transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Coming up, it's a revolving door at Apple Park, Tim Cook is out, John Ternus is in, Cosmic Orange is out, Dark Cherry is in, and MagSafe is out, except it might also be in. Welcome to the Cult of Mac podcast. I'm your host, Leander Cainey. Join me today, Lewis Wallace. What's up, Lewis?

Speaker 2:
[00:18] Hey, it's a great day to be podcasting. Everything's going perfectly as per usual. Not a single technical problem on the Cult of Mac podcast. It's fantastic to be here.

Speaker 1:
[00:28] We've been messing around for a complete hour, right? An hour, trying to get this thing to work. Microphone problems, headphone problems.

Speaker 2:
[00:35] The occasional horrible sneeze.

Speaker 1:
[00:37] Yeah. Oh my God, I did one. Yeah. It came out of my eye again. All right. We also have, what's his name? What's your name again? Griffin Jones. Sorry. This has not been a great morning.

Speaker 3:
[00:55] Speaking of computer setup changes, the viewers might notice on YouTube that I've got yet another new computer behind me. I went to a concert last weekend in the Pittsburgh area, visited a friend who had this Apple eMac sitting in his garage for a number of years. So I brought home a stray. But that is not the most exciting thing that happened. I'm going to share my screen with the two of you, put this in the show as well. Good time to watch the YouTube video, I'll say. I went to the Large Scale Systems Museum, which is a computer museum in the Pittsburgh area. The first floor is all a bunch of really big, very rare mainframes. This is a Singer System 10. Yes, Singer, the sewing machine company. Selling machines? Really? They made a computer. It's very bizarre. This guy was very cheerfully explaining to me the basics of how the system works. It's extremely strange. It went in one ear and out the other, but very bizarre machine. A Cray supercomputer, you might recognize that name, kind of looks like something out of Star Wars. I was shown this IBM mainframe that's hooked up to all of these different terminals. He was showing me how to use this thing. These are used in banking systems. He showed me some of the software there. So first hour and a half of being shown all these mainframe systems. Then I had about 25 minutes left and just at the end, the guy who was giving me the tour says, Oh yeah, upstairs we have a bunch of home computers if you'd like to see those. I said, Oh yeah, sure. I go upstairs and I go around a corner to where they have a lot of apples and what do I see? But one of the rarest Apple computers in the world, a completely functional, all original system of one out of maybe 50 on the planet, a completely original Apple Lisa and almost all of, you can see how many other computers are in this room like in the background. This is the one I just instantly bolted towards. Not only it's completely functional, I got to boot it up and I had a few minutes where I was just messing with it. An original Apple Lisa office system, the original keyboard, mouse, profile, hard disk, both of the Twiggy drives I'm told are completely functional which is a miracle. On the table literally across the way from it, an original BeBox running BOS from the mid-90s, dual processor system, the blinking lights, BOS, the operating system that Apple almost bought instead of Next Step. You'll notice right next to it is a NextCube and a megapixel display. I only had a few minutes with this thing so I didn't even, I was standing next to a NextCube that I didn't even touch because I was so enamored with all of the other incredibly rare machines around me. I saw an Apple III, I saw a Commodore Pet, which was another rare computer from the mid 70s alongside the Apple II. Very exciting day. I will definitely be going back. I've got many ideas for videos I'd like to record with all these machines because again, all of them are completely functional.

Speaker 1:
[04:16] What was the Lisa like? Was it like a Mac?

Speaker 3:
[04:19] Yeah, it's like a weird Macintosh. Before they settled on a lot of the standard user interface and engineering things, it runs almost the same processor as the Mac. It doesn't use square pixels. It renders its screen as a giant rectangle and then squishes it horizontally so that they can have higher resolution text. It's more powerful. It has more RAM. It can do full proper multitasking where the original Macintosh 128 couldn't. But, you know, it also cost four times as much.

Speaker 1:
[04:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[05:00] The mouse is almost like a Macintosh mouse. The keyboard, I wasn't impressed with. It looks like it would be like a big, chunky, funky mechanical keyboard just like the original Mac, but it was kind of a lame keyboard, I'll admit.

Speaker 1:
[05:11] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[05:12] Which surprised me.

Speaker 2:
[05:13] Was the Singer, was that the first multi-threading computer?

Speaker 3:
[05:18] I see what you did there.

Speaker 2:
[05:21] So, here's the real question. Was there anybody else in there but you and the guy that runs it?

Speaker 3:
[05:26] Yes. I was the only person there under the age of 40, but yes.

Speaker 2:
[05:32] Okay. All right. Just had to ask. That looks fascinating though, man. I mean, honestly, what's it called again? Tell people the name it is.

Speaker 3:
[05:41] The Large Scale Systems Museum near Pittsburgh.

Speaker 2:
[05:44] That's catchy.

Speaker 3:
[05:47] It's a bit of a drive for me, but worth it.

Speaker 2:
[05:50] Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, right?

Speaker 1:
[05:54] Did you have to pay to get in with an entrance fee?

Speaker 3:
[05:56] Nope. Completely free. A lot of people there are like volunteers.

Speaker 2:
[05:59] They pay you.

Speaker 3:
[06:01] Retired engineers like one of them from AT&T, AOL.

Speaker 2:
[06:06] That does look interesting, man. I've never seen a Cray supercomputer like that.

Speaker 3:
[06:12] Apple briefly used a Cray for like research and development in the late 80s.

Speaker 1:
[06:20] Most of them were circular with seats inside, weren't they?

Speaker 3:
[06:23] Yeah. That's how big some of them were. Wow.

Speaker 1:
[06:26] If you open them up, the mess of wires is insane and they were actually hired, I believe seamstresses, right?

Speaker 2:
[06:36] From Singer?

Speaker 1:
[06:37] Yeah. Exactly. That's what made me think of it. There was an army of women like seamstresses that wired these things together, I believe.

Speaker 3:
[06:46] That makes sense.

Speaker 2:
[06:47] Crazy.

Speaker 1:
[06:48] Yeah. Now, a Cray, I think, is like an Apple Watch outperforms a Cray, I believe.

Speaker 3:
[06:53] Yeah. Something like that.

Speaker 1:
[06:55] Madness. All right. Well, that's very cool. Nice little show and tell there. Let's talk about Tim Cook. Kind of crazy news, wasn't it? Where the heck did that come from? Even though we're all expecting it, Monday, right? It was like, whoa, what's going on?

Speaker 3:
[07:12] Yeah. Where were we when this news broke? I was, you know, it was 4.45. I was winding down my day. I think I was like taking screenshots for a how-to. Lewis, you were getting your car like smog testers.

Speaker 2:
[07:23] No, not just smog testers. I was at the smog referee, very special smog test, very California high level man. And yeah, I'm sitting there waiting for that. And I get this thing, what Tim Cook is retired? What? I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 3:
[07:37] Honestly, you were running errands of some kind.

Speaker 1:
[07:39] Yeah, I had to run an errand. Yeah. So stupid. I thought it was a quiet afternoon. I thought, yeah, perfect. I'll just nip out real quick.

Speaker 2:
[07:46] Typical sleepy Monday.

