transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:08] Hello, welcome to the Apple Insider Podcast. I'm William Gallagher. Our sponsors this week are Masterclass and Claude by Anthropic. More about them later. Although, if you're a subscriber to Apple Insider Plus, well, then that's the last you'll hear of that. Plus, you will get plus. How many times can you say the word plus in one sentence? You'll also get Apple Insider Plus, which this week, as actually, let's give some credit here. This is almost practically always, or always, this is the idea of my co-host Wesley Hilliard. Always, hello, and what's the idea this time? Anything happening? Anything on your mind at all?

Speaker 2:
[00:41] Well, since it's such a dead week, we figured we'd talk about Tim Cook for no reason. His legacy, what is it? The reason why I'm bringing this up and I wrote a little on the blog about it is, I've seen a lot of really, honestly just terrible hot takes about Tim Cook, a lot of discussions about Apple Car for some reason. We'll probably touch some on it in the main show, but the post show is definitely 100%. Tim Cook, what did he do for Apple? What is his history going to be about? We talk about Steve Jobs and his huge bombastic product releases and changing the world with iPod, iPhone, Mac. What are we going to talk about with Tim Cook?

Speaker 1:
[01:25] Nothing, Apple Vision Pro. Let's not go there, that's for later. Listen, we've all heard of Tim Cook and we can examine him in detail. John Ternus, the new CEO. You said you've seen some things about Cook. I've been seeing preposterous things about John Ternus, people exclusively revealing what he's going to be like. Well, I doubt he knows what he's going to be like. He is definitely, no question, going to be a clone of Steve Jobs and very definitely, totally know he isn't. It will be as if Tim Cook has never left. I mean, the truth is, Tim Cook is becoming executive in charge of Trump, really. But Ternus is bringing his hardware engineering. He's an engineer and he's a really interesting engineer for it. I think that's all we can possibly know for now.

Speaker 2:
[02:16] The most interesting thing, obviously, the topic of the day is going to be Cook and Ternus. We have a few extra stuff at the end if we get there, but we'll see how long we spend on this main subject because it's pretty much the whole show. The most interesting thing I think about John Ternus is that we know nothing about him except for his appearances in public. I mean, and that's easy to say about a lot of Apple executives, but this is especially true. We know where he went to college. I don't think we know his wife's name. I think he's married. People have mentioned in online forums that he's married. If you search it, Google confidently says that he's married. If you follow it through, it's a link to a post on LinkedIn, which is a link to a 9to5Mac article, which has someone commenting in the comment section that he's married. So Google will tell you that he is. I don't know. It's just interesting that he's continuing this, we know nothing about the guy kind of motif.

Speaker 1:
[03:21] Yeah, I think I might know a pixel more than you. One thing I could say is nobody knows his age, which is really frustrating because it's either 50 or 51. And if it's 51, then he's the same age as two of the previous CEOs. And I've forgotten which ones they were now, but I was digging into the statistics here. It's not a lot of digging, actually. William's like seven or eight Apple CEOs, all white male, mostly around the same age. It's a diverse group, really it is. But, Ternus, there are two things I think were really interesting when I was digging into him this week. And one is that his first big appearance was in 2017, when I don't know if this was before your time, Apple did a very unusual thing of coming out to talk about future plans basically for Mac, pro Mac users and it was about the Mac Pro and things like that.

Speaker 2:
[04:13] You read the transcript.

Speaker 1:
[04:15] Yes, that's the phrase. Thank you. I could not bring that to mind. You read the transcript of that and there's Phil Schiller, there's Craig Federighi and they're being the usual interesting and entertaining selves and Ternus is silent. It's way, way downwards. Suddenly, there's a slightly technical question and boom, he's off. He has the answer to that and then he's in the conversation. He's making all sorts of comments for it. And again, he's as interesting as the other two. But it's funny that that was 2017 because also that year is, I believe, and I know he did this, he presented at WWDC, he presented the Numack lineup. So, I mean, WWDC or around, in that year, he announced Numacks and things. And he was good, he was fine, he was capable, he didn't have that kind of flair that Craig Federighi came into being with. But he had it and you kind of knew he knew his stuff. But then flash forward, and I missed this, I don't know how. John Ternus has been so under the radar that I don't think many people noticed he gave a commencement speech at his college in 2024 and he was fascinating in it. I mean, talking about, it was an engineering college, he was talking about engineers and that mindset, that desire to solve problems and make things better. For it was just really riveting stuff and also funny because he admitted having nearly wrecked the University of Pennsylvania's one and only CNC milling machine. He said it was given an aim of crash for the rest of his time there. So the guy is funny, he knows his engineering, he has a lot of very-

Speaker 2:
[05:52] Swim team champion?

Speaker 1:
[05:54] Are you just making that up or do you know?

Speaker 2:
[05:56] No, he was on the college swim team and apparently, well, so someone who's poking fun at this because apparently, it was almost by default, like he won a race almost by accident, but he was on the swim team and he definitely looks like he was on the swim team. People have been talking about his appearance a lot and he's been kind of a fitness guy.

Speaker 1:
[06:17] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[06:18] Well, you know, and he may not be behind the Apple Watch, but like, well, he was behind the Apple Watch because hardware. Do you know what his current, so this is fun. There are two hardware chiefs at Apple, senior vice presidents, one's hardware engineering and one is hardware, the other one.

Speaker 1:
[06:40] The design, is that Molly Anderson?

Speaker 2:
[06:42] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[06:43] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[06:43] No, no, no, no. I'm talking about Johny Srouji and John Ternus.

Speaker 1:
[06:47] Right, right, right. Sorry. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[06:49] Two Johns.

Speaker 1:
[06:50] Actually, I want to just take a second step back there. I was really sarcastic about descriptions of Ternus' opinion, opinion, appearance, and I made the crack of what is he a woman. And that's not because I think he should be, but because women, for God knows why, reasons are forever picked on this, not used to a man being doing it. So I suppose it's fair. Is it more egalitarian? We should just stop it all. But anyway, Johny Srouji, who, as we know, as we know, definitely was definitely going to leave Apple. No, he wasn't. But has now been tempted to stay by being given a longer title. Is that what you mean?

Speaker 2:
[07:31] Well, we're going to have to discuss, Johny Srouji. Well, we're probably going to be bouncing around a little bit because there's a lot of crossing connection points here. So just to go down the news list. Suddenly, it's a Monday afternoon and there's just a post on Apple Newsroom out of nowhere. John Ternus to step in as Apple CEO as Tim Cook becomes Executive Chairman, and then five seconds later, Johnny Srouji promoted to Chief Hardware Officer, which is a new thing that didn't exist before.

Speaker 1:
[08:07] I didn't realize that.

Speaker 2:
[08:08] It's funny because I've been using it and I don't know if I've been wrong to use it, but he's getting pushed from being a vice president. It's still vice president, but it's senior vice president role to a C-suite role. Now, senior vice president might have been C-suite, I don't know. But C meaning chief, so C-suite, chief executive officer, there's Apple's chief financial officer, chief operations officer. Now, there's a chief hardware officer, which means he's basically a half step down from CEO now, instead of being a senior vice president. What he's done is absorb John Ternus' responsibility. So he's still chip fab, he is still Apple silicon, as you said, hardware design, but he is now also hardware engineering. Is it hardware design? I'm going to have to look, because that's going to drive me nuts.

Speaker 1:
[09:00] It does feel like different roles. I mean, it's not like when Johnny Ive took over software design as well as hardware, but it feels like somebody who's great with processors isn't automatically going to be great with.

Speaker 2:
[09:13] Hardware engineering is basically hardware design, so we were conflating. It's hardware engineering, which was John Ternus' position, and hardware technologies, which is Johnny Srouji's position. They are now one, right? It makes sense. What Srouji has basically done, now, I don't want to pick, this isn't pick on German week, but we seem to be coming back to this a lot because he's had a lot of very odd reporting lately and we'll get into more of that later. But one of his odd reports has come back to haunt us of Srouji claiming, not that he was going to retire, but that he was going to move to a different company at 61 years old, even though he's senior vice president at Apple, the highest position in his field until now, and accomplished more than anyone could ever accomplish in his field with Apple Silicon, and he was going to leave for, God only knows what, pay, definitely not substantial gain or popularity, who knows? But he was apparently leaving according to some person, someone, some tipster that overheard an e-mail, I don't know. Well-

Speaker 1:
[10:30] Sorry, I overheard the e-mail. I like that description. Can I just point out, if he'd gone to Intel, he could have saved Intel, look, he could have been a hero there. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2:
[10:40] It was never going to happen, but now we're retroactively making up a story. Sorry, I'm not going to accuse anyone of making anything up. A person familiar with the matter has clarified that Srouji was definitely going to leave until Tim Cook bribed him with this new C-suite position, but it couldn't happen until Tim Cook stepped down and Ternus took over, and suddenly Srouji was going to be promoted, and he just had to wait a couple more months, and he would get that super special fancy type, all nonsense.

Speaker 1:
[11:13] That's what it is. Yes.

Speaker 2:
[11:15] Total nonsense. The reality is Srouji earned this position. The man created the modern world of Apple with Apple Silicon, and so chief hardware officer, a C-suite position where he's going to probably spend the next five years, 10 possible years, at least five, I would assume, basically building out the teams that will ultimately replace them, which is every leader's job, by the way. We'll get into more of that later. If you're a good leader, there's two things that you do. One of them is delegate, and the second thing you do is find your replacement. That's check box one and two if you ever are in charge of something.

Speaker 1:
[11:59] I might have worked in some harsher corporations than you. I'm not thinking the BBC, I'm not. But you find your replacement and you get rid of them. That's what you do, you get them out.

Speaker 2:
[12:10] You find out who could possibly take over for you and make sure that they're incompetently. So anyway, Srouji is now in charge of this and he has brought in, he has announced his five officers below him. I called them his underlings, which is I guess a meaner way of saying, yeah, he's basically delegating. How do you run such a large division? Because we're talking about a huge portion of Apple, right? Hardware engineering is design, manufacturing, testing, everything. It's the people who come up with the new keyboard that breaks in the MacBook, right? It's the people who come up with the more rounded corners on the Apple Watch. Now paired with and the same leadership as the guy who's helping design the chipsets. And Srouji is known as a hands-on guy, but now he has to step back and I think maybe he wants to, because he's done the job. And according to some reports, he's pretty, I don't know, strict is the word, maybe. He's not going to be a walk in the park, as they say. He's going to be very much in the game. He's not going to be sitting in an office waiting for a report. I think he's going to be walking the floors and checking on what's going on. That's going to be good, I think, for Apple. I mean, it's not that Ternus wasn't doing that, but having him go from Apple Silicon, which is doing so well, maybe hardware technologies needs a little bit of that too.

