> “When we started out with maps, it was an ambitious undertaking. It was bumpy,” said Ternus. “But the team had just been over the years just pushing and pushing and pushing. And Apple Maps today is absolutely amazing. If you have the vision and you're persistent and you keep working at it, you can take something you know that has a rocky start and turn it into something great.”
Here's hoping he recognizes that Apple's current generation of software is in the "rocky start" phase, not the "pushing and pushing" phase and definitely not the "absolutely amazing" phase. Time will tell...
https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/apples-joz-and-ternus-on...
I do wish that some day someone will tell the story of what happened during that time. Maps was bad at launch yes, but it also wouldn't get better without people contributing more data, and the fact that it took a decade to slowly improve implies that there's nothing anyone could have done to get it right "off the bat". It still feels to me Forstall was set up as the fall guy, especially considering no one was fired for antennagate.
Example: Taking the airport train instead of a private driver and realizing there’s no luggage racks, staying in a regular hotel room and realizing there’s no light in front of the mirror, only behind you. So many examples like that on a daily basis.
And I know many engineers within Apple that had been testing Maps before it shipped and they were filing bugs about it. It shipped anyway.
Also, the UI for it keeps getting more cluttered, and they announced that in-map ads are coming Q2-3 2026.
I know between Moore's Law and Gate's Law which one I would prefer to be the industry standard... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law
I don't have a lot of samples, just one. So, YMMV.
I have to think some of that attitude would be good for apple's software division.
It's not as if ternus will be writing code directly, he's managing managers. Hopefully that means he'll demand and budget more for QA.
There are so many little bugs in consumer-facing apps that hit the ‘sweet’ spot of being incredible little annoyances that just aren’t worth putting an engineer on for a week to fix, but which are totally worth having an engineer throw an agent onto them.
But HW is at least improving (eg. they added anti-reflective screen option), and SW is very much not.
I don't know about Thinkpads, but the utterly pleasant glass trackpad is still one of the things I cannot find on most non-Mac laptops, despite every manufacturer being able to copy it for years.
The closest I've found are the Surface laptop/cover trackpads, but they have their own set of reliability and repairability issues.
As a MacBook user, I very rarely want to use a mouse except for gaming. THe trackpad is delightful enough for the bulk of my use cases.
> But HW is at least improving (eg. they added anti-reflective screen option), and SW is very much not.
And I would disagree with the idea that I should be running Linux on my primary machine. As a developer, I've faced enough "death by a thousand cuts" situations from running Linux on my personal router and servers to let it anywhere close to my main computer.
Don't even get me started on the hardware quality of Mac laptop including their stellar trackpads, screens and the smallest details like the quality of the hinge. I can still open my 5 year old Mac with a single finger and the hinge is as solid as the day I bought it.
As someone who's also particular about user experience, Linux always fails at this. If you have good UX, that means you can critically think for what a user wants from a computer, and can determine what should and shouldn’t be prioritized. UX is never a first-class citizen on Linux, and for all the issues with Tahoe, macOS still has enough residual quality left in it to not feel like I'm constantly fighting the operating system.
Simple example: I want HDR on Linux. Should be easy right? Just switch to Plasma under Wayland? Then do a one time config so mpv can play HDR. Oh and no browsers support it so good luck. Games need gamescope and flags to be set.
I want my computer to work, not for me to work as an integration engineer. So I use my Mac and it just works™. So I just let Linux live where I feel it works best, in servers and headless environments.
The advances that made Apple Silicon possible were, fundamentally, TSMC and ARM. These were the material conditions that had to exist in order for a tech company to capitalize on a new generation of vertically integrated chip design. Now what's the conditions for next generation Mac OS? What research advances or software engineering paradigms that are mature enough for adoption? The state of Apple software isn't just due to mismanagement, it is, but the success of the hardware entails technology nodes as a confounding factor.
Tech in general has changed quite a bit though. I don't know how Steve Jobs would have reacted to AI, and I don't know where tech itself would be if Jobs were still around. But I do think the next evolution is due and yet to be seen. It's not clear that Tim Cook would be the one to effectively see that through. And so I think his timing is impeccable and probably aligned with what is best for Apple. I have a lot of respect here: time has shown that a lot of leaders don't let go until its too late.
I say this as someone who hasn't worked there, but has a large number of friends and peers who currently do or have in recent years.
I vehemently disagree with this. I think Cook's logistics and business-focused goals are, if not diametrically opposed to Job's product obsession, at the very least orthogonal to it. Almost everything about Apple the product, over the past 15 years, has either coasted (e.g. stayed at par with the rest of the industry) or gotten worse. The one exception is arguably Apple Silicon (and I'm sure their board is acutely aware of it).
