Since taking over as Apple’s chief executive officer from Steve Jobs in 2011, Tim Cook has trotted out iterations of products started under Jobs, including Apple Silicon, the Apple Watch, and the Apple Vision Pro, while building out Apple’s Retail Store network (also started by Jobs) and various Apple Services. Cook also tried to build an autonomous vehicle, spending many years and many billions of dollars, before finally pulling the plug in failure this year.
Cook has served for far longer than the average Fortune 500 CEO and is older than many of his peers; he’ll turn 64 in November. So, who’s next? After nearly a decade and a half (and counting) of iteration, will Apple be able to once again find a visionary leader?
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg Businessweek:
But if it seems like a logical time for Cook to start planning for someone else to shape Apple’s next chapter, the situation is complicated by the lack of someone who’s both ready immediately and likely to be a long-term successor…
Then there’s the ever-present need to hit on the next major product. After the release of the Vision Pro and the abandonment of electric vehicles, that will likely be the defining challenge for his successor.
[P]eople close to [Cook] believe he’ll be CEO at least another three years… If Cook were to stay that long, people within Apple say, the most likely successor would be John Ternus, the hardware engineering chief. In a company whose success has always come from building category-defining gadgets, the ascension of a hardware engineering expert to the CEO job would seem logical. Ternus, who’s not yet 50, would also be more likely than other members of the executive team to stick around for a long time, potentially providing another decade or more of Cook-esque stability…
“They got a real big problem,” a person close to Apple says. “Ternus is a great guy, but he’s honestly really junior. He comes off as just one of the guys in the room, not like a refined executive or a person in charge. Being the CEO of a multitrillion-dollar company, you better command presence in the room.”
Other names that come up include Craig Federighi, head of software engineering, a recognizable face among Apple’s biggest fans who’s known internally to be conversant on corporate issues well outside of his purview, and Deirdre O’Brien, its head of retail and a Cook confidant, according to one former executive. People close to the company consider them unlikely successors…
[S]ome more skeptical insiders say the best approach for the company to retain its edge would be to consider an outsider. “The only way they avoid becoming an IBM-like company is if someone comes in with a truly revolutionary new idea—and it’s unclear who that person is,” says one person at Apple.
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MacDailyNews Take: Will Apple be able to once again find a visionary leader? Not if Tim Cook has anything to do with it.
As we wrote on March 22, 2024:
There are a lot of people inside and outside of Apple who think the company should have waited on the Vision Pro, but it’s fairly easy today to see why Tim Cook released this beta (alpha?) devkit: He likely knew last year, or had a strong inkling, that Project Titan was a goner and there wasn’t much excitement in Apple’s pipeline. He’d need something to point to as “innovation” while he continued on his seemingly unending quest to iterate and monetize products invented by Steve Jobs’ Apple (a very different place) while continuing Apple’s retail store buildout. He also needed something to energize developers and, who knows, they might come up with a killer visionOS app while Apple toils on the long road to real lightweight spatial computing glasses and beyond.
More importantly, Apple last year had already come to the sad realization that they’d missed the generative artificial intelligence revolution and would need a distraction while they feverishly scrambled to catch up (the fruits of which — alongside what sound like disappointing partnerships which hopefully, somehow, preserve user privacy — we’ll hopefully begin to see at WWDC this June).
You have to feel for Cook. After a decade plus of being able to iterate and monetize Jobs’ inspired products and services and continue adding retail stores around the world to spectacular effect, and being lauded for it, he now finds himself in a place that requires actual vision to be able to see which path to take. And he’s not the guy. Even the guy who put him in the position knew it.
Tim’s not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs
See also:
• Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
• Work on Apple Vision Pro began under Steve Jobs – August 23, 2023Beyond the fact that Cook can’t even execute a compelling live keynote address, his big send off, the “Apple Car,” [the idea of which was also germinated under Jobs] fizzled in ignominious failure.
See also:
• Scrapped Apple Car ‘a massive disappointment that will alter the course of the company’s history, perhaps for decades to come’ – Gurman – March 11, 2024
• Apple employees referred to doomed Apple Car project as ‘The Titanic Disaster’ – February 29, 2024So, despite myriad misgivings and protestations inside Apple, Cook pulled the trigger early on the Vision Pro. He had to have something to point to that would buy him some time. Even Apple’s rubber-stamping board of lackeys would wake up and start asking questions otherwise.
