Tim’s done, now it’s John’s Ternus

Coming up, it's a revolving door at Apple Park. Tim Cook is out, John Tennis is in. Cosmic Orange is out, Dark Cherry is in, and MagSafe is out, except it might also be in. Welcome to the Cult of Mac Podcast. I'm your host, Leanne Caney. Joining me today, Lewis Wallace. What's up, Lewis? Hey, it's a great day to be podcasting. Everything's going perfectly, as per usual. Not a single technical problem on the Cult of Mac Podcast. It's fantastic to be here. we've been messing around for a complete hour right now trying to get this thing to work microphone problems headphone problems the occasional horrible sneeze yeah oh my god i did one yeah and it came out of my eye all right we've got uh we also have um you know uh what's your name again um griffin john sorry this has not been a great morning yep um you know you know speaking of a computer setup changes uh the viewers might notice on on youtube that i've got yet another new computer behind me uh i i went to a concert last weekend in the pittsburgh area visited a friend who had this uh apple emac sitting in his garage for a number of years and so i i you know brought home astray uh but that is not the most exciting thing that happened i'm going to share my screen with the two of you put this put this in the show as well good good time to watch the youtube video i'll say so i went to the large scale systems museum which is a computer museum in the pittsburgh area the first floor is all a bunch of like really big very rare mainframes this is a singer system 10 yes singer the um the the sewing machine they made a computer it's very bizarre i was this guy was very cheerfully explaining to me like the basics of how the system works it's extremely strange it went in one ear and out the other but very bizarre machine a cray supercomputer you might recognize that name kind of looks like something out of star wars wow um i was shown this uh ibm uh mainframe that's hooked up to all of these different terminals. He was showing me how to use this thing. These are like used in like banking systems. He showed me some of the software there. So, you know, first hour and a half of like being shown all these mainframe systems. And then I had like about 25 minutes left. And I was like, and then just at the end, the guy who was giving me the tour says, oh yeah. And you know, upstairs, we have a bunch of home computers if you'd like to see those. And I said, oh yeah, sure. I go upstairs and I go around a corner to like where they have a lot of apples. and what do i see but one of the rarest apple computers in the world a completely functional all original system of one out of maybe 50 on the planet a completely original apple lisa and almost all you can see how many other computers are in this room like in the background this is the one i just instantly bolted towards not only it's completely functional i got to boot it up and i had like a few minutes where i was just like messing with an original apple lisa office system the original keyboard mouse profile hard disk both of the twiggy drives i'm told are completely functional which is a miracle on the table literally across the way from it an original b box running bos from the mid 90s the dual processor system the blinking lights BOS, the operating system that Apple almost bought instead of Next Step. You'll notice right next to it is a NextCube and a megapixel display. I only had a few minutes with this thing, so I was standing next to a NextCube that I didn't even touch because I was so enamored with all of the other incredibly rare machines around me. I saw an Apple 3. I saw a Commodore Pet, which was another like rare computer from the mid 70s alongside the apple 2 very exciting day um i will definitely be going back i've got many ideas for videos i'd like to record with all these machines because again all of them are completely functional um what was the least like is it like a mac yeah it's like a weird macintosh before they settled on like a lot of the standard like user interface and engineering things it runs um the same the same almost the same processor as the mac uh it doesn't use square pixels it has a rectangle it renders its screen as a giant rectangle and then squishes it horizontally so that they can have like higher resolution text um it's more powerful it has a like more ram it can do like full proper multitasking where the original macintosh 128 couldn't um but you know it also cost four times as much yeah yeah yeah yeah oh wow okay the the the mouse is almost like a macintosh mouse the keyboard i wasn't impressed with it looks like it would be like a big chunky funky mechanical keyboard just like the original mac but it was kind of a lame keyboard i'll admit yeah which surprised me what was the uh singer was that the first multi-threading computer hey so here's the real question was there anybody else in there but you and the guy that runs it yes uh i was the only person there under the age of 40 but yes okay all right just had to ask that's that looks fascinating though man i mean honestly i what's it called again tell people what the name is? The Large Scale Systems Museum near Pittsburgh. That's catchy. It's a bit of a drive for me, but worth it. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, right? Did you have to pay to get in? Was it an entrance fee? Nope, completely free. And a lot of people there are like volunteers. They pay you. Retired engineers, like one of them from AT&T, AOL. That does look interesting, man. I've never seen a Cray supercomputer like that. Mm-hmm. Apple briefly used a cray for, like, research and development in the late 80s. Wow. Didn't they? Most of them were circular with seats inside, weren't they? Yeah, that's how big some of them were. Wow. And if you open them up, the mess of wires is insane. And they were actually hired, I believe, seamstresses, right? From Singer. Yeah, exactly. An army of—that's what made me think of it. There was an army of women, like seamstresses, that wired these things together, I believe. Ah, that makes sense. Crazy. Yeah, and now a cray, I think, is like an Apple Watch outperforms a cray, I believe. Yeah, something like that. Jeez. Madness. All right, well, that's, yeah, very cool. Nice little show and tell there. Let's talk about Tim Cook. Kind of crazy news, wasn't it? Where the heck did that come from? I mean, even though we were all expecting it, Monday, right? It was like, whoa, what's going on? Yeah, where were we when this news broke? I was, you know, it was 4.45. I was winding down my day. I think I was like taking screenshots for a how-to. Lewis, you were getting your car like smog tested or something. No, not just smog tested. I was at the smog referee. Very special smog test. Very California, high level. Man. And yeah, I'm sitting there waiting for that. And I get this thing. What? Tim Cook is retiring? What? I couldn't believe it. Honestly, I couldn't believe it. Leander, you were running errands of some kind? Yeah, I had to run an errand, yeah. So stupid. I thought it was a quiet afternoon. I thought, yeah, perfect. I'll just nip out real quick. Typical sleepy Monday. Yeah. I got caught in a horrible storm, too. In fact, there was a big spin-out. This car right in front of me on the freeway hit the barrier and went spinning across three lanes of the freeway, but then ended up, miraculously, on the shoulder, completely unharmed. I mean, they were super lucky, super, super lucky. Wow. They were really blown away by the news of Tim Picker Tiring. That's what I thought. All right, let's talk about it. What's going on there, Lewis? Yeah, so Tim Cook is stepping down. John Ternus is stepping up to be the CEO of Apple. This all happens in September. Cook is going to move into a new role for him as executive chairman of Apple's board of directors at that time. They announced this press release, shocking everybody in the world, especially Mark Gurman. Tim Cook said of