I'm not just being snarky — I don't think it's reasonable to say the profit-maximizing service-oriented Apple is the best possible version of itself without losing its values of personal computing and individual empowerment.
https://www.apple.com/community-letter-from-tim/
I understand Tim is a logistics genius and Ternus is a hardware genius, and that we all want better software and policy from Apple, but I'm glad that there seems to be good people at the head of one of the biggest and most consequential companies, and further that they seem to care about being good people.
As far as I can see, that's the only way to have a prayer of scaling without too much damage, which is the key issue humanity faces today.
Also want to second your point about the need for having good people leading large organizations like Apple. Especially so as things are changing so fast in technology, with a widening impact across more and more aspects and parts of lives of people and society. We certainly see the negative impact that comes with questionable and/or short term decisions (see social media), so I too am hopeful that above all else, Ternus is a good person and makes (for the most part) good decisions for people and society first and foremost.
While I agree with all these points, I'd still rather see a hardware guru leading Apple rather than a software-focused leader. The state of software zeitgeist has gotten fairly poor, and the types of formal and thorough "Acceptance Testing" that are common in hardware are more likely to produce great experiences for users than whatever most software leaders are doing today.
Before anyone mentions how all hardware groups seem to produce god-awful software (IoT, vehicles, etc)...I agree, though I have generally attributed this to a lack of budget and vision. I don't expect those two things to be an issue at Apple, but I could be surprised.
Why share it as a quote rather than a link I can click?
Marco has enough standing within our world that it's actually a clever idea to appeal to Ternus on these terms. He'll probably be aware that it was written and the appeal is somewhat generic in its call to reverse course on some Cook-era policies.
We're all very hopeful but there's not enough information available on the outside to predict with any certainty how he'll lead.
It is not a tongue in cheek remark, I am genuinely curious
But I cannot argue with the results the man achieved. Especially the transition to A-series and then M-series chips has been an incredible success. Perhaps the biggest flop was the Apple Vision Pro, but it is hard to really call him out on that since it wasn't that Apple lost a battle, it was that the product category just hasn't caught on (yet). Siri is another place where Apple has lagged but they could very easily catch up with the massive interest in local AI on the mac minis.
I think it will be difficult to look back on his legacy without giving him a large share of credit for Apple's continued success.
Gosh I just read a really hellish thread on what frontier LLMs will become as they're infected with advertising, I hope apple manages to break locsl LLMs (and training?) Into the public discourse
Vs. when you're in the Top 10 of the Fortune Global 500, "steady as she goes" business vision is the far safer strategy.
Macs are great for gaming in terms of hardware. But other gaming platforms dominate the market. And Apple's walled garden approach is so effective that Steam's proton doesn't work on its platforms (so far). And its attempt to convince game developers to use Apple specific SDKs like Metal and build platforms are not really making any dent in the overall gaming market, which now eclipses Hollywood in terms of revenue and budgets. From a developer point of view it remains a highly crippled platform. And the Apple tax isn't helping.
Seen against this background, the Vision Pro is a strategic content failure. Very few 3D games work on it. Very little new 3D content is developed for it. Apple's insistence on our way or the highway continues to have developers preferring the highway. There are a few decades worth of back catalog of VR games, 3D movies, etc. Most of which flat out won't work on the Vision Pro or aren't licensed for it. They could fix that but that would require investing in content/licensing deals, compatibility/emulation, etc. And by making the core product so expensive, it basically became a niche product. And without content that remains a hard sell. It does not make sense for productions with hundreds of millions of budget (i.e. most 3D games and movies) to be targeting such a niche platform. And it does not make sense for end users to buy the product if there is no good content and if most of the good content is never released for it.
It's a very fixable problem. Valve is leading the way with Proton currently. That strategy is very portable to macs and the Vision pro. There is very little technical reason to stop that from working. And Apple has been chipping away at their own portability kit. But they are so far not really committing to it fully. They should be filling the Apple store with decades worth of great content from that just works on Apple HW. As it is there is only a relatively small collection of old content that has been ported.
Apple Maps really needs to up their POI game. They have some native data, but I’m still regularly seeing images from 3rd party sites and get prompted to download the app. I understood it in year 1, but we’re 13 years in now. This is the primary reason I keep Google Maps around.
