The Future of Apple Keynotes

Uh there are good times to come on the talk show. And there are really good times to come on the talk show . This is the latter. I was thinking about how to open here and it it popped into my head. I returned to you at the turnice of the turn. How about that? You know what? You're always good for a pun or two. Or a movie reference. Or both. Yep. Or both. Often both. But yes, very good time. We are recording one week after the big announc ements, which I think is perfect. I I did a couple quick takes on dithering with Ben Thompson. At the end of the week I had a very good time with David Pierce and Neh Patel on the Verge cast talking about guess what? I'm kind of glad to let my big podcast take sit for a week before I talk about it. Where are you at a week later? So as you and I talked about sort of off-camera last night and a few days ago. When I write, it sounds like you're the same way. I like to write with fresh fresh in my head, right? So like I try not to read anything about whatever the topic is at hand. Obviously, I'll read like the major Wall Street Journal high overview reports to know what the details are, but you know, in terms of other people's takes and opinions and op-eds and whatnot, I try to keep those out of my feeds or just out of my reader until after I've written something. And well I wrote something I guess shortly after you know the Cook announcement I wrote about Cook, but I hadn't written anything about Turnus until I finally did. I published like an hour ago two hours ago or something 'cause I'm in the UK so it's uh it's still the middle of the day here. And so I feel good about I think where my head is at now too, a week in. So it's not too it's not too hot taky, but it's also not nothing too surprising, right? I mean I think that we've both been following the company long enough to know that this was this was handled exceptionally well, and so there's no craziness. There's some interesting, I think, things on the periphery to talk about with how it happens and sort of the go forward strategy of what they may or may not do . But the overall news item itself is pretty pretty established. I think the more I think about it, the more like my original take was I kind of smelled this coming. I I, for one, really, really when the F T Financial Times report came out in mid November, I was like, Oh, this is a little surprising that it that the timeline is so soon but the F T is re I mean this is like a lock. I remember and it was like a really it was a for for the blockbuster nature of the story that they reported in November, it was actually relatively short. And I went back and reread the whole thing just this week and it's like there's not that much more here, but it's got four byl ines of the yeah, exactly. Yep. Led by T Tim Bradshaw, right? Who's who's well known, like a very good reporter in this regard, and yeah, and so I hi you know I I thought the same thing when I saw it. It's like not not too shocking. The timing though makes it seem like if the F T is coming out with this, there's something to the timing element of it, like either you don't want to say it's like necessarily hand fed to them by Apple, but there's some sort of probably something going on behind the scenes. Maybe they were digging into it. Maybe Apple decided that they wanted something out there, or maybe not even Apple itself, maybe someone just close to Cook decided that they were okay with sort of letting something sort of slip out there. That has not that part of it has not come out sort of the behind the scenes on that. I don't think ever will either, of course. But the Mark Gurman element adds uh adds an interesting wrinkle to the way that this was reported. And obviously you've talked about that sort of extensively now and wrote about it. Should we save that? I don't know if we should get that out of the way or it comes in play. It's not the important thing. I'll just say it's how's that for a teaser? I'll say Yeah. So like a week ago when it dropped, I was like, huh. Okay now. And it's like, yeah, I guess that's just you know, we've been sort of bracing for this. It was exciting, but not at all surprising. And now a week later where the excitement is sort of worn off a little, and I don't mean that in a disparaging way. I just mean o,kay, this is what they're gonna do. It all seems so obvious. It is and whether it turns out that Turnus is the right guy and Turnus does a good job in the role of CEO, obviously that is to be determined. That is the n you know, that it it's the nature of a transition like this. Whether it's a political thing like electing a new president or governor, or a sports thing like when you name a new head coach and the old head coach goes out on top and retires rather than being fired, which is probably even more rare in sport s than CEOs. I mean, even Bill Belichick got run out of town. I mean, Jesus Christ. But so that's to be determined. But in terms of like how did Tim Cook want to leave the position of CEO of Apple? How did he want to become CEO? I think it's the honest to God truth that he never wanted to be CEO. I really do. I mean it's certainly not it's definitely not in the way that happens with tragedy surrounding it. But I I think you're probably right. I mean I think look, Apple back then, back fifteen plus years ago, as all big companies do, they need a succession plan, right? Like it's famous, like it gets talked about a lot in the press because it's a known thing. Steve Jobs pancreas effectively got hit by the worst type of bus. It really it really did. So the plan really did have to be enacted a couple of times because it was an extended protracted medical crisis with multiple two significant medical leaves, etc., where Tim Cook stood in as the temporary CEO or I I don't even know if they called him that. And re remind me this. So I recall vividly when I think it it was Wall Street Journal that broke the news about Jobs' liver transplant, but it had happened well after the fact, right? It was like he was well into recovery. And so presumably Cook had taken over the reins, sort of is like when the president is is is ill or under anesthesia or whatnot, then the the vice president sort of gets the ability. And so I I didn't remember did Apple actually announce that Cook had taken over before they later announced that Jobs had actually had the liver transplant and they just said, Oh, he's he's there's something going on and we need Cook. And I don't think I don't feel like looking it up because I don't think it matters because I think in broad strokes you're exactly right, which is that more or less his desire for privacy combined with his being Steve Jobs and maybe being mad about it. They kept the whole thing more or less under wraps. I forget if he actually I don't know that he had the surgery without people knowing, but I think that he went on a medical leave before they announced that he went on a medical leave. And it wasn't it wasn't that he had the surgery and there was some initial denial and a really kind of it really seemed to go just between Steve Jobs and Katie Cotton and the world. And it didn't seem to go to the board and it didn't seem to be a healthy hammer. And and that was and I it was remember when and then jobs and he was still uh there was that incident where he called Joe Nasera at the New York Times, just picked up the phone and called him. Yeah. Yeah. Just called him a scumbat. You're jogging my mind. And it was and I think the messiness is at a personal level, everybody can a hundred percent understand the desire for privacy. And as the leader of a publicly held company, you can also totally understand that you cannot keep this private. It's there's an obligation it really is like being a public servant, being the better than me. But that there are certain positions in a publicly held company that that are s effectively like public servants and you have to be listed in the forms and there's also Yeah. And any mate any material changes like has to be notified, you have to make a file of obligations. There's all sorts of Yeah, if anything the laws might be more clear for the leaders of a publicly held corporation uh in terms of making that clearer than for things like the president. I mean Yeah, I think it was late twenty twenty. Uh yes, but where you're headed with this is that I I think is Cook so Cook back then obviously took the reins sort of because someone had to, and that's not to say he wasn't a great choice. He was he was the perfect choice. He was really probably the only choice, right? He was the person who could keep the trains all the operations literally running on time. And so he of course would s would sort of swap in there without any anyone missing a beat in terms of Apple's overall operations. But I think there is a broader question, like that you sort of hit on of if if Cook would have actually been the successor had he not been teed up by Jobs' unfortunate health situation previously. So Cook basically moved into the de facto role because he was already in the role previously, and then of course leading into to Jobs' next sort of leave of absence and then ultimate stepping down. There was no question that it would be Cook because he had done it before. And but there is a question though, I think, maybe with hindsight, would the board, I guess, and and jobs have chosen Cook to be the one to succeed him if he had been in total health throughout that entire You know, and i I do think it's interest you y and this was something I'll bet you didn't look at my piece until after you wrote your piece, but we both you and me both opened by the same by going back to 2011 when Steve Jobs resigned. And that's why I'm going back to this. I do think it's really interesting that Cook, I don't think, ever wanted to be CEO. I think he had what's that principle where you le vel up the Peter principle where you you rise to the level of your incompetence in an organization? I think it's the Peter principle. I I I might be getting it wrong whose principle it is. But the idea is let's just say you're a really good programmer and then you become a really good senior program . And then you become a programming manager and maybe you're good at it. And then you get promoted to be like a senior vice president of other programming managers and maybe you're terrible at that job. But you got the promotion because you