Speaker 1:
[07:48] Yeah. I got caught in a horrible storm, too. In fact, there was a big spin out. This car right in front of me on the freeway went, hit the barrier and went spinning across three lanes of the freeway. But then ended up miraculously on the shoulder, completely unharmed. I mean, they were super lucky, super, super lucky.

Speaker 2:
[08:03] Wow.

Speaker 3:
[08:03] They were really blown away by the news of Tim Cook retiring.

Speaker 1:
[08:09] All right. Let's talk about it. What's going on there, Lewis?

Speaker 2:
[08:13] Yeah. So Tim Cook is stepping down. John Ternus is stepping up to be the CEO of Apple. This all happens in September. Cook is going to move into a new role for him as executive chairman of Apple's board of directors at that time. In the press release, they announce this press release, shocking everybody in the world, especially Mark Gurman. Tim Cook said of John Ternus, just in case you never heard of him, he's the guy with the big chin. You've seen him a lot at many of these Apple events. Hardware guy, seems like a very personable guy. Tim Cook said, John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future. That's a pretty bold statement. As I mentioned, Cook's going to stay on. He's probably going to take a pretty active role. In one of the stories later, I guess, we'll talk about it. He's basically saying, yeah, I'm going to be there to help John out as much as he needs, but not too much. He's going to be CEO, not me. Cook is going to be... I think Ed wrote this. It sounds like Cook is not going to offload the worst part of the CEO job, because he's going to be assisting with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policy makers around the world. That's what Apple said, which means he's going to be dealing with the Trump administration. Big favor to Ternus. This is maybe what Cook does best. Cook is so political. He always has been. We've been talking about this for years. He has a way of, or his staff who writes his statements has a way. The things that he says are so balanced and so right on the money about just about every single subject that ever comes down the pike. He says things in a way that is politically neutral and accurate. He is the antidote to the current craziness we have, where everybody is just constantly... the rhetoric is just getting ramped up more and more, worse and worse, crazier and crazier. I was going to say race to the bottom, but it's like they found the bottom and they brought some drills with them and they're digging, going toward the center of the earth. Anyway, this all takes place September 1st this year, and Apple's been planning for this forever. We've been talking about it for a while. There's been a lot of reporting about how Apple, they want to hire somebody from within. Anyway, he's the guy, they also, in the same press release, or actually, I think it was a separate press release, they promoted Johnny Shrooge, the man who led the incredibly successful development of Apple Silicon. He's going to take over a new position at Apple, chief hardware officer role. He's kind of assuming Ternus' jobs. He's going to take over. He was senior vice president of hardware technology. In fact, that's what Apple's page still calls him.

Speaker 3:
[11:28] And hardware technologies, to translate the weird vagueness of that title, Apple gives a lot of vague titles. Hardware technologies is Apple Silicon, all encompassing that branch of the company. They do other things too, but primarily Apple Silicon, the technologies inside the products.

Speaker 2:
[11:47] All the great modems and things that they've been making lately, in addition to all the CPUs and stuff. But now he's going to take over a role leading hardware engineering, which is what Ternus did before. So that's effective immediately. He's already taken over that role. So big changes, not too surprising. I mean, what was it, maybe, I think it was in December or something where his story, basically Financial Times saying like, oh yeah, Cook's going to retire between late January and June. And not technically retiring until September, but turns out that report was kind of on the money despite other assertions.

Speaker 1:
[12:35] And of course, you know, German have been predicting Ternus was going to take over for a long time. I mean, you know, a little bit of skepticism, but it seems to me like in retrospect that, you know, maybe these were, you know, purposeful leaks to try to sort of test the waters, see what the reaction was kind of maybe.

Speaker 3:
[12:52] Maybe.

Speaker 2:
[12:53] Yeah. I mean, obviously everybody on Wall Street is looking at this and going, hmm, you know, Tim Cook has done a pretty good job of turning Apple into a perpetual money machine for forever, right? I mean, it's just been, even as the iPhone sales have slowed, even as the Apple car went poof, even as the Vision Pro kind of landed with a thud, Apple's still making so much money, it's just insane. So Tim Cook, you know, with his sort of, you know, even-handed and penny-pinching, that's kind of got a negative connotation, is what I mean.

Speaker 3:
[13:33] I mean, look, Apple's very intentional with their R&D money. Yeah, they blew, like, relatively a lot of money on the Apple car and the Vision Pro, but that's like, what, one day's worth of funding of all of the money that gets dumped into AI by every company every day, so.

Speaker 1:
[13:48] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the funny thing, you know, like, when Tim Cook took, I remember when Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs, and it was nothing but doom and gloom. Everyone thought, oh, God, this is gonna be a disaster. Apple's gonna be out of business in 18 months. There were definitely predictions like that. They thought, like, this is the end for Apple, you know, it's not gonna survive the Tim Cook regime. And now it's Tim Cook's, you know, shoes are the big shoes to fill. Like, I think now people are worried that his ten is gonna be up to the job that Tim Cook did.

Speaker 3:
[14:19] I mean, that was a very different transition because it was so sudden. Like, Steve Jobs had began a medical leave. He, you know, retired from the role of CEO, but was still gonna stay on as chairman. And then six weeks later, he, you know, tragically passed. And so Tim Cook didn't have anybody to lean on. I think Apple is really banging the drum of Tim Cook won't be gone. He'll still be there as executive chairman because they really want to, like, make it clear to Wall Street, do not freak out. We are planning this. John Ternus will have Tim Cook. Tim Cook is in good health. Tim Cook isn't going anywhere. They keep saying that a lot.

Speaker 1:
[14:56] Yeah. Well, Cook had been running Apple for Jobs, I mean, for quite a number of years, really. Jobs has kind of been some kind of soft retirement and publicly, he was obviously the face of the company and still the active CEO. But really, Cook was doing the day-to-day for a long time, for quite a few years before Jobs passed. But yeah, that's right. Actually, Cook made a funny statement that he said that the next seven months or so, he's going to be handing off to Ternus and he hoped that business schools would be study this. He said it's going to be the best succession in corporate history and that he hoped that business schools would study it and talk about it for future to come. So, you know, that is kind of, that struck me as a bit hard, really, too, as well, like almost as though the transition starts now, the clock starts now. I guess, you know, I guess that is the case. Maybe there's nothing that's so surprising about it.

Speaker 2:
[15:49] Yeah, I mean, honestly, like, can you imagine it going more smoothly than it has? I mean, like, it seems people are optimistic about this change. And if you think about it, like, I mean, hopefully, hopefully, maybe this, maybe Ternus will be slightly more in the Steve Jobs mold of maybe pushing things a little bit further, a little bit faster. But you still got Cook there, you know, to make sure all the, all the numbers add up, right?

Speaker 3:
[16:18] And also, like, Tim Cook staying on, specifically calling out his role with policy makers around the world. Very diplomatic way of putting it.

Speaker 1:
[16:29] I had one particular person in mind, didn't I?

