transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Support for the show comes from Aura Frames. An Aura Frame is the easiest way to display your photos in your home or with your loved ones. It's a digital picture frame that displays your photos at a super high resolution. Named number one by Wirecutter, you can save on the gifts moms love by visiting auraframes.com. For a limited time, listeners can get $25 off their best-selling Carver matte frame with code Prof G. That's A-U-R-A, frames.com, promo code Prof G. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Right?

Speaker 2:
[01:31] Today's number, nine. That's how many four- and five-star generals have been fired by this administration, almost as many as the 150 years prior. When asked for comment, Secretary Pete Hegseth said he's, quote, trying to be the shepherd. We later reached out to Quentin Tarantino to find out what that meant.

Speaker 1:
[01:54] If money is evil, then that building is hell.

Speaker 2:
[02:02] Welcome to Prof G Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is April 22nd. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The major indices declined as Iran talks stalled around market close. Trump announced the ceasefire was extended indefinitely and the blockade would be maintained. Brent crude rose and treasury yields climbed as Federal Reserve Chair nominee Kevin Warsh testified before the Senate Banking Committee. During the hearing, Warsh called for reforms at the Fed, suggesting he'd make changes to the agency's inflation models and communication style. He also dodged questions about Lisa Cook and the Jerome Powell probe and declined to acknowledge that President Trump lost the 2020 election. Still, regarding Fed independence, he said, quote, The president never asked me to predetermine, commit, fix, decide on any interest rate decision in any of our discussions, nor would I ever agree to do so. Okay. What else is happening? After 15 years as CEO of Apple, Tim Cook is officially stepping down. During Cook's tenure, Apple's revenue almost quadrupled, and its market value increased by about 3.6 trillion dollars. On September 1st, Cook will be transitioning to the role of executive chairman, and he'll hand the CEO reins to John Ternus, Apple's head of hardware engineering. Ternus has spent 25 years, half his life at the company, overseeing the hardware behind every major Apple product. The transition marks the start of a new era for Apple, with plenty of unanswered questions about what comes next. So, here to discuss what this moment means for Apple and for the future of this company. We are joined by a panel of experts, Patrick McGee, award-winning journalist and author of Apple in China, The Capture of the World's Greatest Company, and also Tripp Mickle, tech reporter for the New York Times and author of After Steve, How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul. Patrick, Tripp, thank you very much for joining us on Prof G Markets. So Cook is departing, Ternus is taking over. I want to start with a look at Tim Cook and his career. Patrick, I'll start with you. Tim was CEO for 15 years. When we look back at this, what will we say about what he did for the company? What will the history books of business say about his legacy at Apple?

Speaker 3:
[04:34] Well, you're already thinking about it the way I think about it. I mean, look, I think if you're looking at it from 2026, it is hard to fault this guy. As you said, $3.6 trillion added to Apple's market cap. He clearly fulfilled whatever tasks Steve Jobs set him out to do. His role was not necessarily to come up with breakthrough products. It was to iterate what Steve Jobs had already come up with on a global scale. He squeezed every penny that was really available in the supply chain. He built up services, he put Apple into new areas like Apple TV and a host of things like that. He's getting $20 billion of profit per year just out of the Google relationship, just using the user base in Apple's favor. All kinds of things, but what you're pointing to is, where will we see this 10 years from now? That to me is the most interesting question because Ben Thompson of trajectory has put this with a nice metaphor. He laid time bombs for the next CEO, which is to say, the China risk could really blow up and we can go into more detail there, and he's not invested really much at all into data centers for AI. That might be the right move, but if it turns out to be the wrong move, Apple would be years behind the companies that people have been fawning over the last few years with appropriate acclaim.

Speaker 2:
[05:47] Yeah. We will definitely get to China and we'll definitely get to AI, Tripp. I just want to get your initial reactions. What do you make of Tim Cook stepping down? How do you think he'll be remembered?