were good at that level and now you stopped getting promoted because now you're at a job where you're no good. And you kinda if you it's kind of a crappy place in your career because maybe like for your own personal happiness and your thriving, you kind of want to take a demotion and go back to where you were good. And I think f Cook knew that. I think Cook knew that being the COO and right hand man to Steve Jobs was exactly where he wanted to be. I there were reports I don't remember s the specific ones, but of course there were because he was such an operational wizard and everybody knew it before Jobs even got s ick. Everybody knew holy shit. Apple used to be known for having terrible operations. I mean, it was a huge part of the bankruptcy crisis when Steve Jobs and Next were reunified with Apple in nineteen ninety six and going into nineteen ninety seven and ninety eight and the whole hey, we're like ninety days away from bankruptcy at one point. The a huge part of that it wasn't because sales tanked particularly. It wasn't and people misremember this. No, it wasn't good two years after Windows 95. Windows 95 did adversely affect the market share dynamics in the PC market in terms of hey, this But Mac sales were troubled and the Mac future in operating system was severely troubled, but the sales weren't so bad. The biggest problem with the bankruptcy crisis is that they would have these quarters where they ended with massive amounts of inventory. Yeah, inventory, miss ing. Right. And they had this uh totally dysfunctional internal culture where people were like, I don't know if this company's gonna be around anymore. I want to try to make my make my mark this quarter. And and they had managers ordering all of this inventory and building it up because then for this quarter , well, look how many Macs we made. But that's and then here's your bonus. And then it they're like they're sitting in warehouses not being sold getting old and you can't sell old computers. That was the big problem. And they had a huge inventory problem just manufacturing wise and parts that were being shipped around the world. And hey, we're out of this one component and we're manufacturing these devices in Mexico. Where's where do we get the component? Oh, that one comes from Taiwan. So you gotta wait a couple weeks and it's Cook fixed all of that. I mean, it's like they went Yeah. If anything, he he he did the exact he took it to the other extreme, right? With basic They went from having like weeks of inventory to having like hours of inventory for a lot of things by moving to China. And everybody knew it. And so there were feelers out there. I think Tim Cook it was one of those things where i i his his admin staff probably dealt with people asking, Hey, do you want to be CEO? You want an interview to be CEO of this company, that company, this company, every day. Yes. And I don't think he had any interest in it. I think that he's somebody who thought, hey, being the right hand man and COO of this company is actually better than being the CEO of any other company. And being the COO of Apple while Steve Jobs was still there Yeah, is the best possible combination. Yeah. And I wrote several times before Steve Jobs passed that if you just described what these two men did at Apple . Just here's what this this guy does, here's what this other guy does and what they're responsible for, and gave those descriptions to somebody who knows how corporations work. They'd point to Cook and say, Well that he's probably the CE O of the company and this other guy is I don't know what his title is, but he's probably like the director of head of product, head of strategy, yeah. Something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was the other way around. So I think Cook knew that and he did and he had he''s humble. I dont think he needed the title. I think he was fine with it. And I think he obviously knew in terms of being like the face of the company. Well duh. I mean we're still talking about it now that Steve Jobs was so goddamn good You can't replace him. Yeah. So I think that's a a key. He did not take the job the way he wanted. I don't think he ever wanted it. If Steve Jobs were still alive, I just looked it up, he'd be seventy one. I think if he had never gotten cancer , he might still be CEO. Yeah. I mean look at Larry Ellison, who's his buddy, right? Yeah, I think they who's older than he is, quite I think ten years older maybe than he is, and he's still he's not he's not effectively CEO of Oracle, but he obviously runs Oracle, like everyone knows that. And I think jobs would probably be or it might be I've referenced this recently, but you'll remember the movie Casino with Robert Hero where he's running the uh casino but he keeps switching job titles. So cause the gaming commission won't give him let him take a look at the head of food and food and beverage, yeah. So I can see Jobs. Jobs is the head of yeah, the the culinary staff at Apple , but calling the shots as he gives other people some time in the spotlight to build them up or whatnot. But yeah. There's a well, I it's I can't help. I gotta digress. My wife and I always refer back to that scene in Casino where De Niro is having breakfast with somebody in the hotel ki uh restaurant and there's two blueberry muffins and one has way too few blueberries and the other one has too many. And he's hold on a second. And he goes back to the kitchen to talk to the chef, the head chef of the whole casino. And he's like, I want the same amount of blueberries in every muffin. And the guy says, Are you kidding me? He goes, Look at this one. Doesn't have enough. Look at this one. It has too many. It falls apart. I want the same amount in every muffin. And the guy's like, Do you know how long that's gonna take? And Janeiro's like, I don't care. Do it. My wife and I talk about that all the time and talk about Steve Jobs. Yeah, that's a Steve Jobs moment right there. Blueberry. To go back to your c earlier point real quick though about the timing of this part with Cook himself. So when the news first hit, yeah, my mind immediately went to even ahead of sort of subsequent reporting, which I think confirmed a bunch of this, is that it's all obvious stuff, right? So of course there had been already the FT report, there had been the Gur German reporting about succession planning, but then why now? And the timing I think just was lining up the thing I had written months before sort of this the when it when it actually happened had been around like why might now be a time riffing off of the FT piece of why why it seems like yeah, they they were sort of reading the room correctly and why it was the right timing. And it just felt like we knew we were heading into a what Apple had already said in the previous earnings report would likely be a block quote unquote blockbuster quarter , as Apple's holiday quarter often is, because that's their that's their main sales period, but it seemed like it was teed up particularly well for it to be an all time great quarter and they again they they sort of guided to that. So we knew that that was going to be the clay case. So that was coming in early 2026. And then we also knew that Apple's 50th anniversary was coming up. Yeah. Right. And that was on April 1st in 2026. And we also knew where the stock was , but we knew that there were potentially some storm clouds on the horizon, the least of which was war actually breaking out, but also everything going by everything literal war happening. And so all of these things are swirling around and it just felt look, Cook, while he cares first and foremost about Apple and leaving Apple in a great spot, he also has to care somewhat about legacy and he knows that this is like a unique moment in time for him to sort of step back and be sort of at the top, right? With the best earnings of all of Apple's history, the stock potentially at or near all-time highs, around four trillion, Apple's fiftieth. In hindsight, it's obvious he cared quite a bit about that, right? Famously repeating over and over again. We normally don't do things, and Apple normally doesn't look back, but here we're going to do that. So obviously he wanted to be there for that. And so I don't think it's a coincidence and obviously it happened shortly thereafter, a few weeks after, and just ahead of the newest earnings reports, which are later this week. And then of course going into the fall, we know about that with the iPhone and whatnot. But oh I think you you noted it too. W W C D C gives him one more time and stage, one more keynote, and so all of those things led to this perfect storm where the of course this is the perfect timing for this to happen the announcement wise, right? And think back to to the F T thing that kickstarted this. I think it's step one of this plan. In mid November. So in mid November, they are exactly halfway through the holiday quarter. The announcements, the iPhone 17 generation the iPhone Air, which uh probably didn't contribute too much because everybody says it's not selling that well. But the iPhone 17 generation is uh was announced in September on time. There were no shipping delays. They knew how well it was selling, which it turns out is extremely well. The seventeen pro is probably the single most successful iPhone they've ever made. It is a smash hit. The orange is a big hit. A massive, massive hit. I I talked to someone at Apple about like hey, how come there are no ads for the iPhone Air? And it's like, I love this goddamn thing. Yeah. Why? And the explanation is basically like a sports analogy. Hey, when you somebody on the team has a hot hand, you keep giving them the ball, and that's the iPhone seventeen pro. And it's like we th there's only so many ads to go around, so many billboards, so many commercials. And people just keep stre there still are supply problems. Like they're making them as fast as they can and selling them as fast as they can. Don't mess with it. And that's it. And it is you know uh it makes sense to me. But and if you remember back to the iPhone five C, the colorful one, they did plaster that all over and it still did n't so they have a history of knowing that it doesn't necessarily chicken and egg scenario to marketing where you can't you don't just magically sell things by pushing it. The iPhone 5 C is a perfect example. And you do sell more of a thing that's already selling