688: A Company Man
21 Apr 2026John Ternus was announced as Apple’s next CEO! We review the strengths and weaknesses of the Tim Cook era as he transitions to Executive Chairman.
Episode Description:
- 🗣️ ATP STORE IS LIVE! 🗣️
- Follow-up:
- GL.iNet KVM security issues?
- MacBook Neo cores 🤝 BMW heated seats? (via Edward Munn)
- Joe Lion waxes poetic about RAM on Apple Silicon
- More component delays
- It’s Ternus time
- Post-show: John quizzes Marco & Casey
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Media consumption & the limits of human perception
Sponsored by:
- Anthropic: Ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today.
- Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code atp.
- DeleteMe: Making it quick, easy and safe to remove your personal data online.
Become a member for ATP Overtime, ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- ATP Store
- GL.iNet KVM security warning
- Software-locked hardware
- Apple DRAM follow-up
- Mac Studio delay?
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- 🎉 🖼️
- Sponsor: Claude
- 🥳 🖼️
- Sponsor: DeleteMe (code ATP)
- 💃🕺 🖼️
- Ending theme
- Every Apple CEO
ATP Store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Marco is so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happy right now. This. Oh my god. I’m so happy. Oh my god. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to talk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it. I’m not talking about it yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Should we just dive in? I mean, we got, we got some stuff we got to get through first and that is, this is your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last chance. Let me say it again. This is your last chance to go to ATP.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash store and get yourself some sweet, sweet, sweet merch. John, would you please give us one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last nickel tour of the merch offerings for summer 2026? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll just remind people that the sale ends Sunday, April 26th at 11 59 PM, uh, us
⏹️ ▶️ John Eastern time. So that is your deadline. Uh, our products we have this year,
⏹️ ▶️ John we have our ATP neo shirts in the neo colors. Uh, we apologize
⏹️ ▶️ John for not having all the styles that you can imagine available. We, this is the only shirts, the literally the only
⏹️ ▶️ John shirts that these colors came in and we tried to match the styles as best we have the colors as best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we could. John, can you give us an update on the color sales?
⏹️ ▶️ John So when we do these sales, there’s a minimum number of shirts that have to be ordered for them to bother
⏹️ ▶️ John printing them because it’s like they do them in batches and they, you know, whatever. And that number is twelve twelve
⏹️ ▶️ John people need to order a shirt. Otherwise, it will not get printed. And those people will just get their money back. And we
⏹️ ▶️ John have the ATP Neo shirt colors matching the MacBook Neo. We have indigo, blush, citrus, and
⏹️ ▶️ John silver. And I said last episode that silver was proving to be extremely
⏹️ ▶️ John unpopular. Only one person had ordered silver and I was like, well, that person is not getting their silver shirt and unless 11
⏹️ ▶️ John more people order silver since then, since last week’s episode, but you know, it hasn’t been a full week because we’re recording
⏹️ ▶️ John this on Monday. Um, since then, uh, here’s what has happened with the silver shirt. The
⏹️ ▶️ John total number of orders for silver now stand at two, two people
⏹️ ▶️ John have ordered the silver shirt. One additional person ordered it since last week. So not looking good for
⏹️ ▶️ John ATP, Neo Silver. Sorry for those two people. I don’t think you’re going to get your shirts,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the other shirts are there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, if this was a Bezos chart, though, this would like this would look really impressive. 100% sales growth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in less than a week. Sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, I’ll put that on my goodbye
⏹️ ▶️ John letter, just like Tim Cook. We have our Mac Pro Memorial shirt, which, as I noted last episode,
⏹️ ▶️ John was and we will indeed be sending that to John Ternus. I might need to change the address. and so no longer
⏹️ ▶️ John says Senior Vice President of Hardware or whatever. But I’m pretty sure it’ll get to him. They
⏹️ ▶️ John probably know who he is and how to find him. It is our Mac Pro shirt with the years 2019 through 2026 underneath
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Again, prophetic that the shirt has always looked a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John like a tombstone. We’ve got our ATP T65 A and B crossover cable shirts
⏹️ ▶️ John with all sorts of Ethernet conductors crossed over in the ways that you do.
⏹️ ▶️ John We have our M5 Pro and Max shirts. again, if you want an M5 Pro and Max shirt, we’re probably never going
⏹️ ▶️ John to sell them again. We sell them when the chips come out, whatever the sale is after the chips come out. So don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John wait. Maybe you don’t have a Pro or a Max now, but maybe you think you’ll have one someday. Now’s the time to get the shirt because you’re not going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be able to get it again. We got ATP pixels, a very popular shirt from the past that we brought back. That’s a very
⏹️ ▶️ John cool one. It’s just the ATP logo.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. And let me just quickly interject that the pixels in particular is available in a wide array of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different like T-shirts and tank tops and sweatshirts and whatnot. That’s not only true of the pixel shirt, but it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is very true. The pixels, pixel shirts. You might want to check that out as well.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Like since, like since recently we’ve basically made every design available, every
⏹️ ▶️ John possible thing, pullover hoodie, regular sweatshirt, long sleeve, T-shirts, like every tank top, everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, the only time we don’t offer a style is if it’s just not available. So the NEOs are only available T-shirts cause that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John literally all that’s available, but yeah, if you don’t want a T-shirt and you want something that’s different than that, we do sell it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, and then we’ve got our polo, which is just, it’s a polo shirt and short sleeve and that is the only choice there and we’ve got our zip hoodie
⏹️ ▶️ John and hat that’s it for our sale again
⏹️ ▶️ John if you want any of these shirts that are not sort of our perennial shirts like the regular ATP
⏹️ ▶️ John logo one now it’s time to get them because they’ll be gone for good ATP members get 15% off with their discount code that
⏹️ ▶️ John they can find on their member page by logging into ATP.fm or if they’re logged into ATP.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John and go to ATP.fm slash store and just click on a link it should should auto-fill their code for them, but if not, you can copy and paste
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Um, there you have it. This is the last week. Uh, by the time you hear this episode, the sale may almost
⏹️ ▶️ John be over again. It ends at sun on Sunday, April 26th at 11 59, 59 PM Eastern time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will take this as my final opportunity to remind you that every single
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sale, one of you that is listening to my voice right now says, Oh, I’ll remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I get home to do this, or I’ll remember when I get to work to do this. And then inevitably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the day after the sale ends, I get tweets and emails and whatnot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I never thought it would be me, but this time it’s me. Don’t be that person.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pull over, make sure you use your turn signal. If you’re walking in Manhattan, get to the side of the street or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do what you need to do. Pause this podcast and go to atp.fm slash store. Buy yourself some sweet,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sweet, sweet ATP merch. Thank you to John for putting all this together. as always, and thank you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for becoming members and for getting some sweet merch.
GL.iNet KVM security warning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do just a scant amount to follow up. I talked last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week about my beloved GL-iNet KVM. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little dingus that you can connect to a computer to basically act as a keyboard, video, a monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and mouse. And a couple of people wrote in, Mark Wadham writes, the manufacturer of the KVM
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recommends starting with version 1.2 of their Mac software, which leaves a trivially exploitable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey set UID root binary on the system that then persists even if the app is removed. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically, if you choose to use the Mac OS software, which you do not need to do, in fact, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t think I even knew that there was Mac OS software for this thing, because I was only ever using it via the web.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But if you choose to install that, maybe don’t choose to, because there’s some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey complications and potential vulnerabilities. Mark wrote quite a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than this on a blog post, which we will link. But take a look at that before you install the Mac OS software.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then Dan Godin at Ars Technica writes from, actually my birthday this year, March 17th, researchers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the security firm Eclipseum disclosed a total of nine vulnerabilities in IP KVMs from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey four manufacturers, GLINet, and Angeet slash Yiso, Sipede,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and JetKVM. These are unpronounceable, my word. And JetKVM, the most severe flaws
⏹️ ▶️ Casey allow unauthenticated hackers, excuse me, to gain root access or run malicious code on them. I should also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say that a lot of people reached out to say that the cool kid solution is not my beloved GLI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey net, but rather JetKVM. Honestly, I didn’t look at it long enough or closely enough to know why that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the cool kid answer, but apparently that’s the trendy cool kid answer. But it also has some security vulnerabilities, So tread
Software-locked hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey With regard to the MacBook Neo, Edward Munn writes, perhaps Apple could sell an A19
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro version of the MacBook Neo with a software locked core for the same price and then upcharge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the full chip. Yuck, but not unprecedented in other fields. And I can’t help but think of the brief
⏹️ ▶️ Casey foray that BMW did with subscriptions for heated seats,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone was justifiably up in arms about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think someone also did, like, you pay money to unlock more horsepower in your car too.
⏹️ ▶️ John I forget, I’m misremembering something there. But isn’t that Tesla? Basically the same thing like we have a feature
⏹️ ▶️ John of your hardware that is Disabled via software and if you pass money, we will re-enable it and it will make your thing
⏹️ ▶️ John faster Yeah, I think this is also related to our discussion of ads and Apple Maps in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John ideas that would definitely make money But will make people hate Apple Please Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t do this. This is a joke like, you know having having features that are available that are unlocked via subscription
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is Most of the app stores business model like that’s including my own app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Casey yours to like. Yep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I don’t actually have like I don’t think such a model should be like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know illegal or considered, you know immoral It but it does irritate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people and like, you know, you have to well
⏹️ ▶️ John well what irritates people like with the heated seats and with this idea of you unlocking a core
⏹️ ▶️ John in your thing is when You buy like you get a hardware thing because software is
⏹️ ▶️ John you know There’s no marginal cost like software is just infinitely copied and giving you a copy of the software It doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John really cost much more than giving another person a copy. But when you buy a car, there are,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s labor and materials that go into putting the little wires to heat your butt and your back in the seat. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’ve already got, someone did that and pay that. That is not that there is a marginal cost for that. That
⏹️ ▶️ John someone has to pay the money to buy those materials and pay the people to put it in. It takes time in the factory and the labor to do it
⏹️ ▶️ John right. You’ve got it. And yet they’re stopping you from using it. And so I think people
⏹️ ▶️ John feel worse when you buy a hardware physical thing that is a real
⏹️ ▶️ John live thing that costs money to produce and deliver to you. And then they stop
⏹️ ▶️ John you from using the thing, the physical thing that you have in your hands and having a core that works
⏹️ ▶️ John in your SOC and saying, actually, we’ve changed the software. So it won’t use
⏹️ ▶️ John that perfectly good working core that we manufactured and sent to you because you know, if it’s a chip with the working core, it
⏹️ ▶️ John is worth more than the chip without the working core. Right? It’s a version with everything working. You could charge more money for
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I’ve got it. It’s in my computer, but you’re saying I can’t use it unless I pay you more. That’s why people feel
⏹️ ▶️ John worse, because it’s a physical good versus the whole thing is just software. And yeah, you pay money and I unlock features, but
⏹️ ▶️ John like, but just because like, you gave me all the software and it works and you’re disabling virus software. Yeah, but there’s no marginal
⏹️ ▶️ John cost to that. Like you didn’t get anything more valuable or better than the person who got the software
⏹️ ▶️ John with it, you know, disabled because software is software. It’s just bits. And we consider them essentially free
⏹️ ▶️ John to copy and distribute. Is that logical? Like you can make the argument, well, it does cost money
⏹️ ▶️ John to send those bits and figure out what the cost to send the electricity of those extra bits that are in the blah, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in general, I think human nature is, if it’s a physical good and I already have it and you’re stopping me from using
⏹️ ▶️ John it, it feels worse than if it’s software that I already have that you’re stopping me from using some feature in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, I don’t think that difference matters as much as you do. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I understand your argument about there being like, you know, physical parts being present and everything. I understand that argument,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but in this day and age, we have blurred the line so much between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having the physical ability to do something versus the right to do it, and having to purchase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the right to do it. You know, it’s not that different from the original DivX thing, just a lot less wasteful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But like, we have DRM media now that you have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rent effectively to be able to access, even though you, even if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have like a downloaded copy on your computer, you still have to rent access to it. You have DRM
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eBooks, same deal with Kindles and stuff like that. But that’s all software. Yeah, well, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like this line has been blurred so much now. Like we have physical devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that rely on subscription services to operate. There, you know, a lot of like IoT stuff as we were just talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about, or just various like new home devices. A lot of those things require
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of subscription service to even use the physical device. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that different. I feel like this line has been blurred so much by modern technology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that even though like it is totally understandable if this is unpopular, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know if it’s necessarily like a hard line to draw that say to say like this side of this line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is okay and this side of this line is wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we’ll see what people do because they really didn’t like the seed heaters thing, but they’re perfectly fine with Sirius XM. You know
⏹️ ▶️ John what I mean? Like a software unlock type feature. People will pay for SiriusXM, even knowing their car has
⏹️ ▶️ John the ability to use Sirius, but oh, you don’t have a subscription to Sirius? People accept that. But when they tried to do,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, we sell you a car with seat heaters, but you can’t turn them on unless you give us money, people hated
⏹️ ▶️ John Because they knew their seats had heaters! They knew the heaters were under their butt right now, and people weren’t just letting them turn them on. Whether
⏹️ ▶️ John that makes sense or not, one of those is a business model that people accept, SiriusXM,
⏹️ ▶️ John and one of them is a thing that BMW had to walk back because people hated it so much. So maybe it’s just in the car industry where people
⏹️ ▶️ John know that wires are under their butts, but we’ll see how it goes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean the Sirius XM is a perfect example because the car has to have additional hardware to support that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and The the marginal cost to Sirius XM of each person receiving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the signal They’re already broadcasting is zero. So I think it’s actually exactly like
⏹️ ▶️ John The best argument for Sirius is that they had to put a special antenna in the car just for Sirius and you’re paying for the antenna
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, but I’m not sure the antenna hardware is any different for receiving Sirius XM,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco but who knows? It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, it’s a satellite antenna. It’s totally different. Is it though? Yes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, yes it is. Like what, it’s on a different frequency than the regular radio signals they get? Oh, absolutely.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it can’t be picked, it has to be picked up by a special antenna? I don’t know. Anyway, I do feel like there is a difference in,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the engine is a better example of like, what are the, two of the cylinders are disabled. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going up and down, but there’s no ignition in them. You know what I mean? in that mode and then you can enable those cylinders. That’s more
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, cores being disabled in SOC, it feels worse.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, what about all the cars that have like, you know, you can like mod chip the engine basically to like, to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use the same hardware, but just like, you know, pull up the specs a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but that’s just overclocking. Right, yeah, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No one’s afraid,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can overclock, I mean, to avoid your warranty and it’ll probably damage your engine, but you know, that’s up to you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is that that different from software unlocking features? Well, it would
⏹️ ▶️ John be, here’s the difference. If it was like the John Deere thing where the manufacturer forbids you from using
⏹️ ▶️ John the chips. You know what I mean? Like that you can’t do it as opposed to do it at your own risk. And I, you know, car
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacturers, I’m sure would love to do that. But the John Deere lawsuits, for people to know that John Deere is a tractor company in the US
⏹️ ▶️ John and they try to DRM all their hardware so people can’t repair their own tractors. You have to use,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, only John Deere can allow you to do it or whatever, so you can’t repair them yourself.