John Ternus, just in case you never heard of him, he's the guy with the big chin. You've seen him a lot at many of these Apple events. Hardware guy, seems like a very personable guy. Tim Cook said, 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. That's a pretty bold statement. As I mentioned, Cook's going to stay on. He's probably going to take a pretty active role in one of the stories later, I guess we'll talk about it. But he's basically saying, yeah, I'm going to be there to help John out as much as he needs, but not too much. He's going to be CEO, not me. and Cook is going to be whoever, I think Ed wrote this sounds like Cook is not going to offload the worst part of the CEO job because he's going to be assisting with certain aspects of the company including engaging with policymakers around the world, that's what Apple said, which means you know he's going to be dealing with the Trump administration big favor to turn and you know this is maybe what Cook does best I mean Cook is so political you know He always has been. We've been talking about this for years. He has a way of, or his staff who writes his statements has a way. The things that he says are so balanced and so right on the money, just about every single subject that ever comes down the pike. And he says things in a way that is politically neutral and accurate. and just, I mean, he is the antidote to the current craziness we have, where everybody's just constantly, you know, like the rhetoric is just getting ramped up more and more, worse and worse, crazier and crazier, race to the bottom. I was going to say race to the bottom, but it's like they found the bottom and they brought some drills with them and they're digging, you know, going toward the center of the earth. Anyway, this all takes place September 1st this year, and uh you know apple's been planning for this for ever for you know we've been talking about it for a while uh there's been a lot of reporting about how apple's you know they want to hire somebody from within anyway he's the guy uh they also in the same press release they or actually i think it was a separate press release uh they they promoted johnny shruji man who led the incredibly successful development of apple silicon he's going to take over a new position at apple chief hardware officer role he's kind of assuming uh turnus's jobs uh he's gonna uh take over he was senior vice president of hardware technology in fact that's what apple's page still calls him uh he's gonna hardware technologies to to translate the weird vagueness of that title apple gives a lot of vague titles hardware technologies is apple silicon you know all encompassing you know that that branch of the company they do other things too but primarily apple silicon you know the technologies inside the products all the great like modems and things that they've been making lately in addition to all the cpus and stuff but uh he's also going to now he's going to take over uh role leading hardware engineering which is what turnus did before uh so that that's effective immediately he's already taken over that role so big changes you know not uh not too surprising i mean what was it maybe i think it was in december or something murder story uh basically financial time saying like oh yeah you know cook's gonna retire between june i'm sorry between january between late january and june and uh not technically retiring until september but uh you know turns out that report was kind of on the money despite other other assertions and of course you know german had been predicting turnus was going to take over for a long time, I mean, you know, a little bit of skepticism, but it seems to me like in retrospect that, you know, maybe these were, you know, purposeful leaks to try to sort of test the waters, see what the reaction was, kind of maybe. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, obviously, everybody on Wall Street is looking at this and going, hmm, you know, Tim Cook has done a pretty good job of turning Apple into a perpetual money machine for forever, right? I mean, it's just been, even as the iPhone's sales have slowed, even as the Apple car went poof, even as the Vision Pro kind of landed with a thud, Apple's still making so much money, it's just insane. So, Tim Cook, you know, with his sort of, you know, even-handed and penny-pinching, that's kind of got a negative connotation, but I mean. I mean, look, Apple's very intentional with their R&D money. yeah they blew like relatively a lot of money on the apple car and the vision pro but that's like what one day's worth of funding of all the money that gets dumped into ai by every company every day so yeah yeah well the funny thing you know like when when tim cook took i remember when tim took over from steve jobs and it was nothing but doom and gloom um everyone thought oh god this is going to be a disaster apple's going to be out of business in 18 months there were definitely predictions like that they thought like this is this is the end for apple you know it's not gonna survive the Tim Cook regime. And now it's Tim Cook's shoes are the big shoes to fill. I think now people are worried that his tennis is going to be up to the job that Tim Cook did. I mean, that was a very different transition because it was so sudden. Steve Jobs had began a medical leave. He retired from the role of CEO, but was still going to stay on as chairman. And then six weeks later, he tragically passed. and so tim cook didn't have anybody to lean on i think i think apple is really banging the drum of tim cook won't be gone he'll still be there as executive chairman because they really want to like make it clear to wall street do not freak out we are planning this john turnus will have tim cook tim cook is in good health tim cook isn't going anywhere yeah they keep saying that a lot yeah yeah well cook had been running apple for for jobs i mean for quite a number of years really. Jobs was kind of in some kind of soft retirement and it didn't, you know, publicly he was obviously the face of the company and still the active CEO but really Jobs was, I'm sorry, Cook was doing the day-to-day for a long time, for quite a few years before Jobs passed but yeah, yeah, he was right and actually Cook made a funny statement that he said that, you know, the next seven months or so, they're going to he's going to be handing off to Turnus and he hoped that business schools would be studied this, he said it's going to be the best succession in corporate history and that he hoped that business schools would study it and talk about it for future to come. So that struck me as a bit odd, really, too, as well, almost as though the transition starts now, the clock starts now. I guess that is the case. Maybe there's nothing that's so surprising about it. Yeah. I mean, honestly, can you imagine it going more smoothly than it has? I mean, it seems people are optimistic about this change. And if you think about it, like, I mean, hopefully, hopefully, maybe this, maybe Ternus will be, you know, slightly more in the Steve Jobs mold of maybe pushing things a little bit further, a little bit faster. But you still got Cook there you know to make sure all the numbers add up right And also like Tim Cook staying on specifically calling out his role with policymakers around the world very diplomatic way of putting it i think they had one particular person in mind didn't they yeah yeah policy maker around washington dc um like that's you know a lot of people's you wrote a piece of a lot about this leander this week that like that's you know a stain i think on tim cook's era of apple it's rubbed a lot of people the wrong way um and tim cook continuing to do that uh for john turnus well john turnus will be the ceo like he's taking that stain on his shirt into like an arrow that he's taking for john making sure that this doesn't affect him and his position as ceo like right at the start of his career at the top yeah yeah it