Speaker 1:
[13:46] So it's just a side point, but I'm hearing this might become a thing. Do you remember where you were when you heard that Tim Cook was stepping down? You were at work, weren't you?

Speaker 2:
[14:00] It was my shift, yeah. So we were blindsided. What's funny is I was trying to write a story, I believe, about Savant coming back in July, and that's a very touchy subject because somehow it involves Charlie Kirk, so that's a whole thing. I'm sitting here trying to do research on terrorism in America, and then suddenly Tim Cook is announcing he's stepping down, and I'm just overwhelmed by all of it. Yeah, it's kind of wild.

Speaker 1:
[14:33] I was actually in our living room. Mike texted me, and I'm sitting there with Angela, my wife, and I want to tell her, I want to tell her, but she's watching a YouTube video and I can tell. I check on my phone, and my phone will show me the Apple TV, because I can see there's an hour left on this video, and I don't want to, and then she gets a notification on her phone from some news outlet, they broke the news before me. I was thoroughly annoyed. She stopped watching to talk to me about it. I could have interrupted her. So yes, I remember where it happened. Why did I go down that line? Okay. More seriously about why, why do you think this happened now? Because one of the reports that followed afterwards, the kind of inevitable report was, is Tim Cook ill? I truly believe that Cook would see out the current administration and the proper launching of Apple Intelligence. But instead he seems to have waited for the 50th anniversary celebrations and for Apple stock to vest, which I know he did on April 15th. And honestly, I'm not fully sure what vesting stock means.

Speaker 2:
[15:34] But those decisions are made so far in advance. He's not even making them. It's a requirement. He sells them every now and then just because he's trying to liquefy his assets. Cook's made it clear he doesn't want to be a multi-billion trillionaire. He sells his stocks when he can at the legal limit and basically donates it and invests it and stuff like that. He's not doing it to become rich and go live on an island. So to your point, does this feel like it came out of nowhere? I'm going to say no.

Speaker 1:
[16:13] Two sides to this. The moment the news broke, that was quite shocking. But I think the fact that it was the news and it is John Ternus, I thought they had actually seeded it very well for a very long time. Nobody had the slightest surprise that it was Ternus. We all had the surprise that it was now kind of thing. So yeah, they did a good job.

Speaker 2:
[16:34] We knew it was coming. We didn't know when. And we talked about it here on the show. I was pretty adamant about Cook not going anywhere until the end of the administration. But we also were hedging our bets on, well, if he is going to be executive chairman, he could just be an ambassador, which Apple has literally now said out loud. They didn't hide it. They were just said, oh, Tim Cook is executive chairman will continue to be the government liaison for Apple, which means he's going to deal with China, India, Brazil and UK and EU and the United States.

Speaker 1:
[17:06] All the fun stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[17:07] Yeah. Which keeps Ternus hands clean. I think that the reason why it's not out of nowhere, we didn't know the timing. And I was skeptical that it was 2026. Cook clearly doesn't want to go anywhere. But I think, you know, you got to get out while the getting is good. And this is the peak of his legacy moment. He's, we'll get more into this in the Apple Insider Plus segment. But I think Cook's strengths have reached a point where they can start to, they're going to start diminishing soon, meaning the supply chain is going to start showing some weakness because of global unrest. The emergence of spatial computing is going to be slow and difficult to achieve, even though it is their new goal for the future. Apple Health is going to expand and continue to be the new tentpole feature for Apple. And that is going to be part of Cook's legacy. But because of federal regulations, it's going to complicate things. So Cook got the ball rolling on a lot of things. But now we're going to get into the tough portions of those rollouts. And he gets to walk away and say, I started it, you have it now, it's your job. So you don't- I mean, I'm with you on health.

Speaker 1:
[18:31] But logistics, that has always been his bag. Wouldn't you think that the supply chain having difficulties would actually be the opposite? It would be a time for him to do his doings more.

Speaker 2:
[18:45] The world is going to move on with or without Tim Cook. Again, I think, we'll get to this in a second, but I wrote a blog post too about this kind of hero worship that we have for these executives, not just Apple, but in general, like people know the names of these tech executives, and they follow everything they say and do. I don't know that that's really that important. I mean, it's fun to follow what they're doing, and they can sometimes be entertaining, or sometimes just cringey looking at McDonald's, but it's one of those things where Wall Street has made it a point that they move on news of an executive changing. And I understand the importance of an executive. I understand that their decisions make or break a company. But at a certain point, a company is too big for that executive to make too much of a dramatic change. To be clear, when John Ternus takes over, nothing is going to change at Apple externally for years. I mean, he's going to have his own ideas and we're going to see tiny shifts in certain places, right?

Speaker 1:
[20:04] It's like turning a tank, yeah. Yeah, it takes a lot of time.

Speaker 2:
[20:07] Yeah, so Cook is an important asset to Apple and he has done amazing things for Apple. But it's also Apple has done a lot of good things for Apple. It's not a monolith. It's thousands of employees, hundreds of managers and dozens of executives making decisions up and down the chain to make sure this thing runs as smoothly as possible. And Cook has helped with that, but the whole point of leadership is making sure that your replacement can continue the job. And if your replacement can't continue the job, it's your failure as a leader. You didn't prepare them enough. You didn't pick the right person. And I have no doubt that John Ternus is going to be good at the job. And we're going to see that reflected in future decisions he makes to change Apple in ways that he needs, he wants it to be changed. But as you said, it takes a long time to make those changes. It's not like we're going to walk out in September and suddenly there's a MacBook with a Ethernet cable in it or something, right? Like it's just not going to happen.

Speaker 1:
[21:18] It's funny you say that about CEOs though. I wouldn't have said I knew I could think of any CEOs of companies other than technology ones. And maybe that's because I work in that field. But then you mentioned McDonald's. And yeah, look at the way Ronald McDonald dresses. He does stand out. So, okay, yeah, they do get some attention for it. And I'm not sure John Ternus has that rock star appeal, but neither did Tim Cook and he gets treated like one. Okay. So I'm curious about where, September the 1st is actually, we should say, is when John Ternus officially takes in. I mean, doubtlessly he already has. He is doing the job now, I'm sure.

Speaker 2:
[21:56] He's shadowing or being shadowed.

Speaker 1:
[21:58] I imagine that WWDC will still be fronted by Tim Cook this year. It will be his bow out. What do you think?

Speaker 2:
[22:09] Tricky. Maybe they walk out together. It'll be interesting to see how they produce this one. But I have a feeling, I don't know. I mean, this is one of those things where Ternus is still like he's still SVP technically of hardware engineering. He's still in that role transitioning his to Srouji and Srouji's underlings. But I don't know what that reflects as, right? It really just depends. We might get a little peek under the hood Apple's corporate culture. Like you said, is he already technically acting CEO? I don't think so. Not on paper, not legally speaking. But I would assume that a lot of this transition has already more or less taken place, as they ramp up towards the fall. Because the last thing you want happening on September 1st is actual handover, right? It should already have been handed over because the iPhone-

Speaker 1:
[23:10] Here's the keys. Here's my office. Yes. Okay. It doesn't happen.

Speaker 2:
[23:14] It's about to launch. Yeah. So it could be a bowing out for Tim. It could be a handshake moment. Maybe Tim walks out and says, good morning and then Ternus just walks up and shakes his hand and takes over. I think they could have a moment here. I think it might be fun.

Speaker 1:
[23:28] I think it'll be Cook's final bow kind of thing. I think also there might be some political things about, I mean, there's got to be a thing going on in Apple. Craig Federici and Phil Schiller, do they have to start calling John Ternus sir after the 1st of September? And how do they feel about that?

Speaker 2:
[23:45] I don't think they've ever been that kind of company.

Speaker 1:
[23:48] Well, there was Dr. Gil Amelio, that was a thing, actually. But yes, interestingly, he was blaming other people for that, and yet he was doing it. So yeah, CEOs, what can you do? Okay. So that's WWDC sorted out. I'm still interested in the whole Srouji thing, because apart from the fact that I've now learned to pronounce his name, so I want to keep saying it to prove that. The move from processor to the rest of it, I think Apple has always pursued this idea of owning the whole stack, of doing the whole thing itself. Until recently, it had to get modems in, but it's got those itself now. It wants to own everything so that it can control everything and everything can work together. But one thing I read about Srouji was a headline that said, this was the start of Apple's drive to do its own processors. And I'm thinking, does it not? I mean, I know they use Arm, but Apple designs them, TSMC makes them. I don't understand if there could be any processor difference with this change. Am I missing something really obvious?

Speaker 2:
[24:56] I don't know, that headline sounds stupid to me. I didn't read that story. That they already make their own processors. They're making their own modems. They're making their own Wi-Fi chips. Top to bottom, Apple is controlling its silicon. I'm not sure what the story was getting at, but Srouji being oversight of the entire hardware team doesn't really change anything in that aspect. They're going to continue pursuing more ways to vertically integrate hardware and software. They're going to continue replacing every possible part inside of the product. Maybe Apple starts making their own batteries. I don't know, but I don't think that has anything to do with Srouji. One thing I think was interesting about some of the stories coming out was this usual attempt to spin everything as a failure. Tim Cook's leaving now because AI is so bad, he had to quit.

Speaker 1:
[25:53] Oh, no, that's one I didn't see. That's very persuasive. I could think about that one a lot.

Speaker 2:
[26:02] He's so embarrassed by AI, he just had to up and quit and give it to somebody else to take the dot, whatever stupidity. Then there's stories about Srouji. Oh, no, Srouji can't run the entire hardware division himself. He had to choose new chiefs or whatever. It's just like, no, he's delegating. Again, I don't know if you understand how businesses work, but Johnny Srouji is not in the lab mixing vials together and finding the perfect component mixture or whatever. He has people for that.

Speaker 1:
[26:39] Frankenstein image. Yes.

Speaker 2:
[26:41] Yeah. He chose Tom. These are names I'm not going to get correct. Tom Marriott, he was formerly integrity chief. He's now going to be chief hardware engineering. The new silicon chief is Sriyabalan Santhanam. Tell me if I said that horribly wrong.

Speaker 1:
[27:07] You said that horribly wrong.

Speaker 2:
[27:09] Yeah. I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[27:11] You asked me. So, okay. Right.