⏹️ ▶️ John If car manufacturers stopped you from, you know, putting a different engine control
⏹️ ▶️ John computer thing on your car. People will be very angry about that because it’s such a common pastime, but I’m sure they want to, but
⏹️ ▶️ John people wouldn’t like it. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think all of these examples and exceptions and technicalities. I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just proved my point that like this is a very blurry line and as time goes on, I think we’re going to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more of the things that are kind of, you know, going across both sides of this line and I and I think like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I won’t draw a hard line and say like, okay, this this is okay, But this isn’t I think there’s a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of stuff in ambiguity here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even if the line is blurry, there are still things that are clearly on one side of the blurriness or the other. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like paying to re it’s paying to use a working core in your chip is really far on
⏹️ ▶️ John one side of it. So the line may be blurry and it may be a big smeary region. But this is so far from the
⏹️ ▶️ John line part of it that is just clearly a thing that people would be upset about. But, you know, that line does move over time.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it could be that people eventually become acclimated to this and they start doing it. but on the MacBook Neo in particular,
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like the wrong product to try this on.
Apple DRAM follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. We also wanted to call attention to a friend of the show, Joe Lyon, who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has given us lots of really good feedback over the years about chip related things. Joe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey popped off in a happy way on Mastodon and has, I think it was like 12 tweets, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about our discussion regarding RAM and Apple Silicon. And, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, do they just order DRAM chips off the market? And we had talked about that a few episodes back. And it’s a pretty good thread
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you should check out. So we’ll put that link in the show notes.
Mac Studio delay?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then finally for follow-up, Mark Gurman reports that there’s a belief
⏹️ ▶️ Casey internally that the new Mac Studio won’t ship until around October, likely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because of the component, some sort of component related delay, perhaps RAM, speaking of.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mark continues, also the OLED touchscreen M6 powered MacBook Pros may arrive in early 2027 instead of late 2026. Whoopsie-dipsies.
⏹️ ▶️ John bad news for me because I really kind of want to get a computer sooner rather than later.
⏹️ ▶️ John like at that point like you would imagine the new version of Mac OS would be out or about to
⏹️ ▶️ John come out and if that’s when they announce the new Mac studios it’s going to be a while before I get one
⏹️ ▶️ John uh who knows what kind of manufacturing delays will be on them who knows how long I have to wait to get like an Apple friends
⏹️ ▶️ John and family discount or whatever so this is not looking great like last year I was disappointed
⏹️ ▶️ John that I could you know I failed to get a new computer last year because the Mac Pro situation was uncertain so
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t get one um this year I’m like I’m definitely going going to get one this year. And surely they’ll release the new
⏹️ ▶️ John M5 Max Studio by WWDC at the latest. And now, due to the wonders of AI
⏹️ ▶️ John component shortages, it looks like that’s not great. And also, the rumor that the M6 OLED touchscreen
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Pros were also going to come out this year is now at risk. Maybe they’ll come out at the end of the year. Maybe they’ll come out early
⏹️ ▶️ John next year. But not looking good for fans of fancy new Macs this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, not to mention that if you get your 8 terabyte SSD, which, by the way, I’m also on that train.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And whenever you or I buys a computer, we are utterly screwed if these prices keep up. I’m gonna need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a home equity loan just to buy a new laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. So we’ll see. And yet I’m in a worse situation than you because my,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, I’m not even running Mac OS 26 now, but my Mac will not run Mac OS 27.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, that’s right. I forgot about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John So clock is ticking. Apple, please release a Mac Studio
⏹️ ▶️ John with an M5 something or other in it, sooner rather than later.
Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this episode by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform
⏹️ ▶️ Marco designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you’re just starting out or scaling your business, Squarespace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings to the professional website, grow your brand,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and get paid all in one place. So I love Squarespace because so many times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, being the nerd around me, am asked to help somebody build a website.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so often in the past, the answer to this was not very good. The answer was, all right, go,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, sign up for some server thing, install some packages, or have a nerd like me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it for you. And both of those are terrible. You don’t want to have people have to go through you as a gatekeeper.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t want to be responsible for it. And you don’t want to load people with a bunch of like hassles and complexity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when they’re trying to run their business. Squarespace has all of these problems solved. It’s super easy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for anyone to use, whether they’re technical or not. Everything is visual, everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is real-time previewing and everything. You can make a beautiful website so easily with Squarespace.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re not just templates. You start with their guides, but you customize everything. You can even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use AI to automatically generate even more custom stuff for you so that it looks like your site
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and your design and your brand, not theirs. It supports any kind of business you might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have in mind, physical goods, digital goods, services, time slots, paid content,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco paid newsletters, paid podcasts, membership stuff, all of that backed up by things like SEO,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco analytics and everything you might want. Squarespace supports it all. You can see for yourself by starting a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco free trial. Build your site on Squarespace for free before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you launch. You can see how it works for you. If it works well for you, and I think it will, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can go to squarespace.com slash ATP and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think you can honestly go right there. Start right there. You don’t even need the trial, but you have the trial.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Try it out. Squarespace.com slash ATP. It’s a wonderful service. I can’t wait for you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to see for yourself. Thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring our show.
🎉
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s a little bit of news that happened, thankfully, and I must give my thanks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to someone over at Apple for timing this as they did, because I was sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here working on CallSheet, working fast and furiously on some new features for CallSheet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’m really excited about, which we’ll talk about another time. And all of a sudden, my phone started blowing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up. I have messages from everywhere, my slacks are going crazy, and I didn’t know what was going on. Turns
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out that, uh, Apple put up a newsroom post and let me read to you, to be honest, kind of a lot of it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s a lot there. So from the Apple newsroom, Apple announced that Tim Cook will become
⏹️ ▶️ Casey executive chairman of Apple’s board of directors and John Turner, senior vice president of hardware engineering will becomes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s next chief executive officer effective the 1st of September, 2026, the transition.
⏹️ ▶️ John going to pause you a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John here because I selected these paragraphs for a reason.
⏹️ ▶️ John it somewhat interesting, uh, as sort of like the last act of Tim Cook as the CEO,
⏹️ ▶️ John is that the first sentence of this press release says that Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John board of directors. And I feel like that is not the most important part of this news.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it kind of is, but like, can’t you also, can’t you be like the CEO and the executive chairman
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple? Either way, this news releases John Ternus, new CEO of Apple, right? That’s the news release.
⏹️ ▶️ John But Tim Cook gets one last moment in the spotlight It’s like I’m as of the
⏹️ ▶️ John writing of this press release. I’m still CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is actually reasonable given that like the the amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pressure and scrutiny from the press and Wall Street on the move
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this. I’m gonna say he’s not going to an island It’s yeah It’s all about like managing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco skepticism and doubt because that’s that’s every like right in this moment what you need to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when Apple is gonna have a transition away from the a very long-running very financially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco successful CEO, what you need to tell Wall Street is, everything’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine, calm down, also new CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel bad for Ternus though. He gets second billing in his own I’m the new CEO announcement, but alright.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He’ll have plenty of attention. I think the funniest thing about this, like you know, right at the top of this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have this big picture of Ternus and Tim Cook walking down of…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John They’re so happy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re walking down a walk in Apple Park, and my favorite thing about this about this is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are wearing the exact same uniform.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the little clothes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so you had so basically to be the CEO of Apple apparently it’s important to communicate that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to be a smiling in side profile white American
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guy. You have to be wearing a blue button down shirt untucked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with jeans and sneakers like that. The only difference is that Tim Cook’s sneakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are white and John Ternus’ sneakers are black. And Tim’s look a little bit more athletic and Ternus’
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look a little bit more like canvas. The shirt materials are different. You know, Cook has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much more of a like, like the kind of silky sheen Oxford style material. Ternus looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s wearing some kind of tri-blend. Maybe I can’t identify quite the exact shirt it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s that kind of like, you know, soft material that is, that feels like a t-shirt but has buttons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a collar. Other than that though, it’s like, don’t worry, we’re replacing the CEO
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with another person that you can all be comfortable with. It’s the same kind of guy. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course, it isn’t at all, but that’s kind of what this picture shows. It’s such
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a uniform and the business suit used to be the uniform of business people, right? Like, and everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of looked the same. Then, Silicon Valley comes around like, you know, we can just wear whatever we want. We’re not going to wear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suits. We’re going to wear like jeans and t-shirts and hoodies and you know, And then like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has just kind of formed its own version of the suit, especially at Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Where like this is just the Apple suit. It’s just a button-down shirt and jeans and sneakers. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s probably a very nice button-down shirt, and I bet those are very nice jeans and probably very nice sneakers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it’s still like this is just the Apple suit and you have to make sure that to show continuity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these guys like each other. Someone just told a joke and And don’t worry, they look pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John Someone in the chat room says that Tim Cook is wearing Travis Scott Jordan 1s in this picture, which are different
⏹️ ▶️ John shoes than Ternus. I will point out that this is dressing up for Ternus
⏹️ ▶️ John because I can’t remember the last time I saw him not wearing a T-shirt. Like even when he just did that, I just
⏹️ ▶️ John talked in the last episode about that YouTube interview he did with Tom’s Hardware, wearing the T-shirt. He
⏹️ ▶️ John loves T-shirts, so why keep sending him T-shirts? He loves them! But he dressed up, he dressed up for his big PR photo.
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s wearing what looks like a button-down t-shirt.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will give them credit. They are wearing different color Apple Watch Ultras. Cook’s rocking the black one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Ternus is rocking the white one. And I can’t tell what Cook’s strap is because Ternus also has mastered a move that I wish
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could master, the partial sleeve roll-up to show off the Apple Watch and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strap selection. I wish I could master that move. I have not yet, but I have much to learn before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can become the next Apple CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ John They just slide back down, that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem. Well, but if you roll them up right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they don’t. Yeah, this is not difficult. Next time we’re around each other, which unfortunately the rate we’re going is gonna be like two or three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years, I will instruct you. This is about the only thing I can accomplish that’s even vaguely related to fashion.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it’s easy to get them in that position. My experience is they eventually slide down.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but when you have like the button slip, and to be clear also, Cook did not roll his up, because he’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more formal. But the problem is you can’t just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco push them up, because that makes them all crinkle up, and then they just slide back down. There’s a bit of a rolling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in progress there. Like you have to like, um, I don’t know how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do it though. I shouldn’t have been so smug. This is not buttons on the sleeves. Like there’s no cuff link area
⏹️ ▶️ Casey buttons on turn us to shirt. That makes us far more difficult. I take it all back.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t believe this is the, uh, the tangent we’re going on one sentence with the press release. He’s a wizard, a sleeve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wizard. Hey man, you, you stopped us. You stopped me. I was, I was cruising right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John along. I know. I know. I just stopped
⏹️ ▶️ John for the billing thing. Marco went off into fashion.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How do you not comment on these guys looking exactly the same in this picture? No, it was a good point.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was a good point. just, you know, I don’t need all the, the, all the fashion detail.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do they have to include the trash can on the left side? It’s a nice looking trash can. It’s a beautiful, they have beautiful trash cans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at Apple Park, but like, really? They didn’t, they didn’t want to paint
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aye, aye, aye. All right. Uh, where was I? Okay. So reading from the newsroom post, the transition, which was approved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unanimous, unanimously by the board of directors, follows a thoughtful longterm succession planning
⏹️ ▶️ John Thoughtful longterm widely leaked succession planning process. They left that widely leaked in that comma separated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s fair. Like that is true. Like this was obviously like, you know, you can, as we look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back on even before the leaks, as you look back on some of the executive reshuffling that have happened
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the last, I’d say at least six months, um, it has looked pretty apparent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this was probably the path that they were going down and that it was being executed very well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I do give them credit for that. And don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John forget, uh, I don’t remember the date of this, but I’ll forget however long it was. I think it was multiple years ago that
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook said in an interview, which he never accidentally says anything in an interview, that he probably wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John be at Apple for 10 more years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly. And I guarantee you there was already, I mean, whether the plan was finalized,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether all the details were finalized, I guarantee you that, you know, knowing Tim Cook and knowing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how careful and deliberate and patient he is, this has probably been planned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a long time, maybe, maybe not specifically turn us. Although I bet turn us has been under
⏹️ ▶️ Marco consideration for a long time, but Tim has probably been planning his exit for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good amount of time. This probably was very careful, very deliberate and executed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as far as we can tell very well.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s very Tim cook move to, to, uh, leave. We’re not going to say retire, but to
⏹️ ▶️ John leave your CEO position at age 65. Exactly. It’s just like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John social security retirement or whatever, it’s just like, it’s a plan that I can imagine him coming up
⏹️ ▶️ John with a decade ago and say, yeah, I’ll probably aim for leaving around 65, and he’s doing it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, well, also, real-time follow-up, I asked a sneakerhead friend of mine, what is the deal with these shoes that Tim Cook is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wearing? He said that they are, as one of you said, the Travis Scott Jordan 1 fragments, which apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were impossible to find. My friend Adam said they were a limited run and only select
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people were able to get them. So, there you go. Nothing’s impossible if you’re a billionaire. Exactly. Continuing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on from the newsroom, Cook will continue in his role as CEO through the summer as he works closely with Ternus on a smooth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey transition. As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including what?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Including engaging with policymakers around the world
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John as the prophecy
⏹️ ▶️ John is the thing I didn’t want to be true. It was so clear that it was going to me, but I really wished it was, I want him
⏹️ ▶️ John to go to an Island. I want him to retire from public life and live a wonderful
⏹️ ▶️ John life with his his billions and give to charity and whatever it is that he wants to do. But no, that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s going to happen for the reasons Marco just cited. That’s that’s not that’s not what he wants to do. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John good for the company’s stability. He will continue on as chairman. And what will he do as chairman?
⏹️ ▶️ John He will continue to eat poop from our president and other world leaders.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think again, like I think given the immense size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and scale and influence of Apple in the world and in politics and in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco finance and all like they’re so big. I think this is what they have to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s part. I mean look Steve Jobs did exactly the same thing, right? Wasn’t he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the last few months of his life? Wasn’t he? I mean he was dying. I mean, yes, but I mean like what in the last few months of his life
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t when he left CEO to cook didn’t job stay as president of the
⏹️ ▶️ John form. I forget that sounds familiar for me, but it’s in in that role. he was mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John concentrating on dying and not really spending a lot of time schmoozing world leaders. But this is a hundred,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, this is one of the things we talked about with the timing of this. It’s like, well, it just seems so much cleaner for Cook
⏹️ ▶️ John to stay out the Trump presidency so he can just be the sin eater and the garbage
⏹️ ▶️ John sink for that whole terrible thing and then let Ternus come in clean. But the alternative
⏹️ ▶️ John is that, okay, Ternus comes in, but Tim continues to be Tim Apple to
⏹️ ▶️ John our terrible president and to deal with world leaders leaders and do all that other stuff. One, because I mean, dealing
⏹️ ▶️ John with like China and everything, he’s, he’s got the experience and the relationships there. Whereas I’m, I imagine John Ternus doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John spend a lot of time talking to a, whoever is running China these days. I forget what that person’s name is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, so that there’s some continuity of care as they say there, but the other thing is, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, cook will continue to be a meat shield for Ternus so that he is,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s say less sullied by the terrible things that Apple is doing related to the current us administration.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this all makes sense because it did like as we were talking it didn’t make sense to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to have Tim Cook totally disappear and retire completely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during Trump’s term like given that relationship that’s been built up and given how like you’d want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the next CEO to have a more clean political slate after Trump’s out of the office thank God
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this didn’t make sense for Tim Cook to retire completely during this term and so this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably one of the many reasons that played into Cook plan to stay on as executive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chairman of the board. That makes a lot of sense and I think the only question is like how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cleanly will they be able to keep the separation?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah that’s that’s my fear that’s like I want John Ternus to do things differently than Tim. How
⏹️ ▶️ John easy is it to do things differently than the guy who’s still like staring over you from the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco board? You know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That part I don’t actually mind like I’m I’m very confident that Tim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will let Ternus lead the company without Tim interfering with Ternus. What I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worried about is Trump going to Ternus and bringing him into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the spotlight with him instead of going to Tim Cook.
