My Take on The New Apple

[00:04] now, not for any new products, but for what's going on behind the scenes, because it is now the scenes. So, Apple turnover or like the last week straight. You've probably already seen it on your feed.

[00:18] Tim Cook is officially stepping down as CEO of Apple this year to be replaced by John Ternus. And I normally don't cover CEO changes at companies, but a lot of do think this one's really interesting in the context of the types of products

[00:32] we may be about to get as a result. So, the full story is John Ternus, starting in September, will be the new CEO of Apple Inc. He was previously the senior vice president of hardware engineering. So, the new chief of hardware when he

[00:46] moves up will be Johny Srouji, who was working as senior VP of hardware technologies. He's the guy who's always in the chip lab down in all those Apple keynotes leading all the Apple Silicon stuff. And Tim Cook won't be leaving

[00:58] retirement move to chairman of the board of directors. So, first of all, where it's due. I mean, love him or hate him, that man stepped into probably the single hardest job in tech, which is you're going to follow up Steve Jobs.

[01:13] And while he is no Steve Jobs, he did it in his own way. He brought all of his supply chain optimization and business expertise to take Apple to ridiculous heights to be a trillion-dollar then two, three, four trillion-dollar company

[01:26] through 15 years of wildly different economies and political climates. always good at. But the number one question a lot of people have been like, all right, now what do you think? What is going to possibly change about

[01:39] Apple now that Tim Cook is stepping down? And it's funny, normally, you shuffling around, it typically doesn't actually make much of a difference. Like with these huge companies, they're like a massive boat and thousands of people

[01:52] have a paddle. So, no one person is going to dramatically change the direction of the whole company. But if you've paid attention for the past actually more than just the guy at the top. It's more than one or two people.

[02:04] There have been a lot of really high-level executives and important people and leaders in the company stepping down, leaving, and mostly retiring. There were maybe one or two surprises in there, but it was mostly a

[02:17] bunch of fairly long-tenured predictable 65-plus year-old C-suite executives just retiring around the same time and then handing over the reins to a bunch of the younger generation inside Apple. So, then Tim Cook, who is 65 years old, was

[02:33] essentially the last big domino in a large, likely orchestrated series of insight on this, you should watch Snazzy Qwinn's video on it. It's a few months old, but it has aged incredibly well on all of this. So, my takeaway from all

[02:46] this is it feels like there's a bunch of coordinated oars all changing direction at the same time in the same way that seems to actually be changing the direction of the boat.

[02:59] And I think I really like where it looks like it's all going. See, Steve Jobs is what I would call a product guy, right? He was the CEO and he did a lot with marketing and strategy and the rest of that. He was the visionary, but the

[03:12] head of the company was this guy who really dived into the nitty-gritty of the products and what they were capable of and what made them great. So, then not a product guy. And that's fine. That's still totally fine. Still was

[03:25] Investors love him. But whenever he talks about Apple, it's pretty clear he's not in the nitty-gritty of the products. Like, you can even go back and years ago. I made the mistake of trying to talk about a lot of products in

[03:38] detail and that's how I end up with this meme of me basically reminding him that the Magic Mouse exists and him having to come up with something to say about it on the spot. The Magic Mouse. Uh

[03:56] getting the ergonomics well done and uh was key. The Magic Mouse. he's thought about that product in a long time. So, anyway, John Ternus, new

[04:11] CEO, just came from being the VP of hardware engineering. just saying that. You can go watch interviews of him from the last year or so of Apple parading him around, essentially getting him on camera and

[04:25] ready for the CEO spotlight. I also interviewed him about two years ago and we went back and forth in depth about the iPhone and its materials and shed some light on Apple's specific stance on repairability versus durability, and it

[04:38] was quite nuanced. Now, whether we agree with it or not, that's another story, but the point is this guy is clearly in the nitty-gritty of the products all the in a much more elevated position in the company. So, what does this mean?