Speaker 3:
[16:32] Yeah, yeah, policy maker around Washington, DC. Like, that's, you know, a lot of people's, you wrote a piece of a lot about this, Leander, this week, that, like, that's, you know, a stain, I think, on Tim Cook's era of Apple. It's rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. And Tim Cook continuing to do that for John Ternus. Well, John Ternus will be the CEO. Like, he's taking that stain on his shirt into, like, an arrow that he's taking for John, making sure that this doesn't affect him and his position as CEO, like, right at the start of his career at the top.

Speaker 1:
[17:04] Yeah, yeah, it definitely, like, you know, it has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, hasn't it? Because, you know, Tim Cook's bonafide is with his stated positions about the environment and, you know, all these different issues. I mean, he's definitely left his center. And then his personal, what appears to be a personal friendship with Trump, I think, really does, you know, rub a lot of Apple users the wrong way. Like, you know, donating to the inauguration and stuff like that. Yeah, definitely has, I think, you know, like some people are really freaking out. You were saying Lewis, wouldn't it? Your band members, like, compared unfavorably to certain historical figures. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[17:44] I think anybody who sort of, you know, takes Cook to task for the way that he has managed Trump is short-sighted. I mean, Trump is the freaking president of the United States. And he's doing some crazy crap. And I'm sure that Tim Cook is not going golfing with Trump and, you know, hanging out buddy buddies. I'm sure that if he actually was truthful and not diplomatic, which is, I said political, you said diplomatic, and you're right. He's diplomatic. He's apolitical. And, you know, he's done, I mean, the thing, he delivered that stupid gold thing to Trump. I mean, that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. That was not a good look. He looked like a, you know.

Speaker 1:
[18:33] I thought, my reaction was, they're taking the piss. He's making fun of Trump. It's a gold brick. You know, it almost seemed like a joke. And that's why I thought he was nervous, because he thought, oh God, they're going to see through this. You know, this is like, I thought they were, you know, like they cut this up in some in the boardroom and they were laughing their heads off and they thought this is going to be super hilarious. When he did it, he's like, he's shitting himself because, you know, are they going to see through this? I mean, I started laughing when I saw it, because I thought this is just too on the nose. This is just too bizarre. No matter what, I'm having a wheelbarrow of, you know, like of cash. Like, could it be any more an obvious bribe than a gold brick?

Speaker 2:
[19:13] Well, I mean, was it solid gold or was it gold plated?

Speaker 1:
[19:17] 24 karat gold. I guess it was plated.

Speaker 2:
[19:20] I mean, the part of that that rubbed me wrong was just, you know, like how, I mean, Cook almost looked like something like a game of Thrones or somebody walks into somebody and like, you know, bows down, you know, like, yeah, I mean, his body language is what bothered me more than anything, you know, it's like, and he had to unbox it and assemble it on the on the resolute desk, which is just, yeah, but you know, I mean, the end result is Apple didn't get screwed by, you know, Trump deciding to do something ridiculous, you know, I mean, they still took what, a billion dollar hit or something in tariffs, which maybe they'll get back, but, you know, I mean, I think overall, he did a good job of dealing with Trump because Trump is not a, you know, he's not, I don't think he's an easy guy to deal with. To put it mildly. And, you know, after this happened, you know, Trump in his own way sends out a message on Truth Social talking about, you know, how great Tim Cook was, even better than Steve Jobs. And, you know, it's great that he called to kiss my ass. And, you know, it's okay, whatever.

Speaker 1:
[20:26] It's definitely been effective, hasn't it? Yeah, he definitely has effectively managed the Trump administration for sure, you know, and saved Apple from a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache. I mean, they are the poster child for, you know, for offshoring for Chinese manufacturing, aren't they?

Speaker 2:
[20:38] Well, it was their biggest, it was like their hallmark, right? Like, wow, look at this amazing thing they've done that allowed them to produce all these fantastic devices at prices that you can actually kind of afford, you know? And then suddenly it's like, oh, this one thing that is the key element of your manufacturing process is now like, you know, toxic. And I mean, it's not just Trump either. I mean, during COVID, you know, it's like, holy crap, you know, we can't have all our eggs in one basket, you know, for whatever reason, you know, whether it's China or anywhere, we can't have everything that we consume produced in one region. It's just crazy. So, you know, I mean, live and learn, right? I mean, yeah, Cook put it all in place and it was genius. And, you know, I think now they're doing smart, you know, smart, like dispersion of that, to bring some stuff back home, moving stuff to other parts of the world. And how the hell do we end up talking about all this?

Speaker 3:
[21:32] And I think it's, I think it's, it's brought to light the number of funnels that are quite narrow in Apple's process. Like, yeah, they started spinning up, you know, a lot of factories in India. Now a lot of the iPhones that are sold in the US are made there. But, you know, all of Apple Silicon is made by TSMC in Taiwan. That's, that's another potential problem point. Like, Apple's incredible group.

Speaker 1:
[21:57] Isn't someone out of Arizona now?

Speaker 2:
[21:59] They're moving.

Speaker 3:
[21:59] Yeah, they're building something that'll build, but it won't be their latest and greatest fabrication process, and it'll not be at the same scale. And the chips they make will probably be more expensive, but it feels like the world has realized this is a major problem. The most advanced chips that anybody makes are only made in one place that is not on a very solid political foundation at the moment.

Speaker 1:
[22:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Well, they announced that they'd deal with it. Well, there was a rumor, wasn't there, with Intel, they were gonna get Intel, maybe, was it gonna be manufacturing for Apple? Although, but that, I think, is a couple of years out.

Speaker 3:
[22:37] There was going to be an Intel plant built in Ohio that they've pretty much abandoned. Oh, boy.

Speaker 1:
[22:44] Let's talk about Cook's ranking. Apple's best CEOs, where does he fit in the ranking? Is he Apple's best CEO? There's an argument to be made for that, but I don't think so. No, it's got to be a lot of Steve Jobs. There's no way. But he's definitely a close, very, very close second. And, you know, I mean, Jobs pioneered three big technological transitions during his career. I mean, three huge transitions. The first PC, the first really, you know, first good personal computer that came as a package, the first easy to use PC, the Macintosh, and then, you know, the game changing mobile computer, the iPhone and a bunch of other products as well. iPod, I think, could be up there as a huge one. You know, no one can match that that run. That is like an unprecedented run in technological history. I think there's any other CEO that can match, you know, three big revolutions like Jobs did. But, you know, look at the success of Apple as a company. You know, like it was always a niche player. It was not under Jobs. It was like a tiny little sort of struggling niche PC maker. But at a Cook's ten yet, you know, this is one of the biggest companies in the world. And for several times it's been the biggest company, isn't it? Anyway, you know, he quadrupled Apple's profit to more than 110 billion. Its market cap has blew more than tenfold to 4 trillion. And this is undoubtedly, I think, probably the most successful run in business history. Gotta be, right? Up there. It's got to be up there with like the most successfully run business ever. You know, and I think, you know, the one thing that will knock against him is that he's not a product guy. But I think that's not entirely fair. And in fact, I think one of the products, I think, could be, you know, as important as the iPhone. I think he's had his fair share of innovative devices, AirPods. You know, I think AirPods are as good as the product that Apple's ever made. Apple Silicon, that is a game changer. And I think it's only going to become more important. The current Mac lineup is the best it's ever been. The iPod, you know, and I think that's true of all the other stuff too, all the other products they make. The iPhones are the best they've ever been. The iPads are the best they've ever been. And the Apple Watch. I think the Apple Watch is a big, big device. I think it's already turned into a life-saving device, and I think it's only going to become even more of a life-saving device. And I think this is possibly a device that I think will be as universal as a smartphone. I think it's a device that I think everybody might wear, especially older people like us.