⏹️ ▶️ John You said you’re not worried about Tim interfering with how Ternus wants to do things, but if Tim’s job is
⏹️ ▶️ John to be the stupid Trump whisperer and deal with all that crap, what if Ternus’s decision is
⏹️ ▶️ John day one, I’m the new CEO, the new Apple policy is F you Trump. That’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John hard for Tim to smooth over. And like, it would be, it’s like essentially screwing up what Tim wants
⏹️ ▶️ John to do, because Tim’s like, I’m supposed to be talking with the world leaders and dealing with them and trying to keep them placated
⏹️ ▶️ John and, you know, selling out our values to make sure that we get all good, we don’t have tariffs and all that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, that’s what Tim clearly has wanted to do and continues to do right now. And if Turner says,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, actually my new policy is no engagement with them. We hate them. We don’t engage with them at all. We are
⏹️ ▶️ John their mortal enemy. I don’t see how that can exist. You can’t have the CEO saying that and the whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John executive chairman of the board trying to continue that other policy. I don’t think it’s gonna happen. I don’t think Ternus is gonna do that. That’s my point,
⏹️ ▶️ John that he is not free to do whatever he wants with the company in this specific realm. And it’s one of the specific
⏹️ ▶️ John realms that I think Apple should act differently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yes, but I think if Ternus, like for Ternus, I think the best move for him
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to not rock that boat until Trump is out of office. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, and let him continue to be the hate sink in the political sphere. Let Turner
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stay clean in that area and then start making changes. Once the path is clear,
⏹️ ▶️ John then you got to stop Tim from giving anything anything with an Apple logo made of gold to anybody. It’s like you can
⏹️ ▶️ John continue to be there a little like diplomat to these terrible people, but we can’t allow you to give Apple branded
⏹️ ▶️ John merchandise anymore. It’s like in the App Store. If you have a picture of an iPhone in your No,
⏹️ ▶️ John sorry, you can’t do that.
Sponsor: Claude
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this episode by Claude. You know, I am always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprised how much Claude can do for me. The other day I had a big spreadsheet and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, I’m like, you know what, let me see. I don’t think it’ll be able to help me with this, but let me see. And I gave it to Claude
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I said, Hey, review this for these criteria. Let me know what you find and what your takeaways are.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the insights it had, it was pulling references from different areas of it. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was figuring out correlations between different sections that I wouldn’t have seen and then I went
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and manually went through everything and checked it all and it was right. I am so blown away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by how good Claude is. Claude is the AI for minds that don’t stop at good enough. It’s the collaborator
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you’re debugging code at midnight or strategizing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you’re a developer spending half your day on really tough development tasks, Claude Code is your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pal. It It runs in your terminal. It reads your code base. It can take on things like writing tests, refactoring,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco debugging without you handholding it through every step. And this too, I just did this recently because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had a hairy problem. I couldn’t figure out why something was happening. And I had Claude look at it, Claude Code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at it. And it found the problem and I had it fix the problem and then generate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some tests. And then I said, you know what? Generate more tests. And so it generated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even more tests. I hate writing tests. Claude wrote them all for me. It was amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the code it wrote works and now is well tested. And I didn’t have to do either part
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that. It was fantastic. So for problems worth solving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or not having, should have Claude do it for you, but for problems worth solving, get started with Claude
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at claude.ai slash ATP. That’s claude.ai slash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in this episode, claude.ai
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash ATP. Thank you so much to Claude for solving my problems for me and for sponsoring our
🥳
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Arthur Levinson, who has been Apple’s non-executive chairman for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the past 15 years, will become its lead independent director on the 1st of September 2026.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tarnas will join the board of directors, also effective the 1st of September 2026. Nice
⏹️ ▶️ John for Tarnas, he gets to be on the board of directors. Yeah, that’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tim Cook joined Apple in 1998. He became CEO in 2011 and has overseen the introduction of numerous products
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and services, including new categories like Apple Watch, AirPods, and Apple Vision Pro, and services ranging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from iCloud and Apple Pay to Apple TV and Apple Music. So this
⏹️ ▶️ John section of the thing, we’ve skipped a bunch of stuff, you can read the press release, but this section is basically like, there
⏹️ ▶️ John are quotes and everything from people saying how they wonder how wonderful everybody is, and we’ll read some of those quotes later from
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook’s letter. But this is the part of the press release written in the voice of the press release
⏹️ ▶️ John where they are recapping how awesome Tim Cook has been and his history with the company. So joined in 1998 when he
⏹️ ▶️ John became CEO, no mention of jobs in the when he became CEO, although I think it’s mentioned elsewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so this is the, you know, we have a couple of paragraphs excerpted from here saying what his legacy
⏹️ ▶️ John is. So first paragraph of talking about his legacy, here’s what I did.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was CEO and we did these things. And he’s got Apple Watch AirPods and he throws an Apple Vision Pro because we know Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John really likes that, but I’m not sure that’s on your greatest hits. And then he talks about services, iCloud, Apple Pay,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV, Apple Music. Some of those arguably like iCloud or, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John transitional things from the job era and everything, but some of those are clearly his, like Apple Pay has got Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ John written all over it and Apple TV predates him obviously, but not the current Apple TV and Apple Music is services.
⏹️ ▶️ John So say Apple Watch and AirPods are two big feathers in his cap and Apple Vision Pro remains to be seen, but
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s how they chose to, well, that’s his sizzle reel for product stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John product things that regular people would know about that I did as CEO. and you know, it’s not a bad list.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, it really isn’t. Continuing, under Cook’s leadership, Apple has grown from a market capitalization of approximately 350 billion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to 4 trillion, which this is old news, but that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is stark. You started at 350 billion, which is nothing to shake your fist at, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey end at $4 trillion. That’s just bananas. Continuing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey representing a more than 1000% increase in yearly revenue has nearly quadrupled from 108
⏹️ ▶️ Casey billion in fiscal year 2020, 2011, excuse me, to more than 416 billion in fiscal year 2025.
⏹️ ▶️ John is the Tim Cook section of Tim Cook’s accomplishments made numbers go up by more than you can
⏹️ ▶️ John imagine. Again, if you’ve ever seen this on a graph that has a zero, you know, uh, a zero rooted,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, y-axis and you’ve labeled the errors of Apple’s history. So first of all,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you label the errors of Apple’s history, like, you know, like 1990 and earlier.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to keep in mind that during those years, Apple was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I did a joke about it in Forrest Gump, it’s like, hey, if you got in on the ground floor of Apple before the Apple II
⏹️ ▶️ John became popular, you made a ton of money because Apple was one of the first big tech stocks. It’s like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John this little dinking company named Apple, they’re going somewhere. And then the Apple II comes out and it’s everywhere. And it’s like, wow, the stock went up
⏹️ ▶️ John so much. Apple’s value as a company going from nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John to huge success. was a big story in the 80s. And again, so much so that it ends up as a
⏹️ ▶️ John gag in the Forrest Gump movie and stuff, right? Look at that section of the graph
⏹️ ▶️ John on like, from the founding of Apple till today, and it looks like the flat part. That’s the part where
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing happened. That’s the amazing success of Apple in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, that’s basically flat.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you see Steve Jobs come back and like he turned the company around. And then you see the
⏹️ ▶️ John line start to go up a little bit, but it’s still kind of in the flat part. And then you see Tim Cook era, And it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, this is where Apple really was successful because the numbers just get massive. It’s like a big hockey
⏹️ ▶️ John stick graph. And Tim Cook dominates the chart in terms of these kinds of
⏹️ ▶️ John numbers. We’ll get to more of them in a second, but just merely like, what is the market cap?
⏹️ ▶️ John What is the yearly revenue? Just huge, huge. Tim Cook,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sure people can do lots of math on it. Like how many, I mean, he did 1,000% in degrees or whatever, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John how many multiples of like the go-go 80s Apple has he grown? It’s just tremendous. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t care about business, if you don’t care about the, you know, the success of business people and CEOs
⏹️ ▶️ John and so on and so forth, and maybe these numbers don’t impress you, but I know there’s a lot of people in the world who
⏹️ ▶️ John are, you know, who treat business as a pursuit in and of itself,
⏹️ ▶️ John regardless of what business you’re in. If you are the CEO of a company, uh, and you’re tasked with making
⏹️ ▶️ John the company succeed, it’s going to be very difficult for, it’s going to be like, He’s like the Wayne Gretzky of CEOs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, you’d never want to be compared against his numbers. Like, within your chosen sport of like, I am a CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, okay, did you take your, you know, how much did you make your company succeed? They brought you in as CEO,
⏹️ ▶️ John and when you retired, the company was twice as big as it was before. And Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John Cook’s like, I did a 1000% increase. Right, and we started
⏹️ ▶️ John huge. This is how big we started. We started at 350 billion market cap, and I leave at four trillion,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then he just drops the mic and walks away. I don’t care that much about business, but well, other people do. And I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John is much more impressive than his list of products.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey During his tenure, Apple has grown by more than 100,000 team members and increased its active
⏹️ ▶️ Casey installed base to more than 2.5 billion devices. Apple services has been a major
⏹️ ▶️ Casey focus of Cook’s. And during his tenure, the category has grown to become more than a $100 billion business,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the equivalent of a fortune 400 company. Holy God. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John so obviously they don’t go into details as we always talk about, like, what does that mean? The services category
⏹️ ▶️ John really means, you know, rent seeking for software developers, which is not a particularly wonderful and friendly thing to describe.
⏹️ ▶️ John But again, when people read this, they think, wow, he really signed up a lot of people for Apple TV+, and that’s not what it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not, absolutely not. But that’s his thing. It’s the thing that’s currently growing. You gotta put it in the press
⏹️ ▶️ John release. Wall Street loves it for the people who are interested in the sport. And to be clear, I’m not that interested in the sports
⏹️ ▶️ John business, but for the people who are interested in the sport of business, these are big, big numbers. I’m interested
⏹️ ▶️ John in the sport of good products and that section is less impressive, but if you are into
⏹️ ▶️ John these stats, these are big, big numbers. These are just embarrass anybody numbers. These are kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, you know, John Ternus, don’t even try to do this because if you did another
⏹️ ▶️ John thousand percent increase, it would be like the paperclip game. What is
⏹️ ▶️ John that game? Universal paperclips?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey yeah, our planet
⏹️ ▶️ John becomes paperclips. If if John Ternus had a Tim Cook like performance,
⏹️ ▶️ John the entire earth would be apple. But so it’s not possible.
⏹️ ▶️ John So don’t don’t even try. Like, don’t don’t try. And I hope I hope the like the law of big numbers where it’s like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John really easy to double when you have a small number. You just mentioned it with the silver neo shirt, but it’s really, really hard
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that next doubling when you’re, you know, you are 99% of the GDP of the planet
⏹️ ▶️ John or something. So yeah, Hopefully, Ternus will be dissuaded from even attempting to match
⏹️ ▶️ John this kind of numerical performance and thus turn his attention to things that are more important, in my opinion.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, I have very important real-time follow-up. I have found what I believe to be the shirts they are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John in the photo. This is extremely important.
⏹️ ▶️ John Put them in the show notes, please.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I first thought that it might have been something from Marine Layer, Normal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Brand, Faherty, however that’s pronounced, anything like that, and it’s maybe Theory. I checked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all those sites. Miyake or whatever that guy’s name is? So it’s none of those. No, I figured it wouldn’t be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some like super, super high-end thing, because that doesn’t seem like their way.
⏹️ ▶️ John Those sneakers are pretty much super high-end, it sounds like, in terms of sneakers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah, but so I couldn’t figure it out, so I eventually just pasted it into Gemini and said, find these,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it did. And I’m pretty sure the matches are correct. They are both from Vuori, that brand of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, fancy exercise wear and stuff. I don’t know how it’s pronounced. I say Vuori, but it’s probably not that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, Ternus is wearing the long sleeve Ponto button down. It is a casual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco technical take on a classic button down, a slightly fitted athletic cut. And then Tim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cook has the bridge button down. It’s a performance woven shirt designed to look like a traditional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dress shirt with technical benefits. So it’s a more structured crisp look compared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the one Ternus is wearing, but still a minimalist aesthetic. Both shirts are around a hundred bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not bad, not bad choices. And I think they accurately represent both of these people. It’s like, Ternus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is looking a little more casual. Tim’s looking a little more formal, but they’re still both kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of technical, athletic, casual combos. Perfect. I can’t believe this company
⏹️ ▶️ John not sponsoring the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The funny thing is, I think they did sponsor, they did sponsor podcasts around our sphere in the past. I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they ever sponsored us, but they certainly were nearby. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. Well, if you could provide links for the show notes, I would appreciate it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Continuing from the newsroom, Cook has made Apple’s core values even more central to the company’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey decision-making and product development. So this
⏹️ ▶️ John one, like the first line that hurt me was the other one that I put in bold in this thing, which is, you know, engaging policy
⏹️ ▶️ John makers around the world. We also are coming in. There it is. This one, I’m not sure I saw this, um,
⏹️ ▶️ John claim coming, even though as you’ll read it, as you’ll continue when you read, it’s a hundred percent true,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there, I feel like there is an error of omission here. Um, because
⏹️ ▶️ John to the extent that people are upset with Tim Cook, it is due to his
⏹️ ▶️ John lack of making Apple’s core value centric central to the company’s decision making, you know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John The problem is, there’s lots of core values, and lots of them he has made even more central, like I this is a true
⏹️ ▶️ John statement, we’ll get to in a second why it’s true. But it is also the source of I think, pretty much all
⏹️ ▶️ John of almost all of the dissatisfaction with Tim Cook, whether it’s minor dissatisfaction, like I don’t like what he’s doing with the products
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple’s core values to be be about products, like as in keep selling an old product, people will keep buying it instead of wiping
⏹️ ▶️ John the table clean because you know something’s better, all the way up to, hey, how you deal with the Trump administration is
⏹️ ▶️ John upsetting because we don’t feel it reflects Apple’s core values. That whole range of dissatisfaction with Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ John is not making Apple’s core values central to the company’s decision making.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you know, I give them credit for following it up with evidence because it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Under his leadership, the company reduced its carbon footprint by more than 60% below 2015 levels
⏹️ ▶️ Casey during a period in which revenue nearly doubled.
⏹️ ▶️ John Thumbs up. And by the way, big victory lap there saying, Hey, not only have we been doing these environmental stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is part of Apple’s core values and they have totally been doing it and they’re kicking butt and they’re like, look, we are doing 60%.