Speaker 4:
[05:57] Patrick's right. We can make a call today on how he's done over the past 15 years and say, clearly he'll be remembered today as the most successful successor to an accomplished executive, to a founder. What Tim Cook did is rare, whether you're talking about the world of business or sports or even politics. If you have somebody who's a figurehead in the same way Steve Jobs was, seldom do you have somebody come along behind them and continue or sustain that success. I mean, if you're a college football fan, nobody followed Bear Bryant for decades until Mick Saban came along. You skip generations. Tim Cook, he wasn't a miss, despite what people thought out of the gate. But there's another question about Tim, and that's based on the lack of new products. I mean, Apple is still really living off the iPhone, and off the products that it's stitched onto the iPhone, that have made the iPhone stickier than even it was when it was first released. The question will be whether or not it runs out of momentum eventually, and whether or not his successor can succeed in innovating again and delivering a new product that potentially adds to the company's prospects for the future.

Speaker 2:
[07:20] I mean, when we look at what he did well, it's easiest to just start with the numbers where he took a $350 billion company and turned it into a $4 trillion company. He increased revenue 300%. He increased profits 350%. But when we look at the decisions that he made and the things that he actually did to achieve those numbers, Tripp, what do you think he got right? What were his big wins over the course of his career? Then we'll return to what the future will look like. But what do you think he got right?

Speaker 4:
[07:57] There are two signature things that I think he did that really changed the trajectory for Apple. The first was striking a China mobile deal two years after taking over as CEO of the company. He'd spent a long time working on that. It changed Apple's trajectory in China. It unlocked the iPhone in China and turned China not just from a market that made and produced the iPhone, but it turned Apple into a company that really captured sales from the rising middle class in China. That's really become a bedrock of their business. Also to Patrick's point earlier, it's a precarious part of their business as well because of the geopolitical circumstances and the adversarial relationship today between the US and China. Then the second thing he did was he looked at the iPhone and he said, okay, well, how do we make more money off a product that now is in the pockets of a billion people around the world? He leaned into services in 2019 and made that a focus of the company's business. He launched new services that drew attention to that, including TV Plus and a credit card. He elbowed Apple into new areas so that it can make more money just because of the sheer heft and the number of people who own the iPhone.

Speaker 3:
[09:19] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[09:20] Patrick, I'd be curious to hear if you have anything to add on to that, and potentially, but my follow-up is, what do you think he got wrong?

Speaker 3:
[09:29] Yeah. No, the getting wrong stuff is obviously more interesting. I suppose maybe I would point to two things. One, there's just the clear failure. They worked on an Apple car for 10 years and then abandoned the project. I honestly hem and haw about whether or not one should point that out as a major disaster. Tim Cook's line about it was that we like to fail internally, and honestly, I can respect that. They put a lot of engineering talent into it, and at the end of the day, decided not to do it. I don't know that we should hold his feet to the fire for that, but it's worth thinking about. The other one is the Vision Pro. I did the Vision Pro demo and was in awe of this thing. Somehow convinced my spouse to let me get $3,500 to spend on the device, and after six days, took it back. I was writing my book at the time. I thought this is going to be the first book ever written in the Vision Pro. Within six days, I realized this thing is useless. You can't have it on your head for more than 45 minutes. It's an engineering marvel, but it's basically a disaster as a product. No pun intended, it lacks vision. That's Tim Cook, the engineering talent in the company can build a great product, but it doesn't have an ecosystem. I don't think Tim Cook is much of a partnerships guy. He's not really a win-win partnerships guy. He's an Apple takes all guy. I think that really came home when they tried to build this new platform in visionOS. Companies like YouTube and Netflix had no interest in building for it. That's a failure. But the bigger one is, I think the failures are more intangible. Tripp will know as well as me, if you go find people that worked at Apple for 20 or 30 years, people who really understood the difference between the Steve Jobs era and the Tim Cook era, there's just a lack of inspiration. There's just a lack of hunger. The people leading Apple all are worth hundreds of millions of dollars through their stock options. They just don't have the appetite to take on major projects like they used to. You'll have someone that comes out of Caltech with brilliant expertise and what are they doing? They're doing the iPad magnets for two and a half years before calling it quits or something. It's a huge company and I don't know, fundamentally just to the honest statement, I don't know if it's just the nature of a company that size or if it's Tim Cook's pedigree and risk aversion that just makes the company a little bit dull, predictable and more like a utility than it ever has been.