Speaker 3:
[25:15] Tim Cook said later this week that the Apple Watch is what he's most proud of as a CEO. He says Apple Maps was his most embarrassing mistake, but the Apple Watch he's very, very proud of. A reaction I had after reading your piece here, Tim Cook is a very close second. Who's in the third place? It's a big leap down. Apple has had a lot of mediocre CEOs. John Skelly, he did okay. Everybody else, D tier trash.

Speaker 1:
[25:45] Well, come on. What about the first, I mean, the early ones, Mike Scott and Markkula, the early ones. You can't discount those guys. They got the company off the ground and said it into something. Not convinced.

Speaker 3:
[26:03] Yeah. Because the products were so unbelievably good, but they weren't designing the products. They were the CEO of the company. But Michael Scott, he went through a period where he just randomly fired people because he felt like it when he got pissed off. Like he was not a good business leader. He said, and I'm going to keep firing people until morale improves. It's basically a quote from him. It's in Pogue's book. I don't remember it off the top of my head. But yeah, it's a long trip down the stairs to reach number three.

Speaker 1:
[26:35] Scully, I think is unfairly maligned. I think he also oversaw a period of huge growth. I think it was like 800 million to 8 billion or something. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like those orders of magnitude type increases. And of course, he did the Newton is maligned, but that's, I think, laid the foundations for a lot of the subsequent products.

Speaker 3:
[27:03] I think the Alexander Hamilton of Apple history, the person who had a lot of early influence but always surprised me was never actually CEO was John Louis Gasset, who led the Macintosh division in the late 80s, early 90s. He was the one who championed. We need to make the Macintosh like the peak of the personal computer in the industry. So he spearheaded the Macintosh 2, which is part of what took Apple to that incredible high level during the John Scully era. I think he also might have been a little bit involved with the power book, which finally made personal computers right. He was very influential in that critical period. He may have overindexed on that plan a little bit because their pursuit of the high end of the market cornered them into some small market share, but he was very influential in there. With regards to Tim Cook's role as CEO, I've been thinking a lot about this this past week, and I think if I were to characterize the Steve Jobs and Tim Cook eras, it's like Steve Jobs built the Saturn V rocket, planned a trip to the moon, and they took off successfully, and then he left about 30 seconds into the mission. And then Tim Cook, he took over and perfectly, you know, Apple went to the moon and back in terms of like stock price influence over the world. The iPhone absolutely changed the world, and Tim Cook piloted the rocket ship on the course that was plotted. A lot of Apple's success is owed to Tim Cook because of his vision of, you know, consolidating all this manufacturing in China, making sure that they had the ability to sell the billions of iPhones and products that they did throughout the 2010s. But what I keep coming back to is, you know, Tim Cook still would have done that if he was still COO. If Steve Jobs had been with us for another few years, Tim Cook like might have even done better because he would be able to continue devoting all of his attention to being COO and not the expanded roles that being, that replacing Steve Jobs demanded of him.

Speaker 1:
[29:08] It's gonna be fascinating to see, you know, like how Ternus does, isn't it? You know, the next few years. It's like, I think, I'm not really a huge ascriber to the great man of history. You know, this theory that it's all about, you know, this is obviously a large organization. And we're gonna talk about this in a minute, about, you know, Tim Cook's sort of decision making process.

Speaker 3:
[29:27] I think he was the right guy at the right time. In that, that was a period where Steve Jobs, like, built out this plan for them. These are the amazing products. Tim Cook, you need to make sure we sell as many of them as we can and, you know, take us to the next level. But I think now that they've reached that peak, that plateau, I think now it is time for somebody who's a product guy to be, you know, back at the helm and say, okay, well, this is what's going to be new. This is what's coming up next.

Speaker 1:
[29:53] Absolutely, because I think, you know, the products are gonna, with AI, the products are changing, I think, more radically than possibly ever before. And, you know, the next few generations of personal products, personal computers, personal devices are gonna be very, very different. And, yeah, it's gonna be fascinating to see what they come up with. And this is interesting, I think, with Johnny Saruja's promotion, too, to being head of hardware. He's an AI guy, look at Apple Silicon. You know, they were putting neural engines when five years ago before AI was the hype.

Speaker 3:
[30:29] Oh, 2017, first one was the iPhone X.

Speaker 1:
[30:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think there's a lot of AI expertise now at the top of Apple. And so at least AI, yeah, you know, they're AI aware, they're AI cognizant. And it's, yeah, I think that, you know, they are two very, very good people. You know, Apple's leadership is in a very, very good position to capitalize on this. One of the things, actually, I wanted to discuss quickly before we move on is like, you know, I mean, people are sort of saying, like, Bob's had these major world changing platforms like the iPhone, like the Mac, and Tim Cook hasn't come up with a similar, similar world changing product if we discount, you know, if you discount the Apple Watch. But I think, you know, who has, which other company has come up with a world changing product in the last 10 years to rival the iPhone? I don't think there is one. I mean, AI, obviously, but this is, you know, this is sort of an industrial, like it's a, it's not just a product. It's a, you know, what do you call it? It's not like a single product, is it? Like a physical gadget. It's an enabling technology that is going to impact everything horizontally, right? Across every single industry, every single human endeavor. I can't think of it, you know, maybe in electric cars, self-driving cars, maybe?

Speaker 2:
[31:48] Yeah, I was going to say maybe, maybe Tesla.

Speaker 1:
[31:52] But Tesla is getting out of the car business now, isn't it? They're getting lunch eaten by the Chinese, so.

Speaker 2:
[31:56] Well, yeah, but they made them seem possible, right? I mean, before that, it was like, oh, there's no such thing.

Speaker 3:
[32:07] People forget that in the 2000s, there were electric cars. They were just really crummy and terrible because they were trying to build a cheap electric car. Like, no, it was not possible to build a $25,000 electric car that could go more than like 50 miles, you know. Tesla's innovation was the business plan of start low volume, very high profit margin with the Tesla Roadster, then ease your way down into like $100,000 luxury sedan, then you can make the Model 3 that'll, you know, sell in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands a year.

Speaker 1:
[32:40] And it's a shame, isn't it? That's probably the biggest bust under Cook's leadership was the $10 billion they've reported to the Apple Car. And, you know, I mean, I'm sure they got a lot of behind the scenes, a lot of AI expertise. And I think he said that it was like the car was the mother of all AI projects. And I'm sure that they've learned a lot from the car that they've applied to other products.

Speaker 3:
[33:02] It was a reasonable thing to explore at the time.