⏹️ ▶️ John I reduced it by 60% since 2015. And by the way, because I’m Tim Cook,
⏹️ ▶️ John during that period, I doubled our revenue. So we reduced our carbon emissions, not at like
⏹️ ▶️ John status quo. Like we’re just doing the same stuff and we reduced it by 60%. I doubled our revenue because I’m Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s what I do. And we still reduced it. Amazing. Mic drop. It is one of Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John core values, just not the one I’m mad about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cook who has long advocated for privacy as a fundamental human right has made privacy and security imperative
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at Apple, setting a standard for user protection that continues to set the company apart from the rest of the technology
⏹️ ▶️ John True. 100% true. Thumbs up. And as Marco pointed out, I think in the last episode,
⏹️ ▶️ John he has done that more than his predecessor. These are places where not only he has continued Apple’s core values, he
⏹️ ▶️ John has made them even more central. There’s no arguing that he has made environment and privacy even more central
⏹️ ▶️ John to the company’s decision making and that those are today’s Apple’s core values. So partial
⏹️ ▶️ Casey credit. Yeah. He has also pushed for continued innovation in the accessibility space.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would say he just basically continued that one because I think Apple was pretty good about that before. But again, thumbs up, core value. Good job.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ternes joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 and became a vice president of hardware engineering in 2013.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Prior to Apple, Ternus worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. He holds a bachelor’s degree
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m thinking this is in my mind because both of my, on my mind because both of my children are in
⏹️ ▶️ John college now. My son is about to graduate with both a bachelor’s and a master’s
⏹️ ▶️ John degree and my daughter is just working on her bachelor’s degree.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I just wanted to put, wanted to highlight this because it’s like, okay, I think a lot of kids today think,
⏹️ ▶️ John um, if I don’t go to a good school or if I don’t get an advanced degree, I’m never going to be anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Turn this has got a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the university of Pennsylvania.
⏹️ ▶️ John And as someone with an engineering degree, I can tell you an engineering degree from anywhere is, is nothing to sneeze at,
⏹️ ▶️ John but university of Pennsylvania is not MIT and he’s just got a bachelor’s degree
⏹️ ▶️ John and he’s going to be the CEO of Apple. So I was like, is that your, your degree
⏹️ ▶️ John and your school are not your destiny. Um, Steve jobs famously didn’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John complete college cause he didn’t think it was doing anything good for him. So, uh, and you know, uh, Bill Gates
⏹️ ▶️ John dropped out of Harbor or wherever the hell it was. Um, and I know that’s a cliche of like, I’m going to be a Silicon Valley CEO. I don’t need to
⏹️ ▶️ John go to school. I’m not telling you not to go to school. What I’m telling you is that, um, if you didn’t get into the school of your dreams or if you
⏹️ ▶️ John quote unquote only have a bachelor’s degree, that’s not going to be your limiting factor. It’s gonna be everything else about
⏹️ ▶️ John you. That’s gonna limit you, but you know, it won’t be that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. There are a lot of, uh, industries and businesses that really care a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the school you went to and how you did in it. Um, fortunately for people like me, that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all industries. Uh, not, not all businesses. Um, I barely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco graduated from college. My GPA was so low.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t actually even know it. I, I failed a required class senior year, had to take it in summer school at a a different university,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco transfer the credits in, get my diploma by mail, it was a whole thing. But I think my final GPA was somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around 2.0. You know, certainly never anything I would have ever given an employer.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s not what stopped you from being CEO of Apple. Right, well. I mean, I bet he got good grades. All
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m saying is that he’s just got a bachelor’s degree. I just feel like, talking to my kids and everything, and everyone’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, you can’t get anywhere in this industry if you don’t have at least a master’s and probably a PhD. It’s like, no, no, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can be CEO of Apple if you just have a bachelor’s degree, it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like the secret to success is who you know, but the second best secret to success is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you’ve done. And that’s what, you know, the tech business cares most, what have you done? And that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, so start doing stuff and that’s how you get far. You don’t just rest on college forever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For what it’s worth, the University of Pennsylvania as ranked by US News and World Report, which I’m sure this is a racket, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the best I can do on short notice. University of Pennsylvania, 16th best engineering school in the United
⏹️ ▶️ Casey States. That’s pretty good. Would you like to guess, John, What is Boston University?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I told you this before. My daughter was looking into BU, and it was listed as a far-reach
⏹️ ▶️ John school for her. I’m like, BU is a far reach? I went to BU and so did my wife. And it was not a fancy school when we went
⏹️ ▶️ John there. But apparently, its reputation has increased. I’m going to say BU is 25.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is a very good guess. It is number 32, tied. I can’t see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t see the list. I’ve just been searching universities. I can’t see what other schools it’s tied
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with, other than I can tell you it’s tied with Virginia Tech, which is where I went. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also got an engineering degree. Also only barely, though. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John you and Ternes, and really what you want to look up is how is the University of Pennsylvania regarded when
⏹️ ▶️ John John Ternes went there, which was a long time ago. 100%. But I just thought it was funny. Sorry to slam the University of Pennsylvania. As I said, an engineering
⏹️ ▶️ John degree from anywhere, any good accredited university, is a difficult
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. Definitely agree. All right, so I can move on. And then there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey plenty of other things for us to talk about. Is there anything, I mean, Marco, do you want to do your victory lap before we start talking about other things?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, let’s at least get through, like we have the whole show for this. I think we can just get through the
⏹️ ▶️ John last things that we have here and then we can just give our thoughts on the whole thing. Because I do want to get to the New York Times thing
⏹️ ▶️ John because I think that’s central to what I’m sure Marco wants to talk about, which is like the Tim Cook legacy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So also announced today, Johnny Sruji has been named Apple’s chief hardware officer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is a different newsroom post. today announced that effective immediately, Apple executive Johnny Sruji will become
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chief hardware officer. Sruji, who most recently served as senior vice president of hardware technologies,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will assume an expanded role leading hardware engineering, which John Ternus most recently oversaw as well
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as the hardware technologies organization. And I did a little asking around my understanding of hardware technologies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that that’s the Apple Silicon part. And then the hardware engineering is, you know, putting devices together part.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, if you want to, you can click this in puzzle piece wise to the rumor about Sruji, you know, potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John looking elsewhere. and then them saying, no, totally, I’m staying. I’m not going anywhere. And it’s like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John as you said at the time, it doesn’t mean that rumor was untrue. It just means that that rumor was late. And then maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John Suruji had a talk with Tim Cook and they decided that he would stay by, you know, giving him this more responsibility
⏹️ ▶️ John or it could just be that he was gliding into this role. Like this was always going to happen because it makes sense. Like, who are you going to who are you going
⏹️ ▶️ John to bump up to take Ternus’s place when he leaves as the hardware guy? Putting the awesome chip guy
⏹️ ▶️ John as now the hardware guy makes perfect sense because hey, chip guy, you knocked it out of the park as chip guy,
⏹️ ▶️ John then you get to be all hardware guy like rewarding success and turn us knocked out of the park as all hardware guy
⏹️ ▶️ John and now he gets to be CEO. So this all makes perfect sense. I’m glad to reduce sticking around he seems
⏹️ ▶️ John to I like I like the results. I like his work. Like Marco said,
⏹️ ▶️ John What can you do? Rugee can do a lot. So he’s maybe talent retention
⏹️ ▶️ John is a potential challenge for him that we’ve heard rumor-wise. But so far, products are pretty good. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John thumbs up on Johnny getting the nod to be hardware guy. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, this was actually the first thing that I happened to see was a community letter from Tim.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was very good. It is not very long. I really enjoyed this. And we’ll hear your two opinions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here in a moment. But I recommend reading this whole letter. I think this is an amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey humanity, humanness? I can’t think of what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John we’re looking for.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Humanity. that we don’t typically get from Tim. And I did listen to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the emergency re-recording or additional recording of Upgrade before we recorded tonight. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason was saying that, we haven’t heard Tim be this human since
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his coming out letter from, I think it was like 2014 or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like that. I think Gruber
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, maybe it was Gruber. Okay, I thought it was Jason, but maybe I’m wrong. It doesn’t matter. Somebody said it and I would like to plus one it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I thought this was really good. So let me read a couple of portions of it that John has selected. Today we announced that I’m taking the next step in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey journey at Apple. A new person will be stepping into what I know in my heart is the best job in the world.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That leader is John Ternes, a brilliant engineer and thinker who has spent the past 25 years building the Apple products our users love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so much. Obsessed with every detail, focused on every possible way we can make something better, bolder,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more beautiful, and more meaningful. He is the perfect person for the job.
⏹️ ▶️ John JSON And I think like that’s an interesting characterization. So, you know, here’s Tim writing his more personal, informal
⏹️ ▶️ John letter about what’s going on. And he describes Ternes as first
⏹️ ▶️ John a brilliant engineer, which I mean, no one is describing Tim Cook as a brilliant engineer because
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s not. That’s the new CEO of Apple. So that is music to a lot of people’s ears because that is
⏹️ ▶️ John John Ternes’s reputation. And that is how Tim Cook has chosen to describe him. Not
⏹️ ▶️ John a great business leader or, you know, a master of the supply chain or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but a brilliant engineer. And then what has he done at Apple? building products.
⏹️ ▶️ John So thumbs up on that characterization, whether it was chosen carefully in Tim Cook style to
⏹️ ▶️ John spin the story in the way that he wants it to be told, or whether it is just simply a reflection of reality that
⏹️ ▶️ John he is in fact a brilliant engineer with just a bachelor’s degree. But you know, that’s his mindset. That’s his bent. He’s
⏹️ ▶️ John working on hardware. This is how he thinks. This is how he looks at the world. I hope it’s true because I like that mindset.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you remember, even though I don’t disagree with your characterization that Tim is not a a brilliant engineer. He did get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a undergraduate degree in industrial engineering from Auburn.
⏹️ ▶️ John So right, but he did not spend his career pursuing anything really related to that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe I don’t know. Supply chain engineering, maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what I was going to say. All right. Well, I mean, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, moving on.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, have you ever seen a news story where describing Tim Cook as a brilliant engineer or
⏹️ ▶️ John any or him characterized that way about other people talking about him? It tends not to be the top line
⏹️ ▶️ John item about Tim Cook. Certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not. Uh, coming back to Cook’s, uh, letter, John cares so much about who we are at Apple, what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we do at Apple, who we reach at Apple, and he has the heart and character to lead with extraordinary integrity.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m so proud to call him Apple’s next CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that, that, that, that part I liked because, um, again, Tim Cook being more human
⏹️ ▶️ John saying like, what, what do I want in my successor? You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John what am I looking for in a leader? Heart
⏹️ ▶️ John and character to lead with integrity that Tim Cook cares about that regardless of how much we disagree with him
⏹️ ▶️ John about his the manifestation of his supposed integrity with his various decisions that he made at various times about
⏹️ ▶️ John having to do with App Store and developer relations and political stuff or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John that you know, he believes that he is acting with integrity and heart and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what he’s looking for in a leader. He believes John Ternus is going to do the same thing. I mean, I
⏹️ ▶️ John still kind of feel like John Ternus is a bit of a cypher because we’ve never seen him speak out of turn, so to speak, because, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Because he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John always been speaking in his capacity as an underling to the CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple. And they are very like single voice focused and on message or whatever. So maybe we’ll see different stuff from him now.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I’ve never heard anything about him that made me think that he is not in fact a person of character
⏹️ ▶️ John and integrity. And I really hope that’s true. Tim Cook says it’s true. So fingers crossed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is not goodbye, but at this moment of transition, I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you. Thank
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you for the confidence and kindness you’ve shown me. Thank you for saying hi to me on the street and in our stores. Thank
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you for cheering alongside me when we unveiled a new product or service. Thank you most of all for believing in me to lead the company that has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey always put you at the center of our work. Every day we get up and think about what we can do to make your life
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little bit better. And every day you’ve made mine the best I could have asked for. Thank you, Tim Cook.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I believe that he does like it when people say hi to him and
⏹️ ▶️ John cheer when they announce new products. And not because of ego gratification, he thinks he’s wonderful. I just really think he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John always enjoyed that part of being CEO. Like he enjoys that people are excited to see him and they really
⏹️ ▶️ John love Apple products. And like in a wholesome way. Like I do think that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of person he is. Like he’s just, you know, an aw shucks, happy kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John guy. And when I see him in those environments, I don’t think he’s acting
⏹️ ▶️ John happy or like, you know, being like false to the public or like glad handing like a politician. I
⏹️ ▶️ John honestly think that he maybe you don’t enjoy being mobbed by like fans or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ John he basically he does appreciate that he that is probably one of the more fun parts of his job
⏹️ ▶️ John where he’s not yelling at people to get on planes to China, but is instead just getting to hear,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, people applaud when they announce products or they’re so excited to go into the Apple Store to get a new thing
⏹️ ▶️ John or as he said at the top of this letter, which I cut, which again, I echo what Casey said. You should read. He talks about the first thing he does
⏹️ ▶️ John every day when he wakes up at some ungodly hour before he exercises is read emails from people.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you’re like, oh, I bet I bet like he has staff that just filters the emails and just sends him the good ones, Trump style. But
⏹️ ▶️ John no, he talks about, um, he reads emails to people, tell me how their Apple watch saved their
⏹️ ▶️ John life and all that stuff. But he also he mentions in his typical Tim Cook understatement when people will say that their products are
⏹️ ▶️ John disappointing them and the areas where they they could do better. So he’s getting your angry emails too, right? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John people aren’t filtering out, I hope all the angry emails that people get about how I’ve been Apple customer since X
⏹️ ▶️ John year, but now I’m so disappointed in blah, blah, blah. No, he’s getting those two and hopefully they motivate him to do better.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know, that was all in the letter. And so I, I feel like this again, I don’t know if Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John Cook and there’s very little to judge him by because he’s so guarded as a person, but this letter does read
⏹️ ▶️ John to me like really coming from his heart and he’s being honest about the things he says. He’s Also,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s very Tim Cook and the things that he omits and doesn’t talk about and doesn’t address, which is also part of him that annoys me, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s his letter, he can write what he wants.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For Tim Cook, it’s fine. It’s heartfelt, it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it is honest. In typical Tim Cook fashion, you don’t get a lot out of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, there’s not a lot of value.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s not a lot of surprises. There’s nothing, there’s no super new information revealed here that we didn’t know before,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, like, it’s fine. I’m glad he wrote it. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it is exactly what it is. Henry cook fashion. It is exactly what you’d expect.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco His signature is weird too. Can we agree? A signature is weird. Oh, that’s really weird. Yeah. I noticed that too.