Speaker 4:
[11:43] Yeah. I mean, I just elaborate on that.

Speaker 2:
[11:46] Yeah, please.

Speaker 4:
[11:47] One of the things Patrick's getting at here too is that what Tim did over time was turn Apple into a juggernaut, a giant machine where operations had a bigger voice in product development. Some of that was necessity. They're making 200 million iPhones a year. You have to make sure that you hit certain deadlines to be able to deliver those iPhones. But the rigidness of those deadlines closed some of the creativity possibilities for people who had once developed these products in a more nimble fashion, and that's locked them into the product lineup they have, and to Patrick's point, made it hard to be as innovative as they once were. To people from the outside looking in, it's led to accusations that Apple's more uninspired.

Speaker 2:
[12:35] Is this part of the AI problem here? We talked about the fact that Apple is basically the only company that is not investing hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure. I mean, look at Amazon, its CapEx is expected to reach $200 billion this year. For Google, it's close to that, $175 billion. Then Apple is going to spend only $14 billion. They're actually cutting their spending. What does that say about the company? Is that because they don't have vision, or is it because they have discipline? I mean, what are we to make of that? And where is Tim Cook? How does he play into that, Patrick?

Speaker 3:
[13:19] So I think it's pretty nuanced because on the one hand, Apple would like to say, hey, we can just be the hardware engineering company. Someone's going to build out massive data centers. If it's OpenAI, if it's Claude, fine. But they're going to use the iPhone to access it. And meanwhile, we'll actually collect 15 to 30 percent of every subscription supporting that ecosystem. I mean, in that sense, it's brilliant. But the nuance there also is that Apple had the first mover advantage with Siri. Siri is pre Alexa. It's pre any of this by a decade, and they completely squandered the potential. So the question is just going to be, what sort of revolution is AI? And if you listen to Demis Ashabis and Elon Musk and all these people, I mean, if they are almost half right about how much potential there is here, that it's the biggest change to computing since the web, if not much larger than that, then it's a strange place to be for the world's most iconic company that has this creative five-decade history behind it, to basically not be involved and just be a passive vehicle for other people's AI systems. On the other hand, it's possible that they do just ride this out, let every other company spend and just take the Google partnership where they have, where they are literally being paid to be the vehicle. Nobody really asks these days, why doesn't Apple have their own Google competitor? It's a nonsensical question and possibly AI is like that. I hate to say, time will tell, we just don't know, but I think that's the most honest answer.

Speaker 2:
[14:52] Yeah. Tripp, do you agree?

Speaker 4:
[14:53] Yeah, certainly. They took their eye off the ball in theory and that was never part of the business, a product that they prioritized. Therefore, they weren't really in a position to step into the AI race in a competitive fashion because it just wasn't a muscle that they built up over time. As a result, they wound up in this position of getting scared internally about what the threat AI posed to them. The fact that this could be a technological revolution that creates a new operating system that breaks up the connective tissue between iOS and the iPhone, that software hardware experience that we're all accustomed to, that's part of the iPhone's magic, they were scared by that. So they threw out their best shot at developing AI and it just backfired. I mean, they've backed into this position of waiting and seeing what will happen, in part because they missed out of the gate with what they developed. And as Patrick said, that leaves them in this position of having to wait to see how it will play out, rather than actually dictating on their terms what happens to their business in this AI race.

Speaker 2:
[16:06] Stay tuned for more of this panel after the break. And by the way, we are heading out on tour at the end of May, so for more info and to get tickets to a show near you, head to profgmarketstour.com.