While Cook is hemming and hawing when faced with shareholders (virtually, of course, never again in person for as long as Cook remains), Apple is currently in scramble mode trying to catch up to rivals — including the world’s most valuable company, Microsoft — in generative AI, a technology the company seems to have completely missed while focusing instead on the not-ready-for-primetime Apple Vision Pro, visionOS, its now-canceled decade-long multi-billion-dollar electric vehicle boondoggle, replacing leather in iPhone cases and Apple Watch bands with overpriced junk in a quest to “save the planet,” forcing employees to endure a constant barrage of time-wasting zero-productivity DEI sessions, and myriad other various and sundry “initiatives” which Cook deems of import. – MacDailyNews, February 28, 2024
When you lose your visionary CEO and replace him with a caretaker CEO, this is the type of aimless, late, bureaucratic dithering that ensues. – MacDailyNews, November 21, 2017
Until it gets another visionary leader (fingers crossed; Apple’s history has shown – cough, Sculley, Spindler, cough – that the next CEO could be far, far worse than the very competent caretaker Cook), Apple can afford to miss things like generative AI – which they clearly did – and then use its huge war chest to catch up – which they’re doing right now (fun times and 80-hour weeks inside Apple Park!) – and, hopefully, surpass rivals (or at least be as good). Apple will very likely unveil their catch-up work within months (this June at WWDC 2024) in iPhones (and iPads, Apple Watches, etc.) with built-in on-device generative AI and other new AI-driven features. – MacDailyNews, February 14, 2024
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My two cents:
Scott Forstall
Elon Musk
no
You beat me to it and see it CLEARLY from across the pond EEGuy. Unless you moved to Cupertino. HA!…
Lol I wish. Sadly dont have enough talent for them. Maybe in the next life. Steve, if you are reading this, my future body would be available for transporting your soul back to 1 Infinite Loop 🙂
Scott Forstall certainly evoked a Steve Jobs Jr. vibe.
Not sure why he ruffled so many feathers and got ousted.
That happened to Steve Jobs too and he started a new company and got back to where he once belonged.
No other person will have the personal none financial interest vested in apple like Jobs had.
Elon can really attract talent and motivate people to get things done but he is doing more important things with his time than running a computer company.
“Not sure why he ruffled so many feathers and got ousted.”
Forstall was Steve’s RIGHT HAND man, brought over from NEXT, to get things done on early major projects. Examples: Aqua & iPod, co-inventor of iPhone, spearheaded the App Store — ALL made Apple the FIRST trillion dollar company. Scott was written up in magazines & newspapers speculating the heir apparent Jobs replacement.
However, without Steve Scott operated in the mold of Jobs. Can only speculate that did not sit well with consensus Cook managing process, simply stated — FORSTALL THREATENED COOK. He had the talent, creativity, brains and drive.
Also, I’ve read famous fights in the consensus meeting scenario with Jony Ive, the two did not get along as Scott was channeling Steve, while Cook was playing referee and Ive was walking out of meetings.
The Maps debacle most likely was an EXCUSE to get rid of the CREATIVE MAVERICK. Wish he was back in the saddle and never left. But as we have seen with the Cook track record of hiring high level executives to great fanfare, soon after join the ranks of the REVOLVING DOOR resigning from Apple.
Musk is the creative GENUIS CEO of 2024 and imagine what he would do with all those Apple trillions and most definitely he could actually build the Apple Car.
Meantime Cook is a CLUELESS, iterative bean counter CEO plodding along and way past retirement as executives go. Scott or Elon present day, are the best Apple picks IMHO and many others…
I am suggesting that the head of MacDailyNews editorial staff become next Apple CEO since they apparently have all the answers on how Apple should be run.
Where did MDN provide all of the answers? They merely said that Tim Cook is not a visionary leader and, if he’s involved in the selection process of the next CEO, the odds are low that Apple will get a visionary leader. Very likely, Apple will end up with an insider who parrots the DEI bullshit Cook loves and who continues the iteration train until the gravy runs out.
Steve Jobs was involved in the selection of Tim Cook as successor, So, who knows?
Steve Jobs also chose John Sculley..
Steve is gone. Tim will leave Apple. So will his successor.
The Tim “hate” is just fkn boring now….
Fkn boring. Just like Tim Cook’s Apple.
It’s not like he hasn’t had a lot of time to catch up to speed, but since he obviously lacks a creative leadership instinct he has dumbed down the company down to his pathetic slow place of uncertainty, lack of vision and free of not making a mistake.
Tim failed apple
As one that is VERY tired of TC and revels in the idea of leadership from a “product guy,” w/ AT LEAST a sliver of Jobs likeness, it’s beyond hyperbolic to say TC “failed apple.” Some aren’t in it for the “story,” (like me), as in “number-go-up” being THE main element/goal, but NO ONE is here for just the story…at least if you own one share of AAPL. In this respect, TC has hit it out of the park. He’s overseen a 10x+ increase in value. Yes, one could say SJ is responsible for that b/c the iPh is the major reason, but for ALL leadership positions, the buck (good & bad) stops with the one at the helm. Financially, he’s been fantastic.