by pushing it. Like it is. And but by mid November they knew it, right? They they knew they were gonna have a blockbuster probably already. I think they they I think that they could be confident they were gonna have the record breaking best quarter in the history of the company that they were going to have. So that's when they that's when they tip the FT. That's when they set this in motion. Like this got set in motion in mid November at a point where it's okay, we're going to have the best quarter ever. The most important product in the company, the iPhone is in the best shape it's ever been. Let's get this started. Fiftieth is coming up. Everything seemed and again, it it this is the whole point of this whole segment of the show is a week later. I can't from Tim Cook's perspective, I cannot think of a way that this could have possi this succession could have been announced and put into motion and timed better. There's no possi ble way. There is no everybody's in good health. Everybody is the company is in fantastic health. Another bit of timing that I don't think you mentioned is Turnus is fifty or fifty-one. It doesn't seem his birthday is not public knowledge, but he's either fifty or fifty one and he might be turn fifty he'll probably be gonna turn fifty one before September first. Which is exactly the age Cook was. And if he w if he's successful and has a fifteen year run, he'll be a round the age Cook is now when it's time for the next succession. Perfectly aligned. One more thing off of that. I think it's sixty seven, but still sixty-five is is a nice round age. And Apple famously has their seventy five cutoff date for the board. So this would give him exactly ten years to be on the board as chair and sort of lead from that thing, which leads to the one other bit of why I push back a little bit on German after he pushed back on the FT report, because just reading the tea leaves of what happened with Arthur Levitson, who is the board And had been on the board. Two thousand. Has been on the board since two thousand, yeah, for a long, long time. So the fact that Apple put out there that they were waiving the seventy five year age limits for him and Ronald Sugar, who's another long, long standing board member. Now at the time they sort of couched it like look, there's a lot of turnover at Apple. There was a bunch of senior executives retiring. And so you could say that, yeah, that's all normal. But doesn't it just make sense? And and this is obvious in hindsight, but I said it in real time at the time. I think that this that signal basically that they knew that Cook would be stepping into that chairman role sooner rather than later. And so there's no way that they let Levis on either off the board or taking out of a chairman role and putting someone in for six months, that doesn't make any sense to do that. And so either you leave it vacant or you just wait for Cook to come in i in on his timing. And I think he may have taken the holiday time to make sure that he was feeling good about it and making sure that everything was aligned, making sure there was no say COVID on the horizon, like when Bob Iger retired the first time around and famously left sort of a mess, which ended up a giant mess back it in his lap after it didn't and so I think all of those things come perfectly into play for the time. And I think if something else had happened, some black swan event to put it in that in that get out of Taiwan with China or something like that. A real which would be a huge crisis for Apple. Well, then Tim Cook says, okay, I got it at least another year. I'm not handing off the job in this position. In that case, then I think they make a special announcement about Arthur Levinson where they're going to make an exception and he'll stay as chairman of the board for another year if it because there's a mo this all this is going on, we don't want any disruption on the board and we're gonna make i we know that the rule says se venty five, but uh uh Arthur Levinson is in great health and has been a key part of the company since two thousand, so he's gonna stay another year as on the as chairman of the board. And there still would have to have been an announcement of some sort. And then that announcement would have been like, oh, Cook's not going anywhere for a year or two . Yes. Yes, exactly. But I think that w the way they did announce that was a huge tea leaf. Hey, get ready. Like my analogy I forget if I I forget if I put it in writing or not or said it on a podcast. But my analogy is at least I do. I am not a just jump in the pool, get cold person. I put my feet in the water first. Give me a minute give me a minute to put my feet in, maybe go up to my ankles, and then I'm gonna jump in. And that's what the F T story was. The FT story in November was we're gonna put everybody's feet in the water that this is going to happen. And it wasn't I don't think it was a trial balloon. It wasn't like Apple was waiting to see what everybody said about this plan. That plan, they were like, we know this is going to happen. We just we just don't want you to be uh shocked when when when this happens. Yes, exactly . Yeah, and I had called it a trial balloon and I got pushback for that. And I think rightfully so as as you're saying right now. You're right. What I mean by that is exactly what you're saying. It wasn't that there was a go-no-go for like public perception of it or something like that. It was just to guide the market to know that this was likely coming down the pike and it would happen at some point to be determined. And again, I I do think that there was some wiggle room there probably on co in Cook's court, right? If he decided for whatever reason that he didn't want to step back just right now, it wasn't wasn't good timing for any number of reasons macro or personal wise. We probably could have pulled pulled it back and and said like yeah let's revisit this in the fall or whatnot. But obviously yeah it it didn't it didn't play out that way. And one one other thing that I'm just reminded of talking through this is remember we talked about Iger. Iger was on Apple's board for a long, long time and so that they had to he must have consulted with him and and Bob Iger's going went through his own transition, his second transition out of CEO role around the same time. And so obviously he's conferring with people like that and and figuring out exactly what that looks like. Remember too, he's on the Nike board and they've gone through their own CEO . Which wasn't good. Yeah that's good. That's which wasn't a good one . And so all of these things are in his head of knowing like why why this timing needs to be right. All right, let's come back to that. And I'm gonna take a break here and thank our first sponsor. It's our good friends at Squarespace. Hey, Squarespace is the most consistent, longest running sponsor of the talk show. And I thank them for that. It's great. But the reason why it's not like they're just squirting money into the air on this. It is because listeners of this show keep coming back to Squarespace through the code talk show and signing up for websites and or as I often reiterate here as the sort of nerd who listens to a podcast like this, you are the go to person in your family and your friend circle. 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When that's up and it's time to pay use that code Talk Show or go to squarespace.com slash talkshow again and you save ten percent off your first purchase for up so you can prepay for up to a year save ten percent with that code to squarespace dot com slash talk show so let's go back to to Disney and Nike, which I think are two examples. Uh comparable companies to Apple in some in a lot of ways. Disney in particular, right? 'Cause they've got like the the Walt Disney equals Steve Jobs charismatic founder who constantly every time he had a major success would just have this constant drive to create something new, right? That that Walt Disney wanted to make just animated feature shorts and then he wanted to make feature films. And everybody was like, that's crazy. Nobody wants to watch a cartoon that's more than five minutes long. And they uh they bet the whole company. Like it's it Snow White w if it hadn't been a box office success, we'd nobody here would hear of Disney. It would have been a d a historical artifact that went out of business in nineteen thirty seven or whatever year it was. But it turned out Snow White was like the at the time like either the uh the or one of the biggest box office history. Box office wise. And then it's like the rest of the movie industry, then they become a huge, huge feature film company, and then uh TV becomes a thing in the fifties, and every other studio is panicked about TV, hates TV. Why in the world? This is our enemy. We want people to come into the theater and see these big full color cinema scope things on hundred foot screens and stay away from the little eighteen inch black and white static filled picture tube in your house. And Walt Disney was like, oh no, I w I want to be on TV every day. We're gonna have a Mickey Mouse show after school so kids come home from school and see it. You know, and Walt Disney himself hosted the show every Sunday night, the wonderful world at Disney or whatever the hell it was called. Right. Becomes a huge TV thing. Then he's like, You know what I want to make? Theme parks. It's one thing after another. Sounds exactly like Steve Jobs, right? It's such a great analogy. Disney and Apple, very, very similar. And it unfortunately there is a similarity in how Steve Jobs and Walt Disney left the companies, right? Yeah. Yeah. And fast forward of course a bit and I think with Bob Iger in his autobiography, talked about how he believed that Apple and Disney would combine at some point if Jobs had remained alive, which is wild to think about. And it's and it's it's wild to think about, but it's actually like viable right now in our current world because while Disney is still sort of the foremost movie production company And and everything sort of got kicked up the dust got kicked up when Netflix, of course, zoomed in to try to buy Warner B rothers and but just showcases like the future of Hollywood, as much as everyone in Hollywood will hate to admit it, probably looks a lot more like Netflix and now YouTube and all of these other streaming services coming in and sort of the