Speaker 2:
[27:13] Silicon engineering group, basically same. So, I don't think anything changed there. Zongjian Chen, I don't know. I can't do Chinese letter combinations. I need to learn those better. I can do Japanese all day, but Chinese have different combinations. Maybe Zongjian Chen, but Zongjian Chen, maybe. Anyway, I'll have to learn that better. VP in charge of Wireless Chips is, I believe, another way of saying advanced technologies, which means no change. Maybe a change, I don't know, but he has been moved to advanced technologies. Then platform architecture, same, Tim Millett, we've seen him before. Project management, Donnie Nortius, same position. Those are the five areas of focus and the five people in charge of those areas of focus that will be reporting directly to Johny Srouji. I found it really entertaining because the same story, or at least maybe a different story, this was the Srouji wanted to quit story. Oh, that's it. There was a story about, there's been like 12 Bloomberg stories this week about the transition and all of them, but I don't know. They're really going hard here trying to monetize, or at least drive the market on this news. But one of the stories was about how upset people are, and Ternus is going to have trouble keeping his people, because they're all going to quit, and everyone's leaving Apple and there's no engineers left or whatever, because if you've been following the stories over the past year and a half or so, everyone's quit Apple and gone to Intel and Spotify or something.

Speaker 1:
[28:55] We actually worked it out that there are only 164,000 people left at Apple. We calculated it, so yes, yeah. I read those stories too, but I'm doubtlessly-

Speaker 2:
[29:06] If you do Trump math on this, that's a 16,000 percent decrease.

Speaker 1:
[29:12] Moving on. There will be people who wants to get these jobs and then get them. This happens to happen in any company for it. There will be people who leave maybe over this, but they're going to be reported as leaving because of Ternus.

Speaker 2:
[29:24] Every person that quits include, I swear we're going to hear about a janitor next week, is going to be because John Ternus took over. So go ahead and prepare yourself. We're going to have a hundred articles between now and December about every single person who's leaving is mad because John Ternus is terrible and they think the future of the company is in danger or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[29:47] Although there's something to be said about that from the other side, which is something we'll say in a moment. Did that tantalise you enough? Was that good? I'll just try to tease you into that. One thing we just said that people will leave. I wouldn't be surprised if Ternus fires people as well. Because I mean, Tim Cook did, he got rid of Scott Forstall. I mean, we know reasons for it, but you know, he still did it. Ternus has got to be in charge and one of the things we have learnt about him, allegedly, do you know, I'm going to dial that back. One of the things we've heard about him rather than learnt is that he is more decisive. I believe more decisive than Tim Cook. I believe that because the decision sounds like an engineer. This is a problem, here's the solution, do we do or do we not kind of thing. I could see him being quite methodical about that and getting it done. Whereas we have heard previously that Cook is more liable to take opinions from all sorts of people and go for a consensus. Ternus will fire people, I'm sure, and we will hear about it or not hear about it. I just don't know what else is going to do.

Speaker 2:
[30:56] Well, that's another of Bloomberg's 30 stories about anonymous tipster saying something about an email they overheard of just like, Ternus, whatever, I'm so tired of these anonymous tipster says. It's become a gossip column, William. It's not even news anymore. It's now we're sharing the opinions of other people about their bosses. It's just, I don't understand.

Speaker 1:
[31:26] Out of this, some good has come. We've now got your phrase of overhearing an email. That's going to be in my idiolect from now on because it fits so well, but okay.

Speaker 2:
[31:37] It's just, so Ternus might be more decisive. We don't know. Sure. That's great. What does that mean? Was Tim Cook sitting at the desk hemming and hawing over what color the iPhone should be?

Speaker 1:
[31:51] Well, sometimes.

Speaker 2:
[31:52] They're meaningless points. They're meaningless statements.

Speaker 1:
[31:55] Yeah, but you remember, according to Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs biographer, one problem Steve Jobs had with Tim Cook was that he was not a product person. He was great with so many. In fact, I think the full quote is that Tim can do everything, but he's not a product person.

Speaker 2:
[32:12] And yet, we have the story that did happen and has been confirmed by multiple sources of Tim Cook looking square at, what is his name? He's the new CFO. He looks square at Savvy Khan and he's just like, what are you doing here? Why aren't you on a plane to China? That sounds pretty decisive to me. Really?

Speaker 1:
[32:35] I seem to remember a Steve Jobs story like that. I didn't know Cook had done it as well. Wow.

Speaker 2:
[32:40] Okay. That's pretty decisive. Yeah. Basically, I believe, now I might be crossing stories here, so forgive me. But I believe this is the whole thing that happened around 2014 when the new leader's name escaping is Ping. Anyway, what can I think of his name? Anyway, the new leader of China who was definitely slowly pushing China away from more democratic norms towards more what it is today. One of the first things they did was have the state run news run a story about how terrible Apple is basically and how they're being unfair to Chinese customers. I believe that is the same moment that Tim Cook basically said, we need to take care of this now. I believe it might have been Sabi Khan that was one of the people getting sent on a jet direct without any clothes, had to land in China and buy his anyway. The examples like that tell me Cook is a fine decision-maker. It's always so funny to me, in any type of transition like this, people are going to be desperate to make comparisons. They're going to try and choose teams. If they're like, well, we're ready for the hardware guy, so they got to look for reasons why they hate Tim Cook now. Even though on paper, Tim Cook increased the value of Apple by 1600 percent or something stupid.

Speaker 1:
[34:25] Yeah, I remember John Scully, the most maligned CEO ever took Apple from, was it single-digit millions into 800 million before he just seemed to lose interest, really. Okay, so yeah, there is precedent for increasing money. It's just not anything like the scale Tim Cook did, yes.

Speaker 2:
[34:44] It makes me curious, like I said, we're dancing around the subject because it's going to be the post show, but truly makes me curious of how we're going to talk about Tim Cook in the future, because I have a feeling there's going to be a few sticking points that are going to color his legacy that maybe we don't have any control over, and that's not going to be great for Cook. I think that's the problem. I mean, one of the things about Steve Jobs that stuck, even though it might have been mildly exaggerated by media, as far as we can tell, was his attitude, and then there's also the whole thing with his kid that was definitely blown out of proportions by certain movies apparently, depicting him as like this very-

Speaker 1:
[35:33] Yeah, he's not as likely saintly over it, but okay.

Speaker 2:
[35:36] He was not saintly, but from my understanding and from, again, other people outside of the film industry saying, it's not quite how it went. He was definitely not taking ownership of that child, but at the same time, he was not like screaming in a parking lot at her or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[35:53] He named the Lisa after her, although what was the nonsense that they made up that Lisa could stand for? I can't remember the L, but it was Integrated Systems Architecture, some utter nonsense like that.

Speaker 2:
[36:04] A background name. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[36:06] That's the word. I love that word. Yes. Okay. Tim Cook's legacy, obviously he's going to try to put a legacy out and he already has. The town hall meeting he had this week with Apple staff. One of the things we know about it is that he's talked about things that he think he got wrong. He actually, what's the phrase? It's something like, the list of mistakes I made would be an extraordinarily long one, which goes beyond self-deprecation. I think it was honesty. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[36:35] I think that so people are going to cling to that because whatever. But Tim Cook's a human being and he makes mistakes. I think that's what he's referencing is like, I've made mistakes in my life. I chose the wrong jam at the cafeteria one day. That's a mistake. Of course, the mistakes we're talking about, with Apple as a corporation, as an entity that we can observe, I don't know. There's not that many what you could call quote unquote mistakes, missteps, mistakes, whatever you want to say. For me, I think it was a mistake.

Speaker 1:
[37:17] It's not like I disagree with you. Sorry. What was the mistake?

Speaker 2:
[37:22] I was going to say it was a mistake to pursue autonomous vehicles, but the end result was beneficial to Apple because of what they learned about AI and robotics. It was a mistake to chase down and even announce air power. But the end result was better because it's what allowed them to create MagSafe and improve charging standards for basically everything because of it and Qi charging and all of that. So what is it? Edison, he didn't make a thousand mistakes, he made one light bulb or something like that.

Speaker 1:
[37:56] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[37:58] People always want to want to color these things.

Speaker 1:
[38:02] They are. I began to say that it's not like I disagree with you. It's always what somebody says before they disagree with somebody. I would have pointed to AirPath, I did. And there's also a big one is Apple Maps. And actually an unusual thing this week is we learned why Apple Maps started so badly. They didn't test it properly, which I suppose we could have guessed, but interesting to hear it.

Speaker 2:
[38:23] Apple Maps looks great at one infinite loop. I don't know what the problem was.

Speaker 1:
[38:28] You can find your way around the whole of Cappuccino, no problem. But I kind of like don't care about those. I don't feel like there's anything we know of that Cook did that was bad. I mean, there's bad stuff Apple does with the unions and the retail outlets and how it treats its suppliers. Ultimately, that has to fall on Tim Cook's shoulders because he could just stop it if he didn't want it. So there's got to be things like that. But overall, it does feel like he got Apple to a great place, and we are benefiting from it in the products we have that we wouldn't have otherwise. So am I pro Tim Cook or anti him or neither, really? I just think he had an incredibly difficult job. I mean, stunningly difficult, unimaginably difficult. And look how well he did, how well he lapsed it.

Speaker 2:
[39:19] I think that's the best answer because we really got to stop idolizing these people. They're very interesting, and I would love to read a book about their morning routine or whatever. They're a fun study because we can learn a lot about these people who dedicate their lives to this business and achieved the position in the first place. Not anyone could step into Apple CEO and do what Tim Cook did, of course. But they're not gods. And so the story that had me at my wit's end this week was this idea that John Ternus' biggest hurdle as Apple CEO, and this is my headline, this is the headline they ran with, his biggest hurdle as CEO is retention, which is madness because we've talked about how people are at an age that the famous names in Apple are likely to be retiring.

Speaker 1:
[40:28] Is that what it means? He's going to have to try to persuade them to hang on.

Speaker 2:
[40:32] What's even funnier is the story was hedged entirely on a statement made by a former Apple executive. Let me find his name.

Speaker 1:
[40:42] Well, while you look for it, I can tell you, there have been seven CEOs of Apple, and five of them were fired from the post. No, not fair. Mike Markkula actually stepped aside. Four of them were fired. Markkula stepped aside, he helped hire John Scully, and then Steve Jobs obviously died, and now Tim Cook is resigning. But otherwise, you get fired when you're the Apple CEO. Yeah. What are the odds for Ternus? Okay. Do you find his name?

Speaker 2:
[41:10] Tony Blevins. Do you remember that name?

