Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple's chief executive officer, and hardware engineering chief John Ternus is set to take over, Apple announced today. Cook will continue on as Apple CEO through the summer, with Ternus set to join Apple's Board of Directors and take over as CEO on September 1, 2026. Cook is going to transition to executive chairman, and he will "assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world".
Since 2011 when he took over Apple, to 2020, Cook doubled the company’s revenue and profit, and the company’s market value increased from $348 billion to $1.9 trillion.In 2025.
I frankly don’t know about Apple and Tim Cook specifically, but broadly a lot of enthusiasts may not be as excited about revenue and profit as they are about how good the experience is for them.
For example, looking at a well executed enjoyable game with no bullshit micro transactions or loot boxes or anything most would agree that is a good game.
But revenue and profit wise some random low effort mobile game with micro transactions would blow that good game out of the water business wise.
Unfortunately, lots of “better business” is explicitly screwing over the customers as much as they can possibly get away with, so I’m not super excited about arguments around revenue, profit, and market cap as a measure of a company I should like to buy from.
Sure, but then people should be honest about what they are actually saying:
“I’m glad he left because I hate what they did to my iPhone during his tenure.” Instead of “I’m glad he left, he’s been a disaster for Apple.”
One is honest and accurate, the other isn’t.
Also in what is Apple really screwing people over? The MacBook is more competitive than it’s ever been so much so that M chips continue to be the gold standard every brand aims to beat and MacBooks are more affordable than ever considering the pricing we’re seeing now. Really, all things considered, the Liquid Glass design is (maybe) a L drop in an ocean of Ws for Apple.
Yeah it’s weird that people argue Tim was bad for Apple. All the major metrics are in the green since he took over, the only complaints I see about Apple today is something abstract like “I don’t like the bubbly design of my device.”
If anything, he has only improved Apple’s products since the mid 2010s when their products were suffering from focusing on thinness instead of usability.
CEOs deal with higher level stuff (the aforementioned macroeconomics). They don’t give a shit that some chronically online people complain about the design (which is not reflecting on the sales at all).
Apple products still have good design, especially compared to what the competition is putting out. Nobody thinks Apple is coasting or iterating aimlessly outside of niche internet groups. Apple is still making record profits and is still gaining market share.
Sure. Tim Cook was great at driving costs down and selling more devices and services.
Design is how it works, not just how it looks. Apple has focused much more on the looks instead of functionality and usability since Cook took over. You can even see it on Apple’s website. It’s looks flashy and elegant, but finding technical information is a hassle. The user interface is optimized to look clean and elegant in screen shots, not for usability.
I recently used an older Mac and was delighted with using it.
macOS has gotten noticeably worse in many aspects. The Human Interface Guidelines are often ignored. Some system applications like Disk Utility were rewritten with less features than before. QuickTime only has a fraction of the features of QuickTime 7. Hiding UI elements like scrollbars, excessive transparency made usability worse. The new System settings are a convoluted mess compared to the old one. The way permissions and app notarization are implemented is user hostile, while giving only marginal security improvements.
Also on the technical side it has been meh. Swift if a good programming language but it suffers from endless feature creep. Compile speed and debugging is still worse than Objective-C.
Apple used to dogfeed new APIs in house first for a few years and then open it up once it was working. They have changed this completely. New APIs are first introduced for public use while in an unfinished state.
SwiftUI being a major example. It’s a giant framework introduced with the idea of being cross platform between all of Apple’s platforms. However, it hasn’t managed to do that. SwiftUI is different on all of them. It even makes it harder to write proper Mac apps. All while being much slower, more buggy, and more limited than UIKit and Appkit.
Or look at the options for scripting and automation. Shortcuts is cross platform. However it’s limited and can’t do everything that’s possible with Automator, AppleScript, and shell scripting. It also doesn’t integrate with the existing Services menu in macOS. The share menu still feels kind of alien on macOS.
iPadOS is held back by lots of limitations. For example the file manager is a joke compared to Finder on the Mac. It’s still bogged down by design decisions that were made for the first iPhones that had extremely limited memory and no swap. The windowing and multitasking are clunky and inelegant.
Liquid Glass is so bad usability wise, the guy who lead it left the company.
The yearly releases of major versions for operating systems led to a less stable platform. Every year millions of developers spend time to test adjust to the new version. This means they can’t work ok features or other bugs. This has lead to lots of abandoned software especially on iOS, that could still work if Apple didn’t break stuff every year.
Do you know why I would do better? I would hire him to do the logistics and handle the CFO, while focusing on R&D, design and what the customers want. He entirely skipped R&D, design and giving the customers what they want.
Plus I would fucking never do this and suck up to a fascist:
Since 2011 when he took over Apple, to 2020, Cook doubled the company’s revenue and profit, and the company’s market value increased from $348 billion to $1.9 trillion.In 2025.