⏹️ ▶️ John seen a signature. Like you see jobs, a signature, because people are always getting him to sign stuff, especially in the jobs to error. But even
⏹️ ▶️ John before that, you’d see a signature on like the Apple founding documents and crap like that. And so you’re familiar with the Steve
⏹️ ▶️ John and Steve jobs. Didn’t have a great signature either, but the Tim cook one. Wow. Is it weird? Yeah. The T is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s like a J
⏹️ ▶️ John script. Like the the I am is kind of scripted. Well, the M looks like an N and then cook
⏹️ ▶️ John is just like print. It’s just it’s just it’s fine. He’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John signed his name a lot. He’s probably sick of it. Yeah. And then this final bit, like I put this final bit in just because this is a stand
⏹️ ▶️ John in. I mean, we’re recording this the day of the announcement, so there’s sure to be more. But this this New York Times bit
⏹️ ▶️ John that Casey’s about to read is the stand in for how does the rest
⏹️ ▶️ John of the world, who is not like in the insular little Apple techno, you know, enthusiast
⏹️ ▶️ John sphere. How do they see what is the story from their perspective? Now, granted, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John slightly modified by the author of this New York Times article who are at least one person. I know Trip Mickel has
⏹️ ▶️ John been on the Apple beat and written books about Apple. So he’s not really an outsider, but like, how is this presented
⏹️ ▶️ John to the world? What does it, what does this story look like, uh, to the general
⏹️ ▶️ John public? And my, this New York time snippet is my standing for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. So, Callie Huang and Trip McElroy, the retirement of Mr. Cook will end one of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey most successful management runs in the history of American business. Apple has lost several top executives in recent months, worrying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey investors about the depth of its next generation of managers and its long-term strategy, particularly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with artificial intelligence. The company has largely stayed on the sidelines as the rest of the technology industry has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars developing AI. Apple is also navigating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey increasingly choppy political waters, including whiplash over the Trump administration’s tariffs, a looming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey antitrust trial, and geopolitical tensions with China. In recent years, Mr. Cook, out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of necessity, has become the technology industry’s leading diplomat, making regular visits to Washington and Beijing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to try to manage the often conflicting agendas of President Trump in, what is it, Xi Jinping? I think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco right, hopefully.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey China’s leader. Even so, Apple is still one of the most profitable companies in the world, thanks to the stability
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of its sales, of its iPhones, products like the Apple Watch, services, including iCloud and Apple Pay.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so again, this sort of summary of, you know, this is a very short story. I feel like they should have
⏹️ ▶️ John had this pre-written like people’s obituaries who are real old, but they apparently didn’t because this definitely feels like it was hastily slapped together
⏹️ ▶️ John today. They should have pre-written the transition memo, but I guess they don’t do that for transitions, only for deaths.
⏹️ ▶️ John The top line thing is, you know, they say retirement of Mr. Cook, which is not
⏹️ ▶️ John probably that accurate, but anyway, end one of the most successful management runs in the history of American business. Yep. That’s line one.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s got to be line one, especially for the New York Times. So like we talk about news. He’s a CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re going to measure him against other CEOs. The way you measure our hockey players against Wayne Gretzky. He is the Wayne Gretzky of
⏹️ ▶️ John CEOs. He made numbers go up more than any numbers ever went up before. Tim Cook. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, yeah. Number one. And then there’s some other stuff about it. And then they go to like, OK, well, what
⏹️ ▶️ John about like there’s got to be some bad stuff to controversies or whatever. And so they talk about top executives
⏹️ ▶️ John leaving in recent months. But I feel like it’s just, you know, when this is changing in leadership, that’s always going to happen. I don’t think that’s on Tim Cook. That’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John the way it works. But then their first line item of like things that might not
⏹️ ▶️ John be so hot about Tim Cook’s Apple, like potential problem areas or maybe places where he dropped the
⏹️ ▶️ John ball. They go for AI investment because in the the general
⏹️ ▶️ John news sphere, outside of the very insular techno nerd sphere, but maybe also inside of it is like
⏹️ ▶️ John all these companies, all the big companies making headlines today are spending just so much money on AI.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple is mostly not. And they’re talking about capital expenditures.
⏹️ ▶️ John How much money are we putting towards this in this year? How much money are we spending on building new data centers
⏹️ ▶️ John or buying GPUs or doing all the money that we’re laying out to do stuff. And everyone’s spending tons
⏹️ ▶️ John of money and not Apple. They don’t, they say like, company has largely stayed on the sidelines. And
⏹️ ▶️ John they say, as the rest of the technology industry has committed to spending hundreds of billions developing, they don’t really talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple failing. They didn’t say Apple failing to ship Apple intelligence or like failing to
⏹️ ▶️ John give things to their customers that other companies are giving, which I feel like is the bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John failure. Like I don’t think, let’s look at their capital expenditures compared to other companies and determine
⏹️ ▶️ John whether they’re succeeding or failing in AI. Let’s look at things they said they were gonna ship and failed to. Meanwhile, lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of other companies are shipping things that do the things that they were promising and customers like it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they don’t mention that. They just mentioned the capital expenditure. Maybe it’s because of the New York Times. Then they get to
⏹️ ▶️ John navigating increasingly choppy political waters, talking about tariffs and Trump. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like this is so a New York Times view of this, because it’s not even
⏹️ ▶️ John presented as an opinion or one of
⏹️ ▶️ John multiple positions. But they just basically said, Cook, out of necessity, had become technology
⏹️ ▶️ John industry’s leading diplomat. That wasn’t a necessity. That’s a choice. This is how he’s choosing
⏹️ ▶️ John to interact with China and Trump or whatever. But it’s not out of necessity.
⏹️ ▶️ John But New York Times is like, well, he had to do it. What Tim Craik has done was
⏹️ ▶️ John a necessity. Like, you could say you could agree with it or disagree with it, but it was, in fact, a choice, not
⏹️ ▶️ John a necessity. But the New York Times is like, no, this was totally a necessity. He had to do this. And to do anything else would
⏹️ ▶️ John be unthinkable, because what would it do to the stock price?
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s their position. And then finally, what is not in this New York Times summary
⏹️ ▶️ John at all is many of the concerns that I and other super tech
⏹️ ▶️ John nerd people have about Tim Cook’s leadership of Apple having to do with
⏹️ ▶️ John app store policies, developer relations, the specifics
⏹️ ▶️ John of the decisions with respect to Trump and China, all that stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John is not, not in the public consciousness. Not,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I’m sure Tripp McCullough knows about it, but doesn’t care, doesn’t go in the New York Times story because the only people who care about this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John are weird Apple nerds. And I think it’s right that only weird Apple nerds care about that, but this is a weird Apple nerd podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John and it hurt me that none of that is in this summary. And so when I see every story
⏹️ ▶️ John in the regular media, not in the tech media about this transition, I’m going to be reading and
⏹️ ▶️ John looking. Is there any awareness that a subset of super nerd, weirdo, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John tech enthusiasts are really mad at Tim Cook about stuff that never gets mentioned in this. And I find that,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, a little bit disheartening because if it never gets mentioned in your time story, story, I feel like it makes it easier
⏹️ ▶️ John for Turner’s to dismiss it. It makes it easier for Turner’s to ignore Marco’s blog posts because it’s like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John none of that stuff came up in the, in any of the stories about me becoming CEO. So it’s obviously not something I should bother concentrating
⏹️ ▶️ John on because it’s not of general interest, and that makes me sad.
Sponsor: DeleteMe (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this episode by Delete.me. Delete.me makes it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data from hundreds of data brokers online at a time when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. So, you know those sites that like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you search a search engine for someone’s name, you got all these sites saying like person’s name, address, person’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco name, phone number, you know, home address, and you know, you can look up their relatives names or where they went to college,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like all this stuff. Those are data broker websites. They’re this kind of gross business where they just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to collect as much info as possible on people and then offer it for some amount of money to whoever comes by looking for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s kind of creepy. You know, somebody can just go and pay 20 bucks or whatever to get your home address,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your phone number, like your kids names, your parents names. It’s a messed up business. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what Delete.me does is they have an automatic service that goes around and opts you out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and has takedowns sent to all these sites for your data so that your data has to get removed from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. So all these sites, they all have some kind of opt out procedure, but they’re all different. And there’s no other way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go around and just like, you know, bulk remove yourself. So delete me has automated the process. And then it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an ongoing thing. So you sign up for delete me. And it’s an ongoing service that will continually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitor for new data brokers that pop up, and we’ll try to opt you out of every single one they can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find. So I personally went looking for a service to do this for a while ago before they were a sponsor. And delete me came
⏹️ ▶️ Marco highly recommended. So I tried it and it’s great. Take control of your data and help keep your private life private
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeleteme.com slash ATP and use promo code ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindeleteme.com slash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP and enter code ATP at checkout. That’s joindeleteme.com slash ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco code ATP. Thank you so much to Delete.me for sponsoring our show.
💃🕺
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, Marco, victory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lap. I am so happy this is finally happening. The Tim Cook era
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has had its strengths. Back when Steve Jobs was clearly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting sicker and when it became apparent, oh, he needs to step down as CEO,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of us in the Apple blogosphere and fandom, we were all basically on board.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, yeah, Tim Cook is the obvious choice to be the next CEO. And that was for a number of reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tim Cook was already taking a visible leadership position in the company. It was very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obvious that the plan was to have him be the next CEO. He was good at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his job. He was good at operations. He was good at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what he was hired to do, which was to be an operational genius and a bean counter. He was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good at that. And we all knew at that time that for a company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to lose Steve Jobs. It was going to be a huge deal for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco public perception, for doubts about the future. Everybody was going to freak out, especially Wall Street
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was going to freak out about, you know, will Apple be able to continue innovating without Steve Jobs? And so Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was the obvious and the safe choice. And he led
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty much exactly the way you would expect based on the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that story was was aimed at that time. He was brought in to be the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the safe confident for Wall Street leader to take over from the visionary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco founder to assuage everyone’s fears and to make the company like predictable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and grown up and to grow all the numbers over time. That’s exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what he did. So he did the job he was hired to do. He did exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what what Steve Jobs probably expected and wanted him to do. This ship is in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco motion. It’s an amazing ship. It’s done some great things. Continue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the path and figure out what’s next, and keep this amazing thing going. Don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let Apple die when Steve Jobs died.
⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, also, I would imagine what Steve Jobs wished for Tim Cook was to, I
⏹️ ▶️ John have to get to the quote or whatever, to continue to embody Apple’s core values in their
⏹️ ▶️ John decision making and fitting in with the Jobs telling him,
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t do what I would do, do what you feel is right. One of the first things he did after he took over and Jobs
⏹️ ▶️ John was gone was change Apple’s policy and charitable giving because Jobs didn’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John to, like I think Apple didn’t have any match under Jobs or whatever it was. Tim Cook says, this is more important to me
⏹️ ▶️ John than it was to Steve Jobs. I want to change Apple’s charitable giving and matching policy, so I’m going to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in the environment, I’m sure Jobs cared about that. But when Tim Cook took over, that’s a value
⏹️ ▶️ John that he brought in that he cared about more than Jobs. And he really concentrated on that. And I guarantee you that Steve
⏹️ ▶️ John Jobs wanted, what he wanted was things that are important to you that mesh with
⏹️ ▶️ John the core values of Apple as trying to do good in the world, pursue those. They may be different than mine.
⏹️ ▶️ John I cared about these things, you care about those things. But as long as the things are all good things, pursue
⏹️ ▶️ John them. I don’t think he would be happy if Tim Cook took over Apple and just
⏹️ ▶️ John scaled the company, but then didn’t do any of the other sort of stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John like the environment or privacy or accessibility and just kind of like left, let them at status
⏹️ ▶️ John quo or let them die on the vine. I don’t think jobs would have been happy about that. Even if you wanted Tim Cook to take over to be
⏹️ ▶️ John a steady leader to scale the company, he would also really want, you know, I mean, Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John Cook’s not going to do the thick different ad campaign, but like whatever the equivalent of that is to Tim Cook. It seems like to
⏹️ ▶️ John him that was basically like the environment and privacy. Right. And I think he did that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think jobs would have been happy with that as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Tim Cook took this amazing ship that jobs have really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had built and grew all the numbers. The Tim Cook era was not defined
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by massive, like big splash brand new revolutionary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco products, even though I think part of Apple’s great product portfolio was attributable to the Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco era. I think, you know, mainly if I had to point out like the biggest successes, like in terms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like innovative products, it’s got to be the Apple watch and the AirPods. Those were both solidly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco within the Tim Cook era.
⏹️ ▶️ John And both of those, by the way, like he really, you mentioned the stories like comparing him to jobs. Those stories haunted him for
⏹️ ▶️ John years. How many years did you have to see those stupid stories about, oh, Apple’s going to do an announcement, but is Tim Cook going to be
⏹️ ▶️ John able to pull a Steve Jobs and bought like he could not get rid of those damn stories. And when he didn’t introduce new things, it
⏹️ ▶️ John was like, yeah, but what he did, that’s not But it was like the whole like overnight success thing like the iPhone wasn’t an overnight
⏹️ ▶️ John success either But in hindsight everyone thought it was so when he came out when Apple came out with AirPods It’s like alright
⏹️ ▶️ John fine like whatever there their earphones, but like honestly who cares about headphones
⏹️ ▶️ John compared to the the iPhone It’s like fast forward a few years and allow it to grow like the phone did
⏹️ ▶️ John and guess what AirPods are an incredibly important and successful product that totally changed
⏹️ ▶️ John their market category almost in the same way that the phone did, simply by popularizing the concept
⏹️ ▶️ John of tiny little wireless earbuds. But when they were announced, everyone was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, you know, whatever, it’s no iPhone, right? And you know, nothing’s gonna be the iPhone, but like, and same thing with the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Watch. Take a while to get going, but you’d fast forward a few years, and you wake up and you’re like, huh, the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Watch massively dominates the smartwatch industry that it basically founded on its own
⏹️ ▶️ John for the first thing to reach volumes. And AirPods are, I think, another one of those, Like if AirPods were their own company, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John they’d be in the Fortune 500 as well. Huge success, but it’s like, ah, they’re boring and
⏹️ ▶️ John they weren’t a hit on day zero. So we get to write the story about how Tim Cook isn’t Steve Jobs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the reality, and Tim Cook isn’t Steve Jobs, but Tim Cook is Tim Cook. And he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did and does have a lot of strengths that he did bring to this job.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The downside is that Tim Cook does not really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco value and understand some pretty important things that are critical to Apple’s products.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Number one, he’s not a product person at all. He’s also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not seemingly particularly a fan of computers or computing devices. Like he doesn’t hate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them, but he doesn’t seem to have a passion for them. And he doesn’t seem to understand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software or design. Okay, what does it mean to lead Apple?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is a company that succeeds by making really great products that integrate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good hardware, made with good operations, sure, with good software and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good design of both hardware and software interfaces. And Tim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cook doesn’t really understand a lot of those elements. He probably doesn’t fancy himself as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody understanding those, but also that meant that he made leadership choices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think didn’t maximize the chances of those universally and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco consistently excelling. And we saw that. Tim Cook is really good at numbers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and being the bean counter and being the operations person, but he’s not that good at products.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He relied on other people to do that for him, but because he didn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have as much of a sense for it as Steve Jobs did, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it led him to make really inconsistent and misguided choices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much of the time in those areas.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think his self-awareness of that weakness is part of what led him to at least one poor decision, which was the
⏹️ ▶️ John bending over backwards to make Johnny Ivey stay longer than he wanted to, which at the time, like
⏹️ ▶️ John again, for Wall Street’s perspective and from Tim Cook’s perspective, seems like a good idea. Like, everyone loves Johnny Ivey. Super famous.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s done awesome stuff. him leave Apple, but I think it really hurt the company’s products. And because he knew it’s like, look,
⏹️ ▶️ John I need to delegate these things because I’m not good at them. And who better to delegate to than Johnny I have the world’s best designer.
⏹️ ▶️ John In fact, I want him. I need him to stay there because if he leaves, who do I delegate to after it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John risk? I know this guy is a safe bet, so I’m going to put him in charge of all design. And that was the wrong decision. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it was made, I feel like out of trepidation about the idea of finding someone
⏹️ ▶️ John to fill that role. But it’s like, if you already, if you become CEO and you’ve already got Johnny I’ve it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I don’t have to worry about design. I got that covered. I know it’s not my strength, but I’ve got the world’s
⏹️ ▶️ John best designer of the things that Apple makes Johnny I’ve right. But he gets older, he gets restless.