If you buy the 'iPhone Max' for $1500, you get ads, and if you buy the 'iPhone Max ad-free' for $3800, you don't get any ads in the app store, apple maps, apple news, or the various other apple services you use on only that one device. Similarly, you need to buy the ad-free edition of the iPad to not get ads there, and the ad-free version of the macbook for no ads there, and each of them can cost ~2.5x the cost.
I think that would be better than a monthly subscription since you'd just pay it once and then never think about it again.
Quite successful.
Even if that figure might somehow be inflated, it is impressive nonetheless.
But it's still a net deficit of nearly 15 million tons of emissions of which practically none are offset.
https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Pr...
The real disconnect IMO is TSLA.
Would you not own stock of the most valuable brand in human history?
This growth comes from rent seeking. Greedy fees and lock-in they can sustain due to control of the platform and cultivated duopoly.
Apple narrative around security is patronising and deceptive, used as an excuse for removing users' freedoms (by not letting users replace Apple's services with competing ones Apple protects users from their bad choices). Very conveniently the supposedly most innovative company that is great at UX can't do better than Vista.
Apple's response to pro-consumer laws was petty, vindictive, malicious compliance.
To me Apple morphed from having premium products with excellent integration to having cross-product lock-in that maximizes money extraction from users.
And then there's Cook sucking up to Trump with a golden turd to protect next quarter's revenues. This showed that Cook had no principles more important than profit.
AMZN: +2100% META: +1700% MSFT: +1300% GOOG: +1400%
You see this most obviously in software and marketing - the kinds of decisions where only a few people sign off at the end, and where "good enough" is whatever those few people decide it is. You see it less in hardware and procurement where there's a powerful review cycle and scrutiny at every level of the stack. Work there is more immediately measurable: benchmarks for performance, dollars for cost.
The "vibe" of software, or of a PDF [^1], is much harder to catch that way. There's no benchmark that flags it and most conventional executives aren't drilling down in that level of detail to see it either.
You want distributed decision-making, of course. But that only works well if it's distributed to people who've cultivated their own taste and who will make good calls under pressure. I'm not sure how much of that gets fixed by leadership change at the top. Taste isn't really something a CEO can decree into a 60,000 person org. But I've only heard good things about Ternus, so I'm optimistic. Fingers crossed for a bright new chapter.
[^1]: https://www.apple.com/promo/pdf/US_FY26_Earth_Day_Promo_Tand...
It sounds like Cook will continue to get the dirty work of pleasing world leaders while Ternus can focus on actually running the company.
Not saying that Ternus wouldn’t have been involved in or part of the decision making process in moving the Mac to Apple-designed silicon, but I haven’t seen any indication he was any more involved than other execs at the company.
you could say apple silicon was almost 2 years ahead of its time, or you could say that intel lost years on bad bets. there are only 3 consumer-scale, leading node foundries in the world!
is apple a, "making good commercial terms with poor counterparties" company? yes, to their core. whether it is their employees whom they worked to the bone, their suppliers in the ASEAN trade network, or the US politicians who starkly are too broke to regulate giant US corporations, for whom too little money goes too long of a way.
my point is, who the hell knows! there are many, many points of view. it's not any one thing. but one thing's for sure, i don't think i'm upgrading my phone until it blows up anymore, and this is the simple, greatest risk to their business.
so they're going to become a company that breaks phones to get people to replace them, regardless of what they are today :)
Also think it's cool that John Ternus has only a bachelor's degree with a very down to earth presence. I completely dig his LI page being really bare bones.
I suspect Apple is about to experience another Renaissance era...
That people are still judging someone by their school performance (or, less charitably but how I experienced the difference between "poor" and "good" students in about half of the cases: their willingness to deal with arbitrarily set requirements) after being in the workforce for this long says a lot about society. I'm not sure it's a factor when one is comparing devices in a store, which ultimately is what they created right? Shouldn't we judge them by their work?
Also considering this is HN
> Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_culture
"Only a bachelor's" is a ridiculous comment, and incredibly out of touch.
(We're seeing echoes of that again now where you can get 20-30% performance bumps in Neos and Airs just by sticking a thermal pad on the CPU - Apple is still allergic to cooling, they've just built amazingly efficient hardware that sidesteps the problem)
[0] As Steve Jobs said in 2005: "OS X is the most advanced operating system on the planet and it has set Apple up for the next 20 years."
How incredibly prophetic that 21 years later, MacOS is suddenly showing its age.
How so? Genuinely curious, I've got no idea what he's like as a person.