definitely and like you know it has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, hasn't it? Because, you know, Tim Cook's bona fide is with his, you know, set his positions about the environment and, you know, all these different issues. I mean, he's definitely left his center and then his personal, what appears to be a personal friendship with Trump, I think, really does, you know, rub a lot of Apple users the wrong way. Like, you know, donating to the inauguration and stuff like that. Yeah, definitely has, I think, you know, like some people are really freaking out. You were saying, Louis, wasn't it? Your band members, like, compared unfavorably to certain historical figures. Yeah. I think anybody who sort of takes Cook to task for the way that he has managed Trump is short-sighted. I mean, Trump is the freaking president of the United States, and he's doing some crazy crap. And I'm sure that Tim Cook is not going golfing with Trump and hanging out buddy-buddies. I'm sure that if he actually was truthful and not diplomatic, which is – I said political. You said diplomatic, and you're right. He's diplomatic. He's apolitical. And, you know, he's done – I mean, the thing where he delivered that stupid gold thing to Trump, I mean, that kind of rubbed me the wrong way. That was not a good look. He looked like a – I thought my reaction was they're taking the piss. He's making fun of Trump. It's a fucking gold brick. You know, it almost seemed like a joke. And that's why I thought he was nervous because he thought, oh, God, they're going to see through this. You know, this is like I thought they were, you know, like they cut this up in the boardroom and they were laughing their heads off. And they thought this is going to be super hilarious. And then when he did it, he's like, he's shitting himself because, you know, they're going to see through this. I mean, I started laughing when I saw it because I thought this is just too on the nose. This is just too bizarre. They might as well have a wheelbarrow of, you know, like of cash. Like, could it be any more an obvious bribe than a gold brick? Well, I mean, was it solid gold or was it gold plated? Yeah, 24 karat gold. I guess it was plated. I mean, the part of that that rubbed me wrong was just, you know, like how. I mean, Cook almost looked like something like something in a Game of Thrones or somebody He walks into somebody and bows down. I mean, his body language is what bothered me more than anything. And he had to unbox it and assemble it on the Resolute desk, which is just... Yeah, but the end result is Apple didn't get screwed by Trump deciding to do something ridiculous. I mean, they still took, what, a billion-dollar hit or something in tariffs, which maybe they'll get back. But, you know, I mean, I think overall he did a good job of dealing with Trump because Trump is not a, you know, he's not, I don't think he's an easy guy to deal with, to put it mildly. And, you know, after this happened, you know, Trump in his own way sends out a message on Truth Social talking about, you know, how great Tim Cook was, even better than Steve Jobs. And, you know, it's great that he called to kiss my ass. And, you know, it's OK, whatever. It's definitely been effective, hasn't it? Yeah, he definitely has effectively managed the Trump administration for sure, you know, and saved Apple from a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache. I mean, they are the poster child for offshoring, for Chinese manufacturing, aren't they? Well, it was their biggest – it was like their hallmark, right? Like, wow, look at this amazing thing they've done that allowed them to produce all these fantastic devices at prices that you can actually kind of afford, you know? And then suddenly it's like, oh, this one thing that is the key element of your manufacturing process is now toxic. And, I mean, it's not just Trump either. I mean, during COVID, it's like, holy crap, we can't have all our eggs in one basket. For whatever reason, whether it's China or anywhere, we can't have everything that we consume produced in one region. It's just crazy. So, I mean, live and learn, right? I mean, yeah, Cook put it all in place and it was genius. And, you know, I think now they're doing smart, you know, smart, like dispersion of that to bringing some stuff back home, moving stuff to other parts of the world. And and how the hell do we end up talking about all this? I think it's I think it's it's brought to light the number of funnels that are quite narrow in Apple's process. Like, yeah, they started spinning up, you know, more factories in India. Now a lot of the iPhones that are sold in the U.S. are made there. but um you know all of apple silicon is made by tsmc in taiwan that's that's another potential problem point like is this in arizona now they're moving yeah they're building something that'll build but it won't be their latest and greatest fabrication process and it'll not be at the same scale um and the chips they make will probably be more expensive but it feels like the world has realized this is a major problem the most advanced chips that anybody makes are only made in one place that is not on a um very solid political foundation at the moment yeah yeah yeah yeah right well they announced that to deal with it well there was a rumor wasn't there with intel they were going to get intel maybe was going to be manufacturing for apple although but that i think is a couple of years out there's going to be an intel plant built in ohio that they've pretty much abandoned. Ah, boy. Let's talk about, you know, Cook's ranking. You know, Apple's best CEOs, where does he fit in the ranking? You know, is he Apple's best CEO? There's an argument to be made for that, but I don't think so. No, it's got to belong to Steve Jobs. There's just, you know, there's no way. But he's definitely a close, very, very close second. And, you know, I mean, Jobs pioneered three big technological transitions during his career. I mean, three huge transitions. The first PC, the first really personal computer that came as a package. The first easy-to-use PC, the Macintosh, and then the game-changing mobile computer, the iPhone. And a bunch of other products as well. The iPod, I think, could be up there as a huge one. No one can match that run. That is like an unprecedented run in technological history. I don't think there's any other CEO that can match three big revolutions like Jobs did. But, you know, look at the success of Apple as a company. It was always a niche player, wasn't it under jobs? It was like a tiny little sort of struggling niche PC maker. But under Cook's tenure, this is one of the biggest companies in the world. And several times it's been the biggest company, hasn't it? Anyway, he quadrupled Apple's profit to more than $110 billion. Its market cap has ballooned more than tenfold to $4 trillion. and this is undoubtedly, I think, probably the most successful run in business history. Got to be, right, up there. It's got to be up there with, like, the most successfully run business ever. You know, and I think, you know, the one thing that the knock against him is that he's not a product guy, but I think that's not entirely fair. And, in fact, I think one of the products, I think, could be, you know, as important as the iPhone. I think he's had his fair share of innovative devices. AirPods, you know, I think AirPods are as good as a product that Apple's ever made Apple Silicon, that is a game changer and I think it's only going to become more important the current Mac lineup is the best it's ever been the iPod, you know, and I think that's true of all the other stuff too all the other products they make, the iPhones are the best they've ever been the iPads are the best they've ever been and the Apple Watch, I think the Apple Watch is a big, big device I think, you know, like it's already turned into a life-saving device and I think it's only going to become even more