World's blandest man steps down from CEO job to spend more time in tastefully appointed home
Tim Cook is handing the reins to John Ternus at Apple
Have you heard? Apple's Tim Cook is stepping down after 15 years leading the iMaker's business. He'll become executive chairman and hand the reins over to John Ternus, a senior VP of hardware engineering, effective September 1.
You can't fault Cook's performance on a pure financial basis. Since he took over, Apple's stock is up over 18-fold. Annual revenues and profit have grown roughly 4x, to approximately $416 billion and $112 billion respectively in Cupertino's last fiscal year ending September 27. That's massive growth from a massive base.
During this time, Apple also established itself as a designer of cutting-edge chips, with its own Apple silicon now used in Macs and iDevices.
But over the same period, Apple lost its sizzle. Its most successful brand new product was a set of wireless earbuds that appeared with what looked like a ridiculously long stem at the time, but they have become such standard issue that nobody even notices them anymore.
The Watch was fine. Impressive from an engineering perspective, but of limited real-world utility, and certainly nothing like the culture-changing hits of the iPhone, iPod, iTunes, and the Mac (original, iMac, Air...). The Vision Pro virtual reality headset, like all VR products before (and - prediction - all VR products hence), seems to be shaping up as an expensive flop. You'd probably have to stretch your mind to think of another big new Apple product announced over the last 15 years? Apple Intelligence?
Cook himself? He was the first major company CEO to make a public announcement that he was gay, a laudable moment of personal courage that no doubt gave comfort and solace to millions, particularly younger people coming to grips with their sexuality. But his awkward delivery and forced enthusiasm during Apple's increasingly rote stage demos was painful to watch. He was not a showman.
Tim Cook is bland, and the company became bland under him. It would've been hard for anybody to follow the ultimate showman hustler, Steve Jobs, but Cook was like the anti-Jobs.
Ternus? He seems competent and well-spoken enough in this recent video interview with Tom's Guide. A long profile in Bloomberg over the weekend says he recently took over a secret internal project to develop robots, including a device whose screen swivels around to face the person speaking during a group video call. The report also says that he'll lead plans to develop a whole bunch of new products, including a folding iPhone, and realizes that he's got to do more to make Apple a player in AI. (Hey, John, we actually agree with what you're quoted as saying on Good Morning America, which is if you're truly doing AI right, nobody will even notice it. AI just becomes computing eventually.)
The world is more interesting when Apple is more interesting, so here's hoping this next bite has a lot more spice than the applesauce of the last few years. ®