Speaker 1:
[33:03] It just didn't end up being the right one. I'm bummed that they never came out with it. But there was a report that came out earlier this year talking about, well, Johnny Ives' role in it. And apparently it was progressing. It was what, Dan Riccio's idea? I think he was the one that pitched it. And then he ran it for a little while. And I believe that his ambition was something like along Tesla's lines. It was going to be AI-ish or semi-autonomous. It wasn't going to be a fully autonomous vehicle. It was going to have smart driving capabilities and that they would iterate. The first one would be relatively modest in what it would do. It would be more like a regular electric car. But then Johnny Ives came in and said, well, no, we want to totally reinvent the car. We want no steering wheel, no pedals. It's got to be fully autonomous. He blew it up and it never recovered. This is what this report said. And so, I don't know, it sounds like maybe it was Johnny Ives' problem, not Tim Cook.

Speaker 3:
[34:06] I mean, I think that goes back to a problem with the Steve Jobs to Tim Cook transition. Losing Steve Jobs, Tim Cook had to hold on to Johnny Ives because he was afraid that the stock would tank if Johnny Ives left as well. And I think they ended up keeping Johnny Ives on long after his welcome because he blew up the car project. He also blew up the MacBook Pro for a solid five years. Nobody liked them.

Speaker 1:
[34:37] That's funny how Johnny Ives had to do a villain now, isn't it? Well, actually, this kind of segues into the next thing we're going to talk about, which is the decision-making process, right? A report came out earlier this week from our friend Mr. Gurman at Bloomberg who said that, you know, Ternus is going to be more decisive than Cook.

Speaker 3:
[34:59] Yeah, so Ternus' management style is traditional in that he's willing to make clear direct calls. Colleagues told Mark Gurman, quote, Ternus will make decisions. A good thing for a CEO to do.

Speaker 2:
[35:13] Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3:
[35:14] You know, I mean, the clear differentiator, Tim Cook is more likely to build a consensus among top Apple executives about the best course rather than making the call alone. Ternus' approach may echo elements of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' leadership, which was defined by strong individual decision-making and a clear product vision.

Speaker 1:
[35:31] Well, that's kind of what they needed with the Apple car, wasn't it? It sounds exactly like what happened. You know, they're wishy-washing, flip-flopping, going one way or the next, you know, no clear, at least he changed his mind midway through.

Speaker 3:
[35:44] But I think this is the right time for this to happen. I mean, I actually think like three years ago would have been the right time for this to happen. But, you know, the second best time is now. I think it's good to have a clear decision-maker, someone who is an engineer who also knows like what is possible, what is reasonable to ask of Apple engineers who comes from that division, who's not just going to say, and I want you to build me this thing.

Speaker 2:
[36:08] But wasn't that Jobs, wasn't that his superpower? He would tell people, hey, I want you to do this. And in fact, I mean, that came because some devices did not work properly, right? But he said, hey, I wanted to do this. You need to do it this way. And then the engineers are like, what? We can't, how do we? So I don't know. I mean, that's the one thing that I've always heard about Steve Jobs and maybe just go, God, what a pain it would have been to work with him. If he's telling you to do things that just bend the laws of physics.

Speaker 3:
[36:39] Yeah. But I think it's better than leading by committee, having everybody agree on what is the best course forward. Because you won't make any massive mistakes, but you won't have that decisive opinionated voice at the top that I think is a quintessential feature of Apple culture.

Speaker 1:
[36:59] Yeah. Well, I went back and I was reading my own book about Johnny Ive.

Speaker 2:
[37:04] You wrote a book about Johnny Ive.

Speaker 1:
[37:06] Well, one of the funny things that I'd forgotten was, Apple under the Scully era was very bottom up. It was a lot of decisions came from the rank and file. The way they developed new products is they had three documents. There was a marketing document, there was an engineering document, and a user experience document. So these three different, and they were all written by committers. So there was a committee that would weigh in on whatever product they're trying to develop. Then they would take all these three documents and decide whether to pursue a product or not. It was like they were described as what was possible, that was the engineering, what was desirable, that was the user experience, and what people wanted was the marketing part. It was this decision making by committee. Of course, one of the big problems with Apple in that era was that they had 75 different versions of everything. There were 75 different kind of Macs, and which one do you choose? It was impossible. This is what jobs blew up. This is a little bit reminiscent maybe of the Tim Cook era. Look at the iPod lineup. I don't know. I'm not 100 percent convinced in what I'm saying. Because on the one hand, I think with almost all of Apple's products now, there are clear price tiers, aren't there? And I think a lot of it has to do with hitting price tiers. And that people go in and they say, okay, I'm going to spend 350 bucks or whatever on an iPad. And there's an iPad at 350 bucks or I can afford a $600 iPad or a $1000 iPad. And I think that's part of what is driving Apple's current product strategy.

Speaker 3:
[38:47] Part of the iPod strategy, I think, where that comes from is that we need to have an iPod at every $50 increment. If I have $50, I can buy an iPod shuffle. If I have $100, I can buy the more expensive iPod shuffle with more space. If I have $150, I can buy this, I can buy that, I can buy that. All the way up to the maximum 50 gigabyte iPod classic. But maybe what separates the way the iPod lineup was structured to the iPad lineup and the MacBook lineup is that there was a very clear linear progression. This iPod is obviously better in every way than the one below it. Whereas when you get into the computers, it's like, oh, well, what's better? A Mac mini that's configured to $2,000 or the Mac Studio at the same price? Well, it's not clear. I mean, this one has a better processor. This one has more space. I get more memory on this one. This one has the ethernet built in. It's a little muddier there. But I mean, I think it's a valid product design approach because that way everybody feels like they have something to buy and everybody feels like, oh, if I spend just a little bit more, I can get the slightly nicer one.

Speaker 1:
[39:53] Right. Yeah. And I don't think it's like a problem like it used to be back in the old, in the scully days. But one of the reasons why they were saying, why the reasons it was so committee driven was because it was a reaction to Jobs' management style. When Jobs was at the company, he was so imperious. He was such a pain in the ass that when he left, there was a wholesale revolution. And the whole company decided they don't want this kind of imperious leadership anymore. They wanted to have consensus. They wanted to have this kind of committee leadership.

Speaker 3:
[40:23] And it really didn't work for them. The design process was the engineers built whatever they wanted, really. And then they just handed off to the design team to be like, okay, wrap this in plastic. And that's how you end up with the Macintosh LC 520 Series, which is one of the ugliest computers in the world. It's like a gigantic TV-sized screen sitting on top of a slightly weird lumpy middle section, sitting on top of another weird slightly lumpy middle. It's like a three-tiered cake but flipped upside down and square beige. It's hideous.

Speaker 1:
[40:56] Yeah, so I agree. I think we're turning to that kind of decisive, this is where we're going, the product visionary thing. And Tim Cook's description of Ternus, I know that there's definitely the heart, the soul, and whatever it was is a little bit sort of poetic. But if true, it does sound like a good choice. It does sound like a good person to be leading the company. I'm kind of optimistic about the guy. I don't know if I like him. There was something about him kind of rubbed me a bit a lot of the wrong way. Do you get that impression? You know, I don't know why.

Speaker 3:
[41:27] No, I like him. I'm looking forward to it. This is honestly like the most optimistic feeling I've been feeling about Apple for a long time.