movie studios are just a part of that, which has been the sort of trend over the past fifty years, right, where these giant conglomerate companies for everyone but Disney have swooped in to buy the stud ios. And so when everyone's like freaking out about Netflix buying Warner Brothers, it's like where have you guys been for the past fifty years? Like all these various random companies come in conglomerates and buy movie studios. And so this is sort of the norm. And and they're freaked out because of course streaming is the new boogeyman or has been the new boogeyman until AI becomes the ultimate boogeyman, which is happening now. But again, that just to go back, that's di Disney and Apple like maybe is becoming more of an actual viable thing. Remember, Disney, I believe, is is what a two or three hundred billion dollar company? Relatively small compared to the tech giants. Apple could afford it pretty easily. I mean it would be a it would and again their biggest acquisition was Beats and that was five billion, I think. I think even less. I think it was like three billion. And it was over a decade ago. Yeah. Yeah, and the world has changed so much since that time where Apple could make a three billion dollar acquisition now and it would be like a big deal. Wouldn't be the Yes, there are AI seed rounds that are that big. Like literally. Right. It sounds a little crazy to say a hundred times bigger acquisition, like a three hundred billion dollar acquisition of Disney would be roughly it would be a bigger deal than buying beats. It would. But it wouldn't break Apple's bank by any by any stretch. I mean they could get that deal done in a heartbeat except for regulatory concerns. But monetarily they could get it done. And I think the way that they've kept the Beats brand and they still sell Beats headphones, and I actually really like the Beats cases. I haven't written about it yet, but the Beats iPhone cases are actually better than the Apple branded cases because they don't have the bottom lip or at least you can they have models without the bottom lip. Interesting. Actually really good. They're my favorite you know I don't use a case. Most I'm like the the most inter esting man of the world with the modello beer. But he does but I use one of these like moth things that protects it. So when it's laid down but but yeah I don't use a a case anymore these days. I i what's you saying when I drink I don't always drink beer , but when I do drink beer I m I drink Modello. And it's like I d I don't usually wear a case on the case. Oh it's dose of case, it's not medello . Right. But when I do wear a case, I like the beats case right now. I really do. But they've kept the brand and obviously if they bought Disney they would keep the Disney brand. I mean you that that's a huge part of the the value and sort of let it run as an independent company, but with the back ing that's how I would imagine it going. That I think most people wouldn't really Yeah and yes, Apple isn't in the running a conglomerate business like Berkshire Hathaway, but they could make it uh buying Disney would be making an exception to that rule. And that's how they do it. The problem would come in and I imag ine you have to imagine that at least at the the em the the sort of the corporate corp dev level, they've they've sort of thought about all these scenarios, right? Like they have to kick tires on various things and and run scenarios of what this looks like. The problem with Disney is I'm sure that they would love to have the movie studio, but much like when all the talk of and I've written about this a number of times, like they should have bought HBO, right? But they didn't want and and they would have loved to have I think Warner Brothers and all the IP there, but they didn't want all the other stuff. They didn't want the T V networks. And famously Netflix didn't either, right, when they were doing the deal. And with Disney, Apple probably doesn't want the cruise ships, but then you argue is that a part of the brand? Yeah. I think it's part of the brand. I think it's a logistics nightmare, but it's part of the brand. And they've al alreadyready they run it, right? It wouldn't be like people in Cupertino would suddenly need to figure out how to run cruise ships and theme parks. They've already got the people. Need to bring in Tom Wabzigans from uh succession to uh Yeah, but I think that part of the similarity is that Apple knows how important the retail stores have proven to Apple since they created them, how how absolutely essential they are to Apple's brand, how there's now an entire generation entire generation of young adults who don't remember a world without the Apple store. That part of the Apple experience is going to your local Apple store, and that if you have a problem or you want to get a new thing or you just want to see the new Neos, you want to see the c people know. You can just go and check 'em out and that they're at they pay the premium to put the Apple stores in the best parts of the city or the best malls and and they have incredible foot traffic, right? Every time I go to buy an Apple store, they are packed. Um and they so they it that's very similar to the real world experience of hey, you don't just pay twenty bucks a month to get Disney Plus. You can bring your kids to a theme park and meet Mickey Mouse. You can come here and get your picture taken and give them a hug. Like that is a thing that other companies do not have in that space. Like you don't know. And and they're also apparently hugely profitable, right? Both the park parks is the major profit center right now of Disney. And so Apple would be sort of silly to get rid of it just from the bottom line perspective. Uh and it is and it just might break the flywheel of the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. I and so there is a Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway hey separate all the other stuff and it's like is this a good business that has a bright future? And do they have a moat that other companies can't encroach on? Yeah. Right? It's just like a good investment. So I don't know. And we haven't even mentioned the fact that Disney's the company that owns Pixar. Which look it up. Let me check my notes. The CEO of Pixar was a guy named Steve Jobs. Right? Yes. And their new CEO is apparently more interested on the technology side. You know, he's the one who apparently has done a bunch of the Epic stuff, which would be awkward maybe with Apple, but but still I think they could get over that bit. And then of course there's there's ESPN, which is now Apple is clearly ramping on the sports side. Not not yet to the extent that maybe Amazon and and even Netflix are going all in, but that's just because per Apple's way, like they want to own the entire experience. They don't just want to pick off these one off games and stuff. Disney and Apple are about to get married. I'm just saying it makes a lot of sense. And in terms of hey, Apple definitely was sniffing around getting some NFL rights. Another way to do it would be to buy ESPN. Yeah. Yeah. All of a sudden you are thrown head first . You're you're thrown into you're the you're the biggest player all of a sudden in sports. And yeah. I there's there's a lot of reasons why it makes sense. I do think like there's gotta be the push on complex But if they did like sort of you're talking about the Berkshire model, like what if they just let Disney run as is and they're just sort of the the overall holding company of it. Yeah, and that they have and then but also could filter back some you can get a bundle deal and save money on an Apple TV plus What if they backed into so obviously Google where I worked for a long time, when I was there, they they moved up to the sort of alphabet level, right? And so they made a holding company on top of Google. And so Apple could do the same thing in reverse, where they buy a Disney and then have either Apple or something else as the holding company, and then Apple is one of the pillars, Disney is one of the pillars. Beats probably stays as part of Apple 'cause it's been that way for so long. But you could see a world in which in a different in different avenue they would be sort of their own thing and maybe they they buy up a couple other things. Maybe maybe in gaming, maybe some else tangential I don't know. But it is it just to circle back to Cook, it there's two reasons to look at Disney for succession. There's what happened after Walt died, and that was the company didn't tank, but the seventies and a till Eisner came back it came into the company and took the rein in the eighties, there was a a sort of fifteen year blah period for Disney without Walt. They weren't re ady. That's not so instructive. That's more comparable to Tim Cook's era, the 15 years after the death of the charismatic irreplaceable founder. And Apple clearly had a better fifteen years after Steve Jobs died than Disney did after Walt died. There's no doubt. The better example is the the Bob to Bob transition in twenty twenty. Yeah. And that they he he picked the wrong guy. Ch Bob Chaypeck was a goddamn idiot. And it does the the whole question of Iger coming back when Iger came back, it's like well somebody needs to come back because somebody's got to get this ChayP ec guy out of here. But you the question with Iger coming back was, but you're the guy who picked ChayPek. So you know that whole situation. More of it with Iger now retired and like what actually happened there. But it was very weird. If you remember I remember reading his biography before he retired the first time around, and he sort of it did seem like he was telegraphing the fact that he would choose ChayPek because there's like a scene, a part of the book that I remember where there was an incident, I think a a shooting maybe at one of the Disney parks, and Shaypeck was in charge of the parks. And and so the way that he handled it, he like just touted him as as great. And there was this whole swirl around there was always a swirl around who would be succeeding Iger at Disney, in part because he had been having such a successful run with all the the MA he had done and and obviously he r after after Eisner , he reinvigorated Disney to the point where it was by far the most successful studio. And again, he executed those MA transactions better maybe than anyone ever has in history. And then he had his