I wish more tech execs were in Cook’s mold. Reserved. Controlled. Calm. No Twitter beefs, no overt politics, no blow-ups behind closed doors.
and mac has ios, which with ipads goes desktopy. (capability based security)
Yeah, what's going on? I'm confused by this choice - I would have expected a marketer. Maybe they really are doubling down on hardware for the ai age?
I would have expected a marketer.
Before we had many groundbreaking features that redefined how you use smarphone:
- gps
- flashlight (yes everybody with flashlight in the pocket!)
- front selfie camera + video calls
- compass + accelerometer + gyroscope
- good wide and ultrawide (video) camera
- nfc + apple pay
- fingerprint / faceid
- esim
- magsafe
Now you can have iphone 12 pro and don't miss much from iphone 17 pro.
I daresay the iPhone 17 Pro is a compelling enough upgrade, hardware wise. Not much innovation, but their phone hardware is very usable.
But I'd prefer if Apple gave up 2 years of trying to "innovate" nonsense like Liquid glAss and polish up their software first, just like the old days.
I still hope they eventually sell server blades for macOS.
Software is easier given the shorter cycles. Caveat is, the shorter cycles also benefit competitors.
EDIT: I also want to say I really appreciate Tim Cook’s emphasis on user privacy and I hope John Ternus can continue this trend.
At the same time, privacy on internet-connected devices is like true liberty and justice -- rare, precious, fragile, and easily lost without active pursuit and sacrifice.
I hope Temus has the courage and principle to keep fighting the good fight.
Apple has led the industry on hardware but is woefully behind on the software and services front. Focusing on device-level privacy controls turns what would be a gap into a moat, and it helps deprive Google and other services from monetizing their customer base.
Not to say that it's not something the company is passionate about - but it's also good for their business. Especially when you compare it to things like human rights, transparency, and security research where Apple could take a stronger stand but don't.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/news/737757/apple-president-donald-...
If they can make 50B from ads in the iPhone in 12 months why invent a new device that will make pennies.
Sorry folks, the math is brutal for the big corps. They cannot pivot and make cool things, the market demands to be milked until they bleed.
The privacy focus is why Apple is dominant today, keep that up.
> As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world.
This gives me the impression that at least for the near-term, Cook will still be the one groveling to the Trump White House. Whatever you think about that, that's probably helpful for Ternus' dealings with the next administration.
Apple also made some amazing hardware blunders.
My personal favorite is the force-touch home button on the previous generation iPhones and iPads wouldn't work if you were wearing a band-aid. I don't mean the fingerprint reader, it wouldn't even click. So don't ever cut yourself if you were planning to unlock your phone ever. It added basically nothing for the end user over the previous physical home button besides rendering the vibrate function wimpy and useless.
Giving a golden statue of Trump has no effect on you and me, and a very large effect on Trump. He is gaining significant political capital while giving up nothing that matters (feel free to correct if I am wrong). Contrast with every other tech executive, lawyer, and university dean in America, most of whom have been cowed into compromising on their deepest values, or even worse, have done so without hesitation. I cannot think of many tech execs whom history will be kinder towards.
Bribery hurts everyone else following the law. It erodes public trust. All of us are definitely hurt by Trump's extreme and obvious levels of corruption.
No effect on you, really. You aren’t affected by gas prices or tariffs? They are bowing down and participating in Trump’s patronage schemes. Every powerful person who does this is complicit with all the horrible things done by the Trump administration. They are endorsing Trump and his ilk with their behavior if not their words, which allows and encourages him to continue his fraud and abuse.
> Contrast with every other tech executive
What contrast is there? Tech executives capitulated to Trump's demands, and Tim Cook did the exact same thing. The problem doesn't start and stop with the gold trophy, it encompasses things like European legislation, labor/union laws, and complex supply chains that Apple needs federal support to manage. There are convoluted motives here, and the bizzaro FIFA trophies are only the tip of the iceberg.
He personally donated at least a million dollars to Trump's inauguration, plus whatever to the campaign.
You're kidding right? News [1] just broke about how Apple's permanent notification storage (that they refuse to fix) undermines encryption and is being exploited by law enforcement. And they conveniently left out the fact that they were giving out push notification data to law enforcement without any warrants from their transparency reports [2]. And these are just from the top of my head.
Do we now presume all companies putting the word privacy on their ads are emphasizing privacy? Because Meta and Google does that too.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/larsdaniel/2026/04/10/fbi-pulle... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/apple-google-push-notification-s...
But somewhere in the mix, Apple could also really use another great product mind, like the other Steve. It has been too long since the last era-defining product from Cupertino.
