Tim Cook’s Real Legacy at Apple w/ Brian Merchant

It will be clear that Tim Cook's legacy was his rewiring of the supply chain as far as electronics manufacturing was concerned and really tightening this allegiance between China's manufacturing base and U.S. tech products. And doing this in a way that facilitated sort of mass production of objects that require great skill to produce and to do so quickly and at great volume. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks. And before we get to this week's guest, who I think you're really going to enjoy, especially for those longtime listeners of the show, just a reminder that Tech Won't Save Us turned six years old this month. And to celebrate that anniversary, and of course, you know, all the work that I've been doing on the show over the past number of years, the more than 300 guests that I have interviewed to give you these critical perspectives, we're asking listeners like you to become supporters over on patreon.com slash tech won't save us. So, you know, I can keep making this show, you know, so that Kyla can keep producing it so that we can keep doing this work and to try to do more work for you, especially now that my next book is complete. And, you know, I'll have some more time to focus on the podcast, the newsletter, and, you know, the other things that I'm working on. So yeah, if you enjoy the show, I'd really appreciate it if you went over to patreon.com slash tech won't save us, became a supporter, helped us hit our goal, and set us up well as we head into this next year of Tech Won't Save Us. So thanks so much for that. Now, this week's guest is none other than Brian Merchant. He has been on the show many times in the past. He is the author of Blood and the Machine, a fantastic book about the Luddites, and also writes a newsletter of the same name, which, you know, you should definitely check out and subscribe to. When I saw the news that Tim Cook was resigning as CEO to become executive chairman and would be replaced by John Ternus in September, I figured this was a story that we had to talk about. Tim Cook is not one of those CEOs who we talk about so often. He is not regularly making right-wing or even generally political statements at all. He is not someone who is like championing the future of the West or something like that, as we hear from people like Alex Karp. He is not craving that media attention. He is not craving that attention. Certainly, he works with Donald Trump to try to benefit Apple and to get the types of policies that the company would like to see, or at least to try to evade tariffs and further punishment. But he is not someone who is as active in these kind of public discussions as we see from many other tech CEOs at the moment. So hearing that he was stepping aside, I figured it was a good opportunity to actually discuss what his legacy at Apple was, what he actually did as CEO. And even before, you know, he became CEO because he worked at Apple for many years before that, but also what we should take away from what he did in Apple, the changes that he made, what he turned Apple into, and where the company might go from here as he is in his final months as CEO and is preparing for someone new to take over. Apple is an incredibly influential company, and as a result, its CEO is an incredibly influential person. So Tim Cook has been in that role now for all of this time, is somebody that a lot of people would be familiar with, because this company is so recognizable, is so influential. And for that reason, I think it's worth discussing what he did, who he is, what his legacy is. And Brian was the perfect person to do that because he literally wrote the book on the iPhone, a book called The One Device that went into the creation of this product. And Tim Cook might not have been instrumental in the design piece for the iPhone, But there were other aspects of its creation where he was very key, particularly behind the scenes and particularly in the supply chain. And of course, we talk about that in this interview. So I hope that you enjoy this conversation. You know, maybe it will get you to think about Apple, Tim Cook and his legacy in a slightly different way, you know, or maybe these are things you already knew. But either way, I think that you're going to enjoy this conversation with Brian. We start off with, you know, a little bit of banter because, of course, Brian is a buddy of mine, but then we kind of get into the meat of the conversation. So if you do enjoy this conversation, as I said before, please consider going over to patreon.com slash tech won't save us to become a supporter of the show. So I can keep doing these interviews, sharing these critical perspectives on the tech industry that of course you really enjoy for plenty of time to come. So thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Brian, welcome back to tech won't save us. oh paris how i've missed gracing this fine production thanks for having me it's been far too long since you were on the show especially you know we were so used to talking to one another all the time uh for a while and now not to be podcasting with you on the regular it's so odd a gaping hole in my in my life in my existence it can it can only be filled uh temporarily and right now. So I'm pleased to have it do so. No, it's great to see. I like the hair. Thank you. I'm always a fan of your hair as well. So maybe one day I'll get there. I'm going to go with it until it starts falling out, I think. I think I just got to cling to whatever vestiges of youth that I can. You also are wearing a flannel, black and red plaid. I feel like I almost wore that exactly. I feel like, yeah, I used to see you wear that a lot. All the time. Look. Yeah, I feel like I've seen that specific shirt on you many times, even in person. That's one thing I have in common with the tech overlords. Steve Jobs wore the same. I'm like, I don't want to think about this too much. I don't care. And now my entire wardrobe is populated by places I've been and things. I'm truly embracing my true middle-aged dad vibe, where I've got a unionized California t-shirt, or a band t-shirt. like that's like all like i don't i don't i don't want to like go into a store and and purchase clothing just want to like have mementos dude i feel that i feel that of convenience yeah it's hard for me to judge you on that one uh i have a lot of those kinds of t-shirts and now that it's slowly getting warmer uh people will be seeing more of those but obviously i live in a