Speaker 1:
[41:13] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[41:14] He was the former procurement chief. Basically, he was Tim Cook's replacement, more or less. Now, this guy has been gone from Applesent for a while. I don't have the data in front of me, he may be 2022 or something. He did an interview. What's funny is, this is Bloomberg. They mentioned the interview, but there's no link or reference to even who did their interview or where it took place. Did Bloomberg do the interview? They didn't even take credit for it. I mean, if it was them, great, tell me, but they didn't even say who did the interview. He was just in an interview in space and someone overheard it. And he said that, well, he was talking about a couple of things. He's the one who mentioned that Ternus is one of his biggest challenges. And this is actually not wrong. It's just so funny that like this is the premise of the piece. So let's get to it. His biggest challenge is that Steve Jobs was basically the one who elected the almost entirety of the current Apple leadership, minus maybe three people who have since retired under Tim Cook. We're going to see Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi, and these big names start to finally move on, retire, change under John Ternus. And this is going to be a huge challenge to replace them. Here's the thing though. It's both right and wrong. We have big shoes to fill, absolutely. I'm not going to downplay that. Those are very important people, and we've grown to love them because of their presence in Apple Keynotes and these affairs where we get to see them, and they've made memes of them, and we get to be entertained by their presence. Otherwise, we wouldn't know their names if it wasn't for Apple's push to have these names out there. Other companies are not the same. Tell me who the chief hardware officer or chief engineering officer of Microsoft is right now off the top of your head.

Speaker 1:
[43:23] Sarah McFarland. I'm sorry. I just shot in the dark, made it up.

Speaker 2:
[43:28] I have a friend called Sarah. That's a good name.

Speaker 1:
[43:31] It worked, didn't it? I could have bluffed this out for at least a minute.

Speaker 2:
[43:34] No one's going to check. No one's going to check. AI generated that. So anyway, Blevins' point was basically, it is going to be a difficult thing. And of course, Bloomberg, I don't know, built a whole story around this idea that not only is it bad that these people who have been at Apple for 40 plus years, someone asked Chris Espinoza how he's doing. The coal, is he going to quit?

Speaker 1:
[44:03] Employee number eight, isn't he? Yeah, something like that.

Speaker 2:
[44:08] The idea is basically that, yes, it is going to be difficult. And I agree with Blevins on that point. Filling those shoes is going to be a lot. We're going to miss Craig Federighi, for sure, as fans of Apple and people who watch these keynotes. Here's the thing, they're not going to have any trouble replacing them. I think that's another point. It's a difficult position to fill, but they're not going to have any trouble filling it. Those both can be true at the same time. The point of Bloomberg's piece was like, it's impossible to fill their shoes and then everything's going to catch on fire and die. And then, of course, they go into the, and they've lost like 12 engineers from AI and a dozen design members left with Alan Dye or whatever. I really dislike this piece because it just seemed very silly to me. But my point here is, once again, stop with the hero worship. We like Craig Federighi, we're going to miss his hair, but he has already chosen who's going to replace him. That person is probably ready to go right now, sitting in the aisles, just going to step right in and lockstep, as if nothing changed. There are plans for products and designs and system software features and services for the next decade at Apple. The runway is long. It's not as if someone's going to get hit by a bus and then we're going to forget how to make an iPhone, right? And so this whole idea needs to stop because it's driving me crazy. We're going to be fine. Apple's going to be fine. We've seen some really solid transitions in the last few years and this Cook to Ternus transition seems like it's probably going to be one of the smoother ones. And if they can transition CEO that easily, I think they're going to be fine on software and marketing.

Speaker 1:
[46:00] Unless they all retire on the same day. Then...

Speaker 2:
[46:03] That would be great.

Speaker 1:
[46:04] Oh man.

Speaker 2:
[46:05] Bloomberg would be so excited. That would be the greatest day of their life.

Speaker 1:
[46:09] Moving on. I am trying to think that has there ever been a point... I mean, I'm totally with you. I just wonder, has there ever been a point in Apple's history when a significant number of senior executives have left or moved on for any reason at around the same time? And I don't think there has been.

Speaker 2:
[46:25] Last year? Yeah, like November?

Speaker 1:
[46:29] Okay, Craig Pickering is still there, Phil Schiller is still there. Well, he's not doing a lot, Phil Schiller, okay.

Speaker 2:
[46:35] I'm not talking about that high.

Speaker 1:
[46:37] Oh, that's what I'm thinking.

Speaker 2:
[46:39] Yeah, one step lower, we lost the legal person and the environmental person. We lost a lot of vice presidents at once, and that was a heyday for Bloomberg. It was like trouble in paradise. Everyone hates Tim Cook, ah.

Speaker 1:
[46:52] And doesn't know he's going in a few weeks time. Are they all going, go.

Speaker 2:
[46:58] They forgot to mention that they were all retiring. They don't want to die at their desk, William. Tim Cook might have that goal.

Speaker 1:
[47:05] Why not? But come on.

Speaker 2:
[47:07] Have some pride.

Speaker 1:
[47:09] That is pride. Honestly, I have all of that. The only one that surprised me was Lisa Jackson because head of environment, Apple's doing this big thing for 2030. I suppose I'm thinking, took it for granted, she'd see that out. But you're right, they're still doing it, still going on. She did a great thing. She's doing whatever she does now. It happens. Yes.

Speaker 2:
[47:28] Here's my hot take. I'm going to have one hot take and we can get a couple of things to ask you.

Speaker 1:
[47:34] Yeah. Okay. Your hot take is?

Speaker 2:
[47:38] John Ternus is going to kill the iPhone full. That's it. That's the hot take. He's going to look at this thing and be like, why are we building this? Cancel that project. And Tim Cook's going to be like, go for it boss. And that's it. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[47:52] So, Ternus starts on September the 1st. The announcement is due anytime from like the 2nd week of September. He could do it. You're right. That's, that is. Well, remember you heard it here first and quite possibly last. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[48:08] It's not going to happen, but it's just fun. These hot takes are so silly.

Speaker 1:
[48:14] Oh, he could also kill off the Apple Vision Pro, couldn't he? I mean, why not? Let's get rid of it.

Speaker 2:
[48:18] I saw someone actually say opposite of that. They're like, maybe John Ternus will become CEO and make everyone understand what Apple Vision Pro is. He like built the thing. He was in charge of the division. It's okay. We're having fun here. I think it's going to be an interesting transition. I think it's going to be an interesting time for Apple. We just, as always, need to keep a cool head, dig through all of the manipulation and weird headlines and just understand that these things are going to happen. Apple did not find the fountain of youth. They did not invent a time machine. These people will die eventually. They have to retire. We have to move on. We have to move on. It's okay. It's okay.

Speaker 1:
[49:05] We do move on, but we step away from terror like this and go to something completely calm, normal, relaxing that is on my list of things to ask you about, which is just iOS 26.4.2 being released to stop the FBI accessing my messages and things. That's the headline I read. Is that actually what's going on?

Speaker 2:
[49:32] All right, so this is tricky. This is mildly political. I'm going to say a political thing. We're going to move on. So this story revolves around, I don't know if anyone listening, people in the United States might remember this story. There was a kerfuffle and someone's going to get mad at me for using that word to describe what happened at a ICE detention center where people were vandalizing the facility and setting off a bunch of fireworks. And one person brought a rifle and shot a police officer in the neck. It was a whole thing. And they were arrested and they were designated, this was their, they were really excited about this one. They were, they were designated Antifa, which is a made up terrorist organization by the Trump organization. It doesn't exist. It's an ideology. They don't, they don't exist. Anyway, they were designated that and this was going to court as this big deal and the FBI wanted to prove that first of all, there was a secret Antifa leader and collusion and all this stuff. So they got a hold of their iPhones and used a forensic tool and what, and that's a fancy way of saying they bought something from an Israeli firm, Celebrite probably or Grey Key, that allows them to break into iPhones as best as it can. Now, we talked about these things in the past. They're not like perfect hackers. What happens is they look for vulnerabilities. If you have the latest iPhone and the latest patch, it's going to get like nothing. It's going to get whatever is not encrypted on your device basically, loose notifications that haven't been deleted yet, and just scraps of data about time and place, GPS location type stuff. It gets almost nothing. The older you get and the older the OS version you get, the more they can crack and steal because they're using vulnerabilities, which Apple patches very quickly. It's one of the reasons why it's important to update your device. Well, they plugged in this phone that had the owner of the phone that was involved in this incident at an ICE facility, deleted signal off of their phone because they had used signal to communicate what their plans were. But the FBI was still able to get a lot of their conversation, even with the app deleted, because notification center, the notification system on iPhone, had stored basically plain data of the notifications of the messages coming in. Some of them might have been chopped off, and only said part of it, but it had the raw data of signal, even without the app installed, and they were able to recover information from that. And the FBI testified that that's what they had done in court.

Speaker 1:
[52:17] Except, hang on, would that data have been the actual messages or the Apple Intelligence summary? Because it could be ludicrously wrong, what's been taken by the FBI then.

Speaker 2:
[52:30] Well, the trick is the summary collapses the data, but the data is still there.

Speaker 1:
[52:36] Ah, okay, that was a funny thought, but all right.

Speaker 2:
[52:39] To be fair, this was a failure of two things. One, it was a bug, actually, in Apple's notification system. It's supposed to be deleting those notifications pretty quickly, especially as a part of the app bundle when the app is deleted. So something went wrong there, and things were being kept longer than they should have. Also, this is a failure of the signal user. They had a feature turned on in Settings, which you can still turn off, that allows notifications to be visible on the lock screen. You don't really want that from an encrypted messaging app that you're using for your secret communications.

Speaker 1:
[53:13] Turn that off. No wonder I can't be a criminal. I would never have thought of that, and it's so obvious now you've said it. Okay, yes.

Speaker 2:
[53:21] So you can actually set it up granularly in the Signal app and say, only show the name of the sender and not the message. But this person had the messages coming through as well.

Speaker 1:
[53:32] Sorry, I've got to tell you this because it's just flashback. I was once in a pub sitting opposite of them, it was a whole group of us. I worked out that this woman was having an affair because she kept getting texts from an unknown number. There was something furtive about it and it turned out she'd kept him as unknown so that nobody would spot it, and yet I worked it out in front of her. I felt quite sure like homesy at that point. But okay, yeah, and...

Speaker 2:
[53:56] So this shouldn't have happened. Now, okay, so to be clear, this isn't a story about Apple is trying to stop the government from solving crimes, right? That's not the story. That's how people might try to pitch it. But the story is, this is a security flaw that should not be there, and Apple patched it with iOS 2642. So now, those notification center system stuff should now be more robust and protected, and no longer able to be scraped by these forensic tools, and the data should be deleted when it's supposed to be. So that's been reinforced by Apple, and I'm sure the FBI doesn't like that. They never like anything to do with encryption, to be fair, because it does hinder their access to criminal devices. But as we've said before in the show, they were solving crimes before the iPhone. And I'm sure they can solve crimes after encryption, so.