Speaker 1:
[16:26] Support for the show comes from Vanguard. To all the financial advisors out there, the ones whose job is to help their clients keep more of what they earn, Vanguard is here to help you out. Vanguard is slashing fees again, this time for more than 50 of its funds. That's on top of big fee cuts they already gave last year to investors and 87 of their funds. And in an increasingly high-priced world, Vanguard is staying true to excellence without expense. Not only do your clients keep more of what they invest, they get sophisticated, active and index funds at industry-leading low costs. And a fixed-income team obsessed with consistent outperformance. Low fees give Vanguard skilled bond managers more freedom to maneuver as they pursue that goal. And low fees help you deliver greater value as an advisor. Top performance shouldn't come at a higher cost. Go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com/impact. That's vanguard.com/impact. All investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor. This is Advertiser Content brought to you by Virgin Atlantic. Ed, a couple weeks back, I got you a birthday gift, not to pat myself on the back, but it was a pretty good one.

Speaker 2:
[17:34] It was indeed. You surprised me with Virgin Atlantic upper-class tickets to London.

Speaker 1:
[17:40] So, tell us all about it.

Speaker 2:
[17:42] It was pretty incredible. From the moment I entered that upper-class cabin, I have to tell you, I felt like a VIP. Anything I needed, a drink, snack, assistance, with the seats.

Speaker 1:
[17:51] Flat seats.

Speaker 2:
[17:52] Flat seats. That's the key. Exactly. Had the four-course meal. Got my champagne. Very delicious. Enjoyed the food.

Speaker 1:
[18:00] And the journey home?

Speaker 2:
[18:01] The journey home was great. I went to the Virgin Atlantic LHR Clubhouse. That's the Heathrow Clubhouse. Heathrow Clubhouse was awesome. Got myself a coffee. Headed over to the meditation pod that they call the Soma Dome. Kind of felt like a sort of spaceship where you relax and think nice thoughts. So, I did that for a little bit. We went over to the Wing, which are these acoustically sealed booths where you could do some work. You could even record a podcast. I didn't do that, but maybe I should have. It was a very enjoyable experience.

Speaker 1:
[18:33] So, Ed, the real question here is, what are you planning to get me for my birthday?

Speaker 2:
[18:39] See the world differently with Virgin Atlantic. Flying should be more than just transport. It is part of the adventure. Go to virginatlantic.com to learn more.

Speaker 3:
[18:48] Tickets and lounge access provided by Virgin Atlantic.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[20:04] We're back with Prof G Markets. So Tripp, let's talk about the new CEO, John Ternus. He's been the head of hardware engineering. He spent 25 years at the company. What do we know about this guy? And what do we think of him? Is he the right pick?

Speaker 4:
[20:19] I mean, John has been at Apple pretty much since the infancy of his career. He spent four years at a virtual reality company before he landed there. And he landed in an engineering role and quickly showed himself to be a good manager. He was just really good at working with colleagues, with people. And that is part of the reason that over time he was given more and more responsibility. He was put on a leadership track very early. And he's had staying power there, in part because he learned how to operate in Tim Cook's Apple in a way that helped him really shine. I mean, one of the anecdotes we heard about in our reporting was when Apple was looking at bringing facial recognition to the iPhone. And they were debating after they had done that, whether or not to bring it to some future devices around 2018. And he argued they should wait, in part because he didn't think people who'd be buying those devices, it was going to be an augmented reality capability. He didn't think people who were buying those less expensive devices would gravitate to that technology. They should just wait, provide that to people who wanted early technology at a higher-end price point, and then provide it to other people downstream later. And that's kind of speaking Tim Cook's language, you know? It's a very tactical decision and approach to the marketplace. And those type of decisions are what helped him emerge as the, kind of really the obvious candidate to succeed Tim.

Speaker 2:
[21:55] Yeah, it sounds like maybe he's got kind of a conservative approach, which seems like it was also Tim Cook's approach too. Patrick, I mean, you wrote a book on Apple's relationship to China. And it seems as though China is a big part of the story now. I mean, the supply chains are incredibly entrenched in China. They have this huge consumer base in China. It also relates to the company's relationship to the president. I mean, there's all of this geopolitical crap that you have to deal with in that role now. It's not just about making cool products and selling them and talking about them on a stage with a turtleneck. What do you make of what his approach will likely be when it comes to China and also when it comes to politics in general? What's on his plate here?