I have no idea what that next big thing would be. And of course, a bad product mind in charge is worse than none at all! If the next big leaps come from other companies while Apple just keeps doing what it does best in the hardware categories that it already dominates, then I guess that's fine, too.
Sure it's gross but it does not necessarily signal an abandonment of values from Apple.
Don't count on it.
I killed a Finder process that was at 1.2 G ram consumed today...
How many renaissances does one company need? Apple hasn't had enough? lol
The Vision Pro software team did an incredible job. Its software is more impressive than its hardware.
When is the last time you used Windows 11? I begrudgingly have to run it on my gaming PC and almost every time it's a frustrating experience where I want to put my fist through my monitor. Absolutely awful, zero taste, that will-do software. Windows explorer I believe is still single threaded, the integration of OneDrive into everything (my desktop is stored in OneDrive for some reason) with little to no way to undo it. Don't even get me started on Copilot. My blood pressure just rose off the charts.
For example, on MacOS, you can set an app to be on all spaces. But on reboot, despite that setting, it will stick to a single space, until you relaunch the app. It has been this way for 4-5 major OS versions.
There are PLENTY of examples just like that.
Or more generically answer the question: how can I get an arbitrary audio file into my iTunes music? (hint: good luck)
Music 'synced' with iTunes but not appearing on my other devices? There must be some kind of arbitrary difference between 'synced with iTunes' and 'synced with iCloud'. I guarantee this is some kind of (barely) maintained legacy syncing to keep the iTunes workflow alive specifically so Apple can avoid giving users a modern 'import to my cloud library' feature.
And his "kind of glib"
No, Zuck, you're just mad Apple introduced fine grained control so you can't constantly scrape people's credentials
I'd need another hand to fully count all the Apple apps that have burned me in the past.
I'm using both Linux and macOS close to 20 years (Linux is even more than 20, IIRC), and macOS (aka Mac OS) used to be snappier, more stable, more uniform and had incredibly low number of papercuts around the UI. Now it has some nasty thorns here and there, while Linux is improving steadily and not regressing much as macOS.
Apple needs to overhaul their software stack. They can use a lot of sanding and polishing to bring the shine back. They need another "Snow Leopard" release, as many people say.
On the other hand, even with all these bells and whistles, they can't even get close to the composability of Linux systems. Doing so will also damage their bottom line, so they won't, and that's OK.
I've used basically all of the major operating systems for 30+ years and I cannot stand macOS. I use a Mac as one of my work devices, and off the top of my head:
* Basic things such as window management require third party tools to get things that are table stakes everywhere else. Even with third party tools doing anything with a "full screen" mode is not going to work the way you expect.
* You can't have separate scroll directions for your trackpad and your external mouse.
* External peripherals in general are a disaster. Every time I connect or disconnect from a docking station my windows are left in awkward positions sized larger than my screen and I need to drag them around
* macOS seems to store a different set of monitor orientations based on what USB port I connect my dock to - same dock, same monitors, 2 different layouts I had to configure independently. I don't even know how you could accomplish that if you wanted it - and absolutely no one wants that.
* Multiple monitors is constantly an afterthought, whether it's menus, the dock, layouts, what have you
* The Settings app is impossible to find anything in. You have to search, and that works OK sometimes, but the layout has no rhyme, reason, or comprehensible order
* Safari. Enough said.
I could keep going, but I absolutely do not associate Apple with quality software.
I'd go further and say I am constantly frustrated by how difficult their software can make basic tasks. I often find many of their UX patterns unintuitive, or even feel user hostile at times. Small example, I really want to view passwords as I type them in. I constantly miss type passwords on touch screens. User error maybe, but frustrating experience.
XCode is my least favourite IDE that I use regularily.
But “best” is far too strong a word.
For starters, most if not all their software can be described as simpler also-rans.
And in line with that approach, for a company that innovates in hardware, it does not apply that effort to software.
With two exceptions in the last two decades. The iPhone and Apple Watch operating systems & interfaces were very creative efforts. Which genuinely matched the hardware innovation.
Vision’s OS, on the hand, basically iOS-ified hardware that deserved to be treated like the first device to be positioned above and beyond the Mac. The natural interface doesn’t fall below the Mac’s, like a touch screen does. It fat exceeds it, given a keyboard-trackpad.
Instead, software wise, we get another media and toy kiosk.
I am stunned that Tim Cook didn’t see the opportunity to leave his mark with a device that took the capability crown further than the Mac, instead of falling for the 3D as cute feature un-vision.
Pro hardware. Toy software.