number two person , like the COO role was a rotating cast of characters who kept leaving. And so it was like, Yeah, are they doing that because they don't think he's leaving anytime soon? You know, and they're gonna to to your point, earlier point about Cook, like So did he sort of like back into ChayPek as the sort of last man standing just at the time that he wanted to go? And he's Well, I'm out and here's the most obvious person to do it and so I'm gonna give it to him and he'll be great. But y no one thought I could do it either. Which is true, right? No one thought that Bob Iger could sort of step into that role and and take it on and and obviously he proved them otherwise. And so I think that when in hindsight it's easy to say what a failure CHPEC was because it was a disaster, but it was during COVID and it was like there were a bunch of yeah, a perfect storm in sort of we talked about it was a perfect situation for Cook to step back right now. It was basically the opposite when when Iger left that first go around. For people I mean um we're a Disney family, I mean now our son's twenty two, he's he's senior in college. We're we don't go it's been a while, a couple years now. But we used to go to Disney World every year and really enjoyed it. And the idea of the parks guy taking over it sounded like a great idea without knowing anything about him, but then the par ks guy took over the company and start immediately started wrecking the parks experience. That's right. They jacked up the prices and yeah. And and and they but it's not everybody come that's one of those similarities between Apple and Disney. Everybody c has always complained about the prices, and the prices are very high. It is very expensive to take a vacation to Disney World or Disneyland or any Disneyland anywhere in the world. And it's like ever ybody knows Apple's stuff is expensive and that they have high profit margins. And then you're like, so what do people complain about with Apple? Well everything's expensive. And what do people complain about with Disney? Well everything's expensive. But then you say, but did you have a good time? And they're like, I can't wait to come back. And it's like, do you like your iPhone? I can't wait to buy my next one. That's the thing that keeps going. But like with with CPEC, it was like the just little things like they had this system for years now called fast passes because I know you've been there, but it's like the fast pass system, it's like a way that you can get like tickets to go to a riot instead of waiting in line. Yeah. And and then you just show up the it you get a fast pass that says come come uh back at eleven AM and you come back at eleven AM and you go to the fast pass line and then you just go you don't go right to the front, but you kinda you only have like twenty minutes and then you're on a ride. And you can only get so many of them. And it's like, oh well, how do you get how do you optimize your use of fast passes? And there were all sorts of blogs and books of how to do it. But you could do it and you could get a the bottom line is you could get on more rides in a day than you would otherwise and you're not spending your time just sitting in a queue. And then when CPEC took over, it was like, oh, we're gonna have a new system and every day while you're at the park at 7 AM , you need to go online and sign up for your pass passes and you can't do it the day before and if you wait till like seven fifty till seven fifteen they're all gone. And it's who wants to wake up at seven AM or eight a.m. whatever. It was really early . And and what was the rationale behind it though? I don't know. Who knows? It was but it was just one example of many of ruining the experience and giving people something to complain about. And it's but you were the parks guy. It's not like somebody came in from the movie or streaming business and then started making bad decisions for the parks. It would be like if come next year all of a sudden Apple's hardware gets worse. And it's like, well wait, they put the hardware guy in charge and now the hardware's worse? What is going on here? Like with inexplicably bad decisions. Like, who thought that making people while they're on vacation go on the computer? The whole point, like my argument when we were there doing this wasn't just that it was early in the morning and that it was stressful because hotel Wi-Fi is always an if and it's like you're in a ra it was like any kind of online auction for tickets or something where it's like you don't want to mess it up because you've they're going. Like Don't reload, don't refresh. You gotta stay on it. Yeah. But even more than that being a bad experience, shouldn't the whole point of going on vacation anywhere be that the better the vacation, the less time you want to spend on your computer or phone? Right. I mean that should in today's world that is like a good just rule of thumb for a good vacation or not. Yeah. I was I was so occupied, so interested, we had so much to do that I spent way you know, my screen time went way down. And if your screen time doesn't go down on vacation, it's probably not a good vacation. But it's like you're they're begging it's it was just baffling, right? It's it was like who is it? They they had to get rid of the guy. So I'm sure I'm sure Cook knows more about that than just about anybody in And then the other one is Nike. I don't know as much about that one, but I basically though the new after I forget the guy's name, but the new CEO of Nike really got them away from It was it was John Donohoe who was formerly the eBay CEO who came in. And interesting about this, I believe this is correct. I think Cook led the CEO search for the Nike board, or at least was the main steward to bring him in and sort of mess that up, I guess. Again, in hindsight, you know, who knows, I'm sure there were many things that sort of contributed to that going sideways. But but yeah, it just seemed like they made the bat the wrong call, like the wrong the wrong type of guy to lead that business. And now they're trying to work backwards and and sort of reverse all those changes again and selling Yeah. And just sort of maybe took for granted the primacy of the position that Nike held in the sneaker world and that underestimated just how much competition was ready to rise up and how quickly Nike could go from being the coolest brand of sneaker to hey, not so cool. And it was similar in that again, I don't know that much about Nike rel ative to Apple like yourself, but Mark Parker was the guy before who was also sort of out of left field but became like one of these great CEOs and that's who who had this run that then Donahoe had to step in for and just yeah, it just totally went sideways after that. But obviously that's always the risk after you're succeeding someone who's had great success and and that is now the the point that Turnus finds himself in, which is odd because of course everyone thought that Cook would be in that position. And the one other analogy or or back going back to think about a CEO succession thing that's not directly related, but it's obviously these companies are forever interlinked, is the way that that Ballmer took over for Gates. And in a way, like right, Gates and Jobs famously were frenemies and had both massive control and mind share over the companies that they had they had started and had hugely successful runs by the end of their tenures and left the keys for different reasons, obviously, in good hands, it seems, in terms of where the company was at, and that the new person could just sort of come in and keep keep everything running. And Balmer , while I think again, these things are easy to say in hinds ight. I think that he he did a job of sort of keeping the trains running, but what he really did when you look back on it is just sort of milked the cash cow, right? Like he basically just just took what what was there, what was built from the Gates era, and what he helped build for to his credit, right? Ballmer was there as as one of the high up executives most of the time, famously from from Harvard. They knew each other. Yeah. And uh but still when he came in as a CEO, it seemed like he would just keep everything running as Gates had done it. But what he ended up doing was was just like doing again, milking the the profits out of these companies. And so they be came more profitable and kept growing, growing the top and bottom lines. But the stock, interestingly, was almost like stagnant for the entire 10 year period, which was obviously just not the case with Cook, who had who had done it. You could say he did a similar thing in terms of growing the revenues off of the iPhone and growing and growing the profits off of the iPhone. But the market reaction was very, very different and I think there's there's a reason there's reasons for that. Yeah, I do. I think strategically Cook and and I do it can be a high priority without being his top priority. The way I put it is Cook's top priority was always the well-being of the company its elf. And that's not the shareholders, and that's not a near term hyper focus on stock price. Because you can't really control that. And I think any CEO, especially of a bigger company that gets hyper focused on that. And that to me that's to Ballmer's credit that he never panicked over the fact that the stock was flat. He was he used to say repeatedly, I c I look at two numbers, revenue and profit, and those are both going up, and I can't control the stock price, and the stock price will eventually reflect the success we're having with revenue and profit. And in some ways, I think that's admirable. I I just think what the stock price was reflecting was hey, this company doesn't seem to be heading towards a bright future. No, it really and I think it was and and and Ballmer was hyper focused on milking Windows as the real Windows, which is an op PC operating system that runs on personal computers. Right. And then he got hyper focused on the brand too. So it was like, hey, everything that this company does is going to be running on Windows PCs and anything else we do, we're going to just slap the name Windows on it. We got Windows Mobile and we got Yeah, yeah. And it became like yeah, this this sort of like piecemeal weird product and then they had all these like offshoots and then and then strategically remember of course he had two deals one