When Steve Jobs passed, the question all of us Apple faithful asked wasn’t just “who replaces a legend?” It was whether anyone could fill his shoes. When Tim took over, it felt like a logical decision, but for those of us who were at Apple under Cook…we learned quickly that he was the right answer.
He’s not Steve Jobs.
And he wasn’t trying to be.
Supply chain mastery. Cost discipline.
A leadership style that actually fit the organisation he inherited.
That’s not boring. That’s intelligence.
Now that his transition is confirmed, stepping down as CEO in September to become Executive Chairman with John Ternus taking over, I’m hearing a repeated line: that he wasn’t visionary enough and left Apple behind in the AI race.
Three reasons I don’t buy it.
1. The numbers. 💰
Market cap went from $350 billion to $4 trillion. Revenue nearly quadrupled, from $108 billion to over $416 billion annually. He launched the Apple Watch, AirPods (Max), and Vision Pro. That’s not a man who stood still.
Those are some incredibly daring products that are now widely mainstream or highly aspirational to the masses.
2. Apple was never that focused on the AI race to begin with. 🤖
AI is integral to my daily work. I get it. I’m bought in on that side. But enterprise AI tooling is not Apple’s game and never has been. Apple builds for the majority: creators, consumers, and the person who wants their device to just work. Siri not being a frontier LLM product isn’t a failure, it’s a reflection of who Apple’s focus customer actually is. You can’t be behind in a market you never wanted to play in.
3. His successor choice embodies all of these points.👑
Ternus is Apple’s SVP of Hardware Engineering. 25 years at the company. The iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, Vision Pro. All his. Cook didn’t hand the keys to an AI evangelist. He chose someone obsessed with the object.
For the world of the future, that’s exactly right. Apple wins because it makes the physical experience extraordinary and builds everything else in tandem to it. Look at Apple TV+. Fitness+. iCloud. They didn’t invent any of those categories. Apple innovated and changed them for the better by owning the channel and making the experience distinctly Apple.
Bringing in someone who’s made Apple hardware even more desirable is, to me, the best possible play.
The tech critics want Apple to be OpenAI. Apple has never wanted to be OpenAI.
What do you think? Excited for the next chapter, or are you less convinced?
My own Apple years, and how they led to watches: How I Got Into Watches (Part One).