Speaker 1:
[41:34] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[41:35] You just don't like the chin, Leander.

Speaker 1:
[41:38] It's just definitely the chin. It's rather the tic.

Speaker 2:
[41:47] Oh my God. Well, you're optimistic, so is Ternus.

Speaker 1:
[41:51] Yeah. Good segue there, Lewis.

Speaker 2:
[41:55] Yeah. This is great. This comes from a report that German put out this week talking about an internal all hands meeting that Apple had this week after the announcement where Tim Cook and John Ternus got up and talked about it. And Tim Cook pledged that he's healthy and going to be around for a long time, which I thought was kind of funny. Wasn't it German that had the report about Tim Cook had been, you know, people had said he was shaky or something? You remember that a while back in his weird, weird health rumor? I think that was German. Anyway, the part about all that, I mean, Tim Cook being healthy, being around, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, was awesome, was John Ternus gets up there and says, you know, we've got an incredible road map ahead. And I'm not exaggerating when I say it's the most exciting time to be building products and services at Apple in my entire career. He promised that Apple will, quote, change the world once again. You know, I mean, that's pretty strong statements. You know, he's coming out of the shoot hot and very optimistic. He tried to put a positive spin on Apple's AI efforts even. He says, AI is going to create almost unlimited potential. We're going to be able to keep unlocking possibilities that are going to create entirely new opportunities for our products and services. And I'm so excited. He's very, everyone at Apple is so excited. He's so excited about what that's going to mean for our users.

Speaker 3:
[43:12] You can't wait to see what they do with it.

Speaker 2:
[43:14] Right, yeah. He said that they're going to keep focusing on the design because design is core to what we do at Apple. Apple's brought truly incredible design to more people than any company in history. Who we are as a company won't change. Our mission won't change. I can't believe that this leaked out to the world and people got to hear this.

Speaker 3:
[43:37] I bet the person who leaked that got fired.

Speaker 2:
[43:40] Yeah, they got to raise. You've been at companies where this kind of thing happens, right? You're nervous, maybe optimistic, hoping for the best, and maybe you know this guy, maybe you don't. I think that would have been a pretty good thing to hear if you were working at Apple, and I know that it must be reassuring to stockholders and Wall Street, too.

Speaker 1:
[44:07] He's definitely got the hype down, hasn't he? This is hypey stuff. It's like cheerleading of the highest order. It's not muted. It's not like it's really rallying the trips. One question I had is, how do they fit everybody into the Steve Jobs theater?

Speaker 3:
[44:23] Well, yeah, it's not a very big theater, is it?

Speaker 2:
[44:24] They probably use FaceTime. But, you know, the other thing about that is like, the one thing that I didn't particularly like about Tim Cook being the sort of face of Apple and leading the show and, you know, being the, you know, the guy on the screen at all these events is like, I always felt like they definitely tried to get Tim Cook to get hyped up about things, you know. It never seemed natural to me. It seemed like, I mean, I'm sure he's legitimately psyched up about, you know, the Apple watch and all the ways that it's helped people. And, you know, I'm sure he was absolutely thrilled when YouTube played at Apple, you know, headquarters. But I think that Ternus, I don't know, he seems more like, he has more genuine charisma than Tim has. I mean, I say that with no disrespect to Tim Cook. I'm not a fountain of charisma myself, but...

Speaker 1:
[45:21] Go back and look at some of Cook's first keynotes. They're awful. The poor guy, he's so nervous. He's palpably sweating bullets. It's awful. You know, he's not comfortable at all.

Speaker 3:
[45:31] I will say, I was, when I was doing my recent edit of like, you know, 50 years of Apple and like whatever minutes, I was watching through a lot of the keynotes, you know, in order, obviously. And I was actually really surprised that the later in-person events, like 2017, 2018, 2019, Tim Cook actually did have quite amount of like excitement and energy behind his voice. I think like the switch to the virtual events killed the momentum that he was building. Like they just don't do him any favors because they're, it's just like doing them one after another, not to a crowd of people cheering, but to a camera crew recording him as he reads a script. And they're just so pre-produced. You know, we asked to do the same line, like 50 times probably, like the pre-recorded events don't do him any favors, but like, I don't know, watch a few minutes of him speaking at like WWDC 2019 and he actually does have like, you know, emotion. That's crazy.

Speaker 1:
[46:31] There was a couple, I was also watching a, I can't remember which product it was, but there was, they did a canned spot where someone tries to break into the spaceship headquarters to steal something from a vault. Which one was that? That was it.

Speaker 2:
[46:44] That's when they, they brought the Apple Silicon to the iPad, isn't that what that was? Wasn't it Tim?

Speaker 1:
[46:52] He pulls off a mask and then he does this kind of thing with his head. It was, it was actually genuinely funny, I thought, and showed it like a good sense of humor.

Speaker 2:
[47:00] Yeah, I mean, I didn't mean any of that is like disrespectful to Cook. I think he's, I think he's probably a genuinely nice guy. And I just feel like he got, he probably admitted himself. Yeah, I think he got pushed into being this thing that he maybe was not naturally. And it just happens, right? I mean, so, I mean, you watch those old videos of Steve Jobs showing off a new product. I mean, he was like a freaking stage actor. I mean, his timing was perfect. Everything about it was perfect. And you could tell he had a sense of humor. If something went wrong, he laughed at it in a convincing way. Talking about, I was just watching this this week, reading today an Apple history post about when they showed off the iPhone 4 after the leak. And Jobs is up there, he's like, this is the iPhone 4. He's like, maybe you've seen this before. Because they just had the biggest leak ever in Apple history when some dopey guy left a prototype at a bar. And Gizmodo got ahold of it. But so Jobs says that, which is a great joke, everybody laughs. And then his very next move, though, was brilliant. It's like, trust me, you haven't seen this. And it's like, I don't think that somebody wrote that for Steve Jobs. I think Steve Jobs had that way of communicating, just naturally. I don't think you can fake that.

Speaker 3:
[48:35] It's not, Steve Jobs was, it doesn't come with the job of CEO that you need to do these media events. It's just Steve Jobs was so good at it that it just set the expectation, okay, this is just the job of the CEO of Apple, whoever that is. Every CEO of Apple has to do this. And Tim Cook just was not ready for that particular role.

Speaker 1:
[48:55] Well, you know, Tim Cook's keynotes actually sort of, you know, revealed something about the way he ran the company, right, isn't it? You know, he was able to, he brought in all these different cast of characters. They got, you know, when Jobs' keynotes, it was usually just Jobs and then occasionally he would bring in, you know, Schiller, yeah. Or he had a few other people too on stage every now and again. Like I remember Peter Hardy went on stage and he was a quick time guy every now and again. But there were small appearances and they would often just be there for a couple of minutes just to demo something. And of course he would have CEOs from other companies if there was a game or something they wanted to show off or some partnership with Google or whatever, Intel, you know, like when they Intel transition. But it was usually Jobs. You know, Tim Cook though, every time there was a whole bunch of people, I think almost more and more, like some of them, but there's a cast of thousands of people would come out. And I like that. I like to acknowledge that it was a big company and there was a lot of people involved, different people involved and get different people get to get the share, the limelight and get a little bit of the credit. Jobs is always afraid. I think his stated rationale was that he didn't want to get people poached.