of a life-saving device And I think, you know, this is possibly a device that I think will be as universal as a smartphone. You know, I think it's a device that I think everybody might wear, especially older people like us. I mean, Tim Cook said later this week that the Apple Watch is what he's most proud of as a CEO. He says Apple Maps was his most embarrassing mistake, but the Apple Watch he's very, very proud of. A reaction I had after reading your piece here, Tim Cook is a very close second. Who's in the third place? it's a it's a big leap down uh they apple has had a lot of mediocre ceos uh you know john scully he did okay everybody else d tier trash well come on what about no no no what about the first i mean the early ones you know mike scott and markula you know that the early ones they i i you know you can't discount those guys i mean you know they they they got the company off the ground and said it into something not convinced yeah i mean because the products were so unbelievably good but they weren't like you know designing the products they were they were the ceo of the company but i mean michael scott he he went through a period where he just randomly fired people because he felt like it when he got pissed off like he was not a good business leader and he said and i'm going to keep firing people until until morale improves you know it's basically a quote from him It's in Pogue's book. I don't remember it off the top of my head. But yeah, it's a long trip down the stairs to reach number three. Scully, I think, is unfairly maligned. I think he also oversaw a period of huge growth. I mean, he turned it from, I think it was like 800 million to 8 billion or something. I can't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like those orders of magnitude type increases. And of course, you know, like he did the Newton is maligned, but that's, I think, laid the foundations for a lot of the subsequent products. I think the Alexander Hamilton of Apple history, the person who had a lot of early influence but always surprised me was never actually CEO, was John Louis Gasset, who led the Macintosh division in the late 80s, early 90s. He was the one who championed, we need to make the Macintosh like the peak of the personal computer in the industry. So he like spearheaded like the Macintosh 2, which absolutely, which is part of what took Apple to that incredible high level during the John Scully era. I think he also might have been a little bit involved with the, with the PowerBook, which finally made personal computers write. Like he was very influential in that critical period. He may have over-indexed on that plan a little bit because, you know, their pursuit of the high end of the market cornered them into some small market share. But, you know, he was very influential in there. With regards to Tim Cook's role as CEO, I've been thinking a lot about this this past week. And I think if I were to characterize the Steve Jobs and Tim Cook eras, it's like Steve Jobs built the Saturn V rocket, planned a trip to the moon. They took off successfully. And then he left about 30 seconds into the mission. And then Tim Cook, he took over and perfectly, you know, Apple went to the moon and back in terms of like stock price influence over the world. The iPhone absolutely changed the world. And Tim Cook piloted the rocket ship on the course that was plotted. A lot of Apple's success is owed to Tim Cook because of his vision of, you know, consolidating all this manufacturing in China, making sure that they had the ability to sell the, you know, billions of iPhones and products that they did throughout the 2010s. but what i keep coming back to is um you know tim cook still would have done that if he was still coo if steve jobs had been with us for another few years tim cook like might have even done better because he would be able to continue devoting all of his attention to being coo and not the expanded roles that being that replacing steve jobs demanded of him it's gonna be fascinating to see you know like how turnus does isn't it you know the next the next few years because it's like I think I'm not really a huge ascriber to the great man of history you know this this theory that it's all about you know this is obviously a large organization and we're going to talk about this in a minute about you know Tim Cook's sort of decision making process um I think he was I think he was the right guy at the right time um in that that was a period where Steve Jobs like built out this this this plan for them these are the amazing products Tim Cook you need to make sure we sell as many of them as we can and you know take us to the next level but I think now that they've reached that that that peak that plateau i think now it is time for somebody who's a who's a product guy to be you know back at the helm and say okay well this is what's going to be new this is what's coming up next absolutely because i think you know the products are gonna with ai the products are changing i think more radically than possibly ever before and um you know that the the next few generations of of uh of personal products personal computers personal devices are going to be very, very different. And, yeah, it's going to be fascinating to see what they come up with. And this is interesting, I think, with Johnny Suruja's promotion, too, to being head of hardware. He's an AI guy. Look at Apple Silicon. They were putting neural engines, when, five years ago, before AI was the hype? Oh, 2017. First one was the iPhone X. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I think there's a lot of AI expertise now at the top of Apple. And so at least AI, yeah, you know, they're AI aware. They're AI cognizant. And it's, yeah, I think that, you know, they are two very, very good people. I mean, you know, Apple's leadership is in a very, very good position to capitalize on this. One of the things, actually, I wanted to discuss quickly before we move on is, like, you know, I mean, people are sort of saying, like, Jobs had these major world-changing platforms like the iPhone, like the Mac, and that Tim Cook hasn't come up with a similar world-changing product if you discount the Apple Watch. But I think, you know, who has? Which other company has come up with a world-changing product in the last 10 years to rival the iPhone? I don't think there is one. I mean, AI, obviously, but this is, you know, this is sort of an industrial, like, it's not just a product. What do you call it? It's not like a single product, is it? Like a physical gadget. It's an enabling technology that is going to impact everything horizontally, right? Across every single industry, every single human endeavor. I can't think of it. You know, maybe an electric car, self-driving cars, maybe. Yeah, I was going to say maybe Tesla. I mean. But Tesla's getting out of the car business now, isn't it? They're getting out of lunch eating by the Chinese, so. Well, yeah, but they made them, you know, they made them seem possible, right? I mean, before that, it's like, oh, there's no such thing. People forget that in the 2000s, there were electric cars. They were just really crummy and terrible because they were trying to build a cheap electric car. Like, no, it was not possible to build a $25,000 electric car that could go more than like 50 miles. You know, Tesla's innovation was the business plan of start low volume, very high profit margin with the Tesla Roadster, then ease your way down into like $100,000 luxury sedan. Then you can make the Model 3. that sell in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands a year And it a shame isn it I think that probably the biggest bust under Cook leadership was the billion they reported to the Apple car And, you know, I mean, I'm sure they got a lot of behind the scenes, a lot of AI expertise. And I think he said that it was like the car was the mother of all AI projects, and I'm sure that they've learned a lot from the car