of which didn't happen which was trying to buy Yahoo which he almost bought for forty billion dollars but Jerry Yang came back and blocked it from happening. Which is incredible, like in hindsight, because if that deal gets done, what what does Microsoft look like? That may have sunk Microsoft a lot of money for that product. And back then that was a lot of money. That would have been one of the biggest deals of all time. I mean it still would have been, but it it it would have been maybe an AOL size deal. Yeah. And type situation. And again, Yahoo blocked it. And is now a fraction of of themselves, of course, and then then of course as he's sort of nearing the end of his run, he buys Nokia for a massive amount of money. And and it's just like totally wrong decision. I think ultimately , yeah. Right. And then again I don't want to get sidetracked talking about Microsoft, but uh you know, Satya Nadella, much more Tim Cookie and but really did clean that up and really did come in and just rip the band aid off right away when he took over it and said this whole all we're gonna do is Windows, we're gonna put Windows everywhere. Forget about that. Windows is an important product of Microsoft's future, but we've got a pr we want our software everywhere, including platforms that are not Windows. And it has turned into a very successful strategy in terms of Ballmer's revenue and profit, but also in terms of investors looking at the company and saying, Oh, that's pretty smart. And I see how that that's strategy has a future ahead of it. That feels that feels growthy for the future. And therefore it was very good for the stock too. Yeah. And and famously when one of Nidella's first moves, and this is sort of an interesting one to to look back upon, but it was basically that that he announced as one of his very first things, I think it was in the audience when he did this, was um announcing the iPad version of Office. And and of course now people say i again after the fact that well bomber obviously had that in the works under his leadership. But still there was the it was a it was a watershed moment and just the announcement of it was the big deal, right? Even more so than the work I would compare it to when Steve Jobs had the Macworld Expo in the New York, I think in summer of ninety seven with Gates on the screen saying we've worked out a long-term deal to make Internet Explorer the main browser on a Mac, and people started booing, and we've got a deal with them that they're going to continue developing Office for years to come, or five years or something, which was the linchpin of the deal. And they're making a symbolic investment. But you're right. These are these are watershed moments that that matter more for the symbolic nature of them. They're showcasing to the world, to the employee base, to the world that like to use the jobs or like for Apple to win, Microsoft doesn't have to lose. And and it it's basically showing that we're changing the mentality around what has has sort of gotten us into this these bad places that we're in. Yep. 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The hardware business is great, the services business is great and growing and that's one of Cook's certainly Cook's financial leg legacy. What else is Cook's legacy from the last fifteen years? The two hardware products obviously, are the Apple Watch and AirPod s. Yes. And the Vision Pro, though. Right. In a negative sense. And the car in a in a in a 10 billion Well and didn't I d it's not a f I I would say the car and li I I don't you know, I don't think Apple ever really disclosed exactly ten billion, but it sounds about right, you know. Truth. It must it must have been. Like yeah. They made acquisitions, they did like things here. They and they spent a lot of time. It was just a lot of time, a lot of resources. And and you know, I think that they got some elements some things out of it I,' Im sure that learnings technologies out of it that that they've been able to leverage. But still, for the most part, it was a a side quest to use OpenAI's new parlance for for these things. And but you see why they did it, right? Like what's a business that can actually move the needle potentially for a company the size of Apple, which already has potentially one of the biggest, if not the best, businesses of all time in the iPhone? Cars. Oh, you could do cars, you could do banking, you could do oil. There's only a few things you can do that would actually potentially move the needle for Apple. And so they tried the car routes, and I think that that was the most obvious and probably least painful banking would be a regulatory nightmares Apple scene to some extent with their partnerships and whatnot. And so it's hard to fault them for doing it. I just it just didn't work out. If the card didn't exist, if they're if they never even dabbled in it. You could make the argument that and I'm not just try I'm not trying to carry water for Tim Cook here, but you could make the argument that if they didn't have any, hey we tried this and it didn't work out, then you could make the arg ument that they weren't trying hard enough. If you're trying the optimal amount of trying isn't every single thing you try is a success, it's that most of what you try is a success and then you you get a little bit out over your skis once in a while and it's okay, there there's where we tried too hard. But that means we're trying as hard as we can. And the car was famous for for sort of framing it right with Amazon when he was running Amazon. And Firephone is the preeminent example of that. Yeah. But but yes, and and I think Cook I think there's there's you could say a lot of criticisms of Cook in different degrees, but I do think one thing that he could have sort of done better from a communications perspective is just sort of, yeah, like owning things like that. And he's starting to do that a little bit. I I I didn't actually I haven't gone back and revisited it since I've wro written these pieces now and I'm looking back at these pieces, but I know that one thing he apparently said in the town hall he talked about the Apple Maps fiasco, right? And so he's he's at least somewhat going back now and and looking at things in the rear view. Yeah, that was I guess German reported that the after the big announcement they held a a thing in Steve Jobs Theater. Which I always wonder. I I've talked to some people at Apple, and I guess they simulcast it for the whole company. But you've been there. Like the Steve Jobs Theater only holds I think like five hundred people ish. So they h, but that's like edit Google too. They have like the the t the they basically yes stream it into then all of the other sort of So everybody gets to watch it but, I alwa ys wonder how how they adjudicate the tickets to actually be in the room. 'Cause it's sort of like I don't maybe it's a thousand people at a fitness Steve Jobs theater. I forget. It's not that many. It's it's a beautiful theater. I think it's like first it it might be first come, first served. Like people like line up just like they would for a for an event. Well, but some number of people get guaranteed seats. Right. Right. Right. Eddie Q does not just show up late and it's no back to the off go go back to your office, Eddie. Your you know seats are full. Yeah. Go wa go watch it on your computer, sorry. Yeah uh the maps thing it's interesting that he brought it up. It is he's reflective. It's more complicated though. Like the maps and it's fine, it all worked out. And and it again, that's one of those things he doesn't get credit for. People don't give credit for things that just work as expected. And first impressions do matter, and there's a lot of people who haven't really looked at Apple Maps in a while and have no idea how good it is. A how good it looks, and B that the directions are often better than Google's. They're certainly on par. It does depend where you live. And there are people in other countries around the world where Google Maps directions are good and Apple Maps are crap. I know that every time I bring it up. But Maps turned into a very good product. It is very good now. And it's and there's no moment in time where anybody was like, hey, you know, in twenty seventeen there was this big celebration and all these articles about how Apple Maps is now good. Nope. But everybody just remembers that when it launched it was horrible. But they kind of had to. Google strategic reasons, right. Yeah. Google had them over a barrel where Google the the the Google maps that they had the rights to in iOS was people don't even talk about this anymore, but they were bitmapped map tiles. So they're like bitmapped images that when you zoom in were pixelated until new map tiles were downloaded.. Yeah It's like a a bitmaped image versus a vector image. And vector map tiles where they just scale like a PDF file when you zoom in, they didn't have those. But the bigger one is they didn't have turn by turn directions. Like in I know people are like, what? Well then what did you use maps for? And it's I don't know . People would just look it up to like look at directions. But there weren't turn by turn directions. And I think you maybe you could get like a list of directions, but they weren't updated live. But that was like a thing. But Google had turn by turn directions and Android had it 'cause Google had it and they were offering it to Apple, but they were offering it to Apple with a deal that meant that they would get the location data of the people using it. And that they would be a sign in. It would be optional. You could use Apple Maps with the advanced Google features without signing in, but they Google would still get the data and they could fingerprint to figure out who you are. And guess what? We now know that these companies are really good. They kinda don't need you to sign in, they know who you are. And there would be a sign in so they could know for sure that it's me, John Gruber, who's take getting directions to wherever I may not want them to know that I'm going to. Bitmap maps from Google without turn by turn directions, or they could switch to the new stuff from Google, but uh a seed to Google's demands for private what Apple determined was privacy invasive information, which made that a no-go. Like I talked to people at Apple who were very high up in that decision making. That was something they never