Speaker 2:
[50:07] Oh, really?

Speaker 1:
[50:09] I believe so, yeah. But there was also definitely the showman part of it, too. You know, like he knew that he was he was doing a good job and maybe didn't want to share the limelight with others or that just wasn't his MR. I don't know if that was driven by ego. They were definitely very successful, weren't they? I mean, there was no question about it. Although, you know, I attended almost all those keynotes over when I was working as a reporter for Wired. I know this is blasphemous, but, you know, often people were impatient and they just wanted to get to the one more thing. And sometimes you'd have to sit there through, like, I remember the postcards, the iCloud postcards or something like that.

Speaker 3:
[50:49] iCard, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[50:51] iCard. That one, people were like, for god's sake, when is this going to end, you know? It wasn't all, you know, super showmanship. There was definitely a lot of, you know, stuff that wasn't so memorable.

Speaker 3:
[51:07] For a long stretch of time, he would open every keynote with, like, an update on the Apple stores, like how stores are doing, how many sales they're having, how many stores they're opening. It's like, yeah, okay. The first Apple store was interesting.

Speaker 1:
[51:18] At least it was fairly quick, you know, but they would often, like, the sort of meat of the show, I think, like you said, it was true. That stuff went really pretty quickly and I didn't think it was too bad. But, you know, it wasn't all, it wasn't all, you know, super showmanship. There were definitely some sort of forgettable ones in there.

Speaker 2:
[51:37] Yeah, well, that's true. I mean, you know, we're watching clips, right? We're watching two minutes that were astonishing. And then there was, you know, 45 more minutes on how all the great new features of Safari or something are also watching it in hindsight.

Speaker 3:
[51:51] We're like, yeah, watching the unveiling of iCal isn't interesting to us because every calendar app works like that now. But, you know, when it was new, when it was being shown off for the first time, it was impressive.

Speaker 1:
[52:04] I went back and watched the MacBook Air, the first MacBook Air one.

Speaker 3:
[52:08] Oh, it's a good one.

Speaker 1:
[52:09] Yeah, that one's a classic one. And, you know, it was actually very, very enjoyable. I sat there and watched it for like a good 10 minutes. I was hooked. I was, you know, like on the edge of my seat.

Speaker 3:
[52:19] Maybe I shouldn't admit this to my bosses, but I can't tell you how often it's like, oh, I'm researching a how-to article. And it's a mistake I make every time where I start playing a few minutes of a keynote video and then an hour has passed.

Speaker 2:
[52:32] Jeez.

Speaker 1:
[52:32] That's great. Is there anything else we should discuss about, you know, Ternus and Cook? I think we have kind of talked about every angle that you could think of.

Speaker 2:
[52:42] Well, we don't know what kind of shoes Ternus wears, do we?

Speaker 1:
[52:46] Oh, well, wasn't he, he was in some sneakers, was it some fancy sneakers? I saw that someone did an analysis.

Speaker 2:
[52:53] They used an image lookup or what is it called? An Apple intelligence feature. I cannot remember what it's called.

Speaker 1:
[52:59] Yeah. And they were some original Nike Air Jordans, right?

Speaker 2:
[53:02] Or something. I can't remember.

Speaker 1:
[53:04] He's definitely a sneaker head. I know that people were going crazy. Like when he was in New York recently, he had some unreleased Travis Scott sneakers or something like that.

Speaker 3:
[53:13] It's weird. Like this is a minor point. But in the top of the press release that announces the transition, John Ternus and Tim Cook are wearing the exact same clothes, same blue button down shirt, same jeans. The only difference is their sneakers. And did no one see that coming? Like how weird it looks?

Speaker 1:
[53:34] Well, there was a time, wasn't there, when I know we did an analysis of the shirt that they wore the keynotes. They were wearing the same sort of shiny shirts with the sleeves half rolled up, untucked, and that was a little bit weird.

Speaker 3:
[53:52] What I'm curious about is that usually in an Apple keynote video, Tim Cook wears the button down shirts, but John Ternus is almost always just wearing like a tight t-shirt. And I wonder if now that he's CEO, he'll change. Maybe he has to like upgrade to a button down or if he'll keep the t-shirt going.

Speaker 1:
[54:09] They both look pretty buff too, don't they? I mean, they've got no body fat really between them.

Speaker 2:
[54:14] Yeah. Oh my God. Look at those guys. Rich as can be. And you're right, Griffin, they do look almost indistinguishable from one another, but one has white shoes and one has black. What does it mean?

Speaker 3:
[54:27] Let's maybe talk about the other two things that happened this week.

Speaker 2:
[54:31] Yeah. Big, you know, interesting leak about the iPhone 18 Pro color lineup. Supposedly the new color is going to be Dark Cherry. And sadly for everyone else that hasn't had one, Cosmic Orange is going to go away supposedly, despite having been a huge hit apparently everywhere, especially in Asia, maybe China and Japan in particular. Anyway, iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are launching four colors. Dark Cherry, as mentioned, light blue, you won't believe this, dark gray, and oh my god, you're kidding me, silver.

Speaker 3:
[55:09] Well, the 17 Pro doesn't come in to dark gray, so that actually is a surprise. They're bringing it back.

Speaker 2:
[55:14] Yeah, I, you know, I-

Speaker 3:
[55:15] Light blue, I'm looking forward to that. I think that'll be a good color.

Speaker 2:
[55:19] It'll be whitish, bluish white.

Speaker 3:
[55:22] I was expecting it to be, like when I heard, when I read Dark Cherry, I was like, oh, kind of like a maroon color, but all of these leaks come with like an official Pantone color with them that they're going to match, and it's really very purpley, you know, kind of like eggplant, eggplant color.

Speaker 2:
[55:39] Dark Cherry certainly sounds better than eggplant, but yeah, it doesn't look very cherry, to be quite honest. Then again, the deep purple phone didn't look very purple, so who knows?

Speaker 3:
[55:49] It's not very dark either. It's a very like sort of medium gray purple, but I have renders in the article that I color corrected to match the Pantone color, and very purpley.

Speaker 2:
[56:04] Like I said, this comes from, I think I said this, a report from Macworld. They said that the Dark Cherry is going to be a deep wine-like red that will be, quote, much closer to wine than fruit punch. Okay, well, just for starters, wine, all kinds of wine looks very different. So, you know, I don't think they nailed that down quite as much as they'd like. We heard the other colors, blah, blah, blah. I think the other part of this report was that the folding phone is supposedly going to come, I think, only in black and white or silver and black or gray and basically the most basic colors possible. But it's nice to, if you go to the website and you look at the picture, you'll get a good idea of what the iPhone 18 Pro is going to look like. Although, almost guaranteed, it's not going to look that bright unless you're in direct sunlight.

Speaker 3:
[57:03] Yeah, I mean, the Pantone color that they referenced doesn't match that description at all because it's very purple-y.