that they've applied to other products. It was a reasonable thing to explore at the time. Oh, definitely, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm bummed that they never came out with it. But there was a report that came out earlier this year talking about, well, Johnny Ives' role in it. And apparently it was progressing. It was Dan Riccio's idea. I think he was the one that pitched it, and then he ran it for a little while. And I believe that his ambition was something like along Tesla's lines, that it was going to be AI-ish or semi-autonomous. It wasn't going to be a fully autonomous vehicle. it was going to have smart driving capabilities and that they would iterate. You know, like the first one would be sort of relatively modest in what it would do. It would be more like a regular electric car. But then Johnny Ive came in and said, well, no, we want to totally reinvent the car. We want no steering wheel, no pedals. It's got to be fully autonomous. He blew it up and it never recovered. This is what this report said. And so, I don't know, you know, it sounds like maybe it was Johnny Ive's problem, not tim cook i mean i i think that was a that goes back to a problem with the steve jobs to tim cook transition losing steve jobs tim cook had to hold on to johnny ive because he was afraid that you know the talk the stock would tank if you know johnny ive left as well and i think they ended up keeping on keeping johnny ive on long after his welcome because you know he blew up the car project he also blew up the macbook pro for like a solid five years nobody liked them that's funny how johnny i've turned into a villain now isn't it yeah yeah well actually this this kind of segues into the next thing we're going to talk about which is is that is the decision making process right um a report came out earlier this week from our friend mr german at bloomberg who um said that uh you know tennis is going to be more decisive than cook yeah so turnus's management style is traditional and that he's willing to make uh clear direct calls colleagues told mark german uh quote turnus will make decisions a good thing for a CEO to do yeah okay uh you know i mean the clear differentiator tim cook is more likely to build a consensus among top apple executives about the best course rather than making the call alone turnus's approach may echo elements of apple co-founder Steve Jobs' leadership, which was defined by strong individual decision-making and a clear product vision. Well, that sounded what they needed with the Apple car, wasn't it? It sounds exactly like what happened. They're wishy-washing, flip-flopping, going one way or the next. No clear, or at least he changed his mind the midway through. I think this is the right time for this to happen. I mean, I actually think like three years ago would have been the right time for this to happen. But the second best time is now. I think it's good to have a clear decision maker someone who is an engineer who also knows like what is possible what is reasonable to ask of apple engineers who comes from that division who's not just going to say and i want you to build me this thing and but and it's unrealistic yeah but wasn't that jobs wasn't that his superpower he would tell people hey i want you to do this and and in fact i mean that came because some devices did not work properly right but he he said hey i i wanted to do this you need to do it this way and then the engineers are like what we can't how do we so i don't know i mean that that's the one thing that i've always heard about steve jobs that maybe just go god what a you know what a pain it would have been to work with him if if uh if he's telling you to do things that just you know bend the laws of physics yeah but i i think i think i think it's better than leading by committee having every you know everybody agree on what is the best course forward because you know yeah you'll you'll you'll make some good as you won't make any massive mistakes but you won't have that decisive opinionated voice at the top that i think is a quintessential feature of apple culture yeah well i i went back and i was reading my own book you know about johnny ive and um you wrote a book about johnny ive well one of the funny things that i'd forgotten was um apple under the scully era was very sort of bottom up it was um it was A lot of decisions came from the rank and file. And the way they developed new products was they had three documents. There was a marketing document. There was an engineering document. And a user experience document. So these three different, and they were all written by committees. So there was a committee that would weigh in on whatever product they were trying to develop. And then they would take all these three documents and decide whether to pursue a product or not. and it was like they were described as what was possible that was the engineering what was desirable that was the user experience and what people wanted was the marketing part and it was kind of this this kind of decision making by committee and of course one of the big problems with apple in that era was that they had 75 different versions of everything you know like there was 75 different kind of macs and like which one do you choose it was impossible and this is what jobs blew up and and this is kind of a little bit reminiscent maybe of the Tim Cook here, like, look at the iPod lineup, you know, like, I don't know. I think, I don't know, I'm not 100% convinced in what I'm saying. Because on the one hand, I think with the iPod, with almost all of Apple's products now, there are clear product, there are clear price tiers, aren't there? And I think a lot of it has to do with hitting price tiers. And that people go in and they say, okay, I'm going to spend, you know, $350 or whatever on an iPad, and there's an iPad at $350, or I can afford a $600 iPad or a $1,000 iPad. and i think that's part of what is driving apple's current products part of the ipod strategy i think where that where that comes from is that like we need to have an ipod at every 50 increment if i have 50 i can buy an ipod shuffle if i have 100 i can buy the more expensive ipod shuffle with more space if i have 150 i can buy this i can buy that i can buy that up all the way up to like the you know maximum 50 gigabyte ipod classic but um maybe what what separates the ipod the way the ipod lineup was structured to the iPad lineup and the MacBook lineup is that, you know, there was a very clear, you know, linear progression. This iPod is obviously better in every way than the one below it. Whereas when you get into the, you know, computers, it's like, oh, well, what's better, a Mac mini that's configured to $2,000 or the Mac studio at the same price? Well, it's not clear. I mean, this one has a better processor. This one has more space. I get more memory on this one. This And as the Ethernet built in, like it's a little muddier there. But I mean, I think it's a valid like product design approach because that way everybody feels like they have something to buy. And everybody feels like, oh, if I spend just a little bit more, I can get the slightly nicer one. Right. Yeah. And I don't think it's like a problem like it used to be back in the old, you know, in the Scully days. But one of the reasons why they were saying why the reasons it was sort of so committee driven was because it was a it was a reaction to jobs management style. When Jobs was at the company, he was so imperious. He was such a pain in the ass that when he left, there was a wholesale revolution. And the whole company decided they don't want this kind of imperious leadership anymore. They wanted to have consensus. They wanted to have this kind of committee leadership. And it really didn't work for them. The design process was the engineers built whatever they wanted, really. And then they just handed it off to the design team to be like, okay, wrap this in plastic. And that's how you end up