He has been a great CEO. But if he let Steve and his own legacy down anywhere, that is where.
That, the predictable but mostly stalled vision of software apps. And all the odd software glitches on all their devices that seem to keep cropping up, that suggest poor underlying models to me.
Their underlying systems software are a high point. The hardware integration is stand out.
20+ years ago, software was so horrible that we were just tolerating it, and every new OS release was a big deal because there was hope things would get better! Today an OS release comes out and I have to be bothered by automatic "you must upgrade messages" to even care.
People forget how horrible it used to be, and if you still use windows, how much worse it could be when vs. Apple (and let's not get started on Linux).
The fact that they tie the mobile version to the OS version is just ridiculous.
Outside the two.. Fina Cut better than Premiere Pro or Resolve or Avid, Logic Pro better than Pro Tools or Ableton or many others, Motion better than After Effects, Pixelmator better than anything from Adobe or Affinity..
Come on, my dude. Only thing I haven't mentioned is OS only because that's a religion and I don't fall into MacOS one.
Apple's hardware game is strong. Software isn't, never has been.
- Apple Music's UI/UX is quite rough on MacOS.
- Trying to use my iPhone to type a long password on my Apple TV is hit-or-miss.
- For some reason trying to view a password using Keychain requires you to enter your credentials twice, every time, for as long as I can remember.
But it's worst in the Apple software world compared to Apple's. In fairness, Microsoft has also been in steady tragic decline for a while. I don't know about Google.
I'd rather use nano than having to write code on xcode.
You are comparing against the wrong thing.
Compare it to NeXTSTEP from 35 years ago:
https://infinitemac.org/1989/NeXTStep%201.0
NeXTSTEP was both more usable and better looking.
Apple's iOS is hot garbage. The macOS is not far behind on how horrible the UX is
Honestly, that's such a low bar to hit.
MacOS reliability has slowly gotten worse and worse, but the UX drop with liquid glass was profound.
I think you're attributing a lot more agency to a CEO role (for a publicly listed company, at the least) than they actually have.
As for Ternus' timing:
A)Not very Apple to have the CEO do one last launch while on the way out the door (want the full throated, 1000% commitment in execs)
B)Gives John stage for first time as CEO at September Keynote (historically a BFD)
C)It felt right, among all the other time-slots and factors to consider
D)John gets to announce the next One More Thing, and own it. Would be odd for Tim to announce the One More Thing and then resign.
I don't think even Steve Jobs would've been able to imagine that Apple can get this big.
Over the time I developed the instinct to not take pundit's opinions too seriously.
I'm interested to see what Ternus' first few moves are and how much he will avoid (or hopefully embrace) reversing some of the things Cook is responsible for.
He has a long row to hoe when it comes to things like developer relations but from what I've heard, he is one of the best options we had for the next CEO.
As it happens with most big corp c-suite transitions (see: Amazon), a lot of powerful executives will have to make way for the new CEO's chosen ones, and what those chosen few do (in lieu of asserting new found power) will dictate the short-term.
Srouji stays to lead hardware, https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/20/srouji-chief-hardware-o...
Johny is one of the most talented people I have ever had the privilege to work with. He has played a singular role in driving Apple's silicon strategy, and his influence has been felt deeply not just inside the company, but across the industry. He has always led his organization with remarkable deftness and judgment, and time and again, his team has delivered breakthrough innovations that have transformed our products. We are incredibly fortunate to have him as Apple's chief hardware officer.(actually I doubt this- Demis does not want to run a big company whose main business is Ads)
Ternus will be the soldier in the trenches.
I feel excitement for the future of Apple.
There is no question many of Apple's business experienced significant, impressive growth during his tenure. Amazing capital efficiency.
There is also no question Apple lost product velocity. Few new products were launched, and those that were had mixed success.
Tim was, at the end of the day, an elite financial operator. Apple shareholders were lucky to have him. Customers like myself probably have mixed opinions, and it remains to be seen how he set the company up for the future.
* Apple Silicon, the most far-reaching technical transformation in the company's history (probably a bigger deal than macOS itself)
* Apple Pay
* The Watch and Airpods product categories, both of which Apple now dominates.
All while holding on to its position in phones and improving (drastically) its computers.
It feels like a pretty successful term.
I'm just pointing out product velocity slowed. I'm far from the first person to say it, it's just a fact. In the five years before Cook we got first generation Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. Your list spans 14 years.
Tim oversaw the launch of the Apple Watch, Airpods, Airtags, Apple Pay, the Beats acquisition (which lead to Apple Music) and the launch of the M series chips.
