GoKawiilAnother Day Has Come
It’s a profoundly different feeling today than the last time Apple’s CEO announced his transition to chairman of the board, and his chosen successor was promoted to replace him as CEO.
In August 2011, Steve Jobs was sick. For years he’d managed to stay a step, sometimes two, ahead of the pancreatic cancer he’d been battling since 2003, but no more. Jobs wrote, in his letter to the company’s board and the Apple community: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”
Unfortunately, indeed. Cook inherited a company with extraordinary potential growth in front of it, but in deep existential grief. He led the company — and its community — through that grief and achieved that potential.
The transition Apple and Tim Cook announced today is entirely different. No one’s hand was forced. There is nothing unpleasant. Apple’s business is firing on nearly all cylinders. This year’s iPhone 17 lineup is arguably the best ever. The Mac is more popular than ever — exemplified just last month by the introduction of the $600 MacBook Neo, a machine so fun, with a price so low, that the only problem is that it’s selling so well that Apple is reportedly running out of A18 Pro chips to put in it. The iPad lineup is strong, AirPods remain dominant, and I see Apple Watches on wrists everywhere I go.
Tim Cook is 65 years old, has been CEO for 15 years, and is going out on top. Looking only at the numbers, Cook is the GOAT. But Cook, by all accounts, would be the first to tell us he doesn’t want to be judged by the numbers alone. Or as he famously put it himself at a shareholders meeting, early in his reign, “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI.”
Jobs made the right pick for his successor. And while only time will tell, it sure feels today like Cook has too. Cook has never been a product person and to his credit, he never once pretended to be. (That was John Sculley’s downfall, in a nut.) With the table set by the budding iPhone and nascent iPad products Jobs left behind, Apple didn’t need a product person at the helm in the 2010s. They needed someone to let the existing products blossom and expand. Today, it feels to me like Apple needs a product guy at the helm again. Someone with the itch to spearhead the creation of new things. Of course Cook’s successor came from within the company’s ranks. And John Ternus, more than anyone else at the company, seems like that person.
Here’s Cook, quoted in Apple’s announcement today: “John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future. I could not be more confident in his abilities and his character, and I look forward to working closely with him on this transition and in my new role as executive chairman.”
Regarding that new role, Apple’s announcement states:
As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world.
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