With that said, I’m tired of the caretaker, the nanny, the do-gooder and the holder of hubris that believes his way is what you/we need. I also wonder if the his passion/means is waning?
Meanwhile, houses have been paid off, investing in things way beyond my (surprised) means and living like few…thank you Apple/Cook.
Has Cook really been fantastic? Or is this just the result of building out the retail store chain and iterating products and following the playbook Jobs left?
You can’t say definitively that Cook has been fantastic. A better CEO would have the company worth $5 trillion by now, well above Microsoft and the rest of the dreck, not BEHIND them.
Cook only looks fantastic to those who can’t imagine a real CEO with his eye on the ball, not enslaved to the DEI failure, with some charisma and vision.
Did you not read? Yes, one could say SJ is responsible for that b/c the iPh is the major reason, but for ALL leadership positions, the buck (good & bad) stops with the one at the helm.
Yes, Wally, I can read (and better than you, clearly). You wrote, and I quote, “TC has hit it out of the park. He’s overseen a 10x+ increase in value… Financially, he’s been fantastic.”
It only seems “fantastic” to you because you have no other reference point. A tarpaper shack in the desert looks “fantastic” to a homeless guy in the middle of winter in Detroit.
Again, a better CEO would have the company worth $5 trillion by now, well above Microsoft and the rest of the dreck, not BEHIND them.
If Steve Jobs were still alive today, how much more would Apple be worth?
John Ternus — no
Scott Forrstal — no, too much bad blood. Many people would leave.
Craig Federighi — best choice. The software has been weak but he can inspire things.
The minute Microsoft announced Satya Nadella as CEO I thought it was a brilliant move.
I vote for whomever will:
-fix siri
-finally make a karaoke app for apple tv with an apple microphone
-make a tv sound bar
-finally allow for merging of apple IDs (eg people who started an itunes account with a non-apple email)
-make routers again, with built in vpn
-keep doubling down on privacy
-make homekit devices (doorbell, cameras, sensors, etc)
-work with medical systems to make efficient computer systems and seamless communication that streamlines functionality and aesthetics for patients and staff (hospitals are a mess)
-incorporates cryptocurrencies into Apple Card/pay so all of our buying decisions don’t have to go through mastercard and GS
Someone who focuses more on products and less on politics.
I think Tim did a good job overall. Succeeding Steve Jobs is no small task. But it seems clear to me that Apple needs fresh blood to renew itself.
Deirdre O’Brien: NO! Operations/Retail is NOT VISIONARY for hard/software
Craig Federighi: head of soft engineering: knows Apple well, but Visionary?
John Ternus: head of hard engineering: knows Apple well, but Visionary, should visionary know hardware or software or both?
outsider: maybe best choice for Visionary but who knows if he/she has Apple DNA?
Jony Yves! Knows Apple so well, including DNA + knows hard/soft-ware. Has vision, not just dry operational knowledge. Has maturity. But is he CEO material?
Next CEO must have balls to be visionary & strength to endure such a huge firm & have the manufacturing/distribution knowhow to take Apple to the next level. So many big firms has failed to resume its initial innovation i.e. Kodak, Agfa, IBM, Grundig, even Msft/Goo/FB have had major failures etc., but Apple shone through many decades & dotcomboom/bust, so next CEO must reinvigorate Apple with not just new ideas but quality check, as it’s gone down last few years. Tim Cook who catapulted AAPL from $1B to $3T was hailed but his all in 1 basket approach (China concentration) has backfired and he also failed at major product category, the iCar, with slow VisionPro launch, so the world needs a Great Next Apple CEO – if Apple goes down, it’s a depressing new world ; )
I think it should be relatively easy to find someone with good possibilities at the Folsom Street Fair.
They will become age inclusive and hire Biden after that fuckup gets his ass kicked by Trump.
Have any of you here actually been a CEO of a company that does billions of dollars in revenue each quarter. Have any of you run company with 200,000 employees? Have any of you every built out a distribution machine that makes a huge business like this run on all cylinders. Fair warning: Disney thought it was time for Bob Iger to step down at Disney and they replaced him with Bob Chapeck. Chapeck was dealt some really shitty cards (covid) and didn’t have the gravitas to do the job both inside the company and in communicating with wall street. It’s very hard to find replacements for these jobs and if Steve Jobs is the almighty god why did he replace himself with Tim Cook and not Jony Ives? He wasn’t stupid and got it right…just ask his late wife.
Steve Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, is a ditzy Marxist.
Steve Jobs also chose John Sculley.