He's had quite a few product launches under his belt, many of them company-defining products.
https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2025/06/17/g-s1-72...
We’ll see how the new CEO sees it.
I don't think this is true. Apple Watch is basically in a market of its own. iPad might have existed before Cook but he turned it into something people actually use for stuff. Vision Pro may not be a financial success but the tech is impressive and it's clear that work will pay off in the near term in other wearables. Apple Silicon is a phenomenal success. Apple TV is no longer a hobby and he's been at the helm while they've developed their entire services business. AirPods rule the headphone market. Not mention the numerous Mac variants he presided over.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/technology/apple-ceo-tim-...
So, the Tim Cook era lasted 15 years (2011 - 2026). He's 65yo, and he could have easily hung in there for a few more years. But I believe he's leaving at the peak -- both Apple's and his own -- and this might be the best time to leave, rather than being forced out (as many too-long-in-the-tooth CEOs have been) when the company inevitably grows slower, or has a crisis.
Ternus is 50-51 yo, roughly the age when Cook himself took over Apple. There the similarities disappear. Ternus is a HW guy through-and-through. I hope he has solid SW and Design team with him. He's gonna need it, given all the big/small design snafus in the recent past. [Not including Mac Neo in there, which looks stellar by any means]
Wishing him luck; he's gonna need it. (and me too, my $$$ are invested in AAPL, and I ain't selling anytime soon, so well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
1. Hardware: OLED touchscreen Macs, foldable iPhone (2026) & 20th anniversary iPhone (2027). The message here is about flexing his strength in hardware.
2. Software: Snow leopard-like iOS27/macOS27 fixing a lot of Liquid Glass' rough edges. The message here is he's returning Apple to form with quality software.
3. Ecosystem: Gemini-powered Siri. The message here is he's getting Apple finally on track to meet the promise of AI.
4. Political context: A clean slate. The message here is placating the president (or anyone) is in the past.
The timing is interesting because Apple needed Ternus announced before WWDC27 in June, because that's when Gemini-Siri and Snow Leopard-OS strategy are both being unveiled. But they needed to delay it as long as they could so that Tim Cook could soak up as much Trump-chaos as was necessary. Now that polls and vibes show Trump losing support across the board, politically it's the safest it's ever been to announce this change, and still enough time before WWDC to suggest that what's being announced are his initiatives.
Also, going over his past statements as recent as during this year, it seems like he didn’t want to leave his CEO position, so he got forced out?
I bet that was just good message management. The steadiest approach to a CEO transition is to make it seem a long way off until the moment it happens. Markets don’t like any wobbling at the top.
As the world undergoes increasing supply chain issues, wouldn’t it be in Apple’s best interest to keep Tim Cook as CEO for a while? Or is he the one who’s looking to transition to a less demanding position?
It's also the year the iPod was launched, which capitulated Apple from near bankruptcy a few years before to then having the cash it needed to invest in R&D on things like transitioning to Intel, creation of iPhone, etc.
Is this a golden opportunity to take on the software side of Apple, native apps like photos and messages, notes app? So much good data we give to Apple apps sit their idling, there is a play here to turn them into an independent playable artifacts and shared digital human network company. My friend emma has her snack Game on! I would like to get a snack list derived from her snack data. Yes, texting works but there is no programmatic way of accessing each other’s data. I believe this data needs be freed from Apple.
Apple’s privacy approach is stellar, that quest though is a prison where our data goes and does a slow death.
Yes, I get that the iPad is supposed to be a "casual computing device" or whatever. Yes, I know Apple has delivered significant improvements to iPadOS's capabilities in those five years. But using it still feels like wearing a straitjacket a lot of the time.
I have almost no use for the keyboard that's attached to my macbook. I use an external one. On the plane it's in the way. The only use for the keyboard is when taking it with me somewhere which is not my regular spot. And even then a portable bottomcase (keyboard+touchpad) would be great.. Basically an iPad
These new devices will combine Arm performance-per-watt, thousands of Linux OSS packages, ChromeOS desktop SaaS and Google Play Store touch-optimized local apps. Apple could compete by enabling MacOS and/or Linux VMs on iPad Pro, without forcing Pro users to jump through JIT-enabling hoops for iSH or UTM.
MacOS already runs on iPhone SoC in Macbook Neo.
You may also be interested in this video where Jon Rettinger predicted that John Ternus will be the next Apple CEO. Goodbye Tim! A new era for Apple (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbqLWZtdQTc)
That focus on privacy pisses off a lot of devs (Yours Truly, included), but I sincerely believe in it. I write apps that Serve a demographic that values privacy.