with the Macintosh LC520 series, which is one of the ugliest computers in the world. It's like a gigantic TV-sized screen sitting on top of a slightly weird, lumpy middle section, sitting on top of another weird, slightly lumpy middle. It's like a three-tiered cake, but flipped upside down and square beige. It's hideous. Yeah, so I agree. I think, you know, we're turning to that kind of decisive, you know, this is where we're going, the product visionary thing. And Tim Cook's description of Turnus, you know, I know that there's definitely the heart, the soul and whatever it was is a little bit sort of poetic. But if true, you know, it does sound like a good choice. He does sound like a good person to be leading the company. I'm kind of optimistic about the guy. I don't know if I like him. There was something about him kind of rubbed me a bit the wrong way. Do you get that impression? You know, I don't know why. No, I like him. I'm looking forward to it. this is honestly like the most optimistic feeling I've been feeling about Apple for a long time. Yeah. You just don't like the chin, Leander. There's definitely the chin. It brought me the tick. Oh my God. Well, you're optimistic. So is Ternus. Yeah. Good segue, go ahead, Lewis. Yeah, this is great. This comes from a report that German put out this week talking about an internal all-hands meeting that Apple had this week after the announcement where Tim Cook and John Ternus got up and talked about it. And Tim Cook pledged that he's healthy and going to be around for a long time, which I thought was kind of funny. Wasn't it German that had the report about Tim Cook? People said he was shaky or something. Remember that? A while back, this weird health rumor. I think that was German. Anyway, the part about all that, I mean, Tim Cook being healthy, being around, whatever, blah, blah, blah. The part I thought was awesome was John Turnus gets up there and says, you know, we've got an incredible roadmap ahead. And I'm not exaggerating when I say it. It's the most exciting time to be building products and services at Apple in my entire career. He promised that Apple will, quote, change the world once again. You know, I mean, that's pretty strong statements. You know, he's coming out of the chute hot and very optimistic. he tried to put a positive spin on Apple's AI efforts even. He says, AI is going to create almost unlimited potential. We're going to be able to keep unlocking possibilities that are going to create entirely new opportunities for our products and services. And I'm so excited. Everyone at Apple is so excited. He's so excited about what that's going to mean for our users. I can't wait to see what they do with it. Right, yeah. He said they're going to keep focusing on the design because design is core to what we do at Apple. Apple's brought truly incredible design to more people than any company in history. Who we are as a company won't change. Our mission won't change. You know, that's all. I mean, I can't believe that this leaked out to the world and people got to hear this. But, you know, I mean. I bet the person who leaked that got fired. Yeah. They got a raise. But, yeah, I mean, you've been at companies where this kind of thing happens, right? and you're nervous, maybe optimistic, hoping for the best, and maybe you know this guy, maybe you don't. I think that would have been a pretty good thing to hear if you were working at Apple. And I know that it must be reassuring to stockholders and Wall Street, too. He's definitely got the hype down, hasn't he? This is hype-y stuff. It's like cheerleading of the highest order. It's not muted. It's not like it's really rallying the troops. One question I had is how did they fit everybody into the Steve Jobs theater? Well. Yeah, it's not a very big theater, is it? They probably used FaceTime. But, you know, the other thing about that, like, the one thing that I didn't particularly like about Tim Cook, being the sort of face of Apple and leading the show and, you know, being the, you know, the guy on the screen at all these events is, like i always felt like they definitely tried to get tim to get hyped up about things you know it it never never seemed natural to me it seemed like i mean i i'm sure he's legitimately psyched up about you know the apple watch and all the ways that it's helped people and you know i'm sure he was absolutely thrilled when youtube played at uh apple you know headquarters but i think that But Ternus, I don't know, he seems more like he has more genuine charisma than Tim has. I mean, I say that with no disrespect to Tim Cook. I'm not a fountain of charisma myself. Go back and look at some of Cook's first keynotes. They're awful. The poor guy, he's so nervous. He's palpably sweating bullets. It's awful. He's not comfortable at all. I will say I was, um, when I was doing my, my recent edit of like, you know, 50 years of Apple and like whatever minutes, um, I was watching through a lot of the keynotes, you know, in order obviously. And I was actually really surprised that the later in-person events, like 2017, 2018, 2019, Tim Cook actually did have quite amount of like excitement and energy behind his, behind his voice. I think like the switch to the virtual events killed the momentum that he was building. Like they, they just don't do him any favors because they're, it's just like doing them one after another, not to a crowd of people cheering, but to a camera crew recording him as he reads a script. And they're just so pre-produced, you know, we asked to do the same line, like 50 times, probably like the pre-recorded events don't do him any favors, but like, I don't know, watch a few minutes of him speaking at like WWDC 2019. And he actually does have like, you know, emotion. That's crazy. I was also watching, I can't remember which product it was, but they did a canned spot where someone tries to break into the spaceship headquarters to steal something from a vault. Which one was that? That was when they brought the Apple Silicon to the iPad. Isn't that what that was? He pulls off a mask and then he does this kind of thing with his head. It was actually generally funny, I thought, and showed a good sense of humor. Yeah, I mean, I didn't mean any of that as, like, disrespectful to Cook. I think he's probably a genuinely nice guy, and I just feel like he got— He probably admitted himself. Yeah, I think he got pushed into being this, you know, thing that he maybe was not naturally. And, you know, it just happens, right? I mean, so, I mean, you watch those old videos of Steve Jobs, you know, showing off a new product. I mean, he was like a freaking stage actor. I mean, his timing was perfect. Everything about it was perfect. You could tell he had a sense of humor. If something went wrong, he laughed at it in a convincing way. What was it? Talking about – I was just watching this this week, reading today an Apple history post about when they showed off the iPhone 4 after the leak. And Jobs is up there. He's like, this is the iPhone 4. He's like, maybe you've seen this before. because they just had the like the biggest leak ever in apple history when some dope dopey guy like uh left the left a prototype at a bar and uh gizmodo got a hold of it but so so job says that which is a great joke you know everybody laughs and he's and then his very next move though was brilliant it's like trust me you haven't seen this and it's like you know i i don't i don't think that somebody wrote that for Steve Jobs. I think Steve Jobs had that way of communicating it just naturally. I don't think you can, I don't think you can fake that. It's not Steve Jobs was, it doesn't come with the job of CEO that you need to do these media events. It's just Steve Jobs was so good at it that it just set the expectation. Okay. This is what the, this is just the job of the CEO of Apple, whoever that is. Every CEO of Apple has to do this. And Tim Cook just was not ready for that particular