⏹️ ▶️ John He wants to move on to other things. He starts thinking about leaving the company. You’re like, no, no, stay. We’ll put you in charge of the software
⏹️ ▶️ John too. You can design Apple park, whatever you want. And there was a real dark period of Apple design there
⏹️ ▶️ John where things were not going great. And Tim was like, well, I’ve done my job as CEO. I
⏹️ ▶️ John retain the important talent. And it’s like, if he wasn’t so afraid of
⏹️ ▶️ John finding a new person to delegate design to, that he could be confident would be doing a good job, he
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t have made Johnny Ive overstay his welcome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is very important to point out, in the same way that Wall Street was very afraid to lose Steve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jobs, they were similarly afraid to lose Johnny Ive. Not quite to that level, but it was notable.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s another case of where the mainstream press, the concerns that we were voicing
⏹️ ▶️ John at the time in the little Apple tech nerd sphere about Johnny Ive do not exist, did
⏹️ ▶️ John not exist in the mainstream press. All they knew is Johnny Ive equals iPod, iMac, iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John if he leaves Apple, stock price go down. Like all of our concerns about the product decisions he was making
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything just did not appear in these articles, despite the fact that maybe they’d have like lower sales
⏹️ ▶️ John on the laptops or something, and maybe there’d be a story or two about the butterfly keyboard and stuff like that. But it
⏹️ ▶️ John was never It was never in the conversation of like, Apple needs to retain Johnny Ive. Of course they do. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, this one little corner of Apple’s most enthusiastic fans were saying, losing Johnny Ive might not be that bad
⏹️ ▶️ John at this point. But like, that was not visible in the larger world and probably was another
⏹️ ▶️ John easy way for Tim Cook to disregard it because it never came up on his radar that people were upset about decisions Johnny Ive was
⏹️ ▶️ John making about products.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly. So we get through, you know, the Johnny Ive era and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during this era, they almost killed the Mac. They sure tried. And this is not an exaggeration.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, it was very clear that the direction that Tim Cook wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to go was the iPad is the next era of mainstream computing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Mac is legacy, let’s phase it out. That was very obviously the path they were on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in both hardware and software. The Mac became even more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco neglected. They went through some terrible, the terrible hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco era of 2016 through 2020, or 2019, you know, the whole butterfly keyboard era
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where every Mac- And also
⏹️ ▶️ John removing all the ports from laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, removing all the ports, making the whole touch bar
⏹️ ▶️ John That was apparently on Ternus.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hey, whatever, like it happened on Tim Cook’s watch, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and as a result of the leadership structure that he had maintained, it was a bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time for the Mac. You forgot dropping the ball on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro. Of course, I mean yeah, there’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John many… I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John they had to do the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco roundtable, right? Obviously things were a mess. The software quality took a huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dive during a lot of that span as well. They really had a lot of problems with software quality. These
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days, they do have some problems remaining in that area, but it’s not nearly as bad as it used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be. Design quality, that’s, you know, that’s… Obviously that’s a more recent, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco biggest problem, but it’s certainly been going this way for a while. Anyway, a lot of problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then you start looking at the industry as a whole. As everything shifts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first towards like really big cloud services and really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big data services like you have the rise of things like obviously Facebook and the social
⏹️ ▶️ Marco networking whole area there and all the advertising sophistication
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they’re developing and tracking all the stuff and and I think Apple’s behavior around that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco largely good in the sense that they did stand up for privacy a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they did block a lot of the impact of that from getting too deep into too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many of their customers systems. But there was this huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of the industry developing that Apple took no part in and wanted nothing to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with except they wanted some of the money. So they then started doing things like App Store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ads, they’re now doing Apple Maps ads, going in these directions. They want the money, but they don’t want to invest to either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make these products great for users or particularly sophisticated in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their capabilities like ad targeting. So they’re just kind of doing these half-assed, crappy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versions of those kind of things. And the whole services narrative they’re pushing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during this time and the services growth story relies on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somewhat making additive things that make people’s lives overall better, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco largely either imposing taxes as a gatekeeper and or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making the user experience worse to make a bit more money. And that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco largely the revenue growth story. Taking existing product lines and just making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them keep going, great, okay. But the impact of the Cook era
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on them is we’ve maximized the money, it’s going great, and we need to find more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So after we can’t raise prices anymore, what we’re gonna do is just start adding tack-on things, services,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ads, fees, upsells, and then we’re gonna just push
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and push and squeeze and just maximize everything. And that’s when the user experience starts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco taking a nosedive as we were talking about literally last week. What Tim Cook has led is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big expansion of the numbers and generally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making the ship stable and mature and making it reliable for Wall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Street, but at the cost of some of the areas of the products
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having some pretty weird turns in the middle there due to a lack of understanding or leadership.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And now some pretty big questions about their fundamental values that might be being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compromised that could long-term erode the products and the same thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is happening with the Apple brand itself based on Tim Cook’s political choices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and what he built over this entire time was massively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco building up China to a point now that is geopolitically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of risky is existentially risky for Apple in case anything weird would happen between the US
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and China and strategically it’s a pretty large flaw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think he did his job he made the numbers go up but in such a way that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was optimized for short-term gain and ignored a lot of the long-term
⏹️ ▶️ Marco risks and quality and strategy that will possibly come to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bite them later then finally he totally over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco invested in bad product decisions the vision pro and the car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then totally under invested in what actually has turned out to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a pretty big deal AI and this story isn’t over yet we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know how this is going to end up we do know where it has been we do know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple’s efforts at AI so far have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing that they’ve resulted in almost nothing. Siri has been just a massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disaster for a very long time. It’s been holding back all their products.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has caused significant brand damage and meanwhile the industry is taking off in this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive way in this other area that they are just nowhere in. So when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you look at this pattern, the numbers guy takes over from the visionary CEO,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the numbers all go up, the products kind of zigzag a little bit or a little confused mostly just make a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of money and mostly you’re okay but then another then the next big thing is completely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco missed that Steve Ballmer that’s exactly Steve Ballmer Tim Cook just did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a better job of it Tim Cook was a better baller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but he’s still a baller he still has played basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that story arc in the company’s history he grew everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he kept the ship going, he kept things stable, but didn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product sense and has left the company in not an amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco place in terms of future product growth because he totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blew it on the next big wave. Microsoft missed mobile, Apple has missed AI,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Microsoft did eventually do things in mobile, Apple will eventually do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things in AI. But I think it’s pretty clear that they’re never going to be a leader in it. It’s too late. Like they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would have had to start a while ago. They would have had to maybe buy one of these companies when it was much smaller.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They would need a very, very different corporate ethos and priority set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I just don’t think they have. And so if Apple’s ever a leader in AI,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d be very, very surprised. In the same way that if Microsoft is ever a leader in mobile, I’d be very, very surprised.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Microsoft is still a great company, and they still make tons of money, and they succeed in other areas.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But they did take a pretty big hit in their potential and in the roads they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to take by basically being nowhere in mobile. That could happen to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with AI. Apple could be very restricted in its paths in the future, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could be missing out on a whole bunch of potential because they missed AI. And meanwhile,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could that you know billions and billions of dollars to develop the Vision Pro and the car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been better spent in any other way for any of the other products maybe making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri better all this time maybe maybe getting into AI a little bit earlier anything any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those things like they they could have maybe done better things with that money and so even if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you set aside that the more recent stuff with Trump which is abhorrent and and that I think should tarnish Tim Cook’s legacy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forever, his general leadership of the company has been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine, predictable, but not visionary,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and not particularly effective for a design-forward, product-focused
⏹️ ▶️ Marco company. He did really well at making money, and Apple has made a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of money. They made all the money, good job. But where are the products?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the brightest part of the product lineup right now is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware. The hardware is great. And hey, we got the hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chief now as CEO. So I think this is very promising
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the Tim Cook era is ending. We now have an end date. And I think, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically it’s ending now-ish, like even though officially it’s September, but like this transition
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is gonna happen faster than we realize. You know, I think we’re not going to see Tim Cook on stage at WBDC. Like, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be like, you know, I think we’re mostly done seeing Tim Cook doing a lot of public things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think he’s going to let Ternus, you know, take over a lot of that stuff immediately to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco him out there and everything. So I think the Tim Cook era is really effectively over.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the Ternus era is beginning. And we’re going to see what that means. All of these problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could continue. We might have brand new, all sorts of brand new problems. We didn’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco realize that we were taken for granted during the Tim Cook era. But I don’t think so. I think Ternus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going to be good. Because so far, his background suggests that he actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has closer to what we want in terms of product sense,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love of computing and computers and computing devices. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he is also a younger generation. This will trigger over probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the next five years, most of the Apple leadership that hasn’t turned over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet to turnover. And we’re going to get a generational turnover in Apple leadership. And that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could take us in some exciting directions too, which we’ve talked about in the past. So I think there’s not, this transition
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not without risk. You know, there’s always risk that something that we love or need will get worse,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’m hopeful because I think that the things that Tim Cook was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hired to do, he basically did for better and for worse. His job is done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and now it’s time to see what’s next for Apple. And all of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the flaws of the Tim Cook era can be swept behind us and we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can move forward as best as we can and try to improve. And I’m looking forward to what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that ends up being.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Marco, I hear you saying, and don’t let me put words in your mouth, but I hear you saying that Cook,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to a degree, had an edict, he had a mission, and he has succeeded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in that mission. And I think that I agree with that wholeheartedly. Do you consider Cook to have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been successful by whatever metric you so choose? We agree that on paper, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his goal was to grow the company in leaps and bounds, and he has achieved that, that is already agreed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to, do you think he was successful?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a straight yes or no. I think if you had to say like overall was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he successful? Yes. I do think though that there’s a lot of asterisk on that. Again like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am very concerned with the strategic importance that he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has created in China. I think that is really uncomfortable for a lot of reasons both for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the world and for the country, our country, and for Apple itself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All of those things I think were made, uh, were put, were left in a worse position
⏹️ ▶️ Marco today because of Apple’s build up of China. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco products, you know, as mentioned, you know, products are, are, you know, hit or miss in, in certain ways. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he was, he was hired to be the wall street calming replacement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Steve jobs and to take the company into like the bigger, bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and bigger and bigger direction. And he did that. So he did, he did what he was hired to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just think he didn’t know his own shortcomings enough to put proper leadership in place
⏹️ ▶️ Marco below him to cover the things he wasn’t good at. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the Tim Cook era probably lasted longer than it should have in general. I would have liked to see the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco transition happen five years ago. But hey, no better time than now.
⏹️ ▶️ John think he knew his shortcomings. It’s difficult when you know you have those shortcomings to know the right
⏹️ ▶️ John person to pick. And it’s I think the main difficulty is like it’s difficult for him to correctly
⏹️ ▶️ John weight the importance of issues in the categories where he’s not an expert. So I’m sure he had some vague
⏹️ ▶️ John awareness about all the various things that we’ve complained about, the like product problems that Apple has had.
⏹️ ▶️ John But he’s got so many things that he’s juggling having to do with things beyond just the details
⏹️ ▶️ John of the products that when it comes time for him to decide where to concentrate, things really have to be a seven alarm fire
⏹️ ▶️ John before he actually does does something about like the laptop keyboards or something because that’s so below his concern for so
⏹️ ▶️ John long. Whereas if you’re a product guy likes jobs or even maybe like Ternus will see,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though in the grand scheme of things, some issue, some disgruntlement about
⏹️ ▶️ John some particular design of a particular product isn’t that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, you know, but we’re Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is the stuff we’re supposed to get right. And suddenly it demands more forceful
⏹️ ▶️ John leadership from you in that area. Not that you’re gonna fix it yourself or know how to fix it, but that you’re going to rank
⏹️ ▶️ John it, you’re going to pay more attention to it. And I really do feel like that Tim Cook paid attention to the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that he understood well, and it took, it was harder for things that he wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John good at to go up to his level. And I think, again, I think he did know that he wasn’t good at those things, but I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those things where it’s like, choosing what to spend your time and attention
⏹️ ▶️ John on is itself an action as a CEO. He may
⏹️ ▶️ John have thought, I’m not spending my attention on product design because I don’t know anything about that. I’ve delegated, it’s fine. But you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to pay attention to that. You have to treat it as seriously as you would treat a supply chain issue
⏹️ ▶️ John or some other thing that you are good at. Just because you don’t have expertise in it doesn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can just safely ignore it and everyone will take care of it because you’re the leader of all of Apple. You do get to delegate
⏹️ ▶️ John to your lieutenants and maybe you have difficulty judging whether they’re good at their jobs.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in the end, it is your job to oversee everything and figure out which part needs attention
⏹️ ▶️ John now. And he just didn’t seem to ever give attention to the parts that were failing because
⏹️ ▶️ John they weren’t in his strengths. As for your comparison to Balmer, I continue to think that’s not valid,
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly because, we’ll see here, I mean, we’ll find out, but like when Balmer left, the Satya Nadella
⏹️ ▶️ John transformation of Microsoft was basically to turn it into a different kind of company. It was like Balmer
⏹️ ▶️ John was a continuation of the Gates Microsoft, and Nadella said, actually, I have a vision of a different
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft that just cares about different things. We’re not all about Windows everywhere. We’re not about Windows and Office
⏹️ ▶️ John anymore. Now we’re a services company. Now we’re gonna do our things on all platforms. It was just a
⏹️ ▶️ John real transformation of the company to be a different kind of business. Sort of like IBM transformed from the early days of
⏹️ ▶️ John IBM. The company that made the PC is not today’s IBM. You know what I mean? IBM has transformed
⏹️ ▶️ John itself also, coincidentally, into more of a services type company. I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John the Tim Cook to John Turner’s transition we’ll see Apple being transformed in the same way that
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft was after Nadella, which makes me say that Tim Cook is not a Steve Ballmer because Ternus
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have to transform Apple into a totally different kind of company, right? It would be as if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John stopped caring about selling integrated hardware and software and just became like a
⏹️ ▶️ John business-to-business services company that put its software on all platforms. That’s not gonna happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think that shows that Tim Cook didn’t screw up Apple as badly as Ballmer did.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also under Tim Cook’s leadership, like you kind of passed by this quickly, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to undersell it. Like he oversaw the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone product line, not just like, oh, just keep the iPhone going. He didn’t just keep the iPhone going.
⏹️ ▶️ John He continued to make sure the iPhone was, we say this every year, it’s good every year.
⏹️ ▶️ John Almost every single iPhone is really good and gets better. And that’s Apple’s most important product.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s one of the things Tim Cook seemed to be able to pay attention to. There weren’t a lot of stinker
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhones and it’s not like the iPhone just stayed at the status quo and was afraid to make any changes.
⏹️ ▶️ John The iPhone has developed like we wish all of Apple’s product lines would develop. It got a lot of attention,
⏹️ ▶️ John it had a lot of innovation, things were tried, mistakes were fixed quickly, the
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware software integration was pretty good. Even the OS 26 is not that bad on the phone, not like on the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So I don’t think like a Balmer’s like, oh, let’s just squeeze every last ounce of money
⏹️ ▶️ John out of Windows and Office and not really make them any better. He didn’t just squeeze every ounce of money out of the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John He continued to make the phone better, and he also added a bunch of services and profit, but it’s not like he said, Well, the
⏹️ ▶️ John phone, the phone when I become CEO in 2011, we it’s fine. We don’t need to really change
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone much after that. We’ll just keep going. Same selling the same phone like that. I think they have pressed
⏹️ ▶️ John on the phone and Apple Silicon and all that stuff. Like so in the areas where he did pay attention, he did.