Speaker 1:
[54:50] Perfect. There were these two more things. I said there were three things I wanted to ask you. One of them is really quick. One of them, I have a feeling might take a while. Let's see the quick one first. A 200 megapixel camera is coming to the iPhone, but not yet. And it might be later than people said before, though I don't remember when they said it would be before. Why do I care about a 200 megapixel camera?

Speaker 2:
[55:16] This came alongside another one, which I didn't put in the notes, of a curved aperture lens. So Apple obviously is just working on advancements for its camera systems. We've done quite a lot. It's hard to do more in the space that we have without making the phone into a DSLR basically. So one of the things that we can do is increase resolution, but you're not going to be taking a 200 megapixel photo. This is one of those Samsung Galaxy gimmicks that they have, where they do have an obnoxious, probably 200 megapixel. I know it's 100, but I'm sure some phone now is 200, where they pixel bend and they combine the pixels together to make one big pixel, basically, and that's what Apple would do here. They would bend it down to 24 or maybe they would increase to 30 or whatever the multiple would be for 200 megapixels. So it would definitely be bend and you would definitely be getting a normal 24 or 48 megapixel shot from this lens. It just means more pixels available to designate, you're going to be a focus pixel, you're going to be a light sensor, you're going to be long exposure, you're going to be short exposure, and that can all be a one cluster across the view of the lens and get this really dynamic computer manipulated, not manipulated, but what's the word Apple used to use? We haven't talked about it.

Speaker 1:
[56:44] Is it computational photography?

Speaker 2:
[56:45] Computational photography, we haven't talked about it in a while, but that's basically what it would be doing is combining multiple exposures and multiple frames. Maybe they might take a black and white shot with some of the pixels to get more texture information to recombine that back with the original image. There's a lot of really cool stuff you can do with computational photography, but that's what more megapixels would allow. Currently, the max on iPhone is 48 megapixels.

Speaker 1:
[57:13] Okay, so nice, but I shouldn't be distraught if it doesn't come out in the iPhone 18 Pro Max.

Speaker 2:
[57:22] It'll be cool when it happens and if it happens, these things are only going to get bigger. I'm sure there's a button somewhere, a raw mode that will let you take a 200 megapixel photo, which in reality means that you could print it on a billboard and it be the size of a billboard and it be visible, like 200 megapixels is gigantic. I remember buying a Sony camera and it was one of the first with like 60 megapixels and I was asking someone about it and they're like, oh yeah, this just means the dots per inch can be bigger more or less when you're printing and the resolution is bigger. So at 60 megapixels, that's basically like the size of a 20 foot poster on your wall. It's already just gigantic how big these things can get. Think about it like this, a 4K television is basically the equivalent of a 12 megapixel photo. A 65 inch 4K television is a 12 megapixel photo. Yeah, so it's enormous. Yeah, gigantic images.

Speaker 1:
[58:27] Yeah, it's made me think, yeah, it'll come or it won't. The thing I thought would take longer is because it involves the Apple Vision Pro. This is another one where I only know the headline. Actually, if you don't know the story either, this could be shorter than I think. Star Wars, I presume it's the Mandalorian film, whatever the latest Star Wars movie is. They have saved some money by using Apple Vision Pro. Instead of what? I don't know. Do you?

Speaker 2:
[58:55] I wrote the story, John Favreau. I really like this guy. All right. Go watch Chef. If you like movies, go watch the movie Chef. It is just a- I'll go read the script. It will read the script. It will just make you happy. It will just make you happy. It is a happy film. Go watch Chef. It will make you hungry too. But yes, John Favreau, actor turned director. You might know him as Happy from the Marvel franchise. He was Iron Man's assistant. Then he started directing Marvel movies. It's great. He also stepped in and started directing Mandalorian. He is also the director of the Lion King remake that was kind of quote unquote live action. It was just CGI. But anyway, he has always been of the opinion that technology should amplify how we can make film. And one of the examples of that is in Lion King, obviously a CGI film made on computers. How do you direct a movie that doesn't exist, right? In Pixar and stuff like that, you just see it on a computer screen. Well, he kind of leaned into the idea of putting on a VR headset. At the time, it would have been an Oculus Rift and there was the other one that's escaping me. But he was wearing these.

Speaker 1:
[60:13] No, no, no.

Speaker 2:
[60:15] No one ever used those. So he would wear these headsets and be inside of a virtual studio and direct where the animals should go and how they should be interacting from previs. And that was a really cool way to do that. Well, when he started directing Mandalorian, they're making it, I don't know if you know this, William, I'm sure the listeners might, if they watch Star Wars, it's a green room. It's not even a green screen. It's just a giant, yeah, it's a giant felt room with nothing in it except some boxes to use as props and furniture. And the actors are in full dress, the guys there in the Mandalorian armor, and then the aliens in a mocap suit, right? And they're just on this green stage of nothing and they're performing the entire of everything, Tatooine, green room, the bar scene, green room, doesn't matter. It's just the same stage. It is amazing the actors can do this at all. I don't understand how they can pull it off.

Speaker 1:
[61:25] Hang on a second, Star Wars famously used green screens for everything and that was just impossible. How did you ever know where to go? The Mandalorian, the TV show, used this thing called the volume, which was this wall of LED screens, which was actually showing things on it for you to react against and it was affecting the lion stuff. Is the film not doing that?

Speaker 2:
[61:44] Well, so my bad, I might be confusing it with something else. My understanding is it's a virtual set, so maybe I misunderstood.

Speaker 1:
[61:54] Different types of virtual set, but yes, it certainly isn't real. Yes.

Speaker 2:
[61:58] So in any case, it's still difficult to film and frame on a virtual set if it's green screen or the dot matrix that you're talking about. Whatever they're using here, the point of the matter is Favreau is sitting in his director's chair, can't really view how it's going to be seen at the end result. In television, it's easier because the camera can be connected to a TV, and he can look at the monitor and say, oh, that's what it's going to look like. Mandalorian Grogu is being filmed in IMAX. There's no such thing as an IMAX television. IMAX is a very specific format. So the only way to see IMAX is in an IMAX theater. Now, he's not going to stop the film, grab the copy, drive down to the nearest IMAX theater and watch it to see if he got it right. Instead, he's got the Apple Vision Pro with a custom app that lets him view the footage on an IMAX screen in a virtual theater.

Speaker 1:
[63:02] Oh, I see. Right, right, I've got you. Finally, that makes sense. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[63:06] Sorry, it took me a minute to get there.

Speaker 1:
[63:08] So, what's cool about this? Now, I signed the Finch idea. What could it possibly be for it? But now, I get that. Thank you. Okay. That's good. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[63:15] And the reason why this is saving money, and he was on a podcast called The Town, and we've discussed it before, a good show. He was describing basically the problem with filming, you know, obviously making these visually intensive movies is expensive, CGI is expensive. But one of the most expensive things about filming is getting the shot and then throwing it away because it wasn't the right framing. So, he's basically saying everything that ends up on the cutting room floor, whether it's a deleted scene that they didn't use or something that wasn't filmed correctly or needed reshoots, that is all actually much more expensive than just making the film itself. So, the Vision Pro lets him frame the shot properly for IMAX, see how it's going to be seen by the audience and allows them to grab the shot immediately. And he says the only thing that takes away from is when you do have to do a reshoot, you've already been in the seat, looking at all the footage from every angle. And so, when you walk into the reshoot, you know the exact angle and frame and direction that you need to give, allowing you to get the perfect shot. So, it does take away from that aspect of it, but being able to see it pre-vis and all of that on Apple Vision Pro gives him the ability to kind of skip all those steps and arrive at the final shot without having to reshoot.

Speaker 1:
[64:46] I mean, we could talk a lot about that because there are other reasons to delete a scene than it doesn't work and you don't know until you see the thing as a whole for it. Then, what's his name? Eddie something, you edit the Mission Impossible films. He's talking about taking out individual frames to tighten up the dialogue for it. There's all sorts of things going on, which is riveting. But another point of view, I'm fascinated by that. Okay. But that was it for the type of things we want to talk about for the day. But there is also an issue. I understand you. Am I right that you have some reviews to read out this time? I'm not sure.

Speaker 2:
[65:22] Right. So if you have enjoyed our show or maybe you hate our show or want to tell us an opinion or share a tip or anything like that, the best way to do it is Apple Podcasts because we check that every week for new reviews. You can leave as many stars as you feel like. We like the criticism, we like the compliments. So this week we have two new reviews. First is, I should have read this name before. I tried to read it live on the show. Krishna Cant, I guess, maybe I'm off 26. Five stars. Will they really call this iPhone Fold? They're skeptical they're going to call it an iPhone at all. It could be a whole new category between iPhone and iPad. They suggest it's an iPhone Fold, maybe. It's not going to be called iPhone Fold. As we've said before, it's a placeholder. I think it's going to be an iPhone because if they call it anything else, let's say a Newton, it's just not going to sell because it doesn't have the buying power. Clearly, they're going for iPhone because if you look at the dummy models, the shape and size is very iPhone specific. So, it will be some kind of iPhone. It's just what is its name. I don't think it's going to be Ultra, but we'll see what they do here.

Speaker 1:
[66:46] The iPhone Neo, well, no, that wouldn't fit. The iPhone William, I could wear any of these really, but okay, not that long till we find out now, I suppose six months or something like that. Seems, you say that and suddenly it seems longer. But okay, I'm sure you're right. It won't be called the iPhone Fold, but that's gonna be all right now.

Speaker 2:
[67:05] It won't be called anything, William, because it's not gonna come out.

Speaker 1:
[67:08] Because John Ternus is gonna stop it. You're right.

Speaker 2:
[67:10] This is gonna cancel it.

Speaker 1:
[67:11] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[67:12] You guys have to understand, whatever is gonna happen is gonna happen. Okay. Okay, we're not that, we're not, we don't have a bet on it or anything. Maybe we should put some money down on it. Okay, so CrosbySW has returned. He's our young listener. The true Apple Insider Podcast fan has returned five stars. So they mention Tim Cook stepping down and Ternus taking over. Obviously, having built Vision Pro from the ground up, he knows what happened and why it didn't land. Is he going to finally fix it now that he's in charge of the entirety of the company? Or does he quietly move on? And if the Vision Pro 2 flops, is it his fault or Cook's? So a couple of questions here. I think, first off, Apple Vision Pro was made under his watch. Doesn't matter if he was the vice president or CEO. He had the say before it made it to Tim Cook. So I think, not even though he's on a higher rung of the ladder, he's still the guy who made the decision. So it's fully on him. How that thing is or does or what it is as a product. And I don't think he's going to suddenly change it because he's CEO. He was the one who decided what it was going to be well before it made it to Tim Cook's desk, more or less. So I don't think that's going to change.