colder climb than you so uh you don't know in la you got it it's all about the t-shirts and luddite i have so many beautiful wonderful luddite and anti-ai shirts that people have sent me um you know you know the luddites were right my were they wrong tie-dye tee uh the i have like a like a t-shirt a luddite t-shirt that the librarians made the the library freedom project all good all good stuff the uh destroy ai shirt that uh i think kim who made for aftermath yeah yeah yeah not quite I've got my, I do have my, uh, sweater on. So look, just, you know, keeping it real here. That's it. I need to make some new, uh, tech won't save us March, uh, in the near future. So I have been, you know, the four, I, every time I wear this and I see the four of four folks, they tell me I got to make blood in the machine. Like it actually, like, you know, yeah, I do. I do need to, it's, you know, it's, it's not a bad looking logo. If I do say so myself, I would buy one blood in the machine shirts. Okay. Good. Well, I appreciate that. There's one customer right there. I'll even pre-order. It's a guerrilla marketing campaign. Maybe you'll wear it on a podcast and it'll spark a conversation. And then tens of thousands of listeners will now learn about different media properties. This is how it works. This is how it works. Now, speaking of, I don't even know how to make a transition here, to be honest. Listen, we're talking about Tim Cook. um it i wanted to have you on the uniform did tim does tim cook have a uniform did he or did he kind of does i think he's just kind of he's he's got the old school sort of like i feel like either it's just like a sweater or just like kind of like a like a like a polo or a plaid you know not not plaid just like a straight he's got like the business guy attire kind of business casual sort of you know, he's usually wearing some sneakers. Uh, and I think he's usually wearing jeans. I think from time to time he's worn like, you know, like business pants or whatever. Um, but usually it's like a pair of blue jeans and then like, uh, a shirt or a polo or a sweater or something like that, you know, muted colors. Yeah. Not quite as homogenous as, as jobs, but still, still blending into the background. Exactly. And whenever I think of Tim cook, I just think of the image of him, with his hands together as though he's praying. I always see Apple as a religion. There are worse ways of understanding Apple. I think it is very sect-like. It does have its own set of... Although, under Tim Cook, and I'm sure we'll talk about all this, it has gotten a little more diffuse, more like just kind of a bland, faceless, monolithic American corporation in the mold of a General Electric or something like that. But I digress. You lead us to the conversational promise. No, but you're right. And I wanted to have you on because you, obviously, I just like to talk to you anyway, but you wrote the book on the iPhone. And I was like, if I'm going to talk to anybody about, you know, Tim Cook stepping down as CEO, becoming executive chairman in the way that, you know, say Jeff Bezos did at Amazon when he was ready to move on, but not, you know, fully scare investors or anything, you know, they would know he'd still be around. I said, of course, you know, I want to talk to Brian. And I'm wondering when that news came out, you know, when it was announced that Tim Cook was making this shift, and of course, it will happen in September of this year, it's not like right away. What was your reaction? Were you surprised by this or not really? A little bit. I mean, I don't think that there's any great sort of, you know, catalyst for, or maybe it'll come out, maybe reporting will show, you know, why, you know, now, now is the moment. If I had to speculate completely, it's probably just because he's probably sick of, sick of the shit, right? He's just sick of doing the, you know, you know, the Trump era contortions that are required of, of, you know, of modern tech CEOs and, and sort of playing the, the, the political side of the game, which is kind of interesting, like this week, the same week of the news that Tim Cook is stepping down. Like, I feel like one of the other big sort of tech stories was like Palantir's super aggressive manifesto that is explicitly designed to hit every MAGA ideological sweet spot, just like war mongering and chess beating and reinstate the draft. And some cultures are better than others. And we have to, you know, all this sort of nationalist coded MAGA type ideology where it's like, that's what if you want to succeed, you know, really is like a heavyweight headline making kind of um you know tech company i think there is a sense that like that is uh at least in part the game you have to play so like on the other side of that it's like tim cook like bowing out and not to like let tim cook off the hook by any stretch of the imagination like he he did his part in sort of being obsequious to uh to the trump uh administration like the most famously with like the gold plaque, you know, that he handed to Trump because Trump loves gold. And he gave money to the inauguration fund, just like all the other tech CEOs did. He was there in the White House. He was kissing the ring. Yeah, he went to the premiere of the Melania documentary as well. Right. Yeah. Famously, he was like there, like in I forget there was like some news story broke and it was like Tim Cook was like at the White House for the screening, like as it happened. maybe it was even like the like the shoot the ice shooting in Minnesota he didn't shy away from doing any of that stuff I mean it may have chafed him more especially as you know a gay man who you know having to sort of kiss the ring of this like deeply intolerant and prejudiced president you know maybe it clearly didn't irk him enough not to do those things not to play the game not to you know sort of align Apple with the sort of the rest of the tech oligarchic cohort. That would be my speculation. Is that just like he's been there for 15 years. Clearly, he wasn't comfortable really in the AI moment. Also, one way or the other, because I think his intuition was to eat was just to kind of lean on the hardware, like let the AI sort of bubble sort itself out and then kind of do what Apple has typically done. Like Apple has been fast to hardware, much less so to software most of the time. So what they like to do is they like to see what works and then kind of, you know, like integrate, steal it, you know, as Steve Jobs famously said, you know, great art, you