Speaker 2:
[57:09] Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. I mean, we've been hearing rumors about a dark red or a deep red for ages, right? So, not surprising if they would go there, huh?

Speaker 3:
[57:19] I think it's a good move to switch it up, because Ed in our Slack was like, oh, but the orange has been so successful. Why would they kill it? I don't think it's anything about the color orange specifically that people love. Nobody really loves the color orange other than Stephen Hackett. It's just the fact that it was bright and colorful. So yeah, they should change it up every year. So that way, you can identify, oh, that's the new phone because it's the new color. What I can tell because it's a color that I can see.

Speaker 1:
[57:47] This is the first thing that John Ternus should change, my god. Get pop colors on iPhones. Are you listening, John? We did a survey in the newsletter, and it seemed like blue. Blue is what people want, a nice shade of blue. Everyone wants blue. Blue, blue, blue. Nice denim blue.

Speaker 2:
[58:07] I mean, they've done blue. It's just that the shades of blue were not exactly vivid, and they didn't change. One was like, what do we call it? Mom's Minivan Blue. Then the next one was slightly darker. They've always been so muted. That's why I think people were, I mean, I was clamoring for years. I want something flashy. I want something that you can tell is a hot rod phone, and that's what they gave us with the Cosmic Orange. I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of Cosmic Orange, especially the two-tone look with the part that's actually orange, and the part that's actually more like a dreamcicle. But, you know, I mean, yeah, I got it. And I got to say, I get a new phone every year. Don't really need to. Wouldn't if I wasn't on the, well, if I didn't work for Cult of Mac, and if I wasn't on the iPhone upgrade program. But, you know, I'm going to feel a little bit sad handing that thing over and getting probably the Dark Cherry one.

Speaker 3:
[59:07] You think you'll get Dark Cherry? What if the light blue is as light blue as the rumor says?

Speaker 2:
[59:13] I mean, you know, I've been, not burned, but I mean, I've had the light blue iPhone Pro a couple of times, and it's always just like, I don't know. I mean, I like it to look different, you know? It's kind of fun, even though it's just like one little section of the phone sticking out of the case. It's, you know, it's a reminder. And I mean, this is incredibly stupid, but I remember like the first week or two after I went to some brew pub and I was sitting there with my wife and a friend, and the bartender comes up and he goes, oh wow, is that the new iPhone? It's like, yeah, yeah, it is. You know? He's like, oh yeah, it's the first one I've seen. You know? I'm like, yeah, okay, great. You know, now you see them everywhere. So I mean, you know, that's incredibly shallow, but it gives you something to talk about. It's a conversation piece, and you know, I mean, you know, to have something fun in your life. Why not? I mean, light blue to me, boring light blue. It's not gonna be fun. And I hope that the Dark Cherry is actually like redder and less purple than the things that we've seen. So we'll see soon enough. What is it? Like four months away? Oh boy.

Speaker 1:
[60:22] Yeah, yeah, come up real fast. Let's wrap up real quick about the folding iPhone feature that everyone thought was gonna be off the table, but actually now is on the table.

Speaker 3:
[60:31] Yes, this was tragic, tragic news that I think we broke last week, that the iPhone dummy units from Sonny Dixon didn't have the MagSafe ring on the back. They were on the other dummy units for the iPhone 18 Pro models that included it as well. But on Sunday, tipster Majin Bu posted on Twitter, that the images claimed to be of cases for the iPhone Ultra, and these do have a MagSafe ring on the back. Now, this doesn't entirely make the fear go away, because there are a number of weird things about the images that Majin Bu posted. They don't really look like clear cases Apple has sold before. The clear cases have always been like clear with like white plastic accents. One of them is clear and black, the other is clear and orange. Very, very strange. Apple hasn't made a clear and orange case. And if the rumors are true that the folding iPhone only comes in black and white, then why would they have a case that's orange, which is last year's pro color, and presumably won't be represented on any phones, much less the folding phone. Also, if you look at the orange case in Majin Bu's hand here, it's weird that it's got this MagSafe ring on the back. It looks like it pops out as a stand, which is something that third party cases by Case Coup do. I mean, Apple hasn't made a clear case like that before. Very strange. Also, it is entirely possible that the folding iPhone doesn't have MagSafe inside it, but Apple's solution is, oh, you just get a case that adds MagSafe to it.

Speaker 2:
[62:15] That's what I was going to say. Yeah, that would make sense. And you know what, having a stand like that makes more sense if you got something that folds out and you're going to use it like an iPad Mini to watch videos and stuff. So maybe it's totally true. I mean, the one thing about Apple is I think they do think about these things. If they're seriously, if they're gonna leave MagSafe out, they can say, hey, if you really want MagSafe, just here's your case, you're gonna want a case. And by the way, it's got a stand, wouldn't it be great?

Speaker 3:
[62:51] MagSafe accessories are going to have to be a little different on it because I mean, I tested this on the mockup that I had that's probably going to have like very similar proportions to the actual folding iPhone. And there's just not a lot of room under the camera plateau because the phone is so much shorter that if you stick an existing MagSafe wallet or battery or something on it, it's going to stick out beyond the bottom of the phone. MagSafe chargers that only have like the ring size element and don't have like the big rectangle shape, those will probably work fine. And that's really all I need. That's mostly what I use MagSafe for, sticking it on a charging stand. I don't use MagSafe wallets. I only occasionally use MagSafe batteries, but yeah, my fear is a little bit dissuaded based on this leak, but not entirely gone. I'll probably be worrying about this until September.

Speaker 1:
[63:46] Yeah, definitely worrying a lot of people. I mean, MagSafe is one of the key features, isn't it? I think this could almost be a deal killer for some. No MagSafe? I'm not interested. My mom being one of them.

Speaker 3:
[63:57] I mean, Apple learned the lesson on the iPhone 16E that, yeah, this is a budget phone, but yep, we can't cut MagSafe. Everybody will complain about it. So surely they know we're not going to like it if a $2,000 phone doesn't have a feature that phones have had since 2020.

Speaker 2:
[64:13] That's a 70 cent magnet.

Speaker 1:
[64:16] And only a few months away.

Speaker 3:
[64:18] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[64:19] All right. I think I should wrap it up. That's about all the callcast we have for you this week.

Speaker 3:
[64:25] That's not the name of our show.

Speaker 2:
[64:27] God dang it's so hard.

Speaker 1:
[64:31] 20 years of conditioning. Let's try that again. Okay. I think we should wrap it up. That's enough of the Cult of Mac podcast.

Speaker 2:
[64:40] Easy for you to say.

Speaker 1:
[64:42] I could barely get it out. Please give us a five-star rating, at least five stars, maybe six or seven, if you can squeeze it in on Apple Podcasts. Share this show, please, with anybody you think could sit through it. Text us a message at cultofmacpodcast.icloud.com. That's cultofmacpodcast.icloud.com. Send us questions, comments and feedback. We had a good question this week, but we didn't have time to include it. We'll talk about it next week. You can send us an audio message or a short video for us to play too. Thanks everybody for listening. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Have a great weekend everybody.

Speaker 3:
[65:17] Goodbye.

Speaker 2:
[65:18] See ya.