Speaker 1:
[68:35] Oh, there is a government precedent for this. And I mean all governments everywhere. If it's a failure, it was Cook's fault. If it's a success, it's Ternus's. That's how it will play. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[68:46] Yes, of course. What was this story about write two letters? I'm going to make a reference that only three people are going to understand.

Speaker 1:
[68:58] And I appear to be not one of them, but I'm intrigued. Okay, go for it.

Speaker 2:
[69:01] Yeah, I'm completely forgetting the whole anecdote, but someone came into power, Congress or president or something, and they were told, you know, what do you do? And it's like, oh, well, you write two letters. When you give to yourself after your first mistake, you read it. And then after your second mistake, it's for your successor. So anyway, it's a point of sight. The Vision Pro 2, I don't think it's, well, okay. So first off, we have disagreed on whether or not Apple Vision Pro is a flop. Commercial success is arguable, right? That's a different term. Is it commercially successful? I would argue no, but I don't think that was the intention. Was a flop depends on Apple's success metrics. I think it did what it needed to do, so I don't consider it a flop. I don't think Apple does either. Vision Pro 2, flopping or not, I think mostly depends on what it's targeted as, and we won't know that until it's announced. But whose fault is it? It's still Ternus. I think he was the guy in charge of the development of the first one. He will be higher on the rung, but him and Srouji and those guys under Srouji, they're making the calls, and at the end of the day, Apple is a group of people, and the buck doesn't stop at one person. I think it's just one of those things where if it fails, everyone's going to blame Ternus or whatever. But I think it's more complicated than that. But I also don't think it's going to fail. I think this next iteration, and the reason why it's taking so long is because Apple wants it to be more inexpensive and lighter. And if they can check both of those boxes with the next release, even if it's $2,500, I think we'll have, we'll see the future of the product in this release, so.

Speaker 1:
[71:06] So, Wesley, if someone else wants to give us a lovely review, how do they contact us? And if they don't, how do they contact you? If they want to do a bad review, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[71:17] So, of course, Apple Podcasts, if you leave reviews other places, we're not going to see them. We don't check those because there's too many. But yes, Apple Podcasts, just go, even if you don't use Apple Podcasts, if you're on Overcast, you can go to Apple Podcasts, leave a review, and then just close out.

Speaker 1:
[71:33] And on the way again, yes, smash and grab reviews, okay.

Speaker 2:
[71:36] Yeah, so it's totally fine. We don't care if you use Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 1:
[71:40] It's worth it for good reviews, though, isn't it? Definitely, that's why you should do it for the...

Speaker 2:
[71:44] So you can email me, wesappleinsider.com. You can also find me on blueskyhilli.tech, Macedon Hillitech, easy to get to. My blog, of course, is out there. You can reach out, tell us what you think of the show. I get a lot of good emails, get good questions from the emails. I've had a few like purchasing conversations and things like that happen there. Always happy to hear from our listeners and what you think of the show. And if you have any pitches for topics or Apple Insider Plus, we're always happy to hear those. But William, back to you. Where can people stalk you on the Internet?

Speaker 1:
[72:20] Well, actually, they can't. Nobody can. Not for the next week or so, because I'm going to be away next week. But other than that, you can. You know, I mean, it'll just take even longer than usual. If you try me on William at appleinsider.com, or there will be another YouTube 58 Keys video if I get it done in time before I have to leave. There's been a new 58 Keys every Wednesday night for six years unbroken. So there'll be one this time, but it's a bit tight this time. So if you email me, I won't notice because I'll be busy doing that. But then I'll be back next week. It will be you next week. But also, are you able to say who's going to be trying to step in to replace me, as if such a thing is possible?

Speaker 2:
[73:01] It should be Mike Wuerthele unless someone Yeah, I think he'll manage. randomly falls out of the sky. Yeah. So it'll be our boss, our editor, Mike Wuerthele. He's great. I might have to have a couple of leaps at the ready, but it'll be fun. We'll see where the news takes us over the next week and what topics we cover.

Speaker 1:
[73:19] Yeah, I'll definitely be listening even if I'm not here. But that's next week. As for this week, thank you very much everybody for listening. Thank you too to our sponsors Masterclass and Claude by Anthropic. If you didn't hear anything from Masterclass or Claude by Anthropic, it's because you're a subscriber to Apple Insider Plus. In which case, hang on just one moment, we'll be back with more. If you're not, if you did hear them, but you'd like to not, I mean nothing, I'm insulting Masterclass and Claude. If you would like to hear the extended Apple Insider Plus, remember you can always join us through Apple Podcast subscriptions or through Patreon. Either way you do it, it'll be a treat to have you there. But in the meantime, otherwise, well, I won't be back next week, but we will. The show will be with whatever's going on. In this quiet world of Apple where it's just the silly dead season, the middle of the year, nothing going on. I think things will crop up, but speak to you sometime. And like we promised, we're back. Well, actually, it's me, I promised it we're back, but so is Wes. Wes, as ever, I love the fact that you come up with so many Apple Insider Plus ideas. Even saying so many sounds like I do any of them. You always do, and I really like them. This time, truly can't imagine what put this in your head at all. But can you just remind us what strange, esoteric, unimaginable topic you think we could talk about this week?

Speaker 2:
[74:40] To be fair, I put the show notes together the night before, and the topics for Apple Insider Plus just kind of arrive. If they make sense, because it's like we do with Apple Insider Plus, we don't want it to be topical. Like we don't want to talk about the weather, the outside, and it become immediately irrelevant. But I try to find these kind of evergreen topics.

Speaker 1:
[75:02] Just because you said weather. Well, one thing, I think you're actually being very self-deprecating there. I've tried to think of ideas the day before. You've always come up with something better before me. But because you said it the weather, I've got to say, I'm actually facing out of our window. It's sunshine out there. One of the neighbor's kids has been bouncing up and down on a trampoline. And it's like, that's summer already. When was I last on a trampoline? Yeah. And yet it isn't.

Speaker 2:
[75:28] Oh, God, no. A trampoline would probably, every bone on my body would just shatter if I touched one. That's true.

Speaker 1:
[75:35] But I'm sorry, back to you. You come up with good ideas. This is an unusually topical one for us, but not dependent on the topicality.

Speaker 2:
[75:43] No, no, no. Again, this is still evergreen, even if it's topical. That's kind of our whole game here. It's Tim Cook's legacy. What will represent Tim Cook as we go forward a year from now, 10 years from now, 50 years from now? What are we going to be talking about when we talk about Tim Cook? Because he has been CEO for 15-ish years and-

Speaker 1:
[76:07] Longest one so far, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[76:10] He's surpassed Steve Jobs barely by a couple hundred days. So, it's interesting. So, let's start first off. What is Steve Jobs' legacy?

Speaker 1:
[76:24] His fashion sense?

Speaker 2:
[76:26] Turtlenecks.

Speaker 1:
[76:28] Yeah. I think, is this going too far? The idea of obsessive concern about detail, which actually I've read quotes from John Ternus, exhibiting exactly the same thing, having a post-midnight argument with the supplier with a number of grooves in a screw in a particular screen, and even him thinking, what am I doing? But I'm carrying on doing it. That feels like the embodiment of Steve Jobs, the determination to get the detail right at all costs, even if it's other people paying the cost for it.

Speaker 2:
[77:02] I think Steve Jobs' legacy is complicated. I think a part of it is, he is the perfect embodiment of the realization of the American dream, the child of an immigrant rising up to found a company that becomes one of the greatest in the world, right? Like, it is, you couldn't do better in a Hollywood studio. Like, this story is magnificent and grand in a lot of ways. And there's a reason why people still kind of worship the guy, it was weird as it sounds. And because he was kind of a big deal. Like, he may not have put hand to tools all the time, but he was definitely aware of how the world viewed this technology and how it needed to be presented in order for it to become successful. It's not as if Microsoft couldn't have built a Mac. It's not as if these things couldn't have existed anywhere else. It's just he saw all these separate pieces laying around and was able to put them together in the right order at the right time. And it's really hard to have that kind of vision. So I would definitely say Steve Jobs legacy is one of a visionary and not so much an inventor, but just someone who can take an idea and make it concrete and make it something people actually want. And that is such a hard thing to follow up. Tim Cook, his legacy when he stepped in, if nothing else happened, if Steve Jobs was still alive today and we wanted to talk about, and Tim Cook was retiring or whatever, cause he's 65, as the chief operating officer, what would Tim Cook's legacy be today? And that would be China. But here's the weird thing, and I was talking about it in the main show and I want to talk about it here. China didn't happen by accident, it didn't happen in a vacuum, and it wasn't because of Tim Cook. So if Tim Cook didn't exist, Apple and China's relationship would still be very similar. But Tim Cook being the man he is and hired in the return of Steve Jobs and put into that position, he was able to see the importance of this expanded manufacturing. And the whole thing of basically he was one of the key components behind logistical training on site at Chinese facilities to ensure that they could build what Apple needed.

Speaker 1:
[79:48] Oh, I didn't know that, okay, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[79:49] Right, right, well, so again, he is not the singular man behind this. It's not like he woke up one day and said, you know, there's a lot of land in China that could use some factories, right? Go read the Apple in China book, it's excellent. There's a lot in there that you may or may not know. I hate to keep promoting that book, but really, I'm reading it right now, so it's on top of mind. I'm almost done, finally. But what's interesting about Cook is, yes, he was a logistics guy. He helped create the modern supply chain for better or for worse. One of the worst things that we will always remember Tim Cook for is also China, because at the same time that we're ramping up iPod, then iPhone, then Mac production, we're seeing a very strong change in culture in China, and Tim Cook didn't do that, but sadly we made the wrong bet. A lot of American industry made the wrong bet. They saw this democratization of their country, of their people, and then I finally remember Gigi Ping steps in and says, no, I'm just going to be president for life, and turns it into a full qualified on the democracy scale dictatorship authoritarian regime. And you can definitely read it in the tea leaves, you can definitely look back and see it happening, but at the time people thought China was becoming more democratic over the course of the late 90s, early 2000s. So it didn't seem at the time like a bad idea to invest in a country that was coming out of nowhere, and Cook really clamped down on that because the idea is how do you go from a few hundred thousand to a few hundred million devices?