know, good artists borrow, great artists steal. My sense is that he was kind of waiting to see what would happen and it never really, the AI moment has still not really clarified itself to Apple. Now, also a lot of people wound up kind of actually liking Apple's approach because they haven't quite to the same extent spammed all of their apps and their services with AI And when they do people hate it There there like the messages debacle like where it still summarizing you know your texts in AI and people are like this is so stupid So they had that scandal around the summarization of the news headlines and how that like, just was not working out at all, which is such a small scale thing to do. Like, it's like, oh, well, like summarize the news on your notifications. Like I cannot imagine like a smaller swing and it still failed. So I think maybe my guess is that it's like 15 years. I built Apple into a $4 trillion company. I have streamlined its operations, bound our fate together with, you know, the China's manufacturing base. And I'm sure we'll talk about all that. But I think my guess is that he just kind of was like, this is like, I don't like this anymore. I'm out. I'm one of the richest, most powerful people on the planet. Why am I? Why am I flying to Washington to like watch terrible documentaries and hand the president plated gold? You know, this. So yeah, I was, I guess I was a little because there's nothing seemed to precipitate it in particular. It just seems like a moment for him to, for him to pass the torch and be done with this stuff. Yeah, you know, it kind of seems like very wealthy guy who has been there for 15 years, who massively grew this company. Now, you know, it is facing some challenges that he has obviously been dealing with, but he probably doesn't. He's been the CEO for 15 years. He's been at Apple. Oh, yeah, that's what I meant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Yeah. He took over from jobs 15 years ago. But yeah, he's been there for ages. And I want to ask you about kind of like, you know, his pre CEO time at Apple. But yeah, to me, like we can, we can look at the bigger picture, what's going on with Apple, what he's having to try to do. But it also kind of feels like, you know, he's kind of reaching that retirement age, that, that kind of traditional retirement age. He has a ton of money. Why doesn't he just like kind of go off and do his thing for a bit and he'll still be executive chairman. He'll still have, you know, some degree of input and say, you know, because he did build it in this way. But like, I'm sure there's other stuff he wants to do as well. and also just have more time for himself. And, you know, why wouldn't he do it? But on that point about the history, like, you know, you mentioned a lot of things in your answer there, and I want to dig further into a number of different pieces. But I think it's best to start just by going back a little bit, right? Because it's so important to what Apple becomes under his leadership. Can you talk to us a bit about who Tim Cook was under Jobs and how he really, like, remade the manufacturing footprint in the supply chain footprint of Apple. Tim Cook was a really interesting choice to succeed Jobs. And I remember if you've been following this stuff as long as I have, you might even remember when that was in the news cycle because it kind of similarly came out of nowhere to a lot of people. Like Tim Cook was decidedly un-Jobs-like, right? Steve Jobs is famous for being kind of, you know, all about like style and design and how computers look and function. And, you know, it seemed like he would maybe choose someone who had more of those interests instead of somebody who had been just managing the business side and the supply chain as Tim Cook had. But, you know, in hindsight, now we see why it made perfect sense. Cook was in the 90s. He was working for Compaq, an Apple competitor at the time. He was a vice president for corporate materials at Compaq, I believe. Really bringing me back thinking about the old Compaq PCs and stuff. Yeah, if you don't remember, it's like one of those classic gray, You know, during the era of the of sort of the PC where you just, you know, you'd have like a kind of like a gateway was back then or the early Dells. And but his real sort of expertise was in operations. and uh you know i've seen a lot of tim cook ceo postmortems kind of you know grappling well what was his legacy like he didn't design another iphone or have another hit product like that and maybe it was pivoting to services and getting which which is true he did he did do that but like But, you know, I think, you know, in decades to come, it will be clear that Tim Cook's legacy was his rewiring of the supply chain as far as electronics manufacturing was concerned. and really tightening this allegiance between China's manufacturing base and U.S. tech products. And doing this in a way that facilitated sort of mass production of objects that require great skill to produce, like, you know, the iPods and the iPhone, and to do so quickly and at great volume. And so there are a lot of consequences to this shift that I think, you know, Tim Cook has, you know, really, he's evaded a lot of the heat for the fallout from, you know, instituting this mode of kind of hyperproduction that kind of famously, ultimately requires huge workforces of skilled people, skilled laborers that you can famously just wake up in the middle of the night if a design specification changes on the device and get them back to work, get them some coffee. And China had a workforce that its companies were willing to go along with that new labor regime. And so Cook really pushed and plied that new sort of arrangement that is now kind of like the definitive arrangement between tech companies and their manufacturing base that continues to this day. And so that's one part of what he did in worldwide operations. So he's sort of aligning these supply chains, finding vendors, getting everything to work. And he's doing that for Compaq. And then he gets hired by Apple to do the same thing. And he proves to be really, really good at this. And so Steve Jobs recognizes that this is a guy who doesn't really care about what the products ultimately look like, or that's not his specialty anyways. But he has somehow managed to sort of assemble this huge base of operations, of manufacturing in China that can now just sort of deftly turn out really nice looking, high functioning electronic products at will. So as he's doing