Analysts at LightShed think Apple should replace Tim Cook as CEO as the company would benefit from a CEO who’s more focused on the product side of the business or it’ll risk missing out on the AI boom.
“Tim’s not a product person, per se.” – Steve Jobs
That’s the view of LightShed partners analysts Walter Piecyk and Joe Galone, who wrote Wednesday that Apple seems due for a new chief executive. Their note comes a day after the company announced that Jeff Williams will soon retire as chief operating officer, to be replaced by an Apple veteran.
By staying internal for its next COO, Apple signaled that investors should expect a sense of stability in that role. But perhaps, in the Piecyk and Galone view, keeping things stable shouldn’t be the objective for Apple nowadays, hence the call for a CEO shift. While Cook brought operational expertise to the top job, the LightShed analysts said the company now “needs a product-focused CEO.”
Apple has struggled to keep pace in the world of artificial intelligence. ”AI will reshape industries across the global economy, and Apple risks becoming one of its casualties,” the LightShed analysts commented. They noted that some think the company has an insurmountable moat, referring to how it insulates its business from competition. But “we have seen these moats crumble many times during technological revolutions,” they added.
The analysts also didn’t mince words in discussing snafus around Apple’s attempts to build a smarter version of its Siri personal assistant… Dismissing that 2024 pledge as “simply a case of overpromising and underdelivering” would be overly generous, the LightShed team wrote. “Apple was nowhere with AI then, and little has changed since… Missing on AI could fundamentally alter the company’s long-term trajectory and ability to grow at all.”
MacDailyNews Take: Apple should‘ve replaced Tim Cook as CEO several years ago. You know, before the company completely missed GenAI while wasting time on EVs, foisting an AR/VR DevKit foisted onto a handful of consumers, and undertaking a whole host of other distractions.
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
Welcome to the third stage. Several years late, of course, hopefully not too late, but at least we’re here.
We’ve experienced all of the stages, having long been the canaries in the coal mine:
This lack of focus, lack of attention to detail, lack of striving for perfection will catch up to Apple eventually if it is not arrested and corrected in time. — MacDailyNews, November 29, 2017
Apple is not firing on all cylinders.
The quality has been slipping for years and the mistakes, bad designs, stupid decisions, product delays and worse have been piling up. – MacDailyNews, May 18, 2017
Steve Jobs is irreplaceable, but someone with vision, taste, and focus is what’s required here.
The magic of Steve Jobs was vision, focus on the products from the user’s point of view, fastidious attention to detail, and next-level marketing acumen. – MacDailyNews, January 29, 2018
Steve Jobs could make a power cord seem insanely great. Tim Cook could put a room to sleep while unveiling teleportation; he makes watching paint dry seem like must-see event.
Apple is currently helmed by a charisma black hole.
Lacking a charismatic leader who could sell ice cubes to eskimos, execution is the key. High quality products and services that just work with timely updates in sufficient supply at launch… Apple’s issues with late, old, sometimes problematic products and services do more to dampen excitement and devotion than anything. – MacDailyNews, January 4, 2019
Tim Cook is not the best person to be CEO of Apple.
Do I believe that Tim Cook is the absolute best person to be CEO of Apple?
No, I do not.
Someone more focused on the actual business at hand (delighting customers) and who has the ability to sell it onstage would be more successful. Likely wildly more successful. In the Apple CEOship as defined by Steve Jobs, Tim Cook is out of his element.
Will I shed a tear when Tim Cook finally exits Apple? Take a wild guess.
Let’s face it, Steve Jobs’ track record of picking Apple CEOs was less than stellar.
Hopefully, when the time comes, Sculley II isn’t up next. Yes, it could be worse. Cook fans can bask in whatever solace they can scrape up from the bottom of that sentiment, at least. – SteveJack, MacDailyNews, April 2, 2019
You know, some people get upset when we point out that Tim Cook is a boring, reactive caretaker who’s not really the best person to be running Apple today or for at least the past several years.
Operations manager Cook should have been a 3-5 year stopgap after Steve Jobs’ untimely passing, running the iteration playbook, providing continuity for the company while it found a real CEO. Instead, he hung on — and keeps hanging on — well past his sell-by date…
You can be upset with us for having the temerity to call it like we see it, but the fact remains that Apple would be doing significantly better today with a visionary who’d have seen AI on the horizon, who’d have recognized the intrinsic importance of Siri and therefore invested in it instead of criminally neglecting it, and who wouldn’t have squandered the company’s gigantic leads in things like personal assistants and podcasting. – MacDailyNews, August 22, 2024
Apple needed new blood years ago, but the old blood simply won’t let go. – MacDailyNews, January 22, 2025
For its NeXT CEO, Apple needs relative YOUTH, not another 50- or 60-something calcified company lifer who was part of the so-called team that blindly missed the GenAI paradigm shift.
Steve Jobs was 42 years old when he returned to Apple as interim CEO in September 1997. pic.twitter.com/Bk0kdul7QF
— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) July 10, 2025
See also: Steve Jobs never meant for Tim Cook to still be Apple’s CEO in 2025 – MacDailyNews, July 9, 2025
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Replace with whom?
They could do a lot worse than Tim Cook. Who’s better?
I’ve heard some say Elon Musk would be better. I think he’d be a flaming disaster. Johnny Ive? No track record to show he could run anything the size of Apple. Jobs didn’t pick him; he picked Tim Cook.
“Everyone” wants a new CEO, but no-one has a good answer to this.
That is HUGE PROBLEMS.
It would be smart to bring back Scott Forestall (who was Steve Jobs’ protege) and thereby correct his unfair departure after being forced to prematurely release Apple Maps, which then Tim and the crew blamed him for its temporary flaws.
Also, Ternus could be the tech czar under Scott and I would applaud.
Public sentiment won’t settle “who,” but could clearly have an influence on “when and why.”
I for one, have not the insight as to whom, but the fervor and paradigm of Jensen Huang/Nvidia would be ideal, consistent with AAPL’s storied history and light-years ahead of Mr. Wooden.
Steve Jobs? The guy that botched the Lisa and the Mac and got fired after pissing off most of the company, who then failed with his enterprise hardware company, insisting on domestic manufacture when EVERYONE else is making competitively priced hardware overseas? Oh, he produced a successful cartoon? Get real. Apple needs a proven leader.
— MDN, probably, 1996.
So Tim Cook can’t fill Steve Jobs shoes. People like him are irreplaceable, and he had a significant learning curve to surmount to be that guy. SteveJack was around for the Beleaguered years, he should remember the succession of failed leadership. The guy who began that chain of making bad choices for the next leader was Steve Jobs. The time for the next choice is soon, to be sure, but whoever takes over will be a gamble. Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, but he is the second best person ever to run the company, and unlike everyone except Steve and himself, he leaves it in a healthy position for the next one. He deserves a great deal of credit from every reader on this site. Also the publisher.
Whilst nobody believes your moniker it seems you perhaps should be censored for childish political rants while bemoaning how awful everyone else’s are. Take a walk; hopefully off a short pier and find a more suitable site for you hypocrisy.