Speaker 3:
[22:45] So let me say one thing about John Ternus, and then I'll come back to China. I was talking to someone yesterday who knows Ternus well and worked with them. And he said, Ternus actually has more of an opportunity to be a cowboy here, meaning to shoot from the hip and to be a lot more playful, in part because the other announcement yesterday is that Johnny Schruge is becoming Chief Hardware Officer. So that was a separate press release. Johnny Schruge is the guy who basically since 2008 has been overseeing Apple Silicon. Apple Silicon is probably the biggest development at Apple in the last five years. So from I think the iPhone 4 onwards, they displaced Samsung and were designing their own chips for the iPhone. But since 2019, I think it is, they took over the computers as well. So Intel has been totally taken out. Apple has their own design chip studio that has taken over and really put the competition on the back foot. They've even displaced Qualcomm in some of their chips and build that in-house. So major, major development. Schruge was reported to be thinking of leaving last year. So it's interesting that now he's being elevated in this position that didn't exist before because I think it tells me, Tripp, I don't know what your spidey sense is on this or if you have direct reporting on it. But my sense is that that reporting was probably genuine and that the result of that is that, no, he's not the CEO, but he's now in the C-suite. So he's not just replacing Ternus as the hardware chief. He's getting an elevated role. And so what this person was telling me was that Ternus will have more leeway to be a cowboy with the understanding that Schruge backs him up and brings the rigor, cleans up whatever mess is made and so forth. So they might have this sort of dynamic duo quite element to it.

Speaker 2:
[24:23] Is that the right move? Does Apple need a cowboy right now? I mean, it sounds from what you're saying and for what Tripp said, when Tripp's book is about Apple losing its soul, maybe that's what the company needs.

Speaker 3:
[24:36] Well, I think Tripp and I are both these people who long for the days of the 1997 and 2007 decade where Apple just shocked the world with one more thing year after year. Who doesn't want that? Where I get internally debating just myself on, is that just pure nostalgia that has no place in today's Apple? Is the company just too big to really have that? I don't know. I think within the confines of what Apple is, John Ternus sounds like the sort of guy who actually can take on a little more risk. Maybe within the Tim Cook organization, he hasn't been known for that. Certainly, he's not a risk taker in the way that Steve Jobs was, but I don't think he's so averse to it the way that Tim Cook really is. That's a defining quality of Tim Cook, just how conservative, calm and cool he is about it. I love the idea. I don't know if this person is right, but they know Ternus and they say that he's itching to do a lot more. This is someone who plays with go-karts and engineers in spare time, seeing if a titanium go-kart is going to be better than the aluminum one that he has in his garage. That's just not Tim Cook. He's more of a tinkerer. The fact that he's into racing just tells you a little bit about his temperament. Tim Cook's into hiking. That tells you something.

Speaker 2:
[25:53] That is an important detail. I want to return to China for a moment. What's he going to do about China? Are we going to see him giving gold plaques and gifts to the president like we saw with the previous guy?

Speaker 3:
[26:05] He better. That's the president. Obviously for me, this is my issue. This is the thing that I think most about. It basically depends on future events. I hate to keep repeating myself. But with Tim Cook, the issue is that Tim Cook is not leaving the company. He's the executive chairman. Any journalist with a sense of other corporations, histories has to immediately think, is that brilliance because John Ternus needs a helping hand? How do you deal with Brussels, Beijing, and Washington? I mean, how do you deal with Trump? I mean, anyone could use an internship from Tim Cook on how to do that. Absolutely. But do you have a dual CEO position? Like what happens if there's a major world crisis involving China and Tim Cook has a different decision-making process or different just notion of what should happen, then John Ternus, who makes the call? The lucky thing would just be that they don't have to have that sort of debate. But in the case of Disney, Bob Iger steps down and a month later, COVID takes place and all hell breaks loose. I think within two years or so, Bob Iger is back at the company. There is many companies who just have not been able to nail this structure where the CEO of a long-time company, 15 years in the case of Cook, elevates to executive chairman and is able to really let the new CEO earn their reputation and take different decisions. Frankly, I think some of the Cook last 15 years needs to be undone. I think they need to be doing far more in India. I think they need to rethink whether they should have bigger operations in Mexico. But if you're trying to make those decisions and the executive chairman is the very person who put Apple into the current predicament, that is not an easy position to be. I don't know what their relationship is, but it basically just depends on whether it's going to be a tumultuous global economy in the next five years or a calm one.