that through the late 90s and the 2000s, his stature inside Apple grows because it becomes clear how important that piece of the pie is. You know, Apple was and continues to be a hardware business first. It's selling iPhones. That's where its huge profit margins are. In the process of facilitating that mass production, you know, Tim Cook becomes, you know, the leading light at Apple or one of them. Yeah, I think that's really well said. And it's such an important aspect of what he has done, right? And as you say, even though Apple is a significant hardware company, he has really expanded the services business, which we can talk about. But picking up on what you were saying about building out that supply chain, I feel like one of the things that is, you know, that hasn't received the attention that it probably deserves the past few years. as people have been talking about the changes to the iPhones and what the new product categories are going to be and Apple's AI strategy and all this kind of stuff is how the kind of dependence on China started to be seen as a bit of a liability, right? As the tensions between the United States and China grew, and he has really overseen the diversification of that supply chain to a certain degree. It's still very dependent on China, but into Vietnam and India and Brazil, and obviously to a much lesser degree in the United States to please Donald Trump. But we have started to see this like shifting of the supply chain into other areas to try to avoid tariffs and things like that as well. And that, again, is his bread and butter. I think that's where he has business contacts and this is how his sort of operational thinking works. And that's, you know, maybe one reason, you know, why, you know, there was some speculation back in the day that when Jobs handed him the torch that it was because, you know, he wouldn't overshadow, you know, Jobs is like product genius. Like, and if that was the case, honestly, it kind of turned out to be prescient because he didn't like he's, you know, he's tried to introduce a few products here and there, maybe most famously the Apple Vision Pro that has like remarkably tiny adoption. There's been a few also-ran products in key categories, like the HomePod, the car, the Apple car that never came to fruition. That was just like a huge resources dump, but it never... But it's all almost sort of immaterial because none of that stuff wound up mattering. Because what Tim Cook really did was focus on, once you streamline the supply chain and get the operations going, Then it's just about maximizing the business, just like get opening more Apple stores, like getting like diversifying sort of like the the product lines of the existing ones that you have. So instead of one iPhone, there'll be four or they'll, you know, different, different price tiers. Like, again, like, as I mentioned up top, kind of like the general electricification of, of Apple, just making it this kind of omnipresent, you know, consumer electronics seller that maybe doesn't have the mystique or the clout or the cachet that it had under jobs, but can just, you know, sell this stuff at bulk for, you know, huge margins. And it has been remarkably successful in doing so. Yeah. And part of that has been sort of dealing with, you know, the geopolitical ramifications of those early moves, where if you like, concentrate your labor force in one particular foreign country, there's always going to be vulnerabilities. There's a whole book about this, Apple in China, that specifically focuses on that dynamic. And so, yeah, then you need to deal with that as the issue comes up. And the one thing that I do before we, you know, just to ensure that we don't leave this point behind, but I really want to underline that, you know, what Tim Cook has not gotten off the hook for, where are the like the, the ramifications of designing a sort of a supply chain and a work flow that, that operates like this when you're relying essentially on mass immiserated labor forces, there are consequences. And that's that people suffer. And I think the extent to which that Tim Cook's policies at Apple and his dealmaking at Apple have led to things like the suicide epidemic at Foxconn, which now 15 years, it was about the time that he was taking over at Apple in tech world terms as ancient history. But those problems have never really gone away. I was reporting my book in 2015, 2016, which was five years after the epidemic, which to those who aren't familiar, was there was a period where at Foxconn, conditions were so bad and primarily psychologically bad, but also just materially bad that, you know, Foxconn was promising overtime and not paying. And, you know, the effect of, you know, of having a workforce that you treat like you can just pull out of bed and, you know, get to work with little, you know, benefit or compensation beyond just sort of basic wages is like a mental strain. You know, so a lot of people came from all over China to do these jobs. They're not local to the city that they're working in. They don't know a lot of people. They don't have like social groups that they can find solace in. And so it became extremely punishing and it, you know, what the long hours and they couldn't get their benefits always that they were promised. And so a lot of a lot of workers began, you know, jumping off of the roofs of the buildings, the dormitories that, you know, these the factory is huge in Longhua, where it was at the time. over a million square feet of factory grounds. It's a city, basically, that I managed to sneak into for the reporting and see what it was firsthand. And it was just building after building after monolithic building. And it was truly a soul-crushing place to just be, much less live and work. And so that is the direct sort of outcome of Tim Cook's sort of executive policies and operations management is facilities like that that make the iPhone possible, you know, at great cost to the workers. You know, there's a lot of other, you know, worker abuses that happen all over the supply chain. But that was a famous one. And when I, you know, returned years after the sort of the most high profile events in, I think, 2011, so it was five or six years later that the workers I spoke to said nothing has much changed. The conditions are still psychologically demanding, rough. People come and they get a job there and try to last a year because then they can go to somewhere where it less punishing And it been years again since I followed up on any of that but I do