⏹️ ▶️ John I gave him some credit for the product lines that he cared about and paid attention to didn’t just stay at the status
⏹️ ▶️ John quo. And the iPhone is their most important product. And I think they just continue to knock it
⏹️ ▶️ John out of the park with that product. I mean, I care more about the Mac. I like the Mac more, but there’s no arguing that they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John been resting on their laurels with the phone. They’ve been a the perfect combination of innovative
⏹️ ▶️ John and careful because you can’t be like all the you know, the other Android phones that can just try all sorts of stuff. Like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why Android has folding phones first. Everyone has all the different innovations in the phones like they’ll try everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. Apple has to be careful, but it also means don’t just do the same thing forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Try new stuff. See how it works. They made big ones. They made small ones. They made fat ones. They made thin
⏹️ ▶️ John ones. They’re going to make a folding one. They got rid of the home button. You know, there
⏹️ ▶️ John I give Tim Cook credit for that as well. And as for the China stuff like.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is where like values being embodied in decision making is becomes difficult, because
⏹️ ▶️ John basically, as you know, if you read the Apple in China book, like it’s not possible to scale Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook became CEO in 2011. He wants to scale Apple up and sell more phones. It’s very,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s basically impossible to do that without doing what he did with China. There’s not even a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John countries that you could have swapped out for China. Like don’t do it with China, do it with somebody else. Like what are the other options?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of a situation where it’s like, if you really want to adhere to your core values, Apple cannot
⏹️ ▶️ John grow this fast. I mean, that’s the reality of planet Earth was if you just sat down
⏹️ ▶️ John in 2011 and said, so Tim, you want to make the line go like this, but what have I told you? Literally the
⏹️ ▶️ John only way to make the line go at that angle is you’ve got to invest heavily in China and with all the
⏹️ ▶️ John caveats and problems that comes with, or you could invest equally
⏹️ ▶️ John heavily or more heavily in these other places that are, you know, not authoritarian regimes like
⏹️ ▶️ John China or whatever, right? But now the line can’t go up as steep. Which one do you want to do? And he made his choice, which
⏹️ ▶️ John was, I’m going to make the line go up the steeper one and I’m going to invest in China. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly to his credit, he knows the downsides of that may be better than anyone. He knows the downsides
⏹️ ▶️ John of it. And Apple has been trying to pull out of China. There’s been a thing in the notes for ages about Apple’s various
⏹️ ▶️ John efforts to pull back from China to the extent possible. I think something like I
⏹️ ▶️ John forget what the stat was, maybe like half of the of a particular model of iPhone was not made in China, but was made
⏹️ ▶️ John in India or something like that. This is a delicate situation to extract themself from. It is a problem of their own
⏹️ ▶️ John making, but it’s not like they’re doing nothing. And all their press releases, they’ll be like, rah, rah, China,
⏹️ ▶️ John we love you. We’re not backing off or whatever, but look at what they’re actually doing. They are trying to build more
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff in places other than China, and it’s really hard and they’re doing it really slowly. And that’s why it was,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, that’s why it was a momentous decision and why it is going to be his legacy as he’s leaving Ternus with this, holding
⏹️ ▶️ John the bag on this or whatever. But I think it’s not like he, you know, he was going
⏹️ ▶️ John full throttle, all trying to all the time until the day he left. I think he has already tried to already started turning
⏹️ ▶️ John the ship around years ago. It’s just a big ship and it’s going to take a long time. So I don’t know. I,
⏹️ ▶️ John I, I mean, if you ask me, it has to be a success as a CEO. I think it’s inarguably yes. Even though all the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that I have to complain about, but my complaints have increased as his tenure has gone on. And that really
⏹️ ▶️ John tells me his time should end and now is ending. And so I’m happy about that. But, um,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think as a CEO, even though he didn’t make every decision the way I wanted him to, he
⏹️ ▶️ John made mostly good decisions and has arguably
⏹️ ▶️ John been successful. And I do continue to think, despite various times that Marco has
⏹️ ▶️ John not been able to bring himself to believe this is the case. I do think in his heart of hearts, he is
⏹️ ▶️ John a good person who is merely misguided many times, let’s say. And maybe it’s because I’m an optimistic person.
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to see the best in people. And who can know, like, I’m just guessing about a person I’ve never met. You know what I mean? Like, it’s hard to
⏹️ ▶️ John know. He’s so guarded. But it seems to me that he is a good person who thinks he’s doing
⏹️ ▶️ John the right thing and is just mistaken sometimes. And that’s like all of us. The problem is that his
⏹️ ▶️ John mistaken assumptions about him doing the right thing have effects that are magnified by a $4
⏹️ ▶️ John trillion market cap. And that is that is, you know, he describes it as like what I know to be
⏹️ ▶️ John the best job in the world. It’s almost kind of like a curse. Like, would you really want to be in charge of the
⏹️ ▶️ John world’s biggest technology company. It’s a lot of responsibility and everything you do wrong is magnified.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like being, you know, uh, control and control of the world’s most powerful military. If you had a conscience, for
⏹️ ▶️ John example, um, it’s a lot of responsibility and I’m not sure it’s the best job in the world. The best job in the world seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John already having that kind of money and sitting on a beach maybe, but, uh, that doesn’t seem to be, uh, the things that Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim cook wants to do. So here’s hoping that he gets to that beach sooner rather than later and
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s turn this uh make decisions out from the shadow of Tim Cook. Oh and
⏹️ ▶️ John then one final thing uh long term versus short term you frequently said that he’s made short-term decisions but I feel like the time scales
⏹️ ▶️ John are important here. He’s been CEO for what um 15 years or something?
⏹️ ▶️ John Thereabouts. Yeah like and like his chickens are coming home to roost on his bad decisions like in
⏹️ ▶️ John China and you’re calling that he made that decision for short term? I was I was like, well, short term I
⏹️ ▶️ John think is like quarter to quarter or year to year. But if you make a decision, this turn, it’s going to turn out to be a big problem
⏹️ ▶️ John in a decade, that’s longterm thinking in business, right? So he’s made mistakes
⏹️ ▶️ John and I feel like the mistakes have been longterm mistakes, not a short term. I don’t think most of the things he’s done
⏹️ ▶️ John have not been with an eye towards, I got to hit the numbers for next quarter. Almost all of his decisions, including
⏹️ ▶️ John the bad ones have been with an eye towards a decade from now. What is this going to be like? So I
⏹️ ▶️ John think that and you know, you’re grading on a curve here, but a lot of CEOs really are in the mindset of like, what do I got to scrap
⏹️ ▶️ John together for this earnings report? And Tim Cook has mostly been isolated from that simply
⏹️ ▶️ John because he’s, you know, he’s been so good at leading Apple to continue to be successful that he has never been put
⏹️ ▶️ John into a position where everyone is staring at him and saying, boy, Tim, you better hit, you better not have
⏹️ ▶️ John another loss this quarter are going to be coming out with the knives. It’s just merely been a question of,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, did you make as many billions this time as you did last time and even the car thing like you mentioned,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, sinking the money into that looking at how much money tech companies are putting into AI stuff now,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think like one year or one quarter is worth of the tech industries capital
⏹️ ▶️ John investment in AI probably dwarfs all the money Apple ever spent on the car in a
⏹️ ▶️ John decade just because it was, you know, speculative and they didn’t actually build anything and they’re like, Oh, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John spent $10 billion in the car. It’s like people spent $10 billion in one quarter on stupid data center crap for a
⏹️ ▶️ John service they haven’t even launched yet. So yeah, the car was a miss, but a I give him
⏹️ ▶️ John props for not shipping it because it would have been bad. And be in the grand scheme of CapEx,
⏹️ ▶️ John the car, especially Apple’s amount of money, the car is nothing compared to the money that companies are speculatively
⏹️ ▶️ John putting into AI in their panic spending in the hope not to be left behind. And you know, maybe that’ll turn out, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, maybe it’ll be egg on Apple’s face. And we said, Apple, you should have been panic spending and putting those kind of kinds of dollars
⏹️ ▶️ John into AI because it turns out no one uses iPhones anymore and everyone just uses their hovering earphone pod from
⏹️ ▶️ John OpenAI and Johnny Ive or whatever. But right now that’s not the case. So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would also say on the Vision Pro kind of jury’s still out on how the AI thing’s going to turn out and how the Vision Pro thing’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ John turn out. At least Vision Pro shipped and maybe they make money on the hardware that they sell. I’m not even sure that’s the case,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be seen. I think ultimately there’s a lot to complain about with regard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Tim Cook. And some of us, Marco have done that a little more vocally than others. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, I, I do think there’s a lot to complain about. I also think that by any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasonable metric, his tenure at Apple was unbelievably successful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And perhaps I’m just getting, you know, not wispy eyed, but you know, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m just looking at things with rose colored glasses because, you know, it’s the end of an era. But I look at my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer that I’m using right now, which is, you know, an M three max MacBook pro, which is like three years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey old now, something like that. And it’s still incredible. I look at this Mac book Neo that, you know, just came
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out and from. Yeah, everything that anyone has ever said, you know, yeah, it’s got flaws, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the grand scheme of things, it, in the grand scheme of things, it’s incredible. My iPhone takes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phenomenal pictures and keeps me connected with people far, far, far away. You know, one of my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dearest friends from high school is now living in Australia and we’ll FaceTime not irregularly. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just one example of many. Um, you know, I, I look at the vision pro and yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we can snark about how it’s kind of a failed product so far. We can snark about how it weighs,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, a whole ton and it’s not exceedingly comfortable. And, you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t have the occasion to put it on very often, but as I’ve said, many, many, many times on the show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every time I put a vision for a vision pro on and use it, I am reminded that I am strapping the future to my face.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And there’s so much incredible stuff that Apple has done. I think that their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stewardship for privacy, I think them not caving during the San Bernardino situation, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey obviously was fraught and you know, you could make a very strong argument that Apple did not make the right choice. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think they did. I think that there are things that we can complain about, but on the whole, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last 15 years, which has been almost the entirety of my time paying attention
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to I only started paying attention a couple of years, a few years before Tim, you know, took over as CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s been an incredible ride to watch all this and not to be a part of it, but to be a part of it. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, to go from, you know, my first real introduction to Apple, my first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple product was, was an iPod Nano. And I adored that thing and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually just found it recently. And it’s incredible. Like even, even today, it feels incredible in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hand. And obviously, the dock connector is not great, but by and large, it’s still a really cool product.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I look at all these devices, and I look at the things that Apple of the last 15 years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have afforded people, but especially me. My career,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no matter how you look at it, right now anyway, is based on,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey revolves around Apple. And I think that that’s largely true for all three of us at the moment. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s not all, Tim, of course, But it’s hard not to get nostalgic. It’s hard not to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey look back on the last 15 years. I mean, hell this, this podcast started in for real
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in March of 2013. So this is almost the accidental Tim Cook podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know? And, um, and, and I can’t help, but feel like it’s been a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey damn good run. I echo a lot of the complaints that Marco has had. I have echoed them and I echo them now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think that I echo, you know, I, I echo a lot of the complaints that complaints that John has as much as I give John a hard time about his
⏹️ ▶️ Casey beloved Mac pro, like it does kind of suck that there isn’t a just completely bananas,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely no, you know, no punches pulled computer anymore, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the whole, I really do look at the last 15 years and say, you know what, that’s a job
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty well done and I think that we are all largely not exclusively, largely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better off for it. And I think that he should ride off into the sunset, feeling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happy and accomplished and proud of what he has done.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do wonder if he’ll give, do you think he’ll give a, he probably won’t cause he’s the executive chairman. Like at what point does Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ John start giving candid interviews ever or does he just die? Because like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wow. I don’t think, I don’t think it’s in him.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Obviously when he’s on the board, he’s not going to give any candid anything. So let’s say he retires from, will he? That’s the question.
⏹️ ▶️ John Will Tim Cook ever retire from Apple’s board?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hmm. I think he will. And I think the answer to your question, when he will start to get candid,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I were to wager a guess and just, and try to psychoanalyze someone who I met once for about 30 seconds,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, I would say that he will start to get more candid when he is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of ill health. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I think right before he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, truly. I really mean it because if you think
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if he’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it then even. I don’t think so.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not sure he will. I’m not sure he will. And I could, I could make a strong argument that he won’t, but my
⏹️ ▶️ John Because Art Levinson is like 75, and he’s not even leaving. He’s just getting booted out of
⏹️ ▶️ John the non-executive chairmanship, and he’s still going to be, what is it, the lead independent director.
⏹️ ▶️ John Art Levinson’s not leaving that board until he dies. And I imagine the same will be true of Tim Cook. So I don’t think he’ll ever
⏹️ ▶️ John give a candid interview about Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think he will, because I think if you’re Tim Cook, and again, I’m really psychoanalyzing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a way that’s borderline inappropriate, but what is his legacy? He doesn’t, to the best of what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we all know, have any children. He doesn’t to the best that we all know, have any spouse. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so Apple is to a large degree, his legacy. And I think that if it were me and I was on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey death’s door, and I don’t mean that to be flippant, I’m being genuine. Like if I was on death’s door, that is when I would want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to. Try to do what I could to establish whatever legacy or properly cement any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey legacy that I may have had. And I think that if he is to get candid and I echo what you, I echo both of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you going, I don’t know about that, but if he is to get candid, I think it’s basically when time is running
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out and he just wants to make sure that whatever it is that’s important to him, be that reminding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone about all the good environmental stuff Apple does or all the good privacy stuff Apple does. And, and you know, washing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey away all the bad stuff one way or another. I think that’s when he gets candid.
⏹️ ▶️ John I felt like he’s going to be a company man to the end. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey even if he’s totally off
⏹️ ▶️ John the board, he’s an ill health, he’s just never going to say anything bad about Apple. Never going to do a candid stories about what
⏹️ ▶️ John it was like to fight in the trenches. Unlike for example, like we talked about that recent, like what was it, 40th anniversary
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Mac thing or whatever, where you get people from the Mac team telling like stories they’ve told before, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John very sort of, uh, candid, dysfunctional inside stories about the creation of the products they worked on because
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is not their legacy, right? Their legacy in some respects is their participation in this team, warts and
⏹️ ▶️ John all, but they’re, they’re not afraid to, first of all, they’ve been gone from out for decades. And second of all, Apple was not their
⏹️ ▶️ John company. So they don’t have to continue to say, I just love Apple. It’s wonderful. It’s been the best
⏹️ ▶️ John thing in my life. Blah, blah, never say anything bad about it. No, they want to tell you the bad stories. They want to tell you the stories about how
⏹️ ▶️ John things were broken and people argued and you know how how their bosses were dummies
⏹️ ▶️ John and they did something clever despite their bosses telling them, you know, like they’ll do that now while they’re alive
⏹️ ▶️ John because it doesn’t it’s not a threat to their legacy. It’s your point, Casey. Whereas I feel like there
⏹️ ▶️ John is no time when Tim Cook is alive when he will not feel that he has to continue to
⏹️ ▶️ John tow the company line and say, rah, rah, apple, like even something as simple as
⏹️ ▶️ John my, you know, regrets about how China was handled, you know, say something disastrous happens, you know, God
⏹️ ▶️ John forbid, but say something disastrous happens with China while he’s still alive in it. And he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a 87 years old and he’s on his deathbed and he’s being interviewed. He does an interview.