Speaker 2:
[28:00] Yeah. Tripp, what do you think success for John Ternus would look like? What kinds of things would he accomplish that hasn't been accomplished before, that would really fundamentally change the trajectory for the company, but also make investors happy with the company, and perhaps increase the share price?

Speaker 4:
[28:20] Yeah. Success for John Ternus will hinge almost entirely on his ability to navigate this AI transition and make sure that Apple is at the forefront of it. That's going to be integral to whether or not he succeeds. One of the things I'll be watching is, when you talk to people about Apple who've worked there, it functions like a family. Even though it's a publicly traded company, I've often thought of it the same way I've thought of family owned companies. You have the founder who starts a business, the son who takes over the business and takes it to new unprecedented business heights, and then the grandson usually comes along or the granddaughter and screws it all up. I'm like, for John, it's going to be critical not to be-

Speaker 2:
[29:14] Don't be the grandson.

Speaker 4:
[29:15] The third rung of that ladder. But that is a very common trajectory for family-run businesses, and his ability to avoid that predicament is going to come down to conquering AI and figuring out how to make Apple important in the AI era.

Speaker 2:
[29:31] Yeah, I totally agree with that. But what's interesting is that the stock didn't react that much. It was down around two or three percent yesterday. And that to me is a big question. It's like you've got the guy leaving at probably the most important moment for this company. The AI, the new technology has arrived. He's decided to make this very big decision to not invest in that technology. And then he's just leaving and giving it to the grandson. And yet, investors seem to be somewhat okay with that. I kind of would have expected they would have been more nervous about that.

Speaker 4:
[30:07] But that's because Tim's still there, right? Tim Cook's there, it's providing reassurance to investors. And investors have been of a mixed mind about Apple and AI over the past few years. They're both thrilled that Apple isn't investing in data centers at the same rate and degree that its peers are. They've avoided this CAPEX arms race. But they're also uneasy about the fact that Apple may be left behind. So the fact that the stock didn't move, I think is more indicative of the comfort of knowing Tim Cook is going to still be there. They're training wheels right now. And until those training wheels come off, I don't think we can really have a firm sense of what investors think of the company. I don't know about you, Patrick, but...

Speaker 3:
[30:56] Yeah, well, they haven't been tested yet. So I mean, in a sense, I'm certainly not an Apple investor in any way. But I don't think I learned anything yesterday that would cause me to be more optimistic or less optimistic than the company. I mean, John Ternus has been like the only person people could even think about for the last two years as the possible successor. I mean, just based on the fact that if you look at like the senior vice president ranking, like everybody else is nearly Tim Cook's age, so therefore not really a candidate for a 15-year term, if that's sort of the now precedent after two CEOs. So being 50 years old, he's just sort of the natural candidate. You're not going to take someone from outside Apple, certainly, and you're not going to pluck some VP. I mean, he was the only person that was sort of actively being groomed. Again, Johnny Scrooge might be the exception, and I think that's probably why he's chief hardware officer. But there was really no surprise there. People might have been surprised about the timing, but it was reported back in November that this was the likely outcome sometime this year. Tripp wrote that as well. I mean, I don't think we learned much yesterday.

Speaker 4:
[31:50] Ed, one last thing. Go ahead. This year makes a ton of sense. We're in the 50th anniversary of Apple, where they have a product lineup that's going to make both men look like geniuses because they have a foldable phone on deck to launch in September. Tim Cook can say one more thing. John Ternus can come out and explain how the phone works. It is really well scripted. And I think that's part of the reason investors looked at this and said, okay, no big deal.