role. Well Tim Cook keynotes actually sort of reveal something about the way he ran the company right doesn it You know he was able to he brought in all these different cast of characters They got you know when Jobs keynotes it was usually just Jobs and then occasionally he would bring in Shiller. You know, Shiller, yeah. He had a few other people, too, on stage every now and again. Like, I remember Peter Hardy went on stage, and he was a quick-time guy. Every now and again, but there were small appearances, and they would often just be there for a couple of minutes, just to demo something. and of course he would have CEOs from other companies if there was a game or something they wanted to show off or some partnership with Google or whatever, Intel, you know, like when the Intel transitioned, but it was usually jobs. You know, Tim Cook though, every time there was a whole bunch of people, I think almost more and more, like some of them, but there's a cast of thousands would come out and I like that. I like to acknowledge that it was a big company and there was a lot of people involved, different people involved and different people get to share the limelight and get a little bit of the credit. Jobs was always afraid, I think. His stated rationale was that he didn't want to get people poached. Oh, really? I believe so, yeah. But there was also definitely the showman part of it too. He knew that he was doing a good job and maybe didn't want to share the limelight with others or that just wasn't his M.O. I don't know if that was driven by ego. So they were definitely very successful, weren't they? I mean, there was no question about it. Although, you know, I attended almost all those keynotes from when I was working as a reporter for Wired. I know this is blasphemous, but, you know, often people were impatient and they just wanted to get to the one more thing. And sometimes you'd have to sit there through, like, I remember the postcards, the iCloud postcards or something like that. iCard, yeah. iCard. or cards like yeah i i that one people were like for god's sake when is this gonna end you know uh they were it wasn't all you know super showmanship um there was definitely a lot of uh you know stuff that that wasn't so memorable for a long stretch that he would open every keynote with like an update on the apple stores like how stores are doing how many sales they're having how many stores they're opening it's like yeah okay the first apple store was interesting but At least it was fairly quick, you know, but they would often like the sort of meat of the show. I think, like you said, it was true that that stuff went really pretty quickly and I didn't think was too bad. But, you know, it wasn't all it wasn't all, you know, super showmanship. There were definitely some sort of forgettable ones in there. Yeah, well, that's true. I mean, you know, we're watching clips, right? We're watching two minutes that were astonishing. and then there was you know 45 more minutes on how all the great new features in safari or something or also we're watching it in hindsight we're like yeah watching the unveiling of iCal isn't interesting to us because every calendar app works like that now but you know when it was new when it was being shown off for the first time it was impressive i went back and watched the macbook air the first MacBook Air one. Oh, it's a good one. Yeah, that one's a classic one. And it was actually very, very enjoyable. I sat there and watched it for like a good 10 minutes. I was hooked. I was, you know, like on the edge of my seat. Maybe I shouldn't admit this to my bosses, but I can't tell you how often it's like, oh, I'm researching a how-to article and it's a mistake I make every time where I start playing a few minutes of a keynote video and then an hour has passed. Jeez. That's great. Is there anything else we should discuss about, you know, Ternus and Cook? I think we have kind of talked about every angle that you can think of. Well, we don't know what kind of shoes Ternus wears, do we? Oh. Well, he was in some sneakers, wasn't he? Some fancy sneakers. I thought that someone did an analysis. They used... Image Lookup, or what's it called? Apple Intelligence Feature. I can't remember what it's called. Yeah, and they were some original Nike Air Jordans, right? or something i can't remember he's definitely a sneaker head i know that people were going crazy like when he was in new york recently he had some unreleased um travis scott sneakers or something like that it's it's weird like this is a minor point but in the top of the press release that announces tim you know the transition john turnus and tim cook are wearing the exact same clothes same blue button-down shirt same jeans the only difference is their sneakers and like did no one see that coming like how weird it looks well there was a there was a time wasn't there when um i know we did analysis as a wide i think when of the shirts that they wore the keynotes um you know uh they were all wearing the same sort of shiny shirts with the with the sleeves half rolled up untucked um and uh that was a little bit weird what i'm curious about is that usually in a in an apple keynote video tim cook wears the button down shirts but john turnus is almost always just wearing like a tight t-shirt and i wonder if now that he's ceo he'll change maybe he has to like upgrade to a to a button down or if he'll or if he'll keep the t-shirt going they both look pretty buff too don't they i mean they've got no body fat really between them yeah oh my god look at those guys rich as can be and you're right griffin they do look almost indistinguishable from one another but one has white shoes and one has black what does it mean let's maybe talk about the uh the other two things that happened this week yeah yeah big uh you know interesting leak about the iphone 18 pro color lineup supposedly the new color is going to be dark cherry and uh sadly for everyone else that doesn't have one cosmic orange is going to go away supposedly despite having been a huge hit apparently everywhere uh especially in what i hear asia maybe china and japan in particular anyway uh iphone 18 pro and pro max expected to launch in four colors dark cherry as mentioned light blue you won't believe this dark gray and oh my god you're kidding me silver well the 17 pro doesn't come into dark gray so that actually is a surprise you know they're bringing it back yeah i you know light blue i'm looking forward to that i think that'll be a good color it'll be whitish bluish white i was expecting it to like when i heard when i read dark cherry it's like oh you know kind of like a maroon color but all of these leaks come with like a an official pantone color with them that they're going to match and it's really very purpley you know kind of like eggplant eggplant color dark cherry certainly sounds better than eggplant but but yeah it doesn't look very cherry to be quite honest uh then again the deep purple phone didn't look very purple so who knows it's not very dark either it's a very like sort of medium gray purple but i i have i have renders in the in the article that i that i color corrected to match the pantone color and um very purpley yeah yeah this like i said this comes from i think i said this uh report from mac world uh they said that the dark cherry is going to be a deep wine-like red that will be, quote, much closer to wine than fruit punch. Okay, well, just for starters, wine, all kinds of wine looks very different. So, you know, I don't think they nailed that down quite as much as you'd like. You heard the other colors, blah, blah, blah. I think the other part of this report was that the folding phone is supposedly going to come, I think only in black and white or silver and black or gray and basically the most basic colors possible. It's nice if you go to the website and you look at the picture, you're going to look at maybe what the iPhone 18 Pro is going to look