really considered because it was and they could not negotiate Google off of those privacy. You know, it was like on a privacy basis, it was like we can't really go this way, or flip the switch and go with Apple Maps, our in-house product, which we know isn't really ready to go. Which one do we do? And they're like, I guess the best of all these shitty choices is to just flip the switch and go with Apple Maps. And maybe they should have waited another year, but it wouldn't have been a year where they And it would have been a year that they weren't getting data in to make the maps product better. Right. Yeah, how much better . How much better was Maps going to get in a year without death. That was the thing. I just wrote about this when I reflected briefly on going full time at Daring Fireball twenty years ago where my decision matrix was there were a couple of years where I started having ads and started selling t-shirts and I was making some money, but it was nowhere near enough to support my family. But I kinda had this notion that I'm never gonna make enough money doing this until I'm spending full time doing it. And I kinda have to go full time doing it before the ads and the memberships and the t-shirts are gonna make enough to support it. And it I don't know if I had to do it, but that turned out to be the truth. Where once I started doing it full time, even though the revenue wasn't enough to support my family and we were chewing through our savings , that's when the revenue started picking up. And I think they kind of had to go to Apple Maps before it was ready to make Apple Maps better. So it's it's more complex than that, but it makes for a neater, nicer, hey, what do you regret in your time? Oh, Apple Maps. It was a bad launch. Right. It was a fiasco. But it also i is interesting in the context of today in that they're cutting the deals with Google again for AI. And what does that look like five years down the road? Right now they obviously have a deal that they're happy with, but what if Google says we need XYZ more information? And presumably because of the maps situation, they've they've like really locked in these contracts to know what's good and what's not. But at the end of the day, there's always going to be something that they're going to be beholden to the the other company on. So that's a really interesting point. I'm glad you brought that up. I think that there're thinking, and I keep going back to that white paper that I think it leaked from Google. I don't think they released it, but I don't know that they, you know, I once a white paper is written, it's kind of hard to keep it from leaking. But it was the the argument from within Google from their AI team that open AI has no moat and we do we don't either that there is no moat with these LLMs and that there's so that there's enough competition and always will be that if Google were to turn the screws on Apple and say, Okay, you like Gemini and you like building Apple intelligence on a Gemini base layer, we're we want m we want stuff I don't think I think Apple's looking at this situation and saying I don't think they can ever do that because there's enough competition and we can just go somewhere else. And we're seeing that. At least right now. We see it right now. It's a bet though, right? Right. I mean it could go the other way. I I don't think I don't think it necessarily goes fully the other way where it gets like Yeah, it's just one provider rules them all. But I think that there is a world in which it's it's problematic not to own the underlying models that you're using for these things. Right. It it probably is . But I think that I don't think that going with Gemini now slows Apple down to get their own models. And I think I think it's pretty clear with and they're n they they can't spell this out, but I kind of think the whole reason Google is going along with this. Like why is Google going along with this and letting Apple use Gemini and to to sort of save the day, right? Because Apple's models clearly aren't ready. If they were ready, Apple would use their own models . Right? It's almost a statement of fact that Apple's in-house models are not up to snuff by today's frontier standards. So why is Google doing this? Why doesn't Google sc rew them over? Doesn't Google have an interest in Android and aren't they letting their number one competitor catch up in a way? And it's Google doesn't look at Android the way Microsoft looked at Windows back in the day. Android's just sort of there for them. They care about it. And they the the the Pixel team gets to run ads to to try to get people to switch from iPhone and stuff. And they if if more people want to use Android, Google cool for Google, but it's not central to them. It just isn't. And I think what Google sees in this clearly is is kneecapping open AI. Right? And to some extent anthropic. Like if s if Apple is going to go to somebody to fill in the underlying base model for Apple intelligence, let it be Gemini rather than these other guys. Yeah, the risk is sort of the inverse of that. If they don't do the deal and they already did a deal obviously with OpenAI last go around and or they wanted to do a deal, it sounds like with Anthropic per the reporting, but they couldn't come to terms on it, right? If they do one of those, all of a sudden and they're the underlying model that's powering Siri or the next generation of Siri, all of a sudden whatever that model is goes overn overnight from, say, hundreds of millions of users to billions of users potentially. And those are billions of users that are not now using Gemini. And so regardless of of what the the business terms are around it, I do think that there's that there's truth in that. Google looks at it as look, we ha we all of a sudden will get our models in the hands, the literal hands, of of billions of users and the most passionate and the most powerful sort of users of smartphones on the planet. And so why would you not do that deal unless sort of the inverse of what we were talking about? Like then you become too beholden on the iPhone for sort of either your usage and if that goes away and all of a sudden you have to disclose that the Apple deal is ending one quarter and the stock tanks because all of a sudden you don't have the iPhone user base anymore propag So I kind of feel like they don't really you know, the it's more of uh even though Apple doesn't have a good model, and Google does, and that makes it seem like Google's in the position of negotiating strength and Apple's not. I think they're much more equals. Certainly it's not like maps. And go back to that competition factor. There was nobody else Apple could go to at that time. That was Bing Maps, right? I think Bing had had had a maps produ Yeah, but I don't think that they they didn't solve the problems that Apple needed solve with the vector tiles and the turn by turn and stuff like that. And it it probably would have been a harder sell narratively than doing their own thing by just saying, look, we know this isn't the best. Obviously they wouldn't it that way. But Apple famously of course like wants to give their user base the best product, which is why they've long touted that they go with Google search, even though Bing or someone else might give them better terms because it's the overall best product. And so if they were to sort of swap out Google Maps for yeah, Bing Maps, would they really with a straight face say to their user base, Hey, sorry, but you know, you gotta use this thing now. It's not as good , but you know, we got better terms or whatever. Yeah. And that competition factor I think that does play into the stability of Apple Senior leadership is unlike Disney where there are other entertainment companies and especially if you're and there kind of are other theme park companies, you can go to Universal. There's not too much there's not as much competition, certainly, in theme parks. Disney theme park business is just way ahead. There's competition in cruise ships, but not for like families with little kids. Disney has a niche in the cruise ship industry that it's hard to imagine anybody else even coming close to . One of the things that makes Apple different is there is no company really like Apple. Let's just pick an executive. Where else is Craig Federigi gonna go? Right? Yeah. Is he gonna go to Google? Really? Why? Why? Why would he do that? If Google ramped up if if they did the opposite of what you were just talking about and really wanted to ramp up Pixel as the flagship product and they were gonna do exclusive Gemini access and all that sort of stuff. Maybe you could see it. Or Samsung, same same general idea. But it's not gonna be it's not gonna be the sa as good of a yeah, right position. There are other phones. Samsung is obviously the comp the competition for the iPhone. And the iPhone is the biggest business. The smartphone is the greatest consumer product of all time. I just blogged the other day about a rumor that that Samsung is themselves warning investors about that they their their mobile business might actually register a loss for the first time this year because of the Ram crisis. But it really does seem to still be true from fifteen years ago that Apple takes like eighty ish percent of all the profits in the phone business and Samsung takes the other fifteen to twenty percent . And everybody else at best has like one or two percent profit share of the industry, like the Waways and Xiaomi's and that's it. And then everybody else is just sort of breaking even and selling phones for break even and that's why the phones get loaded up with crapware because the deals that they get for the preloaded crapware software on the phone is the only money they make. That's it. And that the they can sell these things at cost basically to the carriers around the world as the freebie phones to give away for discount. The the where why would anybody even make other phones? It's because there's some kind of demand for people on low who don't care about their phone, who just want a phone that that they get with their fifty dollar a month plan. That's it. But but the profits there just aren't it's hard to imagine that. Is was John Turnus ever gonna leave for Samsung ? I I I d was John Turnus gonna leave to go to HP to fix their hardware business. I so this I think he would laugh. I think I th I honestly think if somebody from