read reports of how things are now there's the iPhone city it's not in Shenzhen anymore but it's its own sort of enormous facility and there's been labor unrest and issues there and we can only assume that it's for very similar reasons and so again And I think Tim Cook really has to reckon with that or should be made to reckon with that outcome of this punishing work regime that makes the devices that we all use possible. And so that's a big piece of it. There hasn't been as much sort of investigation into what the working conditions are in India or Brazil. There's been some and some good reporting, but it's almost invariably going to be a similar case there. Yeah, I'd be really fascinated to hear more about how the model differs or is much the same in places like Vietnam and India. And I would imagine it's the case that it's quite similar to what they've done in China. And as you say, even though Cook was essential to setting up this system of production, it's very rare that it gets tied back to him, the kind of consequences of this system, and is treated as part of his legacy. You know, I really haven't seen any of that in, you know, not that I've read all the coverage of Tim Cook, you know, kind of, you know, planning to step down and whatnot. But that's not the kind of stuff that you see much media talking about in terms of his legacy and what he has done. Yeah. No, it's not sexy. Right. It's not it's not cool. Right. It's just but like so many of these guys, as I try to link it to and point out in Blood in the Machine is like they're great genius. Yes, the thing that makes the company a lot of money is just good old fashioned labor exploitation, finding ways to get workers to labor harder and longer and under more profitable conditions. Right. That's true from like the founder of the of the factory system, Richard Arkwright, who, you know, gets remembered as a as like the inventor of the water frame and crucial to the Industrial Revolution for that reason. Well, his true contribution isn't inventing the waterframe, which he didn't. He had a partner that probably did most of the work. But it's about instituting these truly punishing labor conditions that then allow mass profits to be turned. Similarly, you know, with with with Cook, like, you know, yeah, Steve Jobs got all the, you know, flowers for bequeathing the world, the iPhone and all these slick looking gadgets. But it's Tim Cook, who behind the scenes was like, okay, in order to make that profitable, we need to have a small army of underpaid Chinese laborers working around the clock that we can pull out of bed at any hour we want to and say, work harder, work faster. No, I think it's really interesting. And, you know, before we got into digging into that, you were talking about how he really transformed the business and kind of what the difference was under his leadership. And that really does seem to be another of the key aspects of this, right? And I guess the aspect that people are more willing to pay attention to. But under Cook's leadership, Apple becomes a behemoth in a way that it wasn't before, you know, at least for a time, the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. I can't remember if it holds that title now. I don't believe it does. But it's up. It's still up there, like in the top five or something. And part of that is, as you say, or as you said, not like, you know, making some new iPhone like product in order to, you know, kind of take it to another level, but to take these things that came from Jobs and Ive and, you know, the Apple system and the Apple industrial design group and basically finding ways to like squeeze more money out of them. right? So you have people using these devices, you have people who like these devices are dependent on these devices. So slowly over time, let's make them more expensive. Let's offer models that have some additional features to justify you paying a lot more money, such that now the average smartphone price at Apple is over $1,000. And you're going to make these other accessories that are key to using your Apple device, your AirPods and things like that. And then you also create this whole range of subscription services that, you know, you are obviously going to want because you have this iPhone. And in some cases, you know, like, like iCloud or something like that, you're probably going to need regardless of, you know, just because you're using the device, you're probably going to have to pay for it if you're trying to store your, you know, your data or your files or whatnot. And so it really becomes not so much like, what is the next big thing that they certainly try that with Vision Pro and it doesn't work out. But like, how do we look at the consumers that we have? And of course, certainly try to grow the pie, but also like, over time, slowly suck more money out of these people's pockets so that Apple becomes this like, incredibly profitable company that is giving back loads of money to shareholders all the time. And so they're very happy with Tim Cook as a result of that. Yeah. Yeah. The way Lauren Good put it in Wired was that Tim Cook's legacy is turning Apple into a subscription, which I think I think that's true. that's certainly, you know, been like the biggest area of like of a product expansion or the most most successful. I do think it's, you know, to some extent, you know, just been also, you know, what, you know, monopolies tend to do find new ways of extracting rent. Right. And Google's doing the same thing. You're making you pay for storage if you if your email is it was too big or drive or paying for any number of its services and extracting similar kinds of percentages out of the Play Store. But it's really true with Apple, too. Now there's an Apple Music subscription. There's the iCloud subscription that you have to pay. There's Apple TV that is a huge subscription ad. There's all this, you know, they even have some like creative work suite that they launched recently. Like, I don't even understand that one really, but I have not even, I've not even opened that or looked at it or given it 30 seconds of thought, but yeah, it is, it's all these things that they've been able to sort of entrench and to, and just kind of like extract the things that, you know, again, like the Silicon Valley model is expand at any cost. And then once you've staked out your territory, make people pay and degrade the products. And, you know, Apple, to its credit, I guess, under Tim Cook, there has, you know, it's been a little bit more