Speaker 1:
[81:52] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[81:54] You need the plants, you need the people, and there was a lot of, again, there's a lot of moving parts behind this, but Tim Cook building that supply chain, 1000% will always be his legacy. Even as CEO, we've seen the results across the 2010s, even as China became more authoritarian and required Apple to make decisions they didn't want to make in order to continue operating in that country, like removing VPN apps from the app store, because China was so necessary for Apple, mandatory for the company. But at the same time, we see Apple revolutionizing the idea of operating in a different country with different values and different laws and different rules, different societal ideas. Apple was one of the only companies and pioneered having these, what's the word, investigators basically, go to these plants on a regular routine basis and make sure there were any child labor or slave labor involved in making iPhones. Problem is, it was very easy to defeat that system, and China got good at avoiding Apple's irer, even though politically speaking, it was awful to find out that at some places and some factories, which Apple slowly disowned and got separated from, but there was underage people working at these things or they were exceeding over time working way over the 50 hour week guidelines Apple had set. So it was complicated and it was difficult for Apple to deal with this different culture. But Tim Cook was one of the primary reasons why they succeeded. We saw what happened with COVID, even though China was virtually wrecked by this horrific thing that happened to the rest of the world, Apple continued on almost unfazed. Maybe we had a one month delay on one iPhone. That was the most significant thing we can say about COVID. For Apple, that is the strongest part of Tim Cook's legacy, I think. Do you think there's anything stronger or higher than that?

Speaker 1:
[84:16] Well, I can think of things that he would say, but I'm just examining. You talk about the logistics and the build up of the industry. You're not really saying that Tim Cook's legacy is political. How he dealt with China, how he now deals with the US.

Speaker 2:
[84:33] That's a negative. I'm focusing more on positive. We'll get to the negative parts of his legacy.

Speaker 1:
[84:38] You can argue that one either way. There was always been this thing that Steve Jobs wouldn't have been that political, but I think he never needed to be.

Speaker 2:
[84:49] Jobs chose Tim Cook and he's the one who okayed most of the China transition. China happened under Jobs.

Speaker 1:
[84:56] No, absolutely and didn't Barack Obama asked, President Obama asked Steve Jobs about the iPhone coming back and Jobs just said, no, it's never going to happen. It can't happen.

Speaker 2:
[85:09] There's literally zero chance we could build it in the United States for a million reasons. Go read the book, guys.

Speaker 1:
[85:18] But a positive thing of Tim Cook's legacy, the way he would see it, actually, this is what I will always remember is how clever he is. I've said this before. If you're asking a question he doesn't want to answer, or he wants to change it, he will begin with this variation on the way I see it is, and then go off another line. The way he would see his legacy, yeah. Although he explicitly denies that, but he is. The way he would see this is that his legacy would clearly be health. He's hinted at that before. This week's town hall, he talked about what it was like getting the first notification from somebody that the Apple Watch has saved their life and things. He would say health and he's not wrong. Health has become this giant part of Apple that it surely wasn't before. I don't remember health stuff in Jobs' time.

Speaker 2:
[86:09] Yes. Health is, I would say, I put it at number two because one begets the other. Apple can't be the monolith health company without the iPhone, and the iPhone can't be the iPhone without China. So I still stand by his biggest legacy going into the next decade, 100 years of Apple until, I don't know, the sun explodes or Apple goes out of business, that the logistics of building all of these devices that people want is Tim Cook's legacy. Someone else could step in and ruin that, world conflict could ruin that, China could ruin that. There's so many ways this could get ruined. But the last 20 years, man, it is definitely from him arriving at Apple to him leaving Apple, that what he built, whether it falls apart later because of other unforeseen circumstances, what he built will always be legendary. But I do think the Apple health aspect of this, Apple Watch specifically, is huge. Because nobody wants to talk about China, that's business stuff, supply chain, boring, scary stuff. So, yeah, if you want the poster child of Tim Cook of like, put him on a billboard, what does it say? It's Tim Cook built an apple that saves lives. And I think that is true. That isn't exceptionalism or exaggeration.

Speaker 1:
[87:38] No, I agree.

Speaker 2:
[87:39] That is true. And I think that as much as there is flaw and as much as there is, what's the word, cynicism, you know, business, right? Because also healthcare is expensive and makes a lot of money. So getting into healthcare is lucrative. Making hearing aids is lucrative, right? Getting that glucose monitor and Apple watch is lucrative. So it's not that, you know, it's without reason but I see these people, I hear them talk. I hear, I see the business operate and I believe them. It's not that it's not about the bloody ROI. I believe them.

Speaker 1:
[88:22] Yes. That is, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[88:24] Yeah. About the future and health.

Speaker 1:
[88:28] I think you can hear me thinking about this. Let me try to focus this. I agree that health is an amazing part of Apple now, and I agree that it came under his watch. But is there not an argument that it's almost accidental, that the Apple watch was thought to be a fashion thing and then turned out to be health? So that's where they went and pursued it.

Speaker 2:
[88:51] Kind of. To be fair, Apple watch, from the moment it was announced, had three pillars, health and fitness, social and fashion. Turns out social and fashion, not so much.

Speaker 1:
[89:05] That's true.

Speaker 2:
[89:07] They started out with health and fitness as a center example of Apple watch. They didn't realize it was the whole thing. They thought it was a part of a whole. I think once they realized what they had, they doubled down and pursued it and it made the most sense. Now, AirPods have heart rate sensors and I think we'll see more health products and more health integrations. I fully believe WWDC this year is going to have a very big health component to it. It's time for health to get a big component to it.

Speaker 1:
[89:45] I think it's becoming one of the things that Apple has to do. You know, without question, always the iPhone launch will increase some camera improvement. They will never not do something for it. And WWDC will always open with how many they've sold and everything's great and good morning and all that stuff. But health is in there. Services now seems to be in there as well. In some ways, it's nothing, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[90:11] Android might have finally cloned this, I don't know. But on an iPhone, paramedics are now trained that if they're saving someone with an iPhone, that they can swipe to the left or cancel the Apple animation or emergency contact. There's a button you press and it opens a card that lets you see the health information about the individual. Apple introduced legacy contact, which allows you to pass on your Apple devices when you die, so people can log in to them and access your information as needed.

Speaker 1:
[90:43] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[90:46] Health monitoring, fall detection, crash detection, SOS via satellite, it goes way beyond just heart rate. Health isn't just about being healthy and eating right, it's about surviving and emergencies. Apple has been tackling every aspect of this through its devices, and it's fascinating to me. Like the eye stuff that they're doing with Apple Vision Pro, nobody talks about, but that is going to be incredible the more that they get to work on it because-

Speaker 1:
[91:19] The gaze detection and eye tracking kind of thing. So do you mean is there a health, eye health component with Apple Vision Pro?

Speaker 2:
[91:27] One of the things that you do when you go to the doctor, an eye doctor, is they can see if you have cataracts, they can see into the back, into the side of your eye. Well, when you're wearing Apple Vision Pro, it's shining a giant bright screen into your face. What's to prevent them from using analytics to figure out if you've got a problem and warn you about it?

Speaker 1:
[91:48] Goodness. Like, actually, really, that puts me off wearing one, a bright light in your face. But okay, yes.

Speaker 2:
[91:56] It's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting that Apple, I think health is going to be very important. I don't think they're going to be prescribing drugs or anything, but I do think Apple would benefit from having a prescription service, you know? Like, could you imagine if Apple bought good Rx, or what if they got one of the telehealth doctor companies, right? I don't think there's any limits to what Apple could do in this space, fitness included.

Speaker 1:
[92:31] Right. I don't know what good Rx is. To me, Rx means reception, recording kind of thing, but that's prescriptions.

Speaker 2:
[92:39] So good Rx is a prescription company in the United States. You can download an app, and it will tell you how to get generics or lower priced prescriptions. Not an ad, just a cool thing you can have. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[92:51] Excellent. Okay. But you said then about doctors and things. Didn't we report in the last few months that Apple has actually recorded video of doctors doing things and I don't know if it's delayed or stopped or whatever. But that sounds-

Speaker 2:
[93:07] That's still coming. It's going to be part of Apple Health. What was formerly going to be Apple Health Plus, it's going to be a part of a free program, apparently they don't want to charge for Apple Health. I think maybe Q or one of them realized like, hey, if we're going to do this in health, we shouldn't be charging a subscription fee or putting it behind a paywall. It's that important to Apple, again. But they did film Doctors and basically the idea is, when you interact with Apple's upcoming AI integration, chat tool, whatever, and ask it questions about your Apple Health data, it will reference real human beings instead of giving you a generated output. Basically, it's machine learning-esque because it's not using a decision tree but it's going to arrive at a deterministic result. It will never just spit out, well, this reading means this, which is a mistake a lot of other companies have like open AI, integrating with your Apple Health is the worst thing you could ever do. Imagine opening WebMD and then giving it Apple Health data, you probably have seven types of cancer or something. Instead, Apple Health would be directing you to a pre-recorded or pre-written and certified by a doctor item based on your health data, and I think that's interesting.

Speaker 1:
[94:32] Okay. I mean, we took some politics, we talked about logistics and health. Is there anything else that's like I say or?

Speaker 2:
[94:40] Good. So we got to get to the bad. So good side.

Speaker 1:
[94:43] I was trying to dodge that, but okay. Yes. I know where this is going. Yes.

Speaker 2:
[94:48] Yeah. Good side is logistics in China and supply chain, clearly. Good side is Apple Health and Apple Watch and AirPods. I think those all like wearables and health, two different categories, but two sides of the same coin. You can't have health without wearables. You can't have wearables without health. I think wearables without health are useless, and nobody's going to buy them, is my point. So they feed on each other, and I think wearables, the revolution of that has been led by Apple. There were wireless earbuds before AirPods, but now there are AirPods, and there were smartwatches before Apple Watch, and now there's Apple Watch. Right? So that's how the world has evolved around those things. And I think Tim Cook played a significant role in that. Apple Watch was not mentioned in front of Steve Jobs. 2012 was the first time they had a meeting about Apple Watch, to be clear. So this is one of those things.

Speaker 1:
[95:49] There's a tiny dispute about that because there was a patent from a couple of years before. And Johnny and I have been a little inconsistent over when it started. But the official line, you're absolutely right, is Steve Jobs was gone. What do we do next?

Speaker 2:
[96:01] So well, I think Apple Watch being bred from the Gen 6 iPod Nano makes sense that that was the ultimate conclusion. It did arrive from a product Jobs introduced. And so he might have been privy to the idea of making a watch. Yeah, the earlier prototypes of Apple Watch are basically just a Gen 6 iPod Nano. Yeah, so because I used to wear a Gen 6 iPod Nano as a watch. You could clip it on a band on your wrist. And there were watch faces you could use built into the operating system.

Speaker 1:
[96:33] Oh, okay. Now that I didn't know. I knew that you'd done it. I knew people did, but I didn't know about the watch faces. Oh, I missed that there.