like the HP board got Turnus's ear two years ago and said, Hey, what if you came in and we'll make you the CEO of HP? We need we got to turn this around. I think you would have to do it. But so all of this sort of points directly to what happens to everyone that has been at Apple for decades, including Turnus, but now that Turnus is in charge, obviously when there's CEO transitions, always there's shuffles at the top. There have already been shuffles that have been happening at the top of Apple. But a lot of that is just natural because they're getting up there in retirement age. Yeah, Jeff Williams is 63 or 64 or 60. Exactly. Yeah. And so now that the trans ition is happening, who sticks around, who doesn't and what what does sort of that look like? It does seem again, I don't reading between the lines of of what's sort of out there a week into this now? It feels like there is certainly no animosity amongst the main people at the top of Apple, like Eddie Q's talking up Turnus as the right pick. And I haven't seen anything from Phil Schiller, but presumably like he's up there an age enough that he knows like this is probably the right pick and and uh I cannot say for sure, but I strongly suspect that Phil Schiller is very supportive of this pick. You would have to imagine that they basically all are like they've all been working together so long that if there was major break in that in that room, like either someone left already because they didn't like that decision the way it was headed, or they're signed off on it, and they just know that the Cred Craig Federigi is an interesting one to me because he's around the same age. I think he's a little bit older than Turnus. And so just from that light, he's the other name that could have been. I mean Sabi Khan, I think, is in the is in that that boat too. But he's the he's the CEO C O O now. He's the COO. And he I think I don't know if there's been actual report ing on it, but I think like he became sort of the the Cook version of if someone get if Cook got hit by a bus, like he could slot in there after Jeff Williams sort of stepped away. I don't think so. I here's what I 'cause if you look at the timing of all this, I think Williams was definitely that guy for the last most of the last fifteen years. Then I think Cook figured out Turnus is the guy. And and I think he sort of had this. And it's around the times that Williams was legal announced to be. Yeah. And I think everybody I think everybody I don't I don't think this is all that can I don't know. You'll never know because I think it's a very small group of people and they're very private. I don't think there's any contention about this. We'll have to come back to Johnny Suru gi, which is the only asterisk. Ooh, maybe. Right. But I think Cook figured out Turnus is probably the guy. But maybe not definitely. But let's let's see. Let's give him more FaceTime on the keynotes. Let's put more on his plate. Let me take him under his wing and pick his brain and see how he deals with these other and I think that's one of the things I've heard this for a while and a few things have come out in the last week and it's just that that it is there's I think it's still on Monday mornings. I don't know. I've if it's not it's uh nobody's reported it. But jobs always ran a Monday morning executive meeting at nine nine AM every Monday. It's several hours, right? Yeah. It is probably runs through lunch. But it is every Monday at nine a.m. The people on the Apple Senior Leadership Team are all in a room together and they're go over everything the company's doing and what and then w what happened the last week. What do we expect this next week Very well in that room. And there are strong per there are. They are very strong personalities. Yeah, people who've been there for forty years. Yeah. I d the two and yeah. And the the the in order . In order of time I 've spent with them, both on stage in public and behind the scenes off the record, I've spent the most time with the product marketing people, because they're the people whose job it is to deal with idiots like me. Phil and Jaws by far I've spent the most time with. Craig second, probably just because and that's all almost all entirely on stage and backstage, but Craig is ir irrascible. His his real personality isn't totally different from his onstage personality, but he he likes to argue. His his default style of debate is to argue very strongly. He is a and and he is extremely smart, extremely fast . It is easy to get cowed over by him, trust me. Just on any little thing. He is a very strong personality. Jaws and Phil, they are very, very person able people, but they are they can they are really hard to argue with. They are really, really hard to argue with. And they have very strong opinions . I think Turnus does very well managing all of that. And I think that's the that's the thing Cook sees that That's interesting. And that when you talk about it that way, that sort of reminds me of Sundarpa Chai, right? Like be the next CEO of the company post Eric Schmidt and then Larry Page sort of coming in. And yeah, that's that's an interesting I hadn't thought about it in in sort of that that feeling. And I think Cook knows how important it is to the job. And there's two key moments in his CEO ship. There's the forestall situation from er very early, where he just made the decision and and again to go back to maps. The forestall's ouster had almost nothing to do with maps. It it it might have been the straw that broke the camel's back that there was some kind of hey Scott, you should put your name on this apology for maps, and he was like, That's not my problem or whatever happened there. That is not why he got fired. Or or or ousted, whatever you want to describe it. It was because he did not get along with the other executives, particularly Johnny Ive, but I think others as well. And it was i I I've s I I can report this from sources familiar with the matter and other people have reported it from sources familiar with the matter to put it in that parlance, that it had gotten to the point where Johnny Ive refused to be in a meeting with Scott Forrestall or vice versa. I mean that it just was a problem. Yeah. And it I don't know that either one of them or especially Johnny I don't think Johnny Ive went I don't think went to Cook and said it's either him or me, but I think Cook looked at the dynamic in real life Cook read the room, literally and knew. That was the early early test for him that he he had to snuff this out quick. Right. And I think that Cook could see he's so he he's he doesn't talk about such things, but I think he is very perceptive. And I think he could see that Steve Jobs had an ineffable magic. Part of what made Steve Jobs the singular personality and leader that he was, that reality distortion field worked all the way up to the senior vice presidents of the company and that Steve Jobs could keep two people who could not work together otherwise working together because of him, Steve Jobs, and that Cook could see, ah, Steve had something I don't have, and I can see it and I can understand it, but understanding it doesn't give me the ability to do it too. And so what I can do, Tim Cook, is I can just make the hard decision and back truckload of money to Scott Forstall's house and and make a decision and move onward. And I forget the exact headline of the press announcement, but it was like if you go to the Apple Newsroom it, was like in the headline, it was like in a move to further communication within the company and coordination within the company, Apple announces senior leadership changes. I think there's that one. And then ultimately I think Cook sees how his relationship with Johnny Ive didn't end well. It it it just it just didn't. It wasn't a disaster, but it was fractured and I don't think they saw eye to eye but he knew that Johnny Ive was so important to the company and to the perception of the company from the outside and the stock price that he kind of needed to keep him happ y. And again, it wasn't a big deal, ultimately. It is just a curiosity. But it's fine. Make the twenty thousand dollar solid gold Apple Watch. Fine. That versus yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like if that makes you happy, we'll do it fine. But it clearly that wasn't really the right thing to do. And it it kind of put like a weird it's like putting a uh a two thousand pound thing in the trunk of a car. The car The car's not gonna drive like the launch of Apple Watch was weighted a little wrong because there was these twenty thousand dollar ones at the high end that nobody was gonna buy and almost nobody ever even saw in the real world. I think the answer to that riddle was and we see this now that it's played out and it's a successful product, but they didn't know exactly what it would be used for. And Johnny Ives bet was that it would be a fashion accessory. And he he obviously was biased. He w he's into that. He wanted it to be that. And it is kind of. Right? But it's kind of, but it's much more health, you know, obviously now. But yeah, but still does that make it make sense to do it for twenty thousand dollars? Probably not. But I I do see like what he thought that maybe it would be yeah, this thing. Because look at what he's doing now. He does stuff that's like, you know, akin to that now. And so I think he was just I will doing what he thought was the report. I want to be clear. Nobody has ever told me this. I do hear things I've even alluded to some of the things I've heard over the years on the show. I've never heard anything about this. But I would bet money. I would bet money that John Turnus, I forget where he was when the one port MacBook came out. I'll bet, but he was obviously he wasn't a senior vice president of hardware, but he might have been like second to Dan Ricci at the time. I'll bet John Turnus was opposed to putting out a MacBook with one USB C port . I do. And I think that John had. Reporting about the things that he and who knows, you know, like obviously a lot is coming out of the woodwork that he was opposed to uh other I think maybe was it even the Vision Pro at least sort of supposedly that's I think might be down to German, but that he was sort of skeptical and Craig Federig the car project supposedly was too that Federigi and Turnus were like, I don't know if this product's ready to ship. You know, it just doesn