careful about this said degradation of its software and its products than some of its competitors. You know, Google is just like famously a shit show now. like a Google search is just, it's, you know, I'm, I'm in the process of moving off of Gmail because I, you know, I've used Gmail for decades now almost. And I just, I cannot do it anymore with its AI draft prompting. And I'll, I'll like suddenly, you know, new, new, like boxes are opening up and there's at you know it's it's it's it's too much i'm done with it um and but apple has at least tried to keep that spirit of sort of you know the the jobsian design alive somewhat it's again not to like give it give it too much credit i think it just as a business move it just knows that it's viewed as comparatively the premium product and and cook has at least had sort of the sense to recognize that as he is finding ways to extract as much value as he can out of those products. Yeah, it's not to say that there's no problem with the software, but the problems are like less relative to the competitors, I guess, because apparently Windows is a shit show now as well with everything Microsoft has been doing. With Copilot and all of its extensions. Yeah, no, yeah. And I mean, Windows has kind of famously always been a little bit of a shit show because fair enough yeah i mean more so than in the past yeah right it will is an interesting moment i think the big narrative now right is that with tim cook gone like the new ceo is going who's this john turnus guy um who you know i despite having covered apple pretty in depth for a long time he's just his name comes up right like he's a hardware guy he's been in there But he's not he's again, he's a little bit of a he's a little bit of a left field choice, I think a lot of people think. But the big narrative is that he has to reckon with AI and what is how is he going to how is, you know, to some extent, like, you know, the tech press loves and demands big, big narratives. and that's right now the narrative is all orbiting around AI and it seems like it can't has to forever for all time and we're going to be doomed to hear hear about AI strategy until we're we're we're old and and replaced by agentic software well until the until AI doesn't have the same financial value in stock markets that it does at the moment and then we won't hear about it much anymore until the next time it becomes one. Like, do you, you know, when you hear that narrative that, you know, Ternus, this new CEO, he'll become CEO in September, has to reckon with AI. Do you really believe that? Or do you just think that this is the thing that like everyone is saying because AI is the thing at the moment? Like, like you were saying earlier, I feel like Cook's AI strategy is probably actually going to look good in the long run because they're not spending massive amounts of money on capital building out these data centers. You have consumers that are often quite frustrated with how AI is being implemented into their other apps and softwares and operating systems and things like that. And it feels like Apple, yeah, okay, it's integrated into messages. It has been pushed into some other places. But it's really not in your face and all over the place. And I know they're planning to do this new Siri with Gemini and some other models and whatnot. But it still feels like, I don't know, you can more easily opt out of it through Apple's system. And they haven't really gone all in in a way that seems to have been the right decision, just like their patience and in part their inability to really make progress on the technology has probably actually worked for them. So, yeah, I guess my question is, like, what do you make of the strategy? And do you really think that Ternus does need to reckon with AI in the way that all the headlines are suggesting? Well, I mean, there's a couple different ways to think about that question. And the first is the reality that the job of a CEO for one of these companies or somebody who's in the C-suite of one of these companies is just going to be very political by nature. And it's going to be shaped a lot by narratives. With Cook leaving, there is likely going to be a little bit of a power vacuum. There always is when a CEO leaves. And especially one that leaves at a moment where a lot of the company's senior staff is also kind of taking a step back. So there are not a ton of people at Apple who are from the same generation of Cook. There are some. There's Phil Schiller, who's still kind of around. Eddie Q, who's still kind of around. But a lot of those guys are starting to take back seats. And they're like, so Apple is at this interesting moment. And so the question isn't whether, you know, it's a good idea for Apple to inject AI into every possible orifice. I clearly don't think it is. And I think that what seems to have been Cook's intuition, which is to sort of wait it out, see what develops, and then if necessary, try to do AI well, which by the way, he failed at that. Like he fit when they they're like, OK, the few things that they did try to wade into AI, they like they did. They were some of the most, you know, notable failures of, you know, of his of his tenure. I even you're not constantly making Genmojis of yourself. Yeah, they're all. But they're most but they're but as you said, they're mostly sort of non disruptive. They don't cause a lot of upheaval in the core ecosystem. And so that to me, that also seems like the smart strategy. And somebody with Cook's, you know, internal sort of gravity and standing could weather that out. Now, it's going to be a lot easier for, you know, for like a competing sort of or scheming executive, upwardly mobile, ambitious exec to say like, you know, to start like making waves by saying like Apple's losing the AI race, you know, planting that in the board's ear. and mess. So it's all, it's all a matter of like politics and dynamics and storytelling. And, and, and it's, you know, like, as we've seen the entire AI bubble has been sort of buffeted by this grand narrative. And so where, what is Apple's role in that? Like, can Apple, I think one indication of what's happening, we can see in this choice of, of John Ternus to be the successor as a hardware guy is maybe there are indications that its approach to AI is going to be more like NVIDIA's and less like open AI's or or or metas even that again seems to be the smart move right like no one has won bigger from the AI bubble or boom than NVIDIA has by you know selling shovels in the gold rush. So