I was just thinking about what had been avoiding enshittification, and Apple's hardware was the only thing I came up. All other stuff, all products from Google, MS, Facebook, Twitter, and even Nvidia though the performance was improved has gone downhill. It's not only tech companies, but fast food, car manufacturers, real estate, and many others, if it wasn't shit from the start like consulting, healthcare, and marketing.
They have flaws, like not allowing users to repair the hardware, but well, at least it's consistent.
I really hope Apple (hardware at least) will remain free from enshittification.
Tim is fine, but there are clearly other, more powerful forces at play than "Tim Apple amaze".
This period in Apple’s history will be the cold ice bath post Jobs.
There may be serious fanboy energy to this but Apple has so much dry powder going for it still, and to put that in the hands of someone who actually builds, along with what looks to be a strong rumor mill year with VR stuff and the foldable to create a big tailwind… it seems like a pretty intentional move.
Also if they dropped one more subscription on us before expanding categories they might’ve caused an avalanche in lack of confidence.
Cook did an excellent job of raking in cash for bet the company size bets that he wouldn’t be guaranteed to see through. The dude is clearly a salt of the earth, values guy, should enjoy a proper retirement era.
Edit: 6 years old, not 4, and also Intel Macbook, so due an upgrade for sure
do they predict problems of some sort - like lost of ability to small down transistors for a while or supply chain disruption(increased prices of components sourcing)?
One day that watch could be your only PC. And then some type of eyeglass for a screen. Can also do "terrain overlays" Terminator style. I suppose battery power is the bottleneck so maybe long-distance wireless power delivery is the key (as what Tesla originally created.) So no battery at all.
Apple included.
They're gonna be fine in the AI age just like Costco was able to be a honey badger about e-commerce.
Least understood yet most influential company in the history, present and future of the venture capital backed tech world.
To support this I was thinking about (and obviously Googling these names because I definitely don't know them by heart, only that they recently left) the change of CFO Luca Maestri to Kevan Parekh, John Giannandrea being removed, Alan Dye leaving and being replaced with Steve Lemay.
So I take those 4 months more as like an FYI to the public than anything else. Though I am definitely not someone that knows corporate politics all that well (or at all), just mostly thinking out loud in response to your comment.
[0] https://www.spencerstuart.com/research-and-insight/2021-ceo-...
Me thinks Apple software is the problem—I put Asahi Linux on my Mac.
Why so soon?
I don’t need the distraction.
Tim gifted Donald a trophy 8 months ago doing his legacy no favors. You wouldn't do this if you knew you were on your way out. Makes me wonder if something happened between August 2025 and now.
What are these titles? Why? Who does what? It feels like a linkedin tea party.
I'm just askin' questions.
EDIT: Also, can Apple take over the data center already? I am sick of HP and Dell.
the bit in brackets ain't even necessary since we all know Tim is the CEO
he knows when to be conservative - and knows when to push hard.
qualities very few CEOs have shown to have in practice.
all his contemporary competitors have ridden on certain waves e.g A.I to increase company valuation - while he did sorely on just pure operations not hype.
Personally, I have lost all interest in Apple and been slowly switching off their hw/sw/saas for some time.
Thanks for making all that money, Tim. Now please retire. Please.
*John Ternus to become Apple CEO*
Talk about burying the lede, lmao.
Among the dup stories submitted, this one has the best content but the worst title.
I still haven't scroll down to the bottom, I don't want to spoil my impression. But it's great to see a positive reaction. Good way to mark the moment. Tim has been CEO for 15 years roughly, since Steve's passing. This guy seems much younger than Tim was when he ascended. I hope he really takes it to the next level.
Got a feeling that Apple has some Amazing new hardware category-making products coming out of the 'skunkworks' over the next 3 years.
They are all still there.
But here’s to hoping that change comes. Apple is already a rich company. But isn’t that boring?
“Making money is art, and working is art and good business is the best art” — Andy Warhol
It will redefine the way we watch TV and that's exactly your job, to make something truly unique. And I'll tell you the secret sauce, the remote. I know you'll come up with something totally different, a marvel of engineering that will drop jaws around the world. Different aluminum colors and extra flat? Check. But that's not what this new generation needs. They want to watch tiktok and instagram in their TV and nobody right now offers an out-of-this-world experience. Social media consumption on a big screen. Excel at that and you will sell millions at whatever price you set.
My credit card is ready...