Just saying.
I frankly don’t know about Apple and Tim Cook specifically, but broadly a lot of enthusiasts may not be as excited about revenue and profit as they are about how good the experience is for them.
For example, looking at a well executed enjoyable game with no bullshit micro transactions or loot boxes or anything most would agree that is a good game.
But revenue and profit wise some random low effort mobile game with micro transactions would blow that good game out of the water business wise.
Unfortunately, lots of “better business” is explicitly screwing over the customers as much as they can possibly get away with, so I’m not super excited about arguments around revenue, profit, and market cap as a measure of a company I should like to buy from.
Sure, but then people should be honest about what they are actually saying:
“I’m glad he left because I hate what they did to my iPhone during his tenure.” Instead of “I’m glad he left, he’s been a disaster for Apple.”
One is honest and accurate, the other isn’t.
Also in what is Apple really screwing people over? The MacBook is more competitive than it’s ever been so much so that M chips continue to be the gold standard every brand aims to beat and MacBooks are more affordable than ever considering the pricing we’re seeing now. Really, all things considered, the Liquid Glass design is (maybe) a L drop in an ocean of Ws for Apple.
Yeah it’s weird that people argue Tim was bad for Apple. All the major metrics are in the green since he took over, the only complaints I see about Apple today is something abstract like “I don’t like the bubbly design of my device.”
If anything, he has only improved Apple’s products since the mid 2010s when their products were suffering from focusing on thinness instead of usability.
The user experience and user interface has suffered.
That’s says nothing about the CEOs performance. If anything it says about the design team.
Well, it’s says something about the CEO. The design team ultimately reports to him.
CEOs deal with higher level stuff (the aforementioned macroeconomics). They don’t give a shit that some chronically online people complain about the design (which is not reflecting on the sales at all).
Steve Jobs gave a shit and is the reason Apple products had good design. Since his death Apple has been coasting and iterating aimlessly.
Apple products still have good design, especially compared to what the competition is putting out. Nobody thinks Apple is coasting or iterating aimlessly outside of niche internet groups. Apple is still making record profits and is still gaining market share.
Sure. Tim Cook was great at driving costs down and selling more devices and services.
Design is how it works, not just how it looks. Apple has focused much more on the looks instead of functionality and usability since Cook took over. You can even see it on Apple’s website. It’s looks flashy and elegant, but finding technical information is a hassle. The user interface is optimized to look clean and elegant in screen shots, not for usability.
I recently used an older Mac and was delighted with using it.
macOS has gotten noticeably worse in many aspects. The Human Interface Guidelines are often ignored. Some system applications like Disk Utility were rewritten with less features than before. QuickTime only has a fraction of the features of QuickTime 7. Hiding UI elements like scrollbars, excessive transparency made usability worse. The new System settings are a convoluted mess compared to the old one. The way permissions and app notarization are implemented is user hostile, while giving only marginal security improvements.
Also on the technical side it has been meh. Swift if a good programming language but it suffers from endless feature creep. Compile speed and debugging is still worse than Objective-C.
Apple used to dogfeed new APIs in house first for a few years and then open it up once it was working. They have changed this completely. New APIs are first introduced for public use while in an unfinished state.
SwiftUI being a major example. It’s a giant framework introduced with the idea of being cross platform between all of Apple’s platforms. However, it hasn’t managed to do that. SwiftUI is different on all of them. It even makes it harder to write proper Mac apps. All while being much slower, more buggy, and more limited than UIKit and Appkit.
Or look at the options for scripting and automation. Shortcuts is cross platform. However it’s limited and can’t do everything that’s possible with Automator, AppleScript, and shell scripting. It also doesn’t integrate with the existing Services menu in macOS. The share menu still feels kind of alien on macOS.
iPadOS is held back by lots of limitations. For example the file manager is a joke compared to Finder on the Mac. It’s still bogged down by design decisions that were made for the first iPhones that had extremely limited memory and no swap. The windowing and multitasking are clunky and inelegant.
Liquid Glass is so bad usability wise, the guy who lead it left the company.
The yearly releases of major versions for operating systems led to a less stable platform. Every year millions of developers spend time to test adjust to the new version. This means they can’t work ok features or other bugs. This has lead to lots of abandoned software especially on iOS, that could still work if Apple didn’t break stuff every year.
Yes, because profit is everything. Just saying.
That’s the point of running a company, yes.
Just pointing out his results were pretty good in this regards. You believe you are able to do better?
Doubt.
Do you know why I would do better? I would hire him to do the logistics and handle the CFO, while focusing on R&D, design and what the customers want. He entirely skipped R&D, design and giving the customers what they want.
Plus I would fucking never do this and suck up to a fascist:
(screenshot at 4 minutes in article video):
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/08/07/tim-cook-gift-to-trump/