maybe Apple can find a way to tap into that. But I do think that there's a real risk that some executive struggle results in Apple adopting yet another AI strategy that ultimately makes a broad swath of its user base want to tear its eyes out So we see what happens Yeah And we don need to get into this like massively, but hearing you talk about Nvidia brought to mind as well that I feel like one of actually the big wins of Tim Cook's tenure as CEO of Apple is actually Apple Silicon and the way that they have been like making these very efficient but powerful chips to power their hardware and kind of getting off the dependence on, you know, Intel and and these other companies. And I feel like I don't know, obviously, people talk about Apple Silicon, you know, it's very important. But especially when you look at this product, like the MacBook Neo that just came out, that is like, so cheap, especially at a moment where we're seeing compute, consumer electronics prices increased because of like the RAM shortages and stuff like that. It does feel like that is something that has really paid off. And again, it's like not this big flashy thing. It's not this massive new product, but it's like this way to make the existing products work better and become more attractive. But even with that said, you know, looking at Cook's tenure, I feel like the other big thing which you brought up earlier is obviously this relationship to Trump, right? And I feel like Cook has tried to present himself and present Apple as environmentally conscious, socially conscious. It was doing a lot of stuff that we now refer to as DEI stuff for a long time and wanting to be seen as being more inclusive and all those sorts of things, things that looked really good in a certain era of American politics, but also the US tech industry. And it feels like that attempt to present the company and himself in that way has really clashed with the way that he has engaged with Trump, right? You know, certainly in this, you know, second Trump presidency, but even in the first when he was very active in cultivating a good relationship with Trump in order to get much lower taxes on, you know, Apple's profits and particularly the foreign profits that it wanted to bring back to the United States. So I wonder what you make of how Tim Cook handled the relationship with Trump and, you know, how that reflected on him and the company and whether it clashed with the narrative that they were trying to present. Yeah, I mean, I think it clearly did. I think there's, you know, no doubt that the Trump era has been, you know, uncomfortable for Apple, maybe in a way that it's not for Meta or certainly Tesla and Palantir and the other, you know, more expressly ideologically aligned companies. And, you know, I do think, again, to its credit, as much as we're willing to grant it, as Apple, you know, does tend or has tended to sort of play the long game throughout the Obama era and the first Trump era. you know, it didn't really make sort of sweeping changes to its outlook and policy. It kind of basically said the same thing. It never committed like crazy, you know, to any, you know, any grand reforms that would, you know, like, for example, you know, to again, reference the labor issues we talked about earlier in the spot, you know, like workplace conditions abroad or throughout its supply chain. It never did that meaningfully. It never, you know, it never really got its like, remember it made a big deal about its like recycle robot and it had. And I think there were literally like two of them in the entire world. Yeah, and it was like it was a big show, you know, but like it never, you know, again, it operates less like sort of the most modern mold of the tech company where it sort of is, you know, blasting tweets out or, you know, or even, you know, in Zuckerberg's case, sort of, you know, like going on Rogan or sort of, you know, praising Trump in these more in the in these ways that actually sort of signal policy changes at the company. I think in Cook's final days as CEO, he needs to finally make his Rogan appearance. Go on Rogan with Musk. He's just definitely been more old school of a kind of a CEO and has, you know, again, transformed Apple into that sort of more state and predictable devices business while his competitors, which, you know, interestingly, like Google, Meta, it's. Yeah, well, so Meta and Google are, you know, they're software businesses primarily. Google sells a few phones. You know, Meta has tried before. But those businesses, interestingly, are also sort of, you know, much more at the whims of policy, right? Like if there's going to be, you know, a crackdown on social media, you know, there goes, you know, Meta's core business. And so there does have to be kind of more of a deeper and more public-facing sort of retrenchment in those companies to kind of protect their businesses while Apple is selling hardware still primarily. And of course, policy impacts that, you know, they they want to keep taking the cut of the sales on the app store, you know, as long as they can, even though they're just charging, you know, developers 30 percent just for the right to, you know, be hosted on their networks. And it's been found to be a pretty anti-competitive practice. But yeah, but if your main business is just like selling the phone, selling the screens, then, you know, you can kind of just keep stocking the shelves, keep making the iPhones, keep making the camera a little bit better every year. That's a little bit different of an outlook, which is not to say they absolutely can be crushed by tariffs, by trade policy, and also by antitrust policy and with regard to their software business too. And so it just, again, not to give Tim Cook too much credit, I think he did what he thought was required of the company to keep the gears turning and the profits coming in. And so it was a little bit more of a topical sort of kowtowing to Trump than like sort of a deeply substantive one that reorganizes his company's priorities. Whether or not that changes now, that's the question. Like, you know, are they going to keep sort of operating as a kind of modern day General Electric? Or is the new CEO going to suddenly, you know, get feisty? or I don't know, you know, we just don't know that much about him yet. And so I think, you know, time will tell whether or not Apple continues to kind of plot along and accrue profits. That seems to be the smartest move to me and to just like not stake out undue, you know, gambits or