⏹️ ▶️ John Would he say like, my one regret is maybe I could have handled China differently. I think he would not say that
⏹️ ▶️ John on death’s door. I think give you like, nope, you’re never, that’s never gonna come out of my mouth. I might feel it, but I’m never gonna say
⏹️ ▶️ John it. So tough luck, but we’ll see. Like, I mean, it’s when people are guarded
⏹️ ▶️ John and private in this way, when people are so disciplined in their communication, um,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s human nature to wish that we could get at the real them. And I guess, I think the best we’re going to get for Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ John is the increasing number of stories from people who are in the room with Tim,
⏹️ ▶️ John because they, that, that story is like their currency to like, here’s my tell all book and not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the whole book. You know what
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean? Like this, it’s the only reason we know the, the, why are you still here story about the guy who had to go fly to China. We don’t know that from
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook. We know it from the people who are in the room with them. And as those people who are in the room with him retire,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe we’ll see them, you know, on the 50th anniversary of the iPhone. They’re on, they’re on stage in a little panel with
⏹️ ▶️ John a cyber David Pogue. Um, they’ll tell their stories about,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, when Tim Cook was a jerk in a meeting or what Tim Cook really thought about something behind the scenes, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, And honestly, I’m not even sure how candid he is in that. Like, you know, how many people hear Tim Cook’s
⏹️ ▶️ John real opinion about anything ever like related to Apple? Probably like I feel people
⏹️ ▶️ John could fit in a small room and the rest of the people aren’t, you know, don’t get to hear that, but we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John see. For now, I wish he would fade from Apple’s day to day even
⏹️ ▶️ John more than he already is. But, you know, you take what you can get. Quote unquote, retirement
⏹️ ▶️ John to be the executive chairman is better than him staying CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Thank you to our sponsors this episode, Squarespace, Claude,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Delete.me. And thanks to our members who support us directly who join us at at.fm. Join
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the many perks of membership is our weekly bonus topic ATP overtime.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every single episode has bonus content exclusive to members. This week in overtime, we’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about media and the limits of human perception. We’re talking about audiophile
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff, fancy video stuff. video stuff, it’s going to be a lot of fun. So you can join the list at at at that FM
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash join. Thanks, everybody. We’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco begin Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental John didn’t do any research, Margo
⏹️ ▶️ John and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John mastodon, you can follow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, Auntie
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Accidental Check podcasts so long
Every Apple CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John So for the after show I need to tell you what I told Merlin on a recent episode We just don’t look at the internet You may already
⏹️ ▶️ John be spoiled for this and may make this after show totally moot But if so mark we just cut
⏹️ ▶️ John it out and we’ll do a different one
⏹️ ▶️ John this is for you to know looking at the internet I’m hoping you didn’t see information that was on the internet very
⏹️ ▶️ John recently that would make this not fun I would like the two of you in the
⏹️ ▶️ John style of of you two trying to name the versions
⏹️ ▶️ John and names of macOS. I would like you two to name the CEOs of Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John in order. Oh no. In order, oh God. Now I feel like you’re helped a little bit because
⏹️ ▶️ John recently there was the, speaking of David Pogue, he had that Apple at 50 book and I know Casey was reading that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I finished it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s gonna, there you go. It’s given you a lot of information and that’s been in the news and maybe Marco’s seen it fly by.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, but Casey’s memory is bad. So you two can collaborate if you want or you can compete.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s no way we will do this without collaborating. I can tell you that right now.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, well, maybe, before you collaborate, you both, we’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John do them in chronological order. So, and we’ll do Marco first because he’s the least likely to know the answer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, God. Apple’s first CEO, Marco, what is your guess? If you both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, then you can collaborate. Well, there was that guy who was CEO for like 12 days right at the beginning.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Don’t help him, Casey, we don’t know what he says.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh. I Have a bunch of names so I have a couple of names floating around in my head But I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it’s right I know like I think Mike Markkula was one of the earlier ones. I think John Browett
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was one of those earlier ones by
⏹️ ▶️ John You got a lot of names in the head that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco for sure I know I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know some of the later ones You know but like geez the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John very you got nothing about it. Well, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the very first one Technically was probably Steve Jobs. That is wrong. Casey. You want to help
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it’s Ron Wayne, wasn’t it? No
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, you don’t have any of their quote. You just read the book. Yeah. No. It wasn’t. Who was the guy? The 12 days guy. Wasn’t that Ron Wayne?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what you’re talking about, but no, it was not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No. Who’s the third one that the adult in the room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the two of them? It’s some name that we don’t know. Like we, that we’ve never, we never talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John actually before we even do the list. Do you know how many CEOs there have been of Apple? I like 12
⏹️ ▶️ Marco including John Ternus. Oh, Oh, like 13 or 14. Something like that. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was going to say the same somewhere low, low 10, like low double digits, less than 15.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you think there are 13 or 14, I would love to see you trying to name all 13, but that’s too high. There’s not that many.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Okay, so the first one- I thought it was eight, wasn’t it? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John nine. Yes, you probably saw that
⏹️ ▶️ John in social media there. There have been eight Apple CEOs, including John Ternus. Jesus. So for number
⏹️ ▶️ John one, you don’t have it, Casey? No, it’s the, who is the guy?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey He was- You’re thinking of Ron Wayne,
⏹️ ▶️ John who was the person who signed the incorporation papers and then bailed out two weeks later, but
⏹️ ▶️ John he was never CEO of Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, fair enough. Then I got nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, don’t look at the chat room either because they’re spoiling it for all of you.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, I’m not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay, um, uh, Marco, uh, Uh, what do you call it? Um the office?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Uh Main character michael scott.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was the first ceo of apple michael scott 1977 to 1981 How did I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that also known as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John mike scott? That’s why
⏹️ ▶️ John right. Well, that’s that’s tough one because it’s 1977 1981 I don’t think either one of you were alive although Casey did just read the book about him. Remember, he was brought in as
⏹️ ▶️ John a CEO when they formed the company. Okay. Number two, after Mike Scott.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I got nothing on this. That was probably Jobs. Nope.
⏹️ ▶️ John You had it before, Mark R. You wanna try again? Was it John Browett?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is Markkula the CEO?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, Mike Markkula. Casey, don’t look at the chat room either. I’m not looking at the chat room. All right, Mike
⏹️ ▶️ John Markkula, 1981 to 1983. The two Mikes, Mike Scott and Mike Markkula. All right, number three.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s starting in 1983. So we did 77 to 81, 81 to 83. Now it’s 1983. Who becomes CEO of Apple?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think actually, so my thinking now, I think Jobs was never CEO before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he was ousted. I think that’s how this happened.
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey, you want to help him with this? No, I thought that that was correct. I’m just, I’m saying you can collaborate now because you really need,
⏹️ ▶️ John you really need each other. Yeah, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do. And I’m useless. point we have like, you know, John Scully, Gil Emelio,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like we had the series. I get it was Scully the next one. I think Scully might’ve been the next one. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Cause wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Scully the one who fired Jobs? Yes. Jobs was never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My answer was John Scully.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco What year? What year did you say John? 1983. He’s
⏹️ ▶️ John starting. Marco, Marco ends in 83. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought, no, I think Marco is right. I think it is Scully.
⏹️ ▶️ John You got it right. John Scully. He was recruited by Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs said, do you want to do you want to
⏹️ ▶️ John sell sugar water for
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the rest of your
⏹️ ▶️ John life? Because he was at Pepsi. Or do you want to come with me and change the world? He recruited John Scully to become CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple in 1983. John Scully lasted from 1983 to 1993. Yeah, long span. He launched the Newton
⏹️ ▶️ John he thought he was a product visionary, but he was a guy from Pepsi.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Then was it Gil Amelio? So
⏹️ ▶️ John Scully Scully is as gone in 93. Who comes in in 1993? Jobs
⏹️ ▶️ John is obviously not here anymore because Jobs departed Apple during the Scully era in 1985,
⏹️ ▶️ John I believe. So Scully is there for 1983, 85 jobs leaves,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then it’s just the John Scully show from 85 to 1993. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I thought there was somebody before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe was there Mike Markle of then.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey We just we already did. Mike Markle. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John he’s done already. Oh, was that John Scott?
⏹️ ▶️ John Mike Markle. Brown is the guy who ran the Apple store retail for like six months. Oh, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That was for like a hot
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that is very not in
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the center. Paper
⏹️ ▶️ John Master. I don’t know why that name was stuck in your head, but I just want to save you from saying Broward anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounded like a CEO name. All right.
⏹️ ▶️ John After John Scully, who takes over.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, but there was someone between him and Emilio. I could have sworn, but I can’t place who it was. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco’s right. I think Marco had
⏹️ ▶️ John said it was Emilio. I’ll give you a hint. This CEO famously hid under his desk at various points because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the cup fingers were going really badly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And he was of poor physical health. God, I can’t remember his name now, but I know who you’re thinking of.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that somebody else?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No. Oh, crap. I don’t know. I couldn’t pull a name out of a hat, but I know who you’re thinking of.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of you said it before, but I’ll save you because this is not a well-known CEO. Michael Spindler, 1993 to 1996. Yeah, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John heard that name before, but I don’t know anything about it. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the period where Casey and I are not paying attention at all. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hiding under his desk is the note card of Michael Spindler, not profiles in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Courage. It doesn’t seem like that would be a Tim Cook thing to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, Tim Cook is never hiding under his desk,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can tell you that. I don’t think Tim Cook’s… Has Jim Cook ever sat down?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, exactly. He’s always in the mood like a shark. Yeah. All
⏹️ ▶️ John right. So this ends in 1996. In 1996, who takes over as the fifth CEO of Apple?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That must be a Gil Emelio,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You see, well, hold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco on. I’m pulling the Emelio card again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, hold on, though, because if that’s number five, one, two, three, four, five.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because Jobs is backed by like 97 or 98, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Spindler is leaving in 96. One,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John five, six. Who takes over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Spindler in 96?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, no, you’ve got it. You’ve got it. I just need to do the math. You’ve got it. You’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John got it. It’s Emilio
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah who famously Compared the Macintosh to the maglite which was the only other
⏹️ ▶️ John Hardware electronic product he could think of that was high quality It’s like the Mac it’s kind of like the maglite
⏹️ ▶️ John because that was the time on you know Maglites were popular and it was like it’s like a flashlight but like a really good really
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive flashlight So the Mac is like the maglite. Oh, sorry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they really had a moment there with the maglites, but then like LEDs happened and really killed them
⏹️ ▶️ John way before LEDs. This is 1996. So maglites were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Incredibly popular look it up kids. It was it
⏹️ ▶️ John was a whole thing Yeah, anyway, he lasted from 1996 to 1997 the most important decision
⏹️ ▶️ John He ever made obviously was to buy next and get Steve Jobs back Who
⏹️ ▶️ John was the sixth CEO of Apple Steve Jobs? That’s right. The first
⏹️ ▶️ John time he was ever CEO of Apple He was not CEO of Apple at any other time.
⏹️ ▶️ John He was the co-founder, but they brought on CEOs because they were kids and they brought on adults who understood business
⏹️ ▶️ John to be CEOs. And one of those people was recruited by Jobs himself. And that was the one who essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John defeated him in the politics in the boardroom politics of the day, resulting in Jobs leaving. But
⏹️ ▶️ John when he came back, he was I CEO, then regular CEO Steve Jobs. 1997 to 2011, he did
⏹️ ▶️ John not leave. He was not kicked out. He died. It was sad. Number seven.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Tim cook. There you go. And number eight. And then John turn us
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey soon enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John 2011 to 2026, John turn us 2026 to question mark. Oh, we, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay. Yeah. My apologies to, uh, John Syracuse, uh, Jason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Snell and John Gruber. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t, this is, I don’t expect people
⏹️ ▶️ John who weren’t into Apple to know these things. I just, I felt like Casey could have knocked it out because he just read a book on Apple history
⏹️ ▶️ John that talked about all of these people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, but I’ve read other things since then. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John they just pushed it out of your brain. Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John has a small context window. He’s waiting for the upgrade. Also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t that book like 600 pages long? It was. Even by the time you’re at the end of the book, you’ve forgotten the beginning.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also true. It’s like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. No, it was an incredible book, though, despite the fact that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remembered nothing of it, because I’m an idiot and I have no memory. No, it really was worth your time. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I might have said this already on the show, but just in case, you should find it in a local library, which is how I did, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey buy it, or whatever. or if you’re reading it on a Kindle like device, make sure it’s one with color
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because they are incredible photographs in this book. It’s a really, really, really worth your time. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t sponsor or anything like that. It’s just genuinely a really, really good book.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I just started
⏹️ ▶️ John reading that one, but like I, from what I’ve gathered from other people looking at, there’s not much in there that I haven’t read
⏹️ ▶️ John in the 7,000 other books I’ve read about Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John to recommendation for the years that are covered in this book is a infinite loop by Michael
⏹️ ▶️ John S Malone. It obviously ends at the date of publication and doesn’t have any of the stuff after that. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think it ends like, like, like, I think they added like a little chapter at the end about
⏹️ ▶️ John like Steve Jobs coming back or some crap. But like, it’s basically like Mike Scott, Mike Markle, John
⏹️ ▶️ John Scully, Michael Spindler, Gil Emilio bookends more or less, you know, and then there’s Steve Jobs addendum, right? So it’s, it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like early Apple, like up to the, the mid to late nineties. But boy,
⏹️ ▶️ John it does a really good job of covering all that stuff and really making these people into characters that are memorable. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John the fit that Dave Pogues 50th book obviously covers a much larger time span and has
⏹️ ▶️ John a rehashes of many of the similar stories but probably can’t spend as much time even at 600 pages or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever can’t spend as much time as a book that was written in the 90s can spend on the
⏹️ ▶️ John shorter time span that is has to cover. So yeah, I’m not just Jason put a bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ John book recommendations for Apple history. I think on six colors recently. I think he also did some recommendations
⏹️ ▶️ John in his Wall Street Journal article. So maybe we should link to those in the show notes. But my personal rec for, I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ John what is now early Apple history is Infinite Loop by, I think his name is Michael S. Malone. We’ll put a link in the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes, but, um, but yeah, if you want a more comprehensive one, the Pogue one is apparently good too. I, like I said, I’ve just started
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s very good. I also wanted to call out, uh, what is it? Is it Revolution in the Valley? Is that the, um, Hertzfeld one?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, just go to folklore.org. Cause Revolution in the Valley is the paper version of a
⏹️ ▶️ John subset of folklore.org. If you want to know specifically about stories from the creation of the
⏹️ ▶️ John Macintosh, which is one of my favorite periods in Happles history and projects. Folklore.org
⏹️ ▶️ John is a website written by Andy Hertzfeld, who was on the original Mac team and he gets
⏹️ ▶️ John testimonials from, I mean, in the modern era, they would call it an oral history of the early
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac or whatever but really what it is is a bunch of blog posts written by original uh Mac team members including
⏹️ ▶️ John Hertzfeld himself and there is a paper version of that called Revolution in the Valley that I think has most
⏹️ ▶️ John of the articles on the website but maybe not all of them but definitely check out Folklore.org if you’re interested in that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, we did it, Marco. I feel okay with this. You did
⏹️ ▶️ John better than the Mac names, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I guess it’s because there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco fewer of them, although I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it was 13 or 14 CEOs. I’m like, who are all these other people? It’s not been a lot. Mike Scott, Mike Markla, John
⏹️ ▶️ John Scully, Michael Spindler, Gil Amelio, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, John Ternes. There’s only two Johns in there.