transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

Speaker 2:
[00:03] Marco is so happy right now.

Speaker 1:
[00:05] Oh my god, I'm so happy. Oh my god, I can't wait to talk about it. I'm not talking about it yet.

Speaker 2:
[00:13] Should we just dive in? I mean, we got some stuff we gotta get through first, and that is, this is your last chance, let me say it again, this is your last chance to go to ATP.fm slash store and get yourself some sweet, sweet, sweet merch. John, would you please give us one last nickel tour of the merch offerings for summer 2026?

Speaker 3:
[00:33] Yeah, I'll just remind people that the sale ends Sunday, April 26th at 11:59 p.m. US. Eastern Time, so that is your deadline. Our products we have this year, we have our ATP Neo shirts in the Neo colors. We apologize for not having all these styles that you can imagine available. These are the only shirts, literally the only shirts of these colors came in, and we tried to match the styles as best we could.

Speaker 1:
[01:00] John, can you give us an update on the color sales?

Speaker 3:
[01:03] So when we do these sales, there's a minimum number of shirts that have to be ordered for them to bother printing them, because it's like they do them in batches and they, you know, whatever. And that number is 12. 12 people need to order a shirt, otherwise it will not get printed and those people will just get their money back. And we have the ATP Neo shirt colors matching the MacBook Neo. We have Indigo, Blush, Citrus and Silver. And I said last episode that Silver was proving to be extremely unpopular, only one person had ordered Silver. And I was like, well, that person is not getting their Silver shirt and unless 11 more people order Silver since then, since last week's episode, which I know hasn't been a full week because we're recording this on Monday. Since then, here's what's happened with the Silver shirt. The total number of orders for Silver now stand at two. Two people have ordered the Silver shirt. One additional person ordered it since last week. So it's not looking good for ATP Neo Silver. Sorry for those two people. I don't think you're going to get your shirts. But the other shirts are there.

Speaker 1:
[02:01] I mean, if this was a Bezos chart though, this would look really impressive. 100% sales growth in less than a week.

Speaker 3:
[02:07] Sure, yeah. I'll put that on my goodbye letter, just like Tim Cook. We have our MacPro Memorial shirt, which as I noted last episode, we will indeed be sending that to John Ternus. I might need to change the address and so it no longer says Senior Vice President of Hardware or whatever, but I'm pretty sure it will get to him. They probably know who he is and how to find him. It is our MacPro shirt with the years 2019 through 2026 underneath it. Again, prophetic that the shirt has always looked a little bit like a tombstone. We've got our ATP T65A and B crossover cable shirts with all sorts of Ethernet conductors crossed over in the ways that you do. We have our M5 Pro and Mac shirts. Again, if you want an M5 Pro and Mac shirt, we're probably never going to sell them again. We sell them when the chips come out, whatever the sale is after the chips come out. So don't wait. Maybe you don't have a Pro or a Macs now, but maybe you think you'll have one someday. Now's the time to get the shirt because you're not going to be able to get it again. We've got ATP Pixels, a very popular shirt from the past that we brought back. That's a very cool one. It's just the ATP logo.

Speaker 2:
[03:08] Yes. And let me just quickly interject that the Pixels in particular is available in a wide array of different light t-shirts and tank tops and sweatshirts and whatnot. That's not only true of the Pixel shirt, but it is very true of the Pixel shirts. I want to check that out as well.

Speaker 3:
[03:21] Yeah. Since recently, we've basically made every design available in every possible thing. Pullover hoodie, regular sweatshirt, long sleeve t-shirt, tank top, everything. The only time we don't offer our style is if it's just not available. So the Neos are only available t-shirts because that's 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. And then we've got our Polo, which is just, it's a Polo shirt and a short sleeve. And that is the only choice there. And we've got our zip hoodie and hat. That's it for our sale. Again, if you want any of these shirts that are not sort of our perennial shirts, like the regular ATP logo one, now is the time to get them because they'll be gone for good. ATP members get 15% off with their discount code that they can find on their member page by logging into ATP.fm. Or if they're logged into ATP.fm and go to ATP.fm slash store and just click on a link, it should auto-fill their code for them. But if not, you can copy and paste it. There you have it. This is the last week. By the time you hear this episode, the sale may almost be over. Again, it ends on Sunday, April 26th at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. Yep.

Speaker 2:
[04:26] So I will take this as my final opportunity to remind you that every single sale, one of you that is listening to my voice right now says, oh, I'll remember when I get home to do this, or I'll remember when I get to work to do this. And then inevitably, the day after the sale ends, I get tweets and emails and whatnot. I never thought it would be me, but this time it's me. Don't be that person. Pull over, make sure you use your turn signal. If you're walking in Manhattan, get to the side of the street or whatever. Do what you need to do. Pause this podcast and go to ATP.fm.store. Buy yourself some sweet, sweet, sweet ATP merch. Thank you to John for putting all this together as always. And thank you for becoming members and for getting some sweet merch. All right, let's do just a scant amount to follow up. I talked last week about my beloved GL Inet KVM. This is a little dingus that you can connect to a computer to basically act as a keyboard, video, monitor and mouse. And a couple of people wrote in, Mark Wadham writes, the manufacturer of the KVM recommends starting with version 1.2 of their Mac software, which leaves a trivially exploitable set UID root binary on the system that then persists even if the app is removed. So basically, if you choose to use the Mac OS software, which you do not need to do, in fact, I'm not, I 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. But if you choose to install that, maybe don't choose to, because there's some complications and potential vulnerabilities. Mark wrote quite a lot more than this on a blog post, which we will link. But take a look at that before you install the Mac OS software. And then Dan Godin at Ars Technica writes from, actually my birthday this year on March 17th, researchers from the security firm Eclipseum disclosed a total of nine vulnerabilities in IPKVMs from four manufacturers, GLINet, Angit, Yiso, Sipede, and JetKVM. These are unpronounceable, my word. And JetKVM. The most severe flaws allow unauthenticated hackers to gain root access or run malicious code on them. I should also say that a lot of people reached out to say that the cool kid solution is not Apple of a GLINet, but rather JetKVM. Honestly, I didn't look at it long enough or closely enough to know why that's the cool kid answer, but apparently that's the trendy cool kid answer. But it also has some security vulnerabilities, so tread lightly. With regard to the MacBook Neo, Edward Munn writes, Perhaps Apple could sell an A19 Pro version of the MacBook Neo with a software-locked core for the same price and then upcharge for the full chip. Yuck! But not unprecedented in other fields. I can't help but think of the brief foray that BMW did with subscriptions for heated seats, which everyone was justifiably up in arms about that.

Speaker 3:
[07:13] I think someone also did, like, you pay money to unlock more horsepower in your car, too. I forget if I'm misremembering something there.

Speaker 1:
[07:20] Wasn't that Tesla?

Speaker 3:
[07:21] Basically the same thing. Like we have a feature of your hardware that is disabled via software, and if you pass money, we will re-enable it and it will make your thing faster. I think this is also related to our discussion of ads in Apple Maps in terms and ideas that will definitely make money but will make people hate Apple. Please Apple, don't do this. This is a joke.

Speaker 1:
[07:40] Having features that are available, that are unlocked via subscription, is most of the app store's business model, that's including my own app and Casey yours too. I don't think such a model should be illegal or considered immoral, but it does irritate people.

Speaker 3:
[08:03] Well, what irritates people with the heated seats, and with this idea of you unlocking a core in your thing, is when you get a hardware thing. Because software is, there's no marginal cost. Software is just infinitely copied, and giving you a copy of the software doesn't really cost much more than giving another person a copy. But when you buy a car, there's labor and materials that go into putting the little wires to heat your butt and your back in the seat. You've already got, someone did that, and that is not that there is a marginal cost for that. 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. You've got it, and yet they're stopping you from using it. I think people feel worse when you buy a hardware physical thing that is a real live thing that costs money to produce and deliver to you, and then they stop you from using the thing, the physical thing that you have in your hands. Having a core that works in your SOC and saying, actually, we've changed the software so it won't use that perfectly good working core that we manufactured and sent to you, because if it's a chip with the working core, it is worth more than the chip without the working core. It's a version where everything worked, and you could charge more money for 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 worse, because it's a physical good, versus the whole thing is just software, and yet you pay money and I unlock features, like just because you gave me all the software and it works, and you're disabling it via software. Yeah, but there's no marginal cost to that. You didn't get anything more valuable or better than the person who got the software with it. Disable because software is software, it's just bits, and we consider them essentially free to copy and distribute. Is that logical? Like you can make the argument, well, it does cost money 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. But in general, I think human nature is, if it's a physical good and I already have it and you're stopping you from using it, it feels worse than if it's software that I already have, that you're stopping you from using some feature in.

Speaker 1:
[10:03] Honestly, I don't think that difference matters as much as you do. Like I understand your argument about there being like physical parts being present. Like I understand that argument. But in this day and age, we have blurred the line so much between having the physical ability to do something versus the right to do it, having to purchase the right to do it. It's not that different from the original DIVEX things. It's a lot less wasteful. But we have DRM media now that you have to rent effectively to be able to access. Even if you have a downloaded copy on your computer, you still have to rent access to it. You have DRM eBooks, same deal with Kindles and stuff like that.

Speaker 3:
[10:48] That's all software.

Speaker 1:
[10:49] Yeah, well, but I feel like this line has been blurred so much now. We have physical devices that rely on subscription services to operate. A lot of IoT stuff as we were just talking about or just various new home devices. A lot of those things require some kind of subscription service to even use the physical device. That's not that different. I feel like this line has been blurred so much by modern technology that even though it is totally understandable if this is unpopular. But I don't know if it's necessarily like a hard line to draw to say like this side of this line is okay and this side of this line is wrong.

Speaker 3:
[11:29] Well, we'll see what people do because they really didn't like the seat heaters thing but they're perfectly fine with SiriusXM. You know what I mean? Like a software unlock type feature. People will pay for SiriusXM even knowing their car has the ability to use Sirius but oh, you don't have a subscription to Sirius. People accept that. But when they tried to do, hey, we sell you a car seat heaters but you can't turn them on unless you give us money. People hated that because they knew their seats had heaters. They knew the heaters were under their butt right now and people weren't just letting turn them on. Whether that makes sense or not, one of those is a business model that people accept, SiriusXM. 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 know that wires are under their butts. But we'll see how it goes.

Speaker 1:
[12:09] I mean, the SiriusXM is a perfect example because the car has to have additional hardware to support that and the marginal cost to SiriusXM of each person receiving the signal they're already broadcasting is zero. So I think it's actually exactly like software.

Speaker 3:
[12:26] 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.

Speaker 1:
[12:31] They do.

Speaker 3:
[12:32] Right. But I'm not sure the antenna hardware is any different for receiving SiriusXM. But who knows?

Speaker 1:
[12:37] It is. It's a satellite antenna. It's totally different.

Speaker 3:
[12:40] Is it, though?

Speaker 2:
[12:41] Yes. Yes. Yes, it is.

Speaker 3:
[12:43] Like what is on a different frequency than the regular radio signals they get?

Speaker 1:
[12:46] Absolutely.

Speaker 3:
[12:47] And it has to be picked up by a special antenna?

Speaker 1:
[12:49] I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[12:49] Anyway, I do feel like there is a difference. And you know, the engine is a better example of like one or two of the cylinders are disabled. They're going up and down, but there's no ignition in them. You know what I mean? It's running in that mode and then you can enable those cylinders. That's more like, you know, cores being disabled in SOC. It feels worse.

Speaker 1:
[13:06] Well, what about all the cars that have like, you know, you can like mod chip the engine basically to like, to use the same hardware, but just like, you know, pull up the specs a little bit.

Speaker 3:
[13:14] Yeah, but that's just overclocking.

Speaker 1:
[13:16] Right. Yeah, basically.

Speaker 3:
[13:18] No one's afraid. You can overclock. I mean, to avoid your warranty and it'll probably damage your engine, but you know, that's up to you.

Speaker 1:
[13:24] Is that that different from software unlocking features?

Speaker 3:
[13:26] Well, it would be, it would be, here's the difference. If it was like the John Deere thing where the manufacturer forbids you from using 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 manufacturers, I'm sure we'd love to do that, but the John Deere lawsuits, for people to know that John Deere is a tractor company in the US and they try to DRM all their hardware so people can't repair their own tractors. You have to use, you know, only John Deere can allow you to do it or whatever so you can't repair them yourself. If car manufacturers stopped you from, you know, putting a different engine control computer thing on your car, people would be very angry about that because it's such a common pastime. But I'm sure they want to, but people wouldn't like it.

Speaker 1:
[14:06] I think all of these examples and exceptions and tentacalities, I actually just proved my point that like this is a very blurry line. And as time goes on, I think we're going to have more of the things that are kind of, you know, going across both sides of this line. And I think, like, I won't draw a hard line and say like, okay, this is okay, but this isn't. I think there's a lot of stuff in ambiguity here.

Speaker 3:
[14:28] Even if the line is blurry, there are still things that are clearly on one side of the blurriness or the other. And I feel like paying to re, paying to use a working core in your chip is really far on 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 line part of it that it's just clearly a thing that people would be upset about. But you know, that line does move over time. So it could be that people eventually become acclimated to this and they start doing it. But on the MacBook Neo in particular, it seems like the wrong product to try this on.

