This is breaking news. Apple announced that Tim Cook will be stepping down as CEO and will be replaced by SVP of Hardware Engineering, John Ternus.
Cook will remain on the board of directors but will transition to chairman. Ternus will become a board member. Current board chairman Art Levinson will transition to becoming the lead independent director.
In recent interviews leading to Apple’s 50th anniversary, Cook had said he had no plans to step down as CEO for a while (that he would know when it was time). This is therefore somewhat of an earlier surprise announcement (but not unexpected since there had been a lot of chatter over the past year regarding when Cook would step down).
A community letter by Cook was posted on Apple’s web site.
Myself, I’ve soured on Cook recently; he’s said in recent interviews his moves weren’t political and were based on policy, but that didn’t fly for many of us because donating to the White House ballroom (which the president didn’t even go through the proper approval channels), attending Melania, posing next to a convicted SA offender, and having a gold plaque created for the sitting POTUS using Apple resources, is a bit too much “bending the knee”.
IMHO, he chose to debase himself publicly this way to try to shield Apple, but my take is that companies should stand up for their principles and individual leaders ought to do the same. This whole thing about fiduciary responsibilities and shareholder value at all costs, is another piece of propaganda. Caving to something that is being done illegally, throws that out the window.
Those tariffs were not legal to begin with (a president does not have unilateral power and there was no real emergency to make that decision) and eventually bore itself out in the courts where those tariffs now need to be refunded. Had more businesses and their leaders NOT caved, they had the collective power to pressure the POTUS (instead, they provided the permission structure to allow that to occur).
Did I let Apple investor relations/Cook know? Of course I did (and my take was diplomatic, acknowledging the positives from his time as COO to leading Apple to the present… but I felt these moves were NOT in the best interests of the company that I also used to work for).
A lot of this has been a huge driver in my recent AAPL sell orders (none have executed to date because those limit prices have not been reached). I will be re-evaluating the quantities in those orders though after digesting this news, but my long decided divestment plan remains in place regardless of this news.
I personally have no issues with this change being announced at this time (I felt it was needed). As an operations person, Cook served as an important person early on with streamlining Apple’s operations. He led the company during those times when Jobs had to step away for medical reasons. And after Jobs passed away, Cook did provide steady leadership that allowed Apple to grow to its current size, rewarding shareholders in these past 15 years.
Cook isn’t a product “visionary” and while there was a lot of iterative and evolutionary designs in recent product lines, a lot of it was on the legacy of what Jobs had left at the tail end (thus a lot of follow on inertia of the iPhone and iPad). But there hasn’t been that next “big” thing (where having product people in charge can make that difference); Vision Pro isn’t it. Additionally, software quality has gone even further downhill in recent years (that to me ought to be a focus).
It will remain to be seen how Ternus will navigate this environment (since Cook will become chairman, I am presuming there will be some status quo with how Apple will navigate the White House where Cook may still be the point person while leaving Ternus shielded from having to directly deal with those things) as well as how his background in hardware engineering will manifest itself in the decisions regarding the products. True, being CEO means overseeing the entire ship and just because ones expertise is on the hardware side, doesn’t mean this will be emphasized either (since it is managing the entire business).
What matters is his input on products that are in the pipeline and ideas for the future (and that part is what has been missing since Jobs passed away). Due to this same corporate inertia, those ideas will not manifest itself for several years after Ternus has taken over. I do personally believe Apple will be in good hands with Ternus since Cook will be leaving behind a solid bench of executives (including those who will be promoted as a result of this change).
Finally, Ternus should not do most everything that was written in this article by Brian Sozzi. The financial press has been the worst group of folks to listen to (read what I wrote about folks like Jim Cramer from a longtime ago; I stand by the things I flamed him about 100%). Similarly, reading that list by Sozzi including his suggestion of taking the axe to the workforce in the age of AI, as one of the dumbest pieces of advice I’ve read because that right there, highlights this person has little clue as to the culture at the company.
