My Take on The New Apple

Apple is one of the biggest

and most interesting companies in the world right now.

Not for any new products, but for what's going on behind the scenes.

Because it is... now... the scenes.

So Apple turnover, or...

Apple's turnover... has made headlines for like the last week straight.

You've probably already seen it on your feed.

Tim Cook is officially stepping down

as CEO of Apple this year to be replaced by John Ternus.

And I normally don't cover CEO changes at companies,

but a lot of you have been asking me about it

and I do think this one's really interesting in the context of the types

of products we may be about to get...

as a result.

So the full story is John Ternus, starting in September,

will be the new CEO of Apple Inc.

He was previously the Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering...

So the new chief of hardware when he moves up will be Johny Srouji,

who was working as Senior VP of Hardware Technologies...

He's the guy who's always in the chip lab down in all those Apple

keynotes,

leading all the Apple silicon stuff.

And Tim Cook won't be leaving Apple.

He'll just do the classic retirement move to Chairman of the Board of Directors.

So first of all... we gotta give props to Tim Cook where it's due.

I mean, love him or hate him,

that man stepped into probably the single hardest job in tech,

which is... you're gonna follow up Steve Jobs.

And while he is no Steve Jobs, he did it in his own way.

He brought all of his supply chain optimization

and business expertise to take Apple to ridiculous heights.

To be a trillion-dollar, then two, three,

four trillion-dollar... company through 15 years of wildly different economies and political climates...

Investors love him.

That was what he was always good at.

But the number one question a lot of people have been asking me for

the past week straight is like,

all right now what do you think?

What is going to possibly change about Apple now

that Tim Cook is stepping down?

And it's funny, normally, you know, with these,

with one or two people shuffling around,

it typically doesn't actually make much of a difference.

Like with these huge companies,

they're like a massive boat and thousands of people have a paddle.

So no one person is going to dramatically change the direction of the whole

company.

But if you've paid attention for the past couple months around Apple,

it's actually more than just the guy at the top.

It's more than one or two people.

There have been a lot of really high level executives

and important people... and leaders in the company stepping down,

leaders leaving and mostly retiring.

There were maybe one or two surprises in there,

but it was mostly... a bunch of fairly long-tenured,

predictable 65 year old C-suite executives just retiring around the same time

and then handing over the reins to a bunch of the younger generation inside

Apple.

So then Tim Cook, who is 65 years old,

was essentially the last big domino in a large,

likely orchestrated series of exactly that.

If you want a lot more insight on this,

you should watch Snazzy Quinn's video on it.

It's a few months old,

but it has aged incredibly well on all of this.

So my takeaway from all this... is... it feels like there's... a bunch of

coordinated oars all changing direction at the same time in the same way...

that seems to actually be changing the direction of the boat.

And I think I really like where it looks like it's all going.

See, Steve Jobs is what I would call a product guy, right?

He was the CEO

and he did a lot with marketing

and strategy and the rest of

that.

He was the visionary,

but the head of the company was this guy who really dived into the

nitty gritty of the products

and what they were capable of

and what made them great.

So then Tim Cook... not a product guy.

And that's fine.

That's still totally fine.

Still was incredibly successful as a CEO.

Investors love him, but whenever he talks about Apple,

it's pretty clear he's not... in the nitty gritty of the products.

Like you can even go back

and watch my interview with him from two years ago.

I made the mistake of trying to talk about a lot of products in

detail.

And that's how you end up with this meme of me basically reminding him

that the Magic Mouse exists

and him having to come up with something to say about it on the

spot.

The Magic Mouse.

It was also an incredible moment.

Getting the... ergonomics well done, and... that was key.

With Magic Mouse...

Yeah, you can tell that's the first time he's thought about

that product in a long time.

So anyway, John Ternus, new CEO,

just came from being the VP of Hardware Engineering.

This is a product guy again.

And I'm not just saying that.

You can go watch interviews of him from the last year

or so of Apple,

parading him around, essentially getting him on camera and ready for the CEO spotlight...

I also interviewed him about two years ago

and we went back

and forth in depth about the iPhone

and its materials and shed some light on Apple's specific stance on repairability versus

durability...

And it was quite nuanced.

Now whether we agree with it or not, that's another story.

But the point is this guy is clearly in the nitty gritty of the

products all the time.

And so now this guy is obviously in a much more elevated position in

the company.

So what does this mean?

Well, I think we can look at... the past couple years of Apple's hardware

engineering which have gone really well to get an idea.

So the last of the Jony Ive-designed MacBook Pros

that were too thin

and had keyboard issues

and overheated... are out...

And the Apple silicon powered MacBook Pros

that are actually thicker

and have more battery

and more ports are in.

The $599 Mac mini snuck up

as one of the best deals in all of tech.

And then the latest, most disruptive example,

MacBook Neo coming along at 600 bucks

and and putting the entire Windows laptop industry on notice.

So a little inside baseball real quick, but I think it'll be helpful.

So since COVID Apple events, instead of being live on stage presentations,

are now these pre-recorded... productions, these really, really polished productions.

I actually really like them a lot.