[04:52] Well, I I think we can look at the past couple years of Apple's hardware well, to get an idea. So, the last of the Jony Ive-designed MacBook Pros that were too thin and had keyboard issues and overheated are out, and the Apple

[05:06] Silicon-powered MacBook Pros that are actually thicker and have more battery actually thicker and have more battery and more ports are in. Uh the $599 Mac mini snuck up as one of the best deals in all of tech. And then the latest,

[05:18] most disruptive example, MacBook Neo coming along at 600 bucks and putting the entire Windows laptop industry on notice. So, So, since COVID, Apple events, instead of being live on-stage presentations,

[05:35] are now these pre-recorded productions, these really, really polished a lot. But anyway, now that they're pre-recorded, that means that whenever there's a new Apple event and they invite us all to go to Apple go watch

[05:48] this pre-recorded production that they've made. So, when everybody goes to WWDC this summer, we're all going to go to one place and just essentially watch a screening of the movie that they made together. It's the same thing that you

[06:00] see getting live-streamed. But what you might not know is if this is a 10:00 a.m. event and a 10:00 a.m. live stream, right around like 9:57, Tim Cook will come out onto a stage in front of the screen and give a big

[06:14] patented good morning and give us like a 3-minute intro to the event and what to expect. Nothing crazy, just CEO talk. Oh, thanks for joining us today here at made. We have something really exciting to show y'all. So, enjoy. We think

[06:29] starts, you know, at 10:00 you all tune in, the live stream goes. For the MacBook Neo event, that was John Ternus. And that's CEO. It's a couple weeks ago. So, clearly they're getting him ready to do

[06:44] more of these. But also it's it's symbolic of him like heading the owning that project and presenting it to the world. I don't think I saw Tim Cook were already planning to do this again anyway in September, but now it's even

[06:58] more likely since he is the CEO, but Ternus will probably be the guy mainly hosting the entire iPhone unveiling event the way Tim Cook has in the past. This year that we are expecting to get an iPhone Fold, which seems like he has

[07:11] also been spearheading the development of. So, I hope that that guy who's been and has a bunch of people with him on board now for that type of stuff and has interesting stuff like MacBook Pros and then MacBook Neo and a folding iPhone, I

[07:28] hope that that guy can continue taking really big swings at interesting, don't get me wrong, a lot of really solid, interesting products did come out under Tim Cook, like Apple Watch and AirTags and Vision Pro was a big swing.

[07:44] most successful example. They're literally the most popular headphones on shifted into focusing, especially recently, on building out all these becoming a services company now with like iCloud and Apple TV, Apple Music,

[08:01] all this stuff just to get that that sweet, sweet recurring revenue out of the massive iPhone install base. Like I said, investors loved it, but I want the back again. Now, here's the only thing that makes me nervous. Okay, Apple also

[08:17] like they almost seem like they avoid the possibility of failure extra hard, which makes them try less things, if that makes sense. Like, there is a ton of stuff that I would like Apple to make.

[08:31] Like, I say this on my podcast all the time. That they just don't. Like, a camera. I think that could be awesome if Apple made a dedicated camera, but they don't. A smart home speaker with a display

[08:44] cool. Smart glasses, they could jump into that. They're apparently going to stuff like a printer that doesn't suck. dollars they could figure that one out, too. But every new product drop,

[08:57] especially new category from Apple, it feels like it has to be this massive, revolutionary, huge thing, which it like holds them back from trying a lot of interesting stuff. Like, if if Apple were a YouTuber, they would be the

[09:09] YouTuber that uploads every 6 months. Right? Like like Samsung and Google, they're the daily uploader grinding away trying new stuff all the time. New flopped, whatever, I'm going to try something next day. Like, they're just

[09:23] constantly pushing stuff out. And so, there's a graveyard. There's literally a products that you've probably mostly never heard of that just didn't work and whenever they talk about something new and it flops,

[09:36] it gets talked about. It echoes. It's talked about so much. Vision Pro, right? iPhone 16E to an extent. Apple Intelligence, obviously.

[09:50] That's the point. And I think that's made them play things ridiculously safe under Tim Cook for the past many, many years to the point where things feel like almost formulaic. Like we get a new Apple product, but it's it's a parts bin

[10:06] variation of a different Apple product. They all are kind of variations of each Maybe MacBook Neo is a like a positive parts bin product, too. But most of them it it would start to feel very stale. I

[10:18] don't know if that's ever going to completely stop, but it does feel like with the new leadership, the new CEO, all of this Apple turnover, it feels like we may be ready to get a bunch of interesting hardware products again,

[10:30] have been asking about and I think a lot of people are ready for. Now we just need them to step up their software game to match cuz between macOS Tahoe and liquid glass and Apple intelligence and Siri and all of that, there's a lot of

[10:43] work to be done to close that gap. But hey, if they nail both, that that could this video and come back to it in 5 to 10 years to see how well it aged. Or or 10 years to see how well it aged. Or or if you are watching this in 2031

[10:56] this to someone to show them how dumb I am. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.