like. Although, almost guaranteed, it's not going to look that bright unless you're in direct sunlight. The Pantone color that they referenced doesn't match that description at all because it's very purpley. yeah i don't know we'll see i mean we've been hearing rumors about a dark red or a deep red for for ages right so yeah not surprising to switch it up like because ed in our slack was like oh but the orange has been so successful why would they kill it i don't think it's anything about the color orange specifically that people love like nobody really loves the color orange other than like stephen hackett it's just the fact that it was it was bright and colorful so yeah they should change it up every year so that way yeah you know you can identify oh that's the new phone because it's the new color right i can tell because it's a color that i can see this is the first thing that john turner should change my god yeah yeah pop colors on iphones are you listening john we did we did a um a survey in the newsletter about and it seemed like blue blue is what people want a nice nice shade of blue everyone wants blue blue blue blue i think nice denim blue I mean, they've done blue. It's just that, you know, the shades of blue were not exactly, you know, vivid. And they didn't change. You know, one was like, what do we call it? Mom's minivan blue. And then the next one was like slightly darker, you know. They're just, they've always been so kind of muted. That's why I think people were, I mean, I was clamoring for it for years. I want something flashy. I want something that you can tell is a, you know, a hot rod phone. And that's what they gave us with the Cosmic Orange. I mean, I'm not the biggest fan of Cosmic Orange, especially the sort of two-tone look with the part that's actually orange and then the part that's actually more like a dreamsicle. But, you know, I mean, yeah, I got it. And I got to say, I get a new phone every year, don't really need to, wouldn't if I wasn't on the – well, if I didn't work for Cult of Mac and if I wasn't on the iPhone upgrade program. But, you know, I'm going to feel a little bit sad handing that thing over and getting probably the dark cherry one. You think you'll get dark cherry? What if the light blue, you know, is light blue, as the rumor says? Do you think you would consider that one? I mean, you know, light, I've been, not burned, but I mean, I've had the light blue iPhone Pro a couple of times. And it's always just like, I don't know. I mean, I like it to look different, you know, it's kind of fun. And even though it's just like one little section of the phone sticking out of the case, it's a reminder. And I mean, this is incredibly stupid, but I remember the first week or two after I went to some brew pub and we're sitting there with my wife and a friend. And the bartender comes up and he goes, oh, wow, is that the new iPhone? It's like, yeah, yeah, it is. He's like, oh, yeah, it's the first one I've seen. I'm like, yeah, okay, great. Now you see them everywhere. So, I mean, you know, that's incredibly shallow, but it gives you something to talk about. It's a conversation piece. And, you know, I mean, you know, have something fun in your life. Why not? I mean, light blue to me. Boring light blue. It's not going to be fun. And I hope that the dark cherry is actually like redder and less purple than the things that we've seen. So we'll see soon enough. What is it like? Four months away? Oh, boy. Yeah, yeah. Come up real fast. let's let's wrap up real quick with the um about the folding iphone feature that everyone thought was gonna be off the table but actually now is on the table yes this was tragic tragic news that i think we broke uh last week that the iphone dummy units from sunny dixon didn't have the mag safe ring on the back there were on the other dummy units for the iphone 18 pro models that that included it as well but on sunday tipster majin bu posted on twitter images claims to be of cases for the iphone ultra and these do have a magsafe ring on the back now this doesn't entirely make the fear go away because there are a number of weird things about the images that majin bu posted um they don't really look like clear cases apple has sold before they're the clear cases i've always been like clear with like white plastic accents these are one of them is clear and black the other is clear and orange um very very strange apple hasn't made a clear and orange case and if the rumors are true that the um that the folding iphone only comes in black and white then why would they have a case that's orange which is last year's pro color and presumably won't be represented on any phones much less the folding phone also if you look at the uh orange case in majin boo's hand here it's weird that it's got this like the magsafe ring on the back kind of it looks like it's it pops out as like a stand right which is something that third-party cases by like case coup do i mean apple hasn't made a clear case like that before very strange also it it is entirely possible that the folding iPhone doesn't have MagSafe inside it, but Apple's solution is, oh, you just get a case that adds MagSafe to it. Right. That's what I was going to say. Because the case can be a little thicker. Yeah, that would make sense. And you know what? Having a stand like that makes more sense if you got something that folds out and you're going to use it like an iPad mini to watch videos and stuff. So maybe it's totally true. I mean, it would, you know, Apple's, the one thing about Apple is I think they do think about these things. And if they're, if they're seriously, if they're going to leave MagSafe out, then say, Hey, if you really want MagSafe, just here's your case, you know, you're going to want a case. And by the way, it's got to stand. Wouldn't that be great? MagSafe accessories are going to have to be a little different on it because every, because I mean, I tested this on the, on the mock-up that I had. That's probably going to have like very similar proportions to the, to the actual folding iPhone. And there's just not a lot of room under the camera plateau because the phone is so much shorter that if you stick an existing MagSafe wallet or battery or something on it, it's going to stick out beyond the bottom of the phone. MagSafe chargers that only have the ring size element and don't have the big rectangle shape, those will probably work fine. And that's really all I need. That's mostly what I use MagSafe for, sticking it on a charging stand. I don't use MagSafe wallets. I only occasionally use MagSafe batteries, but yeah, it's my, my, my fear is a little bit dissuaded based on this leak, but not entirely, not entirely gone. I'll probably be worrying about this until September. Yeah, it's definitely worrying a lot of people. I mean, MagSafe is one of the key features. And I think this could almost be a deal killer for some. No MagSafe? I'm not interested. My mom being one of them. i mean apple learned the lesson on the iphone 16e that like yeah this is a budget phone but yep we we can't cut magsafe it everybody will complain about it so surely they they know we're not going to like it if a two thousand dollar phone doesn't have a feature that phones have had since 2020 that's a 70 cent magnet and only a few months away yeah all right i think i should wrap it up that's about all the uh coldcast we have for you this week thanks so much everybody that's not the name of our show 20 years of conditioning let's try that again okay I think we should wrap it up that's enough of the cult of back podcast easy for you to say please give us a five-star rating at least five stars maybe six or seven if you can squeeze it on Apple podcast share this show please with anybody you think could sit through it. Text us a message at cultofmacpodcast at iCloud.com. That's cultofmacpodcast at iCloud.com. Send us questions, comments, and feedback. 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