But anyway, now that they're pre-recorded,

that means that whenever there's a new Apple event

and they invite us all to go to Apple Park,

they're essentially inviting us all to go watch this pre-recorded production

that they've made.

So when everybody goes to WWDC this summer,

we're all going to go to one place

and just essentially watch a screening of the movie

that they made together.

It's the same thing that you see getting live streamed.

But what you might not know... is

if this is a 10am event

and a 10am live stream... right around like 9:57,

Tim Cook will come out onto a stage in front of the screen

and give a big patented "good morning"

and give us like a three-minute intro to... the event

and what to expect.

Nothing crazy, just CEO talk.

"Oh, thanks for joining us today.

Here at Apple we're really proud of what we've made.

We have something really exciting to show y'all.

So enjoy.

We think you're gonna love it."

And then it starts, you know, at 10 o'clock, y'all tune in.

The live stream goes.

Good morning!

For the MacBook Neo event...

That was John Ternus, and that's obviously before he's announced as CEO,

it's a couple weeks ago.

So clearly they're getting him ready to do more of these.

But also it's symbolic of him like heading the development of the Neo

and kind of owning

that and presenting it to the world.

I don't think I saw Tim Cook there at all.

Word on the street is they were already planning to do this again anyway

in September,

but now it's even more likely since he is the CEO.

But Ternus will probably be the guy... mainly hosting the entire iPhone unveiling event,

the way Tim Cook has in the past.

This year that we are expecting to get an iPhone Fold,

which seems like he has also been spearheading the development of.

So I hope that

that guy who's been given elevated leadership in the company

and has a bunch of people with him on board now for

that type of stuff

and has... spearheading development of interesting stuff like MacBook Pros

and then MacBook Neo

and a folding iPhone.

I hope that that guy... can continue taking... really big swings at... interesting,

thoughtful hardware products.

Like, don't get me wrong, a lot of really solid,

interesting products did come out under Tim Cook, like Apple Watch and AirTags,

and Vision Pro was a big swing.

I think AirPods, though, are probably the most successful example.

They are literally the most popular headphones on planet Earth.

But they've also clearly shifted into focusing especially recently... on building out all these

services.

Like we hear about them becoming a services company now with like iCloud

and Apple TV,

Apple Music, Apple Fitness, all this stuff just to get that sweet,

sweet recurring revenue out of the massive iPhone install base...

Like I said, investors loved it.

But I want the interesting products to start coming back again.

Now, here's the only thing that makes me nervous.

Okay.

Apple also has this character about them

which is like they... almost seem... like they avoid... the possibility of failure extra

hard,

which... makes them try less things, if that makes sense.

Like there is a ton of stuff that I would like...

Apple to make.

Like I say this on my podcast all the time, that they just don't.

Like... a camera.

I think... that could be awesome if Apple made a dedicated camera.

But they don't.

A smart home speaker with a display instead of just HomePod,

that could be cool.

Smart glasses, they could jump into that.

They're apparently gonna jump into folding phones.

But other stuff like a printer that doesn't suck hey,

maybe with their billions of dollars they could figure that one out too.

But every new product drop, especially a new category from Apple,

it feels like it has to be this... massive, revolutionary,

huge thing which... holds them back from trying a lot of interesting stuff.

Like if Apple were a YouTuber,

they would be the YouTuber that... that uploads every... six months, right?

Like Samsung and Google, they're the daily uploader, grinding away,

trying new stuff all the time.

New video, it worked great.

New video flopped.

Whatever.

I'm gonna try something next day.

Like, they're just constantly pushing stuff out.

And so there's a graveyard.

There's literally a graveyard of dozens

and dozens of Google products

that you've probably mostly never heard of

that just didn't work

and they killed it,

whatever.

But Apple, whenever they talk about something new

and it flops it gets talked about.

It echoes.

It's talked about so much.

Vision Pro, right?

iPhone 16e, to an extent.

Apple Intelligence, obviously.

AirPower.

Like, when Apple flops at something, you remember it, basically.

That's the point.

And I think that's made them play things... ridiculously safe... under Tim Cook for

the past many,

many years, to the point where things feel like almost formulaic.

Like we get a new Apple product,

but it's... it's a parts-bin variation of a different Apple product.

They all are kind of variations of each other.

Maybe MacBook Neo is like a positive version of

that because that's technically a parts-bin product too,

but most of them, it would start to feel very stale.

I don't know if that's ever going to completely stop.

But it does feel like with the new leadership, the new CEO,

all this Apple turnover,

it feels like we may be ready to get a bunch of interesting hardware

products again.

Which is what I think a lot of people have been asking about.

And I think a lot of people are ready for.

Now, we just need them to step up their software game to match.

Because between... macOS Tahoe... and Liquid Glass and Apple Intelligence and Siri,

all of that, there's a lot of work to be done to close

that gap.

But hey, if they nail both, that could be special, that could be fun.

Bookmark this video and come back to it in five to 10 years to

see how well it aged.

Or if you are watching this in 2030, '31,

and I turned out to be super wrong,

send this to someone to show them how dumb I am.

Thanks for watching...

Catch you guys in the next one...

Peace.