Speaker 3:
[32:19] Yeah, I mean, just adding to that, Art Levinson, the current chairman, he's 75, perfect time to go out. Tim Cook is 65, perfect time to leave the CEO position. And if you're going to do a 15-year term, what do you want? A 50-year-old who's a senior vice president. I mean, the stars aligned for this for sure.

Speaker 2:
[32:33] Yeah, he's older but not too old. It's a nice place, nice time to go. You mentioned 50th anniversary. Both of you guys have studied the history of this company for a long time. Patrick, when you look at all of the big moments for Apple in Apple's history, starting with Steve Jobs, the Mac, the iPhone, Tim Cook comes along, the expansion to China, now this. Where does this rank for you in terms of important moments that defined the company?

Speaker 3:
[33:09] Well, I mean, this is a company that's been around 50 years and this is only the eighth CEO and only the third of this century. So it is a big transition, but I wouldn't say like the moment like this week is actually all that big. There's no drama here, nothing has really happened. Yeah. It's going to be, the drama is like when Trump became president for the first time, and then people would declare six months in, like today he became president because he'd bombed the country or something. Like we're going to have a Ternus moment and that will be the answer to your question. But he's not in the role yet, starts in September and even there, Tim Cook's going to be doing some handholding. So I don't know when he's going to be tested, but it certainly hasn't happened yet. So I don't want to sort of draw too much meaning of this particular week. But a new CEO at the world's most iconic company worth $4 trillion, that's clearly a big moment.

Speaker 2:
[33:57] Waiting for the Ternus moment, that's a good place to end. Patrick McGee, award-winning journalist and author of Apple in China, The Capture of the World's Greatest Company. Tripp Mickle, tech reporter for the New York Times, author of After Steve, How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul. Tripp and Patrick, this was awesome. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks guys.

Speaker 4:
[34:15] Thanks for having us.

Speaker 2:
[34:21] So, the Tim Cook era is officially ending. Before we wrap, a quick review of the Apple CEO's career and his legacy. Tim Cook started at Apple in 1998, after spending five minutes with Steve Jobs, who convinced him to join the company. He was eventually promoted to COO, and then in 2011, just weeks before Jobs passed, he was named CEO. He will go down as one of the greatest executives ever. When he took over, Apple was worth $350 billion. Today, that number is almost $4 trillion. In other words, Tim Cook technically created 11 times more value for shareholders than Steve Jobs himself. He also sold more than 3 billion iPhones. That is more than one iPhone for every three people on the planet. In addition, he oversaw the rollout of some of Apple's most iconic products, including the Apple AirPods and also the Apple Watch. But his tenure was not without troubles, most of which came in the latter years. His latest product, the Apple Vision Pro, was a failure. It sold only half a million units before it was quietly pulled. He also fumbled Apple's AI program, which was underwhelming to consumers and also prompted several executives to leave. His greatest mistake, however, might have been his embarrassing display of obsequience toward the president. Last August, Cook presented Donald Trump with a gold plaque, and he quickly became the laughing stock of the Internet and really America at large. But Cook's riskiest bet was actually one that he chose not to stick around for. That was the decision not to invest in data centers. While the rest of Big Tech geared up to spend nearly a trillion dollars on AI infrastructure, Apple chose to cut its spending. The only big tech company in America to do so. Which leaves his successor John Ternus in an interesting position. Because while every investor around the world awaits his AI strategy, his plan to make Apple the multi-trillion-dollar winner of the next era of technology, it might be possible that those plans were already made for him. There's no question that Tim Cook was a great, even legendary CEO. But his legacy will depend on the following question. Did he leave the company on a trajectory for even greater success? Or did he abandon it when he started to lose the script? That is the question for Apple Investors today. And only time will answer it. Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Allison Weiss, edited by Joel Patterson and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Brad Williams. Our research team is Dan Chalane, Isabella Kinsel, Kristen O'Donoghue and Mia Silverio. And our social producer is Jake McPherson. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I will see you tomorrow.