Speaker 2:
[96:39] It would turn off. Yeah, it would turn off, but they were there. So anyway, another point for Tim Cook. I think the iPhone would not be what it is today if jobs were still in charge. We would have a very different iPhone, I think, and for better or for worse. Apple chasing down phablets, was it an inevitability or was it a call? I think it was a call and I think Tim Cook made it. The iPhone 6 and the super cycle, as it's called, was a direct result of having the ability to make that call. Again, if Cook is this indecisive person and Ternus is more decisive, show me the evidence because iPhone 6 clearly was a call. But it's harder to define, but I'll conclude the good section with the bad section, because again, this is two sides of the same coin. I think Cook's ability to navigate political issues have been exceptional.

Speaker 1:
[97:55] Yes. At some cost, but yes.

Speaker 2:
[97:59] But this is where we get to the bad part. People are angry, they're emotional and upset, and I don't think they can see past the actions to see the results.

Speaker 1:
[98:13] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[98:14] So it doesn't matter what Cook accomplished, all they see is what he did, and that will forever color his legacy. Because it's not that he saved Apple from an authoritarian regime and its illegal tariffs, and the threat of reprisal. It's not that Cook saved us from that, it's not that he participated in a presidential kissing butt campaign. So that is how people see it. And I think that is incorrect. I think that is the tabloid version of this story. It's surface level. It doesn't go past what... It doesn't get into the reality of the situation. And I disagree with it, but it doesn't matter what I think. The public chooses how to talk about something, and the public is going to decide to look at this and say, Tim Cook was a authoritarian sycophant. And that is going to, I think, damage, sadly, his reputation going forward.

Speaker 1:
[99:27] I see the point. Even a few weeks ago, I would have completely agreed. I found the Melania screening was the thing too far for me, but I still don't see it as an overall dismissal of his legacy. I see it as something I object to, something I think was wrong, something I dislike. But it doesn't color everything else. And up to that point, it was, it is nonsense that he has to go through this, but he did go through it to save Apple for it. But yeah, I'm emotional about that.

Speaker 2:
[100:01] He was a sacrificial lamb. He was a sacrificial lamb.

Speaker 1:
[100:04] Yes, and he will continue to be so until the end of this administration, at least. So, executive in charge of Trump, might as well be the title. Yes.

Speaker 2:
[100:13] It's a tough situation to deal with. We saw it with China. We saw it with other authoritarian states. Apple has to make tough calls in order to do business. And I don't think, I wish the world wasn't the way it was. And I wish that there weren't certain things that were necessary that are. And I think that the alternative to what Cook did is there's two options. They ignore Trump, do business as usual, and get punished because of the ignoring, and basically absorb the entire brunt of the illegal tariffs and other regulatory action that would be taken against Apple as a response to their inaction to participating in Trump's game or whatever. Or B, they use the full might and power of Apple's financial and legal system to try and sue the president every minute of every day for the entirety of the four-year presidency. But as a result, have even more political action taken against them and ultimately ruin what is otherwise a great company because the political action would ultimately probably replace what we know of Apple is today and turn it into something that we don't want. Either, I think both of those might, like someone's like, yeah, political action. Apple should go to war. People said the same about China, that Apple should basically overthrow the government or whatever. And it's just like, that is not their job. And it is also not Apple's job or Tim Cook's job to get rid of, to push Donald Trump out of office. It's not their job. Well, so I think what he had to do here, as gross as it is, and I will admit it's gross and dirty and wrong and corrupt and terrible. I think it was the necessary thing to do, to ensure Apple stay out of it. And they have.

Speaker 1:
[102:25] How about this? How long do you think it will be before the first book about Tim Cook's legacy comes out? And do you think it will have to be written by Walter Isaacson, who did such a bad job with Steve Jobs?

Speaker 2:
[102:36] He already wrote it. I mean, come on, that thing's going to get published next week. I don't know. I think we have some really good definitive Apple histories right now. I don't. I'm going to keep saying it. Y'all are going to get tired of it. We don't need a Tim Cook book. Go read the Apple in China book. That is the Tim Cook. But in all seriousness, I would like to read something about Cook's life and legacy, but I don't know who's going to do it justice because he's such a private person. There's no one to talk to. We've got all the stories. We've talked to everyone. I don't think there's anything to uncover. We know what we're going to know about him.

Speaker 1:
[103:17] True. So far out of all of the CEOs that Apple has had, two of them have written books and they're both dreadful. They are so self-serving. Gil Amelio's one, My 500 Days in the Firing Line, something like, no, The Firing Line, My 500 Days at Apple. It's a better read than John Scully's Odyssey. Even the title Odyssey is over the top for it.

Speaker 2:
[103:39] It's awful.

Speaker 1:
[103:40] But Amelio is very self-serving and very contradictory. There's one point where he is explicitly criticizing something Steve Jobs did at an event. But there's a video of the event and the account is totally wrong. So it's just self-serving, no fact-checking, things like that. I hope Tim Cook wouldn't do that, but I'd love to know what his writing style is like.

Speaker 2:
[104:06] I think the most personal thing we've seen from Cook is his thank you letter. So go read that.

Speaker 1:
[104:14] Also, when he came out, whenever that was, he wrote, I can't remember which newspaper it was. That was good. Well, he chose to come out in order to demonstrate that even someone like the head of Apple can be gay for it.

Speaker 2:
[104:30] After it was leaked.

Speaker 1:
[104:31] Somebody needs it. I didn't know it was leaked. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[104:34] Yeah, he was forced out, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[104:36] I know he was desperately private about it, and why wouldn't he be? It's his life. But he made good of it, I thought. So he did the right thing.

Speaker 2:
[104:48] Cook feels like an autobiography kind of guy, and I would like to see it at least once from a CEO at Apple that would make good use of his time. We see the Steve Jobs archive. There isn't going to be a Tim Cook archive. I think Cook talking about himself would be very difficult, but I think he's a legacy kind of guy though. I think he's going to want to leave something. He's very thoughtful about his family and his nephew that he pays to go through college and how he wants to make sure his riches are going to the right things. And I wonder if he wants his ideas to be left behind too. And that would be my pitch is I think Cook's going to do something in that field. But he's got so much time ahead of him. He's 65 and very healthy. We got a long time with Cook yet, so we'll see how that goes. But I think Apple is what it is today because of Tim Cook, for better or for worse.

Speaker 1:
[105:46] No question. Yes.

Speaker 2:
[105:49] I heard a person who is outside of the tech field talk about Apple the other day because the news broke and everyone's going to talk about it. And they were just like, I don't like Tim Cook. I went and bought an Android phone, and I've been using the same one for six years because this is all anyone ever needs. But for whatever reason, the capitalistic regime of Apple under Tim Cook has forced everyone to believe that they need to upgrade every year, and that's evil and wrong. And I'm just listening to it. And they were being purposefully loud and obtuse because it was for entertainment, it was for a show. But I do hear those kinds of sentiments echoed from time to time, and I always find them very amusing because it's not that these people are convincing us of anything. It's that these things are what people want and they spend the money on it. At the end of the day, I think Cook created the Apple that it needed to be. It brought it to more people than ever before. There's a lot of people who mourn the Apple of old, but the Apple of old was exclusive and kind of full of itself. And I think the Apple of today is much more inclusive and available. Look at the MacBook Neo. And if we can get past the political nonsense, because the whole world needs to get past the political nonsense, and I don't think we will until someone's out of office, but if we can get past that, I think the good will far outweigh anything bad that can be brought up about Cook. And I mean, look at Apple. It's one of the only companies left in Silicon Valley that has values, that celebrates Pride Months, that has DEI programs, that...

Speaker 1:
[107:40] Just what I was thinking, DEI, yes.

Speaker 2:
[107:43] You know, they still, they don't do product red anymore, but I think Apple still donates to the program, and the African donations too, that they do with their Black History Month Pride Band kind of thing that they do. Like, they have so many causes and things. I believe them when they say that they want to leave the world a better place. The actions they're taking show that they actually care. Their actions in AI and their ethical nature of everything that they do and the stances they take on privacy, that's all under Cook. And like the battle with the FBI, right? Like, that was under Cook. And I think, if Ternus, the best thing Ternus can do is be himself, but continue those fights. So I want to conclude on one question here, and this might be a bit out of left field, but we discussed it in the show. Do you think there's anything to people? Let me phrase it this way. Tim Cook was a gay man, and he came out, like I said, he was forced out, but he came out and kind of pointed to, hey, I can be CEO of Apple, anything is possible. And that was a very powerful message, and it was true for his whole time as CEO. How do we feel about John Ternus, the most vanilla MBA? Someone said that he looked like some, like they made a video game about accounting, and he was the default character.

Speaker 1:
[109:17] Oh, that's odd.

Speaker 2:
[109:20] Like default white man with just short haircut, kind of 50-year-old guy.

Speaker 1:
[109:25] WWDC will not have Tim Cook, it will have John Ternus coming out dressed as Ronald McDonald, showing us all the way it should be. That is what will happen next. We don't know him. We don't, we barely see him.

Speaker 2:
[109:37] No, we know nothing about him.

Speaker 1:
[109:38] I would have seen him in a T-shirt on stage and in full University of Regalia on another stage. That's it. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[109:46] I'll say, he wears a lot of T-shirts. I'll say this about my question and we can conclude. I feel like that Tim Cook's situation was important and it's good that it happened, but that doesn't mean that we automatically need to one up him and go get the black gay lady to be CEO of Apple or whatever. The values are still there and I think Ternus will stand by those values that Apple has held and that is what is important. The representation was good and we will miss that. I think the communities out there that celebrated that will absolutely miss that, but I don't think that changes the company at all because again, the values are still present. I mean, the rainbow arch in the middle of the Apple Park is very clearly ever present. So, I don't know. I'm very hopeful about John Ternus. I think it will be exciting. I think people need to pump the brakes on that. He's an engineer. He's going to be so great. Like, Apple is going to Apple. We'll see what happens in the next five years. Not the next five months. Nothing's going to happen in the next five months.

Speaker 1:
[110:56] Although I would just like to end by pointing out the fact that I thought I had a few more weeks at least to put in my application to become the CEO. So, I feel a bit a bit robbed, but maybe I'll do the next one, okay? We can alternate John Ternus and I, because we're, you know, we were that close for it. All of this has got to continue. We will see the legacy, how the legacy emerges of Tim Cook, and we will be witnesses to the legacy of John Ternus as he does it, as he creates it. And it's such an exciting time. And we will talk about this more often, I'm sure. But for the meantime, good talking to you. Thanks for this. Have a great time with Mike next week. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[111:35] We'll see you when you come back. I'm excited. It will be a fun week to own the show.

Speaker 1:
[111:41] Excellent.