Speaker 2:
[14:57] All right. We also wanted to call attention to a friend of the show, Joe Lion, who has given us lots of really good feedback over the years about chip-related things. Joe popped off in a happy way on Mastodon and has, I think it was like 12 tweets, whatever about our discussion regarding RAM and Apple Silicon. And 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 that you should check out. So we'll put that link in the show notes. And then, finally, for follow-up, Mark Erman reports that there's a belief internally that the new Mac Studio won't ship until around October, likely because of the component, some sort of component-related delay, perhaps RAM, speaking of. Mark continues, also, the OLED touchscreen M6-powered MacBook Pros may arrive in early 2027 instead of late 2026. Whoopsie-doopsies.

Speaker 3:
[15:49] That's bad news for me because I really want to get a computer sooner rather than later. October is like, at that point, you would imagine the new version of Mac OS would be out or about to come out. If that's when they announce the new Mac Studios, it's going to be a while before I get one. Who knows what kind of manufacturing delays will be on them, who knows how long I have to wait to get an Apple friends and family discount or whatever. So this is not looking great. Last year, I was disappointed that I failed to get a new computer last year because the Mac Pro situation was uncertain, so I didn't get one. This year, I'm like, I'm definitely going to get one this year, and surely they'll release the new M5 Mac Studio by WWDC at the latest. Now, due to the wonders of AI component shortages, it looks like that's not great. Also, the rumor that the M6 OLED touchscreen MacBook Pros were also going to come out this year is now in risk. Maybe they'll come out at the end of the year, maybe they'll come out early next year, but not looking good for fans of fancy new Macs this year.

Speaker 2:
[16:48] Not to mention that if you get your 8 terabyte SSD, which by the way, I'm also on that train. Whenever you or I buys a computer, we are utterly screwed if these prices keep up. I'm going to need a home equity loan just to buy a new laptop.

Speaker 3:
[17:01] Yeah. We'll see. I'm in a worse situation than you because I'm not even running Mac OS 26 now, but my Mac will not run Mac OS 26.

Speaker 2:
[17:11] That's right. I forgot about that.

Speaker 3:
[17:13] So, clock is ticking. Apple, please release Mac Studio with an M5 something or other in it sooner rather than later.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[19:28] There's a little bit of news that happened, thankfully, and I must give my thanks to someone over at Apple for timing this as they did, because I was sitting here working on Call Sheet, working fast and furiously on some new features for Call Sheet that I'm really excited about, which we'll talk about another time. And all of a sudden, my phone started blowing up. I have messages from everywhere, and my slacks are going crazy, and I didn't know what was going on. And it turns out that Apple put up a newsroom post, and let me read to you, to be honest, kind of a lot of it, but there's a lot there. So, from the Apple newsroom, Apple announced that Tim Cook will become Executive Chairman of Apple's Board of Directors, and John Ternus, Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, will become Apple's next Chief Executive Officer, effective the 1st of September, 2026. The transition...

Speaker 3:
[20:16] I'm going to pause you a lot in here, because I selected these paragraphs for a reason. I find it somewhat interesting, as sort of like the last act of Tim Cook as the CEO, is that the first sentence of this press release says that Tim Cook will become Executive Chairman of Apple's Board of Directors. And I feel like that is not the most important part of this news. I mean, it kind of is, but like, can't you also, can't you be like the CEO and the Executive Chairman of Apple? Either way, this news release is John Ternus, new CEO of Apple. That's the news release. But Tim Cook gets one last moment in the spotlight, where it's like, as of the writing of this press release, I'm still CEO.

Speaker 1:
[20:55] I think this is actually reasonable, given that the amount of pressure and scrutiny from the press and Wall Street on a move like this.

Speaker 3:
[21:06] You're gonna say he's not going to an island.

Speaker 1:
[21:08] Yeah, it's all about managing skepticism and doubt, because that's every, right in this moment, what you need to do when Apple is gonna have a transition away from a very long-running, very financially successful CEO, what you need to tell Wall Street is everything's fine. Calm down, also new CEO.

Speaker 3:
[21:30] I feel bad for Ternus, though. He gets second billing in his own, I'm the new CEO announcement, but all right.

Speaker 1:
[21:35] He'll have plenty of attention. I think the funniest thing about this, right at the top of this, you have this big picture of Ternus and Tim Cook walking down of-

Speaker 3:
[21:45] They're so happy.

Speaker 1:
[21:45] They're walking down a walk in Apple Park, and my favorite thing about this is that they are wearing the exact same uniform.

Speaker 3:
[21:53] Yeah, they're little clones.

Speaker 1:
[21:54] Like, so basically to be the CEO of Apple, apparently it's important to communicate that you have to be a smiling, side profile, white American guy. You have to be wearing a blue button down shirt, untucked, with jeans and sneakers. Like, the only difference is that Tim Cook's sneakers are white and John Ternus' sneakers are black. And Tim's look a little bit more athletic, and Ternus' look a little bit more like canvas. And the shirt materials are different. Cook has much more of a, like, the kind of silky sheen Oxford style material. Ternus looks like he's wearing some kind of tri-blend. I can't identify quite the exact shirt it is, but it's that kind of soft material that feels like a t-shirt but has buttons and a collar. Other than that, though, it's like, don't worry, we're replacing the CEO with another person that you can all be comfortable with. It's the same kind of guy. Now, of course, it isn't at all, but that's kind of what this picture shows. It's such a uniform. The business suit used to be the uniform of business people. Everyone kind of looked the same. Then Silicon Valley comes around like, we can just wear whatever we want. We're not going to wear our suits. We're going to wear jeans and t-shirts and hoodies. Then it has just kind of formed its own version of the suit, especially at Apple, where this is just the Apple suit. It's just a button-down shirt and jeans and sneakers. Now, that's probably a very nice button-down shirt, and I bet those are very nice jeans and probably very nice sneakers. But it's still like, this is just the Apple suit, and you have to make sure that to show continuity, these guys like each other, someone just told a joke, and don't worry, they look pretty similar.

Speaker 3:
[23:40] Someone in the chat room says that Tim Cook is wearing Travis Scott Jordan ones in this picture, which are different shoes than Ternus. I will point out that this is dressing up for Ternus because I can't remember the last time I saw him not wearing a T-shirt. Even when he just did that, I just talked in the last episode about that YouTube interview he did with Tom's Hardware, wearing the T-shirt. He 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. He's wearing what looks like a button-down T-shirt.

Speaker 1:
[24:09] I will give them credit, they are wearing different color Apple Watch Ultras. Cook's rocking the black one, 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 I could master, the partial sleeve roll-up to show off the Apple Watch and strap selection. I wish I could master that move. I have not yet, but I have much to learn before I can become the next Apple CEO.

Speaker 3:
[24:32] They just slide back down, that's the problem.

Speaker 1:
[24:34] Well, but if you roll them up right, they don't.

Speaker 2:
[24:35] 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 years, I will instruct you. This is about the only thing I can accomplish that's even vaguely related to fashion.

Speaker 3:
[24:45] I mean, it's easy to get them into that position. My experience is that it will eventually slide down.

Speaker 1:
[24:48] No, but when you have the button sleeve, and to be clear also, Cook did not roll his up because he's more formal. But the problem is you can't just push them up because that makes them all crinkle up and then they just slide back down. There's a bit of a rolling in progress there. You have to like, I don't know how to do it though.

Speaker 2:
[25:07] I shouldn't have been so smug. This is not buttons on the sleeves. There's no cuff link area buttons on Ternus's shirt. That makes this far more difficult. I take it all back.

Speaker 3:
[25:15] I can't believe this is the tangent we're going on one sentence with the press release.

Speaker 1:
[25:18] He's a wizard. A sleeve wizard.

Speaker 2:
[25:21] Hey, man, you stopped us. You stopped me. I was cruising right along.

Speaker 3:
[25:25] I know. I just stopped for the billing thing. Marco went off into fashion.

Speaker 1:
[25:29] How do you not comment on these guys looking exactly the same in this picture?

Speaker 3:
[25:33] No, it was a good point. It was a good point. Just, you know, I don't need all the fashion detail. Anyway, we can continue.

Speaker 1:
[25:38] Do they have to include the trash can on the left side?

Speaker 3:
[25:41] It's a nice looking trash can.

Speaker 1:
[25:42] They have beautiful trash cans at Apple Park. But like, really?

Speaker 3:
[25:45] They didn't want to paint it out.

Speaker 2:
[25:47] Ay, ay, ay. All right. Where was I? Okay, so reading from the newsroom post, the transition, which was approved unanimously by the Board of Directors, follows a thoughtful long-term succession planning process.

Speaker 3:
[26:00] Thoughtful, long-term, widely leaked succession planning process. They left out widely leaked in that comma, separated list of it.

Speaker 1:
[26:05] But that's fair. That is true. This was obviously, as we look back on, even before the leaks, as you look back on some of the executive reshuffling that have happened over the last, I'd say at least six months, it has looked pretty apparent that this was probably the path that they were going down and that it was being executed very well. So I do give them credit for that.

Speaker 3:
[26:28] And don't forget, I don't remember the date of this, but don't forget however long it was. I think it was multiple years ago that Tim Cook said in an interview, which he never accidentally says anything in an interview, that he probably wouldn't be at Apple for 10 more years.

Speaker 1:
[26:41] Exactly, and I guarantee you there was already, I mean whether the plan was finalized, whether all the details were finalized, I guarantee you that knowing Tim Cook and knowing how careful and deliberate and patient he is, this has probably been planned for a long time. Maybe not specifically Ternus, although I bet Ternus has been under consideration for a long time, but Tim has probably been planning his exit for a good amount of time. This probably was very careful, very deliberate, and executed, as far as we can tell, very well.

Speaker 3:
[27:15] And it's a very Tim Cook move to leave, not going to say retire, but to leave your CEO position at age 65 exactly. It's just like social security retirement age or whatever. It's just like, it's a plan that I can imagine him coming up with a decade ago and say, yeah, I'll probably aim for leaving around 65, and he's doing it.

Speaker 2:
[27:36] All right, well, also real time follow up. I asked a sneaker head friend of mine, what is the deal with these shoes that Tim Cook is wearing? He said that they are, as one of you said, the Travis Scott Jordan One Fragments, which apparently were impossible to find. My friend Adam said they were a limited run and only select people were able to get them. So there you go.

Speaker 3:
[27:54] Nothing's impossible if you're a billionaire.

Speaker 2:
[27:56] Exactly. Continuing on from the newsroom, Cook will continue in his role as CEO through the summer as he works closely with Ternus on a smooth transition. As executive chairman, Cook will assist in certain aspects of the company, including what? Including engaging with policy makers around the world as the prophecy foretold.

Speaker 3:
[28:14] This 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 to go to an island. I want him to retire from public life and live a wonderful life with his billions and give to charity and whatever it is that he wants to do. But no, that's not what's going to happen for the reasons Marco decided. That's not what he wants to do. That's not good for the company's stability. He will continue on as chairman. What will he do as chairman? He will continue to eat poop from our president and other world leaders.

Speaker 1:
[28:44] And I think, again, I think given the immense size and scale and influence of Apple in the world and in politics and in finance and all, they're so big. I think this is what they have to do. It's part, I mean, look, Steve Jobs did exactly the same thing, right? Wasn't he in the last few months of his life? Wasn't he?

Speaker 3:
[29:07] I mean, he was dying.

Speaker 1:
[29:08] I mean, yes. But I mean, like what in the last few months of his life didn't, when he left CEO to Cook, didn't Jobs stay as president of the board in some form?

Speaker 3:
[29:17] I forget. That sounds familiar for me. But in that role, he was mostly concentrating on dying and not really spending a lot of time schmoozing world leaders. But 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 to stay out the Trump presidency so he can just be the sin eater and the garbage sink for that whole terrible thing and then let Ternus come in clean. But the alternative is that, okay, Ternus comes in, but Tim continues to be Tim Apple to our terrible president and to deal with world leaders and do all that other stuff. One, because, I mean, dealing with China and everything, he's got the experience and the relationships there, whereas I imagine John Ternus doesn't spend a lot of time talking to whoever is running China these days. I forget what that person's name is. So there's some continuity of care, as they say there. But the other thing is, okay, well, Cook will continue to be a meat shield for Ternus so that he is, let's say, less sullied by the terrible things that Apple is doing related to the current US administration.

Speaker 1:
[30:19] Like, this all makes sense, because, as we were talking about, it didn't make sense to have Tim Cook totally disappear and retire completely during Trump's term. Like, given that relationship that's been built up and given how, like, you'd want the next CEO to have a more clean political slate after Trump's out of the office, thank God, this didn't make sense for Tim Cook to retire completely during this term. And so this is probably one of the many reasons that played into Cook planning to stay on as executive chairman of the board. That makes a lot of sense. And I think the only question is, like, how cleanly will they be able to keep this separation?

Speaker 3:
[30:59] Yeah, that's my fear. That's like, I want John Ternus to do things differently than Tim. How easy is it to do things differently than the guy who's still, like, staring over you from the board? You know what I mean?

Speaker 1:
[31:09] Well, that part, I don't actually mind, like, I'm very confident that Tim will let Ternus lead the company without Tim interfering with Ternus. What I'm worried about is Trump going to Ternus and bringing him into the spotlight with him instead of going to Tim Cook.