plays here and just kind of keep selling your iPhones. But yeah, but we'll, yeah, we'll see. Yeah. And I think one of the important things that comes out of what you were saying there is like, okay, Apple has an image that it presents to the public to, you know, try to be appealing, to try to get sales, all those sorts of things. But at the end of the day, someone like Tim Cook or John Ternus, they're serving the shareholders, right? You know, they need to get the share price up, they need to be making returns. And so if that means working with someone like Donald Trump, or if that means not pissing off Elon Musk too much, because of the influence he holds, then like, they are going to try to thread those lines while still maintaining a certain image. And on your point about where things go next, obviously Apple has been talking about smart glasses and working on this as like the follow-up to the Vision Pro. As a company, it obviously has other things that it's working on. There's the talk of the folding iPhone potentially coming in the fall or in the near future. There are obviously certain things that they are trying, that they are hoping to do for the future. Or do you have any thoughts on how things might change? Or you think at this point, you know, it's really too hard to tell with how things are playing out. And we really just need to see who this guy is a bit more to know if he's going to try to really, you know, kind of stake his own version of this, you know, to try to be more Jobsian or, you know, if he's just going to try to keep what's working, working and, you know, not shake their boat too much. Yeah, I haven't really looked into him too deeply. He has been around at the company for decades now. I think he's been there 25 years. Maybe he came just at the turn of the century, 2001 or so. And he certainly hasn't really made any waves beyond his roles. I think he's been a presenter. He is firmly in the sphere of what Katie Natopoulos has famously called Apple Man. you know like the guys who like you know like tim cook steve jobs like who like well well groomed like you know good jeans you know like the polo shirt given a given you know silver foxes a lot of the times like uh you know tech savvy handsome dads kind of you know so he seems to be like squarely in that mold. And that mold tends, you know, over the last few decades at Apple, it's not a lot of boat shaking. Apple's culture has remained, you know, pretty consistent, as you were saying, like they have, they make these kind of lightly progressive tinged, you know, DEI or environmental commitments. And I think that, and they're, you know, they don't feel the need to sort of suddenly abandon them to play. They feel confident in that business that we were just talking about. And so I don't know that there's a, there's a need unless there is some kind of like internal political, you know, struggle that opens up with the power vacuum of, of, of Cook's departure. And it will be interesting to see for that reason, Is Apple a well-oiled bureaucracy at this point such that the next Apple man can just step into the presentation spotlight and just continue running operations while basically being a non-controversial technology pitch man? or if he'll do something different. If I had to guess, if I had to go put my money on Kalshi, I would say probably not much. He might try a few things with AI a little bit more aggressively just to demonstrate that he's with it and understands where the wind is blowing and to say board members who might be curious as to whether or not he's going to be receptive to sort of like the modern tech landscape. Just something to demonstrate. That would be my guess. He just kind of comes in, doesn't make many waves, doesn't, you know, but it will be interesting to see again on the back end, whether he can command the same relationships with the manufacturers, with the manufacturing base that Apple is so dependent on, whether he can, you know, sort of command the same level of operational fluency with Foxconn or Pegatron or the other Apple manufacturers. So yeah, there's a lot of questions. It will be interesting to see a little bit of a curve ball. But yeah, if I had to guess, Apple will just kind of like plug along being Apple. But, you know, I've been wrong before. Totally. And, you know, I know you're you're you're very rarely wrong. It's not something that happens very often, which is why, you know, I like having you on the show, of course, because I always get the accuracy and the experience. Yeah, I have seen reports that that Cook would be like, you will still as executive chairman and play some kind of role in like maintaining those Chinese relationships that that he has built up. Right. So I feel like that's not among the most important things. Yeah. I mean, that's the most important things. But, you know, if he's out the door, then maybe maybe the you know, the CEOs of those companies which are, you know, Foxconn is like one of the largest companies in the world now and they have their own interests and power. So, yeah. So, yeah, we'll see. But, yeah, by and large, my my my my guess is that things will not at least for the immediate future substantially changed all that much. Yeah, I think on day one, John Turner should show up in a spandex suit with a cape, Apple logo on his chest and declare himself Apple man and begin his tenure that way. Brian, it's always great to get your insight on all this. I knew, you know, as soon as I saw this happen, I was like, you know, who'd be the perfect guest to talk about Tim Cook? It would be Brian. And you came through, no surprise. I was just waiting for it. I was sitting in front of my laptop in a darkened room waiting for the link and then like fully you know outfitted dress mic set up ready and so you sent me the link and i clicked it the lights came on and here and that's my destiny was here you are yeah that's right awesome well thanks man great to chat yeah great to chat with you too and i will just add quickly that i did write about this in my newsletter um this week uh as well as the palantir debacle so that's a perfect blood in the machine.com We'll link it in the show notes. Great. Thanks, Paris. Brian Merchant is the author of Blood and the Machine and writes a newsletter of the same name. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Hewson. Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own to help us hit our goal for the show's sixth anniversary. Thanks for listening. Make sure to come back next week. you