Speaker 3:
[31:27] You said you're not worried about Tim interfering with how Ternus wants to do things. But if Tim's job is to be the stupid Trump whisperer and deal with all that crap, what if Ternus' decision is, day one, I'm the new CEO, the new Apple policy is F you, Trump? That's really hard for Tim to smooth over. It's essentially screwing up what Tim wants 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 and selling out our values to make sure that we get all good, we don't have tariffs and all that stuff. That's what Tim clearly has wanted to do and continues to do right now. If Ternus says, no, actually my new policy is no engagement with them. We hate them. We don't engage with them at all. We are their mortal enemy. I don't see how that can exist. You can't have the CEO saying that and the whatever, executive chairman of the board trying to continue that other policy. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think Ternus is going to do that. That's my point, that he is not free to do whatever he wants with the company in this specific realm and it's one of the specific realms that I think Apple should act differently.

Speaker 1:
[32:26] Oh, yes, but I think for Ternus, I think the best move for him is to not rock that boat until Trump is out of office. Let Tim continue to be the hate sink in the political sphere. Let Ternus stay clean in that area and then start making changes once the path is clear.

Speaker 3:
[32:47] Then you gotta stop Tim from giving anything with an Apple logo made of gold to anybody. It's like you can continue to be their little diplomat for these terrible people, but we can't allow you to give Apple branded merchandise to them anymore. It's like in the app store if you have a picture of an iPhone in your app, no sorry, you can't do that.

Speaker 1:
[33:05] We are sponsored this episode by Claude. You know, I am always surprised how much Claude can do for me. The other day I had a big spreadsheet and 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 and I said, hey, review this for these criteria, let me know what you find and what your takeaways are. And the insights it had, it was pulling references from different areas of it, it was figuring out correlations between different sections that I wouldn't have seen. And then I went and manually went through everything and checked it all. And it was right. I am so blown away by how good Claude is. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, whether you're debugging code in midnight or strategizing your next business move. Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. And if you're a developer spending half your day on really tough development tasks, Claude code is your pal. It runs in your terminal. It reads your code base. It can take on things like writing tests, refactoring or debugging without you handholding it through every step. And this, too, I just did this recently because I had a hairy problem. I couldn't figure out why something was happening. And I had Claude look at it, Claude code look at it. And it found the problem and I had it fix the problem and then generate some tests. And then I said, you know what, generate more tests. And so it generated even more tests. I hate writing tests. Claude wrote them all for me. It was amazing. And the code it wrote works and now is well tested. And I didn't have to do either part of that. It was fantastic. So for problems worth solving or not having to have Claude do it for you, but for problems worth solving, get started with Claude at claude.ai/atp. That's claude.ai/atp. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in this episode. claude.ai/atp. Thank you so much to Claude for solving my problems for me and for sponsoring our show.

Speaker 2:
[35:08] All right. Arthur Levinson, who has been Apple's non-executive chairman for the past 15 years, will become its lead independent director on the 1st of September, 2026. Ternus will join the board of directors, also effective the 1st of September, 2026.

Speaker 3:
[35:23] Nice for Ternus. He gets to be on the board of directors.

Speaker 1:
[35:25] Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 2:
[35:27] Tim Cook joined Apple in 1998. He became CEO in 2011 and has overseen the introduction of numerous products and services including new categories like Apple Watch, AirPods, and Apple Vision Pro, and services ranging from iCloud and Apple Pay to Apple TV and Apple Music.

Speaker 3:
[35:39] So this section of the thing, we skipped a bunch of stuff, you can read the press release, but this section is basically like, there are quotes and everything from people saying how wonderful everybody is, and we'll read some of those quotes later from Tim Cook's letter. But this is the part of the press release written in the voice of the press release, where they are recapping how awesome Tim Cook has been, and his history with the company. Joined in 1998 when he became CEO, no mention of jobs in the when he became CEO, although I think it's mentioned elsewhere. We have a couple of paragraphs excerpted from here saying what his legacy is. First paragraph of talking about his legacy. Here's what I did. I was CEO when we did these things, and he's got Apple Watch AirPods, and he throws in Apple Vision Pro because we know Tim really likes that, but I'm not sure that's on your greatest hits. Then he talks about services, iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple TV, Apple Music. Some of those arguably like iCloud or transitional things from the job era and everything, but some of those are clearly his, like Apple Pay has got Tim Cook written all over it, and Apple TV predates him obviously, but not the current Apple TV, and Apple Music is services. Apple Watch and AirPods are two big feathers in his cap, and Apple Vision Pro remains to be seen, but that's how they chose to, that's his sizzle reel for product stuff things, product things that regular people would know about that I did as CEO. And you know, it's not a bad list.

Speaker 2:
[36:59] No, it really isn't. Continuing, under Cook's leadership, Apple has grown from a market capitalization of approximately 350 billion to 4 trillion, which this is old news, but that is stark. You started at 350 billion, which is nothing to shake your fist at, and end at $4 trillion, that's just bananas. Continuing, representing a more than 1000% increase in yearly revenue has nearly quadrupled from 108 billion in fiscal year 2011 to more than 416 billion in fiscal year 2025.

Speaker 3:
[37:32] This is the Tim Cook section of Tim Cook's accomplishments. Made numbers go up by more than you can imagine. Again, if you've ever seen this on a graph that has a zero-rooted y-axis and you label the errors of Apple's history, so first of all, if you label the errors of Apple's history like 1990 and earlier, you have to keep in mind that during those years, Apple was like, and they 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 became popular, you made a ton of money because Apple was one of the first big tech stocks. It's like, oh, this little thinking company named Apple, they're going somewhere and then the Apple II comes out and it's everywhere. It's like, wow, the stock went up so much. Apple's value as a company going from nothing to huge success. It was a big story in the 80s. Again, so much so that it ends up as a gag in the Forrest Gump movie and stuff. Look at that section of the graph from the founding of Apple till today, and it looks like the flat part. That's the part where nothing happened. That's the amazing success of Apple in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. That's basically flat. Then you see Steve Jobs come back and he turned the company around. You see the line start to go up a little bit, but it's still in the flat part. Then you see Tim Cook error and it's like, oh, this is where Apple really was successful because the numbers just get massive. It's like a big hockey step graph and Tim Cook dominates the chart in terms of these numbers. We'll get to more of them in a second, but just merely like, what is the market cap? What is the yearly revenue? Just huge, huge. Tim Cook, I'm sure people can do lots of math on it. He did it 1000 percent in degrees or whatever, but how many multiples of the go-go 80s Apple has he grown? It's just tremendous. If you don't care about business, if you don't care about the success of business people and CEOs and so on and so forth, then maybe these numbers don't impress you. But I know there's a lot of people in the world who treat business as a pursuit in and of itself. Regardless of what business you're in, if you are the CEO of a company and you're tasked with making the company succeed, it's going to be very difficult. It's going to be like, he's like the Wayne Grynski of CEOs. You'd never want to be compared against his numbers. Within your chosen sport of like, I am a CEO. It's like, okay, how much did you make your company succeed? They brought you into CEO and when you retired, the company was twice as big as it was before. Tim Cook's like, I did a 1,000% increase. We started huge. This is how big we started. We started at 350 billion market cap and I leave it 4 trillion and then he just drops the mic and walks away. I don't care that much about business, but other people do and I think that is much more impressive than his list of products.

Speaker 2:
[40:25] During his tenure, Apple has grown by more than 100,000 team members and increased its active install base to more than 2.5 billion devices. Apple services has been a major focus of Cook's. During his tenure, the category has grown to become more than a 100 billion dollar business, the equivalent of a Fortune 400 company. Holy God.

Speaker 3:
[40:46] Yeah. Obviously, they don't go into details as we always talk about, like what does that mean? The services category really means rent seeking for software developers, which is not a particularly wonderful and friendly thing to describe. 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. It's not, absolutely not. But that's his thing. It's the thing that's currently growing. You got to put it in the press 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 of business. But for the people who are interested in the sport of business, these are big, big numbers. I'm interested in the sport of good products and that section is less impressive. But if you are into these stats, these are big, big numbers. These are just embarrass anybody numbers. These are kind of like, you know, John Ternus. Don't even try to do this because if you did another thousand percent increase, it would be like the paperclip game. What is that game? Universal Paper Clips? Oh, yeah. The entire planet becomes paper clips. If John Ternus had a Tim Cook like performance, the entire earth would be Apple. So it's not possible. 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 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 to do that next doubling when you're you know, you are 99% of the GDP of the planet or something. So yeah, hopefully Ternus will be dissuaded from even attempting to match this kind of numerical performance and thus turn his attention to things that are more important, in my opinion.

Speaker 1:
[42:19] By the way, I have very important real time follow up. I have found what I believe to be the shirts they are wearing.

Speaker 2:
[42:26] Oh, this is extremely important.

Speaker 3:
[42:27] Put them in the show notes, please.

Speaker 1:
[42:29] So I first thought that it might have been something from like, you know, Marine Lair, Normal Brand, Faharty, however that's pronounced, anything like that. And it's maybe Theory. I checked all those sites.

Speaker 3:
[42:40] You say Miyake or whatever that guy's name is?

Speaker 1:
[42:42] So it's none of those. No, I figured it wouldn't be some like super, super high end thing because that doesn't seem like their way.

Speaker 3:
[42:48] Those sneakers are pretty much super high end, it sounds like in terms of sneakers.

Speaker 1:
[42:51] Well, yeah, but so I couldn't figure it out. Eventually, I just pasted it into Gemini and said find these, and it did, and I'm pretty sure the matches are correct. They are both from Vuori, that brand of fancy exercise wear and stuff, I don't know how it's pronounced. I say Vuori, but it's probably not that. Anyway, Ternus is wearing the long sleeve Ponto button down. It is a casual technical take on a classic button down, a slightly fitted athletic cut. And then Tim Cook has the bridge button down. It's a performance woven shirt designed to look like a traditional dress shirt with technical benefits. So it's a more structured, crisp look compared to the one Ternus is wearing, but still a minimalist aesthetic. Both shirts are around 100 bucks. Not bad, not bad choices. And I think they accurately represent both of these people. It's like Ternus is looking a little more casual, Tim's looking a little more formal, but they're still both kind of technical, athletic, casual combos.

Speaker 3:
[43:48] Perfect. I can't believe this company is not sponsoring the show.

Speaker 1:
[43:51] The funny thing is, I think they did sponsor, they did sponsor podcasts around Arsphere in the past. I don't think they ever sponsored us, but they certainly were nearby.

Speaker 2:
[44:00] All right. Well, if you could provide links for the show notes, I would appreciate it. Continuing from the newsroom, Cook has made Apple's core values even more central to the company's decision making and product development.

Speaker 3:
[44:12] So this 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 with policy makers around the world. We also are coming in. There it is. This one, I'm not sure I saw this claim coming, even though as you'll read it, as you continue when you read, it's 100 percent true. But there, I feel like there is an error of omission here. Because to the extent that people are upset with Tim Cook, it is due to his lack of making Apple's core values central to the company's decision making. You know what I mean? The problem is, there's lots of core values and lots of them he has made even more central. This is a true statement. We'll get to in a second why it's true. But it is also the source of, I think, pretty much 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 and Apple's core values used to be about products, like as in keep selling an old product, people will keep buying it instead of wiping the table clean because you know something's better, all the way up to, hey, how you deal with the Trump administration is upsetting because we don't feel it reflects Apple's core values. That whole range of dissatisfaction with Tim Cook is not making Apple's core values central to the company's decision making. But you know, I give them credit for following it up with evidence because it is partially true.

Speaker 2:
[45:27] Under his leadership, the company reduced its carbon footprint by more than 60% below 2015 levels during a period in which revenue nearly doubled.

Speaker 3:
[45:35] Thumbs up and by the way, big victory lap there saying, hey, not only if we've been doing these environmental stuff, which is part of Apple's core values and they have totally been doing it and they're kicking butt and they're like, hey, look, we are doing 60% and reduced it by 60% since 2015. And by the way, because I'm Tim Cook, during that period, I doubled our revenue. So we reduced our carbon emissions, not at like 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 and that's what I do and we still reduced it. Amazing, big mic drop. It is one of Apple's core values, it's not the one I'm mad about.

Speaker 2:
[46:09] Cook, who has long advocated for privacy as a fundamental human right, has made privacy and security imperative at Apple, setting a standard for user protection that continues to set the company apart from the rest of the technology industry.

Speaker 3:
[46:20] True, 100% true. Thumbs up. And as Marco pointed out, I think in the last episode, he has done that more than his predecessor. These are places where not only he has continued Apple's core values, he has made them even more central. There's no arguing that he has made environment and privacy even more central to the company's decision making and that those are today's Apple's core values. So partial credit, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[46:41] He has also pushed for continued innovation in the accessibility space.

Speaker 3:
[46:45] I would say he just basically continued that one because I think Apple is pretty good about that before. But again, thumbs up, core value, good job.

Speaker 2:
[46:51] Ternus joined Apple's product design team in 2001 and became a vice president of hardware engineering in 2013. Prior to Apple, Ternus worked as a mechanical engineer at virtual research systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3:
[47:04] So I'm saying this is in my mind because both of my, on my mind because both of my children are in college now. My son is about to graduate with both a bachelor's and a master's degree, and my daughter is just working on her bachelor's degree. And I just wanted to highlight this because it's like, okay, I think a lot of kids today think, 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. Ternus has got a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. And as someone with an engineering degree, I can tell you an engineering degree from anywhere is nothing to sneeze at. But University of Pennsylvania is not MIT, and he's just got a bachelor's degree, and he's going to be the CEO of Apple. So I want to say is that your degree and your school are not your destiny. Steve Jobs famously didn't even complete college because he didn't think it was doing anything good for him. So Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard or wherever the hell it was. I know that's a cliche of like, I'm going to be a Silicon Valley CEO. I don't need to go to school. I'm not telling you not to go to school. What I'm telling you is that if you didn't get to the school of your dreams or if you quote unquote only have a bachelor's degree, that's not going to be your limiting factor. It's going to be everything else about you. That's going to limit you. But it won't be that.

Speaker 1:
[48:21] Yeah, there are a lot of industries and businesses that really care a lot about the school you went to and how you did in it. Fortunately, for people like me, that's not all industries, not all businesses. I barely graduated from college. My GPA was so low. I don't actually even know it. I failed a required class senior year, had to take it in summer school at a different university, transfer the credits in, get my diploma by mail. It was a whole thing. But I think my final GPA was somewhere around 2.0. Certainly, never anything I would have ever given an employer.

Speaker 3:
[48:55] And that's not what stopped you from being CEO of Apple.

Speaker 1:
[48:57] Right, well.

Speaker 3:
[48:58] I mean, I bet he got good grades. All I'm saying is that he's just got a bachelor's degree. I just feel like talking to my kids and everything, and I was like, oh, you can't get anywhere in this industry if you don't have at least a master's and probably a PhD. He's like, no, no, you can be CEO of Apple if you just have a bachelor's degree. It's fine.

Speaker 1:
[49:12] Yeah, like the secret to success is who you know. But the second best secret to success is what you've done. And that's what the tech business cares most. What have you done? And that, so start doing stuff, and that's how you get far. You don't just rush on college forever.

Speaker 2:
[49:28] 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 the best I can do on short notice. University of Pennsylvania's 16th best engineering school in the United States.

Speaker 1:
[49:39] That's pretty good.

Speaker 2:
[49:40] Would you like to guess, John, what is Boston University? What rank?

Speaker 3:
[49:45] I think I told you this before, when my daughter was looking into BU, and it was listed as a far reach school for her. I'm like, BU is a far reach. I went to BU and saw my wife, and it was not a fancy school when we went there, but apparently its reputation has increased. I'm going to say BU is 25.

Speaker 2:
[50:01] That is a very good guess. It is number 32, tied. I can't see, I don't see the list. I've just been searching universities. I can't see what other schools it's tied with, other than I can tell you it's tied with Virginia Tech, which is where I went. I also got an engineering degree, also only barely, though.

Speaker 3:
[50:18] Well, you and Ternus, and really what you want to look up is how is the University of Pennsylvania regarded when John Ternus went there, which was a long time ago.

Speaker 2:
[50:26] A hundred percent. But I just thought it was funny.

Speaker 3:
[50:28] Sorry to slam the University of Pennsylvania. As I said, engineering degree from anywhere, any good accredited university, is a difficult thing.

Speaker 2:
[50:35] Yes, definitely agree. All right, so I can move on, and there's 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?

Speaker 3:
[50:45] Well, I mean, let's at least get through, like we have the whole show for this. I think we can just get through the 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 because I think that's central to what I'm sure Marco wants to talk about, which is like the Tim Cook legacy.

Speaker 2:
[51:01] All right. So also announced today, Johny Srouji has been named Apple's Chief Hardware Officer. This is a different newsroom post. Apple today announced that effective immediately, Apple Executive Johny Srouji will become Chief Hardware Officer. Srouji, who most recently served as Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies, will assume an expanded role leading hardware engineering, which John Ternus most recently oversaw, as well as the Hardware Technologies Organization. And I did a little asking around. My understanding of hardware technologies is that that's the Apple Silicon part, and then the hardware engineering is putting devices together part.

Speaker 3:
[51:32] Yeah, I mean, if you want to, you can click this in puzzle piece wise to the rumor about Srouji, you know, potentially looking elsewhere and then them saying, no, totally, I'm staying, I'm not going anywhere. And it's like, well, as we said at the time, it doesn't mean that rumor was untrue, it just means that rumor was late. And then maybe Srouji had a talk with Tim Cook and they decided that he would stay by giving him this more responsibility. Or it could just be that he was gliding into this role, like this was always gonna happen, because it makes sense. Like who are you gonna bump up to take Ternus' place when he leaves as the hardware guy? Putting the awesome Chip Guy as now the hardware guy makes perfect sense, because hey, Chip Guy, you knocked it out of the park as Chip Guy, then you get to be all hardware guy, like rewarding success. And Ternus knocked it out of the park as all hardware guy, and now he gets to be CEO. So this all makes perfect sense. I'm glad Srouji's sticking around. I like the results. I like his work. Like Marco said, what can you do? Srouji can do a lot. So maybe talent retention is a potential challenge for him that we've heard rumor-wise, but so far, our products are pretty good. So thumbs up on Johny getting the nod to be hardware guy.

Speaker 2:
[52:38] Yeah. Additionally, this was actually the first thing that I happened to see was a community letter from Tim. It was very good. It is not very long. I really enjoyed this. We'll hear your two opinions here in a moment. But I recommend reading this whole letter. I think this is an amount of humanity, humanness, I can't think of what we're looking for. Yeah, thank you. That we don't typically get from Tim. And I did listen to the emergency re-recording or additional recording of Upgrade before we recorded tonight. And I think Jason was saying that we haven't heard Tim be this human since his coming out letter from, I think it was like 2014 or something.

Speaker 3:
[53:18] I think Gruber said that.

Speaker 2:
[53:20] Oh, maybe it was Gruber. Okay, I thought it was Jason. Maybe I'm wrong. It doesn't matter. Somebody said it and I would like to plus one it. 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 journey at Apple. A new person will be stepping into what I know in my heart is the best job in the world. That leader is John Ternus, a brilliant engineer and thinker who has spent the past 25 years building the Apple products our users love so much, obsessed with every detail, focused on every possible way we can make something better, older, more beautiful and more meaningful. He is the perfect person for the job.

Speaker 3:
[53:49] And I think like that's an interesting characterization. So you know, here's Tim writing his more personal informal letter about what's going on. And he describes Ternus as first a brilliant engineer, which I mean, no one is describing Tim Cook as a brilliant engineer because 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 Ternus' reputation. And that is how Tim Cook has chosen to describe him. Not a great business leader or a master of the supply chain or whatever, but a brilliant engineer. And then what has he done at Apple? Building products. So thumbs up on that characterization, whether it was chosen carefully in Tim Cook's style to spin the story in the way that he wants it to be told, or whether it is just simply a reflection of reality that he is in fact a brilliant engineer with just a bachelor's degree. But you know, that's his mindset. It's his bent. He's 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.

Speaker 2:
[54:48] Do you remember, even though I don't disagree with your characterization, that Tim is not a brilliant engineer, he did get a undergraduate degree in industrial engineering from Auburn.

Speaker 3:
[54:56] Right, but he did not spend his career pursuing anything really related to that.

Speaker 2:
[55:02] Maybe, I don't know.

Speaker 3:
[55:03] Supply chain engineering, maybe, I guess.

Speaker 2:
[55:05] That's what I was gonna say. All right, well, it doesn't matter. Anyway, moving on.

Speaker 3:
[55:07] Anyway, have you ever seen a news story where describing Tim Cook as a brilliant engineer or him characterized that way by other people talking about him? It tends not to be the top line item about Tim Cook.

Speaker 2:
[55:19] Certainly not. Coming back to Cook's letter, John cares so much about who we are at Apple, what we do at Apple, who we reach at Apple, and he has the heart and character to lead with extraordinary integrity. I'm so proud to call him Apple's next CEO.

Speaker 3:
[55:33] Yeah, that part I liked because, again, Tim Cook being more human saying like, what do I want in my successor? What am I looking for in a leader? Heart and character to lead with integrity. Tim Cook cares about that. Regardless of how much we disagree with him about the manifestation of his supposed integrity with his various decisions that he made at various times, about having to do with App Store and developer relations and political stuff or whatever, that he believes that he is acting with integrity and heart, and that's what he's looking for in a leader. He believes John Ternus is going to do the same thing. I still feel like John Ternus is a bit of a cipher because we've never seen him speak out of turn, so to speak, because he's always been speaking in his capacity as an underling to the CEO of Apple, and they are very single voice focused and on-message or whatever, so maybe we'll see different stuff from him now. But I've never heard anything about him that made me think that he is not, in fact, a person of character and integrity, and I really hope that's true. Tim Cook said it's true, so fingers crossed.

Speaker 2:
[56:43] This is not goodbye, but at this moment of transition, I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you. Thank 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 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 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 a little bit better, and every day you've made mine the best I could have asked for. Thank you, Tim Cook.

Speaker 3:
[57:08] I believe that he does like it when people say hi to him and cheer when they announce new products, and not because of ego gratification, but because he thinks he's wonderful. I just really think he's always enjoyed that part of being CEO. He enjoys that people are excited to see him, and they really love Apple products, and in a wholesome way. I do think that's the kind of person he is. He's just an aweshucks happy kind of guy. When I see him in those environments, I don't think he's acting happy or being false to the public or glad handing like a politician. I honestly think that he, maybe you don't enjoy being mobbed by fans or whatever, but he basically does appreciate that. That is probably one of the more fun parts of his job, where he's not yelling at people to get on planes to China, but is instead just getting to hear, people applaud when they announce products or they're so excited to go into the Apple Store to get a new thing. Or as he said at the top of his letter, which I cut, which again, I echo what Casey said, you should read it. He talks about the first thing he does every day when he wakes up at on a godly hour before he exercises is read emails from people and you're like, oh, I bet like he has staff that just filters the emails and just sends him the good ones Trump style. But no, he talks about, he reads emails to people, tell me how their Apple watch saved their life and all that stuff. But he also, he mentions in his typical Tim Cook understatement, when people will say that their products are disappointing them and the areas where they could do better. So he's getting your angry emails too, right? Like people aren't filtering out, I hope, all the angry emails that people get about how I've been Apple customer since X year but now I'm so disappointed and blah, blah. No, he's getting those too and hopefully they motivate him to do better and that was all in the letter. And so I feel like this, again, I don't know if Tim Cook and there's very little to judge him by because he's so guarded as a person, but this letter does read to me like really coming from his heart and he's being honest about the things he says. Also, it's very Tim Cook in the things that he omits and doesn't talk about and doesn't address which is also part of him that annoys me. But you know, it's his letter. He can write what he wants.

Speaker 1:
[59:10] For Tim Cook, it's fine. It's heartfelt. It is, I think it is honest. In typical Tim Cook fashion, you don't get a lot out of it. Like there's not a lot of value. There's not a lot of surprises.

Speaker 3:
[59:23] There's nothing. There's no super new information revealed here that we didn't know before. You know?

Speaker 1:
[59:27] No. Like it's fine. I'm glad he wrote it. And it is exactly, in standard Cook fashion, it is exactly what you'd expect.

Speaker 3:
[59:38] His signature is weird too. Can we agree his signature is weird?

Speaker 1:
[59:40] Oh, that's really weird. Yeah, I noticed that too.

Speaker 3:
[59:42] I've never seen his signature. Like you see Jobs' signature because people are always getting him to sign stuff, especially in the Jobs II era. But even 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, and Steve Jobs didn't have a great signature either, but the Tim Cook one, wow, is it weird?

Speaker 1:
[59:56] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[59:57] The T is weird and Tim, It's like a J. It's not script. Like the I, M is kind of scriptable. The M looks like an N and then Cook is just like print. It's just, it's just, anyway, it's fine. He's probably signed his name a lot. He's probably sick of it. Yep. And then this final bit, like I put this final bit in just because this is a stand-in. I mean, we're recording this the day of the announcement. So there's sure to be more, but this New York Times bit that Casey's about to read is the stand-in for how does the rest of the world, who is not like in the insular little Apple techno, you know, enthusiast sphere, how do they see what is the story from their perspective? Now granted, it's slightly modified by the author of this New York Times article who are at least one person. I know Tripp Mickel has been on the Apple beat and written books about Apple. So he's not really an outsider, but like how is this presented to the world? What does this story look like to the general public? And this New York Times snippet is my stand-in for that.

Speaker 2:
[60:55] So Kelly Huang and Tripp Mickel write, The retirement of Mr. Cook will end one of the most successful management runs in the history of American business. Apple has lost several top executives in recent months, worrying investors about the depth of its next generation of managers and its long-term strategy, particularly with artificial intelligence. The company has largely stayed on the sidelines as the rest of the technology industry has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars developing AI. Apple is also navigating increasingly choppy political waters, including whiplash over the Trump administration's tariffs, a looming antitrust trial, and geopolitical tensions with China. In recent years, Mr. Cook, out of necessity, has become the technology industry's leading diplomat, making regular visits to Washington and Beijing to try to manage the often conflicting agendas of President Trump in, what is it? Xi Jinping? I think that's right. China's leader. Even so, Apple is still one of the most profitable companies in the world, thanks to the stability of sales of its iPhones, products like the Apple Watch and services, including iCloud and Apple Pay.

Speaker 3:
[61:56] Again, this is a very short story. I feel like they should have had this pre-written like people's obituaries who are real old. They apparently didn't because this definitely feels like it was hastily slapped together today. They should have pre-written the transition memo, but I guess they don't do that for transitions, only for deaths. The top line thing is, they say retirement of Mr. Cook, which is not probably that accurate. But anyway, end one of the most successful management runs in the history of American business. Yeah, that's line one. That's got to be line one, especially for the New York Times. We talk about news, he's a CEO, 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 CEOs. He made numbers go up more than any numbers ever went up before. Tim Cook, yay, yay, yay. Number one. Then there's some other stuff about it. Then they go to like, okay, well, what about there's got to be some bad stuff too, controversies or whatever. So they talk about top executives leaving in recent months, but I feel like when there's a change in leadership is always going to happen. I don't think that's on Tim Cook, that's just the way it works. But then their first line item of like, things that might not be so hot about Tim Cook's Apple, like potential problem areas or maybe places where he dropped the ball, they go for AI investment because in the general news sphere, outside of the very insular techno nerd sphere, but maybe also inside of it is like, all these companies, all the big companies making headlines today are spending just so much money on AI and Apple is mostly not. They're talking about capital expenditures. How much money are we putting towards this in this year? How much money are we spending on building new data centers or buying GPUs or doing all the money that we're laying out to do stuff and everyone's spending tons of money and not Apple. They say like company has largely stayed in the sidelines and they say, as the rest of the technology industry has committed to spending hundreds of billions developing, they don't really talk about Apple failing. They didn't say Apple failing to ship Apple intelligence or failing to give things to their customers that other companies are giving, which I feel like is the bigger failure. I don't think, let's look at their capital expenditures compared to other companies and determine whether they're succeeding or failing in AI. Let's look at things they said they were going to ship and failed to. Meanwhile, lots of other companies are shipping things that do the things that they were promising and customers like it. But they don't mention that. They just mention the capital expenditures maybe because the New York Times. Then they get to navigating increasingly choppy political waters, talking about tariffs and Trump. And then I feel like this is so a New York Times view of this, because it's not even presented as an opinion or one of multiple positions, but they just basically said Cook out of necessity had become technology industry's leading diplomat. That wasn't a necessity, that's a choice. This is how he's choosing to interact with China and Trump or whatever. But it's not out of necessity, but New York Times is like, well, he had to do it. What Tim Cook has done was a necessity. You could say you could agree with it or disagree with it, but it was in fact a choice, not 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 be unthinkable, because what would it do to the stock price? So that's their position. And then finally, what is not in this New York Times summary at all is many of the concerns that I and other super tech nerd people have about Tim Cook's leadership of Apple having to do with App Store policies, developer relations, the specifics of the decisions with respect to Trump and China. All of that stuff is not in the public consciousness. I'm sure Tripp Mickel 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 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 and it hurt me that none of that is in this summary. And so when I see every story in the regular media, not in the tech media about this transition, I'm gonna be reading and looking, is there any awareness that a subset of super nerd, weirdo Apple tech enthusiasts are really mad at Tim Cook about stuff that never gets mentioned in this? And I find that, I don't know, a little bit disheartening because if it never gets mentioned in the New York Times story, I feel like it makes it easier for Ternus to dismiss it. It makes it easier for Ternus to ignore Marco's blog post because it's like, well, none of that stuff came up in any of the stories about me becoming CEO, so it's obviously not something I should bother concentrating on because it's not of general interest. That makes me sad.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[68:30] All right, Marco. Victory Lap.

Speaker 1:
[68:31] I am so happy this is finally happening. The Tim Cook era has had its strengths. Back when Steve Jobs was clearly getting sicker and when it became apparent, oh, he needs to step down as CEO, all of us in the Apple blogosphere and fandom, we were all basically on board like, yeah, Tim Cook is the obvious choice to be the next CEO and that was for a number of reasons. Tim Cook was already taking a visible leadership position in the company. It was very obvious that the plan was to have him be the next CEO. He was good at his job. He was good at operations. He was good at what he was hired to do, which was to be an operational genius and a bean counter. He was really good at that. We all knew at that time that for a company to lose Steve Jobs, it was going to be a huge deal for public perception, for doubts about the future. Everybody was going to freak out, especially Wall Street was going to freak out about, will Apple be able to continue innovating without Steve Jobs? So Tim Cook was the obvious and the safe choice. He led pretty much exactly the way you would expect based on the way that story was aimed at that time. He was brought in to be the safe, confident for Wall Street leader to take over from the visionary founder, to assuage everyone's fears and to make the company like predictable and grown up and to grow all the numbers over time. That's exactly what he did. So he did the job he was hired to do. He did exactly what Steve Jobs probably expected and wanted him to do. This ship is in motion. It's an amazing ship. It's done some great things. Continue on the path and figure out what's next and keep this amazing thing going. Don't let Apple die when Steve Jobs died.

Speaker 3:
[70:36] And by the way, also, I would imagine what Steve Jobs wished for Tim Cook was to, I have to get to the quote or whatever, to continue to embody Apple's core values in their decision-making and fitting in with the Jobs telling him, 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 was gone was change Apple's policy and charitable giving, because Jobs didn't want 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 than it was to Steve Jobs. I want to change Apple's charitable giving and matching policy, so I'm going to do that. In the environment, I'm sure Jobs cared about that, but when Tim Cook took over, that's a value that he brought in, that he cared about more than Jobs, and he really concentrated on that. I guarantee you that Steve Jobs wanted, what he wanted was things that are important to you that mesh with the core values of Apple as trying to do good in the world, pursue those. They may be different than mine. I cared about these things, you care about those things, but as long as the things are all good things, pursue them. Because I don't think he would be happy if Tim Cook took over Apple and just scaled the company, but then didn't do any of the other sort of stuff like the environment or privacy or accessibility and just kind of like let them at status quo or let them die on the vine. I don't think Jobs would have been happy about that. Even if he wanted Tim Cook to take over to be a steady leader to scale the company, he would also really want, you know, I mean, Tim Cook's not gonna do the different ad campaign, but like whatever the equivalent of that is to Tim Cook. It seems like to him that was basically like the environment and privacy, right? And I think he did that and I think Jobs would have been happy with that as well.

Speaker 1:
[72:19] So Tim Cook took this amazing ship that Jobs really had built and grew all the numbers. The Tim Cook era was not defined by massive like big splash brand new revolutionary products, even though I think part of Apple's great product portfolio was attributable to the Tim Cook era, I think mainly if I had to point out the biggest successes in terms of innovative products, it's gotta be the Apple Watch and the AirPods. Those were both solidly within the Tim Cook era.

Speaker 3:
[72:52] And both of those by the way, he really, you mentioned the stories comparing him to Jobs, those stories haunted him for years. How many years did you have to see those stupid stories about Apple's gonna do an announcement, but is Tim Cook gonna be able to pull Steve Jobs and he could not get rid of those damn stories and when he didn't introduce new things, it was like yeah, but what he did, it was like the whole overnight success thing. The iPhone wasn't an overnight success either, but in hindsight, everyone thought it was. So when Apple came out with AirPods, it's like, all right, fine, whatever, they're earphones, but honestly, who cares about headphones compared to the iPhone? It's like fast forward a few years and allow it to grow like the phone did and guess what? AirPods are an incredibly important and successful product that totally changed their market category almost in the same way that the phone did, popularizing the concept of tiny little wireless ear buds. But when they were announced, everyone was like, whatever, it's no iPhone. Nothing's going to be the iPhone, but same thing with the Apple Watch. It take a while to get going, but you fast forward a few years and you wake up, and you're like, the Apple Watch massively dominates the smartwatch industry that it basically founded on its own by the first thing to reach volumes, and AirPods, or I think another one of those, if AirPods were their own company, I think they'd be in the Fortune 500 as well. Huge success, but it's like, ah, they're boring, and they weren't a hit on day zero, so we get to write the story about how Tim Cook isn't Steve Jobs.

Speaker 1:
[74:15] And Tim Cook isn't Steve Jobs, but Tim Cook is Tim Cook, and he did and does have a lot of strengths that he did bring to this job. The downside is that Tim Cook does not really value and understand some pretty important things that are critical to Apple's products. Number one, he's not a product person at all. He's also not seemingly particularly a fan of computers or computing devices. Like, he doesn't hate them, but he doesn't seem to have a passion for them, and he doesn't seem to understand software or design. Okay, what does it mean to lead Apple? Apple is a company that succeeds by making really great products that integrate good hardware made with good operations. They're a company that is a leader with good software and good design of both hardware and software interfaces. And Tim Cook doesn't really understand a lot of those elements. He probably doesn't fancy himself as somebody understanding those, but also that meant that he made leadership choices that I think didn't maximize the chances of those universally and consistently excelling. And we saw that. Tim Cook is really good at numbers and being the bean counter and being the operations person. But he's not that good at products. He relied on other people to do that for him. But because he didn't really have as much of a sense for it as Steve Jobs did, I think it led him to make really inconsistent and misguided choices much of the time in those areas.

Speaker 3:
[75:59] I think his self-awareness of that weakness is part of what led him to at least one poor decision, which was the bending over backwards to make Johnny I stay longer than he wanted to. Which at the time, like again for Wall Street's perspective and from Tim Cook's perspective seems like a good idea. Like everyone loves Johnny Ivey, super famous. He's done awesome stuff. Don't let him leave Apple. But I think it really hurt the company's products. Because he knew it's like, look, I need to delegate these things as I'm not good at them. Who better to delegate to than Johnny Ivey, the world's best designer. In fact, I need him to stay there because if he leaves, who do I delegate to after? It's a 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 it was made, I feel like, out of trepidation about the idea of finding someone to fill that role. But if you become CEO and you've already got Johnny Ivey, it's 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 best designer of the things that Apple makes, Johnny Ivey. But he gets older, he gets restless, 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, too. You can design Apple Park, whatever you want. And there was a real dark period of Apple design there where things were not going great. And Tim was like, well, I've done my job as CEO. I retain the important talent. And it's like, if he wasn't so afraid of finding a new person to delegate design to that he could be confident, would be doing a good job, he wouldn't have made Johnny Ivey overstay his welcome.

Speaker 1:
[77:24] It is very important to point out, in the same way that Wall Street was very afraid to lose Steve Jobs, they were similarly afraid to lose Johnny Ivey. Not quite to that level, but it was notable.

Speaker 3:
[77:35] And there's another case of where, like the mainstream press, the concerns that we were voicing at the time in the little Apple tech nerd sphere about Johnny Ivey, do not exist, did not exist in the mainstream press. All they knew is Johnny Ivey equals iPod, iMac, iPhone, if he leaves Apple stock price go down. Like all of our concerns about the product decisions he was making and everything, just did not appear in these articles. Despite the fact that maybe they'd have like lower sales on the laptops or something, or maybe there'd be a story or two about the butterfly keyboard and stuff like that. But it was never in the conversation of like, Apple needs to retain Johnny Ivey, of course they do. And this one little corner of Apple's most enthusiastic fans were saying, losing Johnny Ivey might not be that bad at this point, but like that was not visible in the larger world. And probably was another easy way for Tim Cook to disregard it, because it never came up on his radar that people were upset about decisions Johnny Ivey was making about products.

Speaker 1:
[78:27] Exactly. So, we get through the Johnny Ivey era, and during this era, they almost killed the Mac.

Speaker 3:
[78:36] They sure tried.

Speaker 1:
[78:37] And this is not an exaggeration. Like, it was very clear that the direction that Tim Cook wanted to go was, the iPad is the next era of mainstream computing, the Mac is legacy, let's phase it out. That was very obviously the path they were on, in both hardware and software. The Mac became even more neglected. They went through some terrible, the terrible hardware era of 2016 through 2020, or 2019. You know, the whole butterfly keyboard era where every Mac...

Speaker 3:
[79:13] And also removing all the ports from laptops.

Speaker 1:
[79:14] Right, removing all the ports, making the whole touch bar thing.

Speaker 3:
[79:18] That was apparently on Ternus.

Speaker 1:
[79:20] Hey, whatever. Like it happened on Tim Cook's watch, right? Like, yep. And as a result of the leadership structure that he had that he had maintained, it was a bad time for the Mac.

Speaker 3:
[79:30] You forgot dropping the ball on the Mac Pro.

Speaker 1:
[79:32] Of course. I mean, yeah, there are so many...

Speaker 3:
[79:35] They had to do the Mac roundtable, right?

Speaker 1:
[79:36] Obviously, things were a mess. The software quality took a huge dive during a lot of that span as well. They really had a lot of problems with software quality. These days, they do have some problems remaining in that area, but it's not nearly as bad as it used to be. Design quality, that's... Obviously, that's a more recent, you know, biggest problem, but it's certainly been going this way for a while. Anyway, a lot of problems. And then you start looking at the industry as a whole. As everything shifts first towards, like, really big cloud services and really big data services, like, you have the rise of things like, obviously, Facebook and the social networking whole area there, and all the advertising sophistication that they're developing and tracking, all this stuff. And I think Apple's behavior around that was largely good in the sense that they did stand up for privacy a lot and they did block a lot of the impact of that, from getting too deep into too many of their customers' systems. But there was this huge part of the industry developing that Apple took no part in and wanted nothing to do with, except they wanted some of the money. So they then started doing things like App Store ads, they're now doing Apple Maps. They're going in these directions. They want the money, but they don't want to invest to either make these products great for users or particularly sophisticated in terms of their capabilities like ad targeting. So they're just doing these half-assed, crappy versions of those things. The whole services narrative they're pushing during this time and the services growth story relies on somewhat making additive things that make people's lives overall better, but largely either imposing taxes as a gatekeeper and or making the user experience worse to make a bit more money. And that is largely the revenue growth story. Taking existing product lines and just making them keep going. Great. Okay. But the impact of the Cook era on them is we've maximized the money. It's going great and we need to find more. So after we can't raise prices anymore, what we're going to do is just start adding tack-on things. Services, ads, fees, upsells. And then we're going to just push and push and squeeze and just maximize everything. And that's when the user experience starts taking a nosedive, as we were talking about literally last week. What Tim Cook has led is a big expansion of the numbers and generally making the ship stable and mature and making it reliable for Wall Street. But at the cost of some of the areas of the products having some pretty weird turns in the middle there due to a lack of understanding or leadership, and now some pretty big questions about their fundamental values that might be being compromised that could long-term erode the products. And the same thing is happening with the Apple brand itself, based on Tim Cook's political choices. And what he built over this entire time was massively building up China to a point now that is geopolitically kind of risky. It is existentially risky for Apple in case anything weird would happen between the US and China. And strategically, that's a pretty large flaw, I think. He did his job, he made the numbers go up, but in such a way that I think was optimized for short term gain, and ignored a lot of the long term risks and quality and strategy that will possibly come to bite them later. Then finally, he totally over invested in bad product decisions, the Vision Pro and the car, and then totally under invested in what actually has turned out to be a pretty big deal, AI. And this story isn't over yet. We don't know how this is going to end up. We do know where it has been. We do know that Apple's efforts at AI so far have been nothing. They've resulted in almost nothing. Siri has been just a massive disaster for a very long time. It's been holding back all their products. It has caused significant brand damage. And meanwhile, the industry is taking off in this massive way in this other area that they are just nowhere in. So when you look at this pattern, the numbers guy takes over from the visionary CEO. The numbers all go up. The products kind of zigzag a little bit or a little confused. Mostly just make a bunch of money and mostly you're okay. But then another, then the next big thing is completely missed. That's Steve Ballmer. That's exactly Steve Ballmer. Tim Cook just did a better job of it. Tim Cook was a better Ballmer. But he's still a Ballmer. He still has played basically that story arc in the company's history. He grew everything. He kept the ship going. He kept things stable, but didn't have product sense and has left the company in not an amazing place in terms of future product growth because he totally blew it on the next big wave. Microsoft missed mobile. Apple has missed AI. Microsoft did eventually do things in mobile. Apple will eventually do 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. They would have had to start a while ago. They would have had to maybe buy one of these companies when it was much smaller. They would need a very, very different corporate ethos and priority set that I just don't think they have. And so if Apple's ever a leader in AI, 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. Microsoft is still a great company and they still make tons of money and they succeed in other areas. But they did take a pretty big hit in their potential and in the roads they're able to take by basically being nowhere in mobile. That could happen to Apple with AI. Apple could be very restricted in its paths in the future and it could be missing out on a whole bunch of potential because they missed AI. And meanwhile, could that billions and billions of dollars to develop the Vision Pro and the car have been better spent in any other way for any of the other products? Maybe making Siri better all this time. Maybe getting into AI a little bit earlier. Any of those things, they could have maybe done better things with that money. And so even if you set aside the more recent stuff with Trump, which is abhorrent and that I think should tarnish Tim Cook's legacy forever, his general leadership of the company has been fine, predictable, but not visionary, and not particularly effective for a design forward product focused company. He did really well at making money. And Apple has made a lot of money. They made all the money. Good job. But where are the products? The brightest part of the product lineup right now is hardware. The hardware is great. And hey, we got the hardware chief now as CEO. So I think this is very promising that the Tim Cook era is ending. We now have an end date. And I think, I mean, basically it's ending now-ish, like even though officially it's September, but like this transition is gonna happen faster than we realize. I think we're not gonna see Tim Cook on stage at WBDC. There's gonna be like, I think we're mostly done seeing Tim Cook doing a lot of public things. I think he's gonna let Ternus take over a lot of that stuff immediately to get him out there and everything. So I think the Tim Cook era is really effectively over. And the Ternus era is beginning. And we're gonna see what that means. All of these problems could continue. We might have brand new, all sorts of brand new problems we didn't even realize that we were taking for granted during the Tim Cook era. But I don't think so. I think Ternus is gonna be good. Because so far his background suggests that he actually has closer to what we want in terms of product sense, you know, love of computing and computers and computing devices. And he is also a younger generation. This will trigger over probably the next five years most of the Apple leadership that hasn't turned over yet to turn over. And we're gonna get a generational turnover in Apple leadership. And that could take us in some exciting directions too, which we talked about in the past. So I think there's not, this transition is not without risk. You know, there's always risk that something that we love or need will get worse. But I'm hopeful because I think that the things that Tim Cook was hired to do, he basically did for better and for worse. His job is done. And now it's time to see what's next for Apple. And all of the flaws of the Tim Cook era can be swept behind us. And we can move forward as best as we can and try to improve. And I'm looking forward to what that ends up being.

Speaker 2:
[89:30] So Marco, I hear you saying, and don't let me put words in your mouth, but I hear you saying that Cook, to a degree, had an edict, he had a mission, and he has succeeded in that mission. And I think that I agree with that wholeheartedly. Do you consider Cook to have been successful by whatever metric you so choose? We agree that on paper, if his goal was to grow the company in leaps and bounds, and he has achieved that, that is already agreed to, do you think it was successful?

Speaker 1:
[90:00] It's not a straight yes or no. I think if you had to say overall, was he successful? Yes. I do think, though, that there's a lot of asterisk on that. I am very concerned with the strategic importance that he has created in China. I think that is really uncomfortable for a lot of reasons, both for the world and for the country, our country, and for Apple itself. All of those things, I think, were made, were left in a worse position today because of Apple's buildup of China. The products, as mentioned, products are hit or miss in certain ways. But he was hired to be the Wall Street calming replacement for Steve Jobs and to take the company into the bigger and bigger and bigger direction. And he did that. So he did what he was hired to do. I just think he didn't know his own shortcomings enough to put proper leadership in place below him to cover the things he wasn't good at. And I think the Tim Cook era probably lasted longer than it should have in general. I would have liked to see the transition happen five years ago. But hey, no better time than now.

Speaker 3:
[91:18] I think he knew his shortcomings. It's difficult when you know you have the shortcomings to know the right person to pick. I think the main difficulty is it's difficult for him to correctly weight the importance of issues in the categories where he's not an expert. I'm sure he had some vague awareness about all the various things that we've complained about, the product problems that Apple has had. But he's got so many things that he's juggling, having to do with things beyond just the details of the products, that when it comes time for him to decide where to concentrate, things really have to be a seven alarm fire before he actually does something about the laptop keyboards or something. Because that's so below his concern for so long. Whereas, if you're a product guy likes jobs, or even maybe like Ternus will see, even though in the grand scheme of things, some issue, some disgruntlement about 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. This is the stuff we're supposed to get right, and suddenly it demands more forceful leadership from you in that area. Not that you're going to fix it yourself or know how to fix it, but that you're going to rank it, you're going to pay more attention to it. I really do feel like that Tim Cook paid attention to the things that he understood well, and it was harder for things that he wasn't good at to go up to his level. And again, I think he did know that he wasn't good at those things, but I think it's one of those things where it's like, choosing what to spend your time and attention on, is itself an action as a CEO. You may have thought, well, I'm not spending my attention on product design because I don't know anything about that. I've delegated, it's fine, you have to pay attention to that. You have to treat it as seriously as you would treat a supply chain issue or some other thing that you are good at. Just because you don't have expertise in it, doesn't mean 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 to your lieutenants, and maybe you have difficulty judging whether they're good at their jobs. But in the end, it is your job to oversee everything and figure out which part needs attention now. He just didn't seem to ever give attention to the parts that were failing because they weren't in his strengths. As for your comparison to Balmer, I continue to think that's not valid. Mostly because, we'll see here, we'll find out. But when Balmer left, the Satya Nadella transformation of Microsoft was basically determined into a different kind of company. It was like, Balmer was a continuation of the Gates Microsoft, and Nadella said, actually, I have a vision of a different Microsoft that just cares about different things. We're not all about Windows everywhere. We're not about Windows in office anymore. Now we're a services company. Now we're going to do our things on all platforms. It was just a real transformation of the company to be a different kind of business, sort of like IBM transformed from the early days of IBM. The company that made the PC is not today's IBM. You know what I mean? IBM has transformed itself also coincidentally into more of a services type company. I don't think the Tim Cook to John Ternus transition will see Apple being transformed in the same way that Microsoft was after Nadella, which makes me say that Tim Cook is not as a bomber because Ternus doesn't have to transform Apple into a totally different kind of company, right? It will be as if Apple stopped caring about selling integrated hardware and software and just became like a business to business services company that put its software on all platforms. That's not going to happen and I think that shows that Tim Cook didn't screw up Apple's but his bomber did. Also, under Tim Cook's leadership, like you kind of passed by this quickly, but I don't want to undersell it, like he oversaw the iPhone product line, not just like, oh, just keep the iPhone going. He didn't just keep the iPhone going. He continued to make sure the iPhone was, we say this every year, it's good every year. Almost every single iPhone is really good and gets better. That's Apple's most important product and it's one of the things Tim Cook seemed to be able to pay attention to. There weren't a lot of stinker iPhones and it's not like the iPhone just stated the status quo and was afraid to make any changes. The iPhone has developed like we wish all of Apple's product lines would develop. It got a lot of attention, it had a lot of innovation, things were tried, mistakes were fixed quickly, the hardware-software integration was pretty good. Even the OS 26 is not that bad on the phone, not like on the Mac. I don't think like Balmer is like, let's just squeeze every last ounce of money out of Windows in the office and not really make them any better. He didn't just squeeze every ounce of money out of the phone, 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 phone, the phone when I become CEO in 2011, it's fine, we don't need to really change the phone much after that. We'll just keep selling the same phone like that. I think they have pressed on the phone and Apple Silicon and all that stuff. So in the areas where he did pay attention, he did, I gave him some credit for the product lines that he cared about and paid attention to, didn't just stay at the status quo. And the iPhone is their most important product. And I think they just continue to knock it 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 been resting on their laurels with the phone. They've been the perfect combination of innovative and careful. Because you can't be like all the other Android phones that can just try all sorts of stuff, like that's why Android has folding phones first. Everyone has, Android has all the different innovations in the phones, like they'll try everything, right? Apple has to be careful, but it also means don't just do the same thing forever. Try new stuff, see how it works. They made big ones, they made small ones, they made fat ones, they made thin ones, they're gonna make a folding one. They got rid of the home button. You know, they're, I give Tim Cook credit for that as well. And as for the China stuff, like, this is where like values being embodied in decision-making becomes difficult because basically as, you know, if you read the Apple and China book, like it's not possible to scale Apple. Tim Cook becomes CEO in 2011. He wants to scale Apple up and sell more phones. It's very, it's basically impossible to do that without doing what he did with China. There's not even a lot of 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? It's kind of a situation where it's like, if you really want to adhere to your core values, Apple cannot grow this fast. I mean, the reality of planet Earth was, if you just sat down in 2011 and said, so Tim, you want to make the line go like this. But what if I told you literally the only way to make the line go at that angle, is you've got to invest heavily in China, and with all the caveats and problems that comes with. Or you could invest equally heavily or more heavily in these other places that are not authoritarian regimes like 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 was, I'm going to make the line go up the steeper one, and I'm going to invest in China. And I think mostly to his credit, he knows the downsides of that, maybe better than anyone, he knows the downsides 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, the various efforts to pull back from China to the extent possible. I think something like, I forget what the stat was, maybe like half of a particular model of iPhone was not made in China, it was made in India or something like that. This is a delicate situation to extract themselves from. It is a problem of their own making, but it's not like they're doing nothing. In all their press releases, they'll be like, Raw, raw China, we love you. We're not backing off or whatever. But look at what they're actually doing. They are trying to build more stuff in places other than China, and it's really hard and they're doing it really slowly. And that's why it was a momentous decision and why it is gonna be his legacy as he's leaving Ternus with this, holding the bag on this or whatever. But I think it's not like he was going full-throttle, all trying to all the time until the day he left. I think he has already started turning the ship around years ago. It's just a big ship and it's gonna take a long time. So I mean, if you ask me, has he been a success as a CEO? I think inarguably yes, even though all the things that I have to complain about but my complaints have increased as his tenure has gone on. And that really tells me his time should end and now is ending. And so I'm happy about that. But I think as a CEO, even though he didn't make every decision the way I wanted him to, he made mostly good decisions and has inarguably been successful. And I do continue to think despite various times that Marco has not been able to bring himself to believe this is the case. I do think in his heart of hearts, he is a good person who is merely misguided many times, let's say. And maybe it's because I'm an optimistic person. I want to see the best in people. And I'm just guessing about a person I've never met, you know what I mean? It's hard to know, he's so guarded. But it seems to me that he is a good person who thinks he's doing the right thing and is just mistaken sometimes. And that's like all of us. The problem is that his mistaken assumptions about him doing the right thing have effects that are magnified by $4 trillion market cap. And he describes it as like, what I know to be 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 world's biggest technology company? It's a lot of responsibility and everything you do wrong is magnified. It's like being in control of the world's most powerful military if you had a conscience, for example. 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 already having that kind of money and sitting at a beach maybe, but that doesn't seem to be the things that Tim Cook wants to do. So here's hoping that he gets to that beach sooner rather than later, and let's Ternus make decisions out from the shadow of Tim Cook. And then one final thing, long-term versus short-term. You frequently said that he's made short-term decisions, but I feel like the time scales are important here. He's been CEO for what? 15 years or something?

Speaker 2:
[101:09] Thereabouts.

Speaker 3:
[101:09] Yeah, and his chickens are coming home to roost on his bad decisions, like in China. And you're calling that he made that decision for short-term? It's like, well, short-term I think is like quarter to quarter or year to year. But if you make a decision that's going to turn out to be a big problem in a decade, that's long-term thinking in business, right? So he's made mistakes. And I feel like the mistakes have been long-term mistakes, not a short-term mistake. I don't think most of the things he's done have not been with an eye towards, I got to hit the numbers for next quarter. Almost all of his decisions, including the bad ones, have been with an eye towards a decade from now, what is this going to be like? So I think that and 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 together for this earnings report? And Tim Cook has mostly been isolated from that, simply because he's been so good at leading Apple to continue to be successful that he has never been put into a position where everyone is staring at him and saying, boy, Tim, you better not have another loss this quarter, or we're gonna be coming out with the knives. It's just merely been a question of, oh, did you make as many billions this time as you did last time? And even the car thing, like you mentioned, sinking the money into that, looking at how much money tech companies are putting into AI stuff now, I think like one year or one quarter's worth of the tech industry's capital investment in AI probably dwarfs all the money Apple ever spent on the car in a decade, just because it was speculative and they didn't actually build anything, and they're like, oh, Apple spent $10 billion on the car. It's like, people spent $10 billion in one quarter on stupid data center crap for a service they haven't even launched yet. So yeah, the car was a miss, but A, I give him props for not shipping it because it would have been bad, and B, in the grand scheme of CapEx, the car, especially Apple's amount of money, the car is nothing compared to the money that companies are speculatively putting into AI in their panic spending in the hope not to be left behind. And you know, maybe that'll turn out, you know, maybe it will be egg in Apple's face, and we said, Apple, you should have been panic spending and putting those kinds of dollars into AI because it turns out no one uses iPhones anymore and everyone just uses their hovering earphone pod from OpenAI and Johnny Ive or whatever. But right now, that's not the case. So, you know, I would also say on the Vision Pro, kind of jury's still out on how the AI thing's gonna turn out and how the Vision Pro thing's gonna 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, but it remains to be seen.

Speaker 2:
[103:32] I think ultimately there's a lot to complain about with regard to Tim Cook and some of us, Marco, have done that a little more vocally than others, but I do think there's a lot to complain about. I also think that by any reasonable metric, his tenure at Apple was unbelievably successful. And perhaps I'm just getting, you know, not wispy-eyed, but maybe 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 computer that I'm using right now, which is, you know, an M3 Max, MacBook Pro, what's it look like, three years old now, something like that. And it's still incredible. I look at this MacBook Neo that, you know, just came out. And from everything that anyone has ever said, you know, yeah, it's got flaws. But on the grand scheme of things, in the grand scheme of things, it's incredible. My iPhone takes phenomenal pictures and keeps me connected with people far, far, far away. You know, one of my dearest friends from high school is now living in Australia and will FaceTime not irregularly. And that's just one example of many. You know, I look at the Vision Pro and yes, we can snark about how it's kind of a failed product so far. We can snark about how it weighs, you know, a whole ton and it's not exceedingly comfortable. And, you know, I don't have the occasion to put it on very often. But as I've said many, many, many times on the show, every time I put a Vision Pro on and use it, I am reminded that I am strapping the future to my face. And there's so much incredible stuff that Apple has done. I think that their stewardship for privacy, I think them not caving during the San Bernardino situation, which obviously was fraught and, you know, you could make a very strong argument that Apple did not make the right choice. I think they did. I think that there are things that we can complain about, but on the whole, the last 15 years, which has been almost the entirety of my time paying attention to Apple, I only started paying attention a couple of years, a few years before Tim took over as CEO. 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 to go from my first real introduction to Apple, my first Apple product was an iPod Nano, and I adored that thing and actually just found it recently. It's incredible. Even today, it feels incredible in hand, and obviously the dock connector is not great. But by and large, it's still a really cool product. And I look at all these devices, and I look at the things that Apple of the last 15 years have afforded people, but especially me. I mean, my career, no matter how you look at it, right now anyway, is based on, is revolves around Apple. And I think that that's largely true for all three of us at the moment. And that's not all Tim, of course, but it's hard not to get nostalgic. It's hard not to look back on the last 15 years. I mean, hell, this podcast started in, for real, in March of 2013. So this is almost the Accidental Tim Cook Podcast, you know? And I can't help but feel like it's been a pretty damn good run. I echo a lot of the complaints that Marco has had. I have echoed them and I echo them now. And I think that I echo a lot of the complaints that John has. As much as I give John a hard time about his beloved Mac Pro, it does kind of suck that there isn't a just completely bananas, absolutely no punches pulled computer anymore. But on the whole, I really do look at the last 15 years and say, you know what? That's a job pretty well done. And I think that we are all largely, not exclusively, largely better off for it. And I think that he should ride off into the sunset, feeling happy and accomplished and proud of what he has done.

Speaker 3:
[107:21] I do wonder if he'll give, do you think he'll give? He probably won't because he's like a chairman. At what point does Tim Cook start giving candid interviews ever or does he just die?

Speaker 1:
[107:30] Wow. I don't think it's in him.

Speaker 3:
[107:33] Obviously when he's on the board, he's not going to give any candid anything. So let's say he retires. That's the question. Will Tim Cook ever retire from Apple's board?

Speaker 2:
[107:42] I think he will. And I think the answer to your question when he will start to get candid, if I were to wager a guess and try to psychoanalyze someone who I met once for about 30 seconds, I would say that he will start to get more candid when he is of ill health.

Speaker 3:
[108:00] Right before he dies.

Speaker 2:
[108:01] No, truly. I really mean it. Because if you think about it-

Speaker 3:
[108:03] I don't know if he'll do it then even.

Speaker 1:
[108:04] I don't think so.

Speaker 2:
[108:06] I'm not sure he will. And I could make a strong argument that he won't, but my guess-

Speaker 3:
[108:10] Because Art Levinson is like 75 and he's not even leaving. He's just getting booted out of the non-executive chairmanship. And he's still going to be the lead independent director. Art Levinson is 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 give a candid interview about Apple.

Speaker 2:
[108:29] I think he will. Because I think if you're Tim Cook, and again, I'm really psychoanalyzing in a way that's borderline inappropriate. But what is his legacy? You know, he doesn't, to the best of we all know, he doesn't have any children. He doesn't, to the best of we all know, have any spouse. So Apple is to a large degree his legacy. And I think that if it were me and I was on 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 to try to do what I could to establish whatever legacy or properly cement any legacy that I may have had. And I think that if he is to get candid, and I echo what you echo both of you going, I don't know about that. But if he is to get candid, I think it's basically when time is running out and he just wants to make sure that whatever it is that's important to him, be that reminding everyone about all the good environmental stuff Apple does, or all the good privacy stuff Apple does, and washing away all the bad stuff. One way or another, I think that's when he gets candid.

Speaker 3:
[109:24] I feel like he's going to be a company man to the end. Like, even if he's totally off the board, he's in ill health, he's just never going to say anything bad about Apple, never going to give candid stories about what it was like to fight in the trenches. Unlike, for example, we talked about that recent 40th anniversary of the Mac thing or whatever, where you get people from the Mac team telling stories they've told before, but very candid, dysfunctional inside stories about the creation of the products they worked on, because Apple is not their legacy. Their legacy in some respects is their participation in this team, Warts and all, but they're not afraid to, first of all, they've been gone from Apple for decades, and second of all, Apple was not their company. So they don't have to continue to say, I just love Apple, it's wonderful, it's been the best thing in my life, blah, blah, and never say anything bad about it. No, they want to tell you the bad stories. They want to tell you the stories about how things were broken, and people argued, and how their bosses were dummies, and they did something clever despite their bosses telling them, they'll do that now while they're alive, because it's not a threat to their legacy, it's your point Casey, whereas I feel like there is no time when Tim Cook is alive when he will not feel that he has to continue to tow the company line and say rah rah apple. Even something as simple as regrets about how China was handled, say something disastrous happens, God forbid, but say something disastrous happens with China while he's still alive, and he's 87 years old, and he's on his deathbed, and he's being interviewed, he does an interview. Would he say like, my one regret is maybe I could have handled China differently? I think he would not say that on death's door. I think he'd be like, nope, that's never going to come out of my mouth. I might feel it, but I'm never going to say it. So tough luck, but we'll see. When people are guarded in private in this way, when people are so disciplined in their communication, it's human nature to wish that we could get at the real them. I think the best we're going to get for Tim Cook is the increasing number of stories from people who are in the room with Tim, because that story is like their currency to like, here's my tell-all book, not the tell-all book. It's the only reason we know the why are you still here story about the guy who had to go fly to China. We don't know that from Tim Cook, we know it from the people who were in the room with him. As those people who were in the room with him retire, maybe we'll see them on the 50th anniversary of the iPhone, they're on stage in a little panel with Cyber David Pogue. They'll tell their stories about when Tim Cook was a jerk in a meeting or what Tim Cook really thought about something behind the scenes. Honestly, I'm not even sure how candid he is in that. How many people hear Tim Cook's real opinion about anything related to Apple? Probably people could fit in a small room, and the rest of the people don't get to hear that, but we'll see. For now, I wish he would fade from Apple's day-to-day even more than he already is, but you know, you take what you can get. Quote-unquote retirement to be the executive chairman is better than him staying CEO.

Speaker 1:
[112:24] All right. Thank you to our sponsors this episode, Squarespace, Claude, and DeleteMe. And thanks to our members who support us directly, you can join us at atp.fm slash join. One of the many perks of ATP membership is our weekly bonus topic, ATP Overtime. Every single episode has bonus content exclusive to members. This week on Overtime, we're gonna be talking about media and the limits of human perception. We're gonna be talking about audio file stuff, fancy video stuff. It's gonna be a lot of fun. So you can join us at atp.fm slash join. Thanks everybody. We'll talk to you next week.

Speaker 3:
[114:03] So for the after show, I need to tell you what I told Merlin in a recent episode, which is don't look at the internet. You may already be spoiled for this and may make this aftershow totally moot, but if so, Marco can just cut it out and we'll do a different one. All right. This is for you two. No looking at the internet. I'm hoping you didn't see information that was on the internet very recently that would make this not fun. I would like the two of you... In the style of you two trying to name the versions and names of Mac OS, I would like you two to name the CEOs of Apple in order.

Speaker 1:
[114:37] Oh, no.

Speaker 2:
[114:38] In order? Oh, God.

Speaker 3:
[114:39] Now, I feel like you're helped a little bit because recently there was the... Speaking of David Pogue, he had that Apple at 50 book and I know Casey was reading that.

Speaker 2:
[114:46] I finished it.

Speaker 3:
[114:47] That's gonna... There you go. It's giving you a lot of information and that's been in the news and maybe Marco's seen it fly by. So, but Casey's memory is bad. So, you two can collaborate if you want or you can compete.

Speaker 2:
[114:57] There's no way we will do this without collaborating. I can tell you that right now.

Speaker 3:
[115:00] All right. Well, maybe that's... Before you collaborate, you both... We're gonna do it in chronological order. So, and we'll do Marco first because he's the least likely to know the answer.

Speaker 1:
[115:10] God.

Speaker 3:
[115:12] Apple's first CEO, Marco, what is your guess? If you both don't know it, then you can collaborate.

Speaker 1:
[115:17] Well, there was that guy who was CEO for like 12 days, right at the beginning.

Speaker 3:
[115:21] Don't help him, Casey. We don't hear what he says.

Speaker 1:
[115:25] I have a bunch of names. So, I have a couple of names floating around in my head, but I don't think it's right. I know, like, I think Mike Markala was one of the earlier ones. I think John Browitt was one of those earlier ones.

Speaker 3:
[115:36] And you got a lot of names in the head, that's for sure.

Speaker 1:
[115:40] I know some of the later ones, you know, but, like, jeez, the very...

Speaker 3:
[115:43] All right, you got nothing on that one, Casey, you want to help him out?

Speaker 1:
[115:45] I think the very first one technically was probably Steve Jobs.

Speaker 3:
[115:49] That is wrong. Casey, you want to help him out?

Speaker 2:
[115:50] No, it was Ron Wayne, wasn't it?

Speaker 3:
[115:52] No. No, it wasn't? You don't have it either? You just read the book.

Speaker 2:
[115:55] Yeah, who was the guy, the 12 Days guy? Wasn't that Ron Wayne?

Speaker 3:
[115:58] I don't know what you're talking about, but no, it was not.

Speaker 2:
[116:01] No, who was the third one, the adult in the room with the two of them?

Speaker 1:
[116:04] Some name that we don't know, we never talk about.

Speaker 3:
[116:07] Actually, before we even do the list, do you know how many CEOs there have been of Apple?

Speaker 1:
[116:10] I like 12.

Speaker 3:
[116:12] Including John Ternus.

Speaker 1:
[116:13] Oh, like 13 or 14, something like that?

Speaker 2:
[116:15] Yeah, I was gonna say the same. Somewhere low 10, low double digits, less than 15.

Speaker 3:
[116:21] 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. Okay, so the first one was...

Speaker 2:
[116:26] I thought it was eight, wasn't it? It's eight and maybe nine with...

Speaker 3:
[116:28] Yes, you probably saw that in social media there. There have been eight Apple CEOs, including John Ternus.

Speaker 2:
[116:33] Jeez.

Speaker 3:
[116:33] So for number one, you don't have it, Casey?

Speaker 2:
[116:35] No, who is the guy? He wasn't...

Speaker 3:
[116:38] You're thinking of Ron Wayne, who was the person who signed the incorporation papers and then bailed out two weeks later, but he was never CEO of Apple.

Speaker 2:
[116:48] Then I got nothing.

Speaker 3:
[116:50] Don't look at the chat room either, because they're spoiling it for all of you.

Speaker 1:
[116:52] No, I'm not.

Speaker 3:
[116:52] Okay, Marco, what do you call it? The office. The main character.

Speaker 1:
[116:59] Michael Scott?

Speaker 3:
[117:00] That was the first CEO of Apple, Michael Scott, 1977 to 1981.

Speaker 1:
[117:05] How did I not know that?

Speaker 3:
[117:06] Also known as Mike Scott.

Speaker 1:
[117:08] They went by Mike Scott. Maybe that's why.

Speaker 3:
[117:10] All right. Well, that's tough one because it's 1977, 1981. I don't think either one of you are alive, although Casey did just read the book about him. Remember, he was brought in as a CEO when they formed the company. Okay. Number two, after Mike Scott.

Speaker 2:
[117:23] Oh, I got nothing on this.

Speaker 1:
[117:24] That was probably Jobs.

Speaker 3:
[117:26] Nope. You had it before, Marco. You want to try again?

Speaker 1:
[117:28] Was it John Browett?

Speaker 3:
[117:30] No.

Speaker 2:
[117:30] No, it was Markkula was CEO.

Speaker 1:
[117:32] Mike Markkula?

Speaker 3:
[117:33] Yes. Mike Markkula. Casey, don't look at the chat room either.

Speaker 2:
[117:36] I'm not looking at the chat room.

Speaker 3:
[117:37] All right. Mike Markkula, 1981 to 1983. The two Mikes, Mike Scott and Mike Markkula. All right. Number three. He's starting in 1983. So we did 77 to 81, 81 to 83. Now it's 1983, who becomes CEO of Apple?

Speaker 1:
[117:54] I think actually, so my thinking now, I think Jobs was never CEO before he was ousted. I think that's how this happened.

Speaker 3:
[118:02] Casey, you want to help him with this?

Speaker 2:
[118:03] No, I thought that that was correct.

Speaker 3:
[118:05] I'm just saying you can collaborate now because you really need each other.

Speaker 2:
[118:08] Yeah, we do and I'm useless.

Speaker 1:
[118:10] So I know at some point we have like, John Scully, Gil Amelio, like we had this series, was Scully the next one? I think Scully might have been the next one.

Speaker 2:
[118:19] Yeah, but not this early though.

Speaker 1:
[118:21] Because Scully wasn't scully living to fire Jobs?

Speaker 2:
[118:23] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[118:24] Jobs was never fired.

Speaker 1:
[118:25] My answer was John Scully. What year did you say John?

Speaker 3:
[118:29] 1983, he's starting. Marco ends in 83.

Speaker 2:
[118:33] I thought, no, I think Marco is right. I think it is Scully.

Speaker 3:
[118:36] You got it right. John Scully, he was recruited by Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs said, do you wanna sell sugar water for the rest of your life? Because he was at Pepsi or do you wanna come with me and change the world? He recruited John Scully to become CEO of Apple in 1983. John Scully lasted from 1983 to 1993.

Speaker 1:
[118:54] Yeah, a long span.

Speaker 3:
[118:54] He launched the Newton because he thought he was a product visionary, but he was a guy from Pepsi.

Speaker 1:
[118:59] All right. Then was it Guillemilio?

Speaker 3:
[119:01] So Scully is gone in 1993. Who comes in in 1993? Jobs is obviously not here anymore because Jobs departed Apple during the Scully era in 1985, I believe. So Scully is there from 1983, 85 Jobs leaves, and then it's just the John Scully show from 85 to 1993.

Speaker 2:
[119:20] Yeah, but I thought there was somebody before.

Speaker 1:
[119:22] Maybe was there Mike Markle of then?

Speaker 3:
[119:25] We already did Mike Markle.

Speaker 1:
[119:27] Oh, was that John Browitt?

Speaker 3:
[119:29] Mike Markle. Browitt is the guy who ran the Aptal Store retail for like six months.

Speaker 1:
[119:34] Oh, that's right.

Speaker 2:
[119:35] That was for like a hot second.

Speaker 1:
[119:36] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[119:37] That is very not in the center.

Speaker 1:
[119:38] Paper Master.

Speaker 3:
[119:40] I don't know why that name was stuck in your head, but I just want to save you from saying Browitt.

Speaker 1:
[119:43] It sounded like a CEO name. All right.

Speaker 3:
[119:45] After John Sculley, who takes over.

Speaker 2:
[119:47] No, but there was someone between him and Emilio. I could have sworn, but I can't place who it was. Because Marco's right. I think Marco had said it was Emilio.

Speaker 3:
[119:54] I'll give you a hint.

Speaker 1:
[119:55] This CEO famously hid under his desk at various points And he was of poor physical health.

Speaker 2:
[120:02] God, I can't remember his name now, but I know who you're thinking of.

Speaker 3:
[120:04] The inoculumelio? That's somebody else?

Speaker 2:
[120:06] No. I don't know. I couldn't pull a name out of a hat, but I know who you're thinking of.

Speaker 1:
[120:11] One of you said it before, but I'll save you because this is not a well-known CEO. Michael Spindler, 1993 to 1996.

Speaker 3:
[120:18] Yeah, I've heard that name before, but I don't know anything about it. This is like the period where Casey and I are not paying attention at all.

Speaker 1:
[120:23] Hiding under his desk is the note card, and Michael Spindler, not profiles in courage.

Speaker 3:
[120:28] It doesn't seem like that would be a Tim Cook thing to do.

Speaker 1:
[120:31] No, Tim Cook is never hiding under his desk, I can tell you that.

Speaker 3:
[120:34] I don't think Tim Cook, has Tim Cook ever sat down?

Speaker 2:
[120:37] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[120:38] He's always on the move like a shark.

Speaker 2:
[120:39] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[120:42] All right, so this ends in 1996. In 1996, who takes over as the fifth CEO of Apple?

Speaker 3:
[120:47] That must be Gil Amelio finally.

Speaker 2:
[120:49] Well, hold on.

Speaker 3:
[120:50] I'm pulling the Amelio card again.

Speaker 2:
[120:51] No, hold on though, because if that's number five, one, two, three, four.

Speaker 3:
[120:54] Because Jobs is back by like 97 or 98, right?

Speaker 1:
[120:58] Spindler is leaving in 96.

Speaker 2:
[121:01] One, two, three, four, five, six.

Speaker 1:
[121:02] Who takes over from Spindler in 96?

Speaker 2:
[121:04] Oh, no, you've got it. You've got it. I just need to do the math. You've got it.

Speaker 3:
[121:07] Yeah, it's Amelio.

Speaker 2:
[121:08] Right?

Speaker 1:
[121:09] Gil Amelio, who famously compared the Macintosh to the Maglite, which was the only other hardware electronic product he could think of that was high quality. He's like, the Mac, it's kind of like the Maglite, because that was the time when Maglites were popular, and it's like a flashlight, but a really good, but a really expensive flashlight. So the Mac is like the Maglite. Oh, sorry, Gil.

Speaker 3:
[121:31] Yeah, they really had a moment there with the Maglites, but then LEDs happened and really killed them.

Speaker 1:
[121:36] This is way before LEDs. This is 1996.

Speaker 2:
[121:39] Maglites were incredibly popular. Look it up, kids. It was a whole thing.

Speaker 1:
[121:43] Anyway, he lasted from 1996 to 1997. The most important decision he ever made, obviously was to buy next and get Steve Jobs back. Who was the sixth CEO of Apple? Steve Jobs. That's right. The first time he was ever CEO of Apple, he was not CEO of Apple at any other time. He was the co-founder, but they brought on CEOs because they were kids and they brought on adults who understood business to be CEOs. One of those people was recruited by Jobs himself, and that was the one who essentially defeated him in the border and politics of the day, resulting in Jobs leaving. But when he came back, he was I-CEO, and then regular CEO, Steve Jobs 1997 to 2011. He did not leave. He was not kicked out. He died. It was sad. Number seven.

Speaker 2:
[122:32] And Tim Cook.

Speaker 1:
[122:33] There you go. And number eight.

Speaker 2:
[122:34] And then John Ternus.

Speaker 1:
[122:36] Tim Cook 2011 to 2026. John Ternus 2026 to question mark.

Speaker 2:
[122:41] I feel like we did okay.

Speaker 3:
[122:43] Yeah. My apologies to John Siracusa, Jason Snell and John Gruber.

Speaker 1:
[122:48] I mean, I don't expect people who weren't into Apple to know these things. I felt like Casey could have knocked it out, but he just read a book on Apple history that talked about all of these people.

Speaker 2:
[122:57] Yes, but I've read other things since then.

Speaker 1:
[122:59] And they just pushed it out of your mind. Casey has a small context window. He's waiting for the upgrade.

Speaker 3:
[123:04] Also, wasn't that book like 600 pages long?

Speaker 2:
[123:06] It was.

Speaker 3:
[123:07] Even by the time you're at the end of the book, you forgot in the beginning.

Speaker 2:
[123:09] Also true. It's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. No, it was an incredible book though, despite the fact that 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 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 buy it, or whatever. Or if you're reading it on a Kindle-like device, make sure it's one with color because they are incredible photographs in this book. It's really, really, really worth your time. They didn't sponsor anything like that. It's just genuinely a really, really good book.

Speaker 1:
[123:39] I just started reading that one, but from what I've gathered from other people looking at, there's not much in there that I haven't read in the 7,000 other books I've read about Apple. My go-to recommendation for the years that are covered in this book is Infinite Loop by Michael S. Malone. It obviously ends at the date of publication and doesn't have any of the stuff after that. I think it ends like a little chapter at the end about Steve Jobs coming back or some crap. But it's basically like Mike Scott, Mike Markala, John Scully, Michael Spindler, Gil Amelio bookends more or less. And then there's Steve Jobs' addendum. It's like early Apple up to the mid to late 90s. But boy, it does a really good job of covering all that stuff and really making these people into characters that are memorable. The David Pogue's 50th book obviously covers a much larger time span and has rehashes of many of the similar stories, but probably can't spend as much time, even at 600 pages or whatever, can't spend as much time as a book that was written in the 90s can spend on the shorter time span that is to cover, so Jason put a bunch of book recommendations for Apple history, I think on Six Colors recently, I think he also did some recommendations in his Wall Street Journal article, so maybe we should link to those in the show notes, but my personal rec for, I guess, what is now early Apple history is Infinite Loop, I think his name is Michael S. Malone, we'll put a link in the show notes, but yeah, if you want a more comprehensive one, the Pogue one is apparently good too, like I said, I've just started.

Speaker 2:
[125:06] Yeah, it's very good. I also wanted to call out, is it Revolution in the Valley? Is that the Hertzfeld one?

Speaker 1:
[125:11] Yeah. I mean, just go to folklore.org, because Revolution in the Valley is the paper version of a subset of folklore.org. If you want to know specifically about stories from the creation of the Macintosh, which is one of my favorite periods in Apple's history and projects, folklore.org is a website written by Andy Hertzfeld, who was on the original Mac team, and he gets testimonials from, I mean, in the modern era, they would call it an oral history of the early Mac or whatever, but really what it is is a bunch of blog posts written by original Mac team members, including Hertzfeld himself, and there is a paper version of that called Revolution in the Valley that I think has most of the articles on the website, but maybe not all of them, but definitely check out folklore.org if you're interested in that.

Speaker 2:
[125:52] Well, we did it, Marco. I feel okay with this.

Speaker 1:
[125:55] You did better than the Mac names, but I guess it's because there's fewer of them, although I think there was 13 or 14 CEOs, I'm like, who are all these other people? It's not been a lot. Mike Scott, Mike Markle, John Scully, Michael Spindler, Gil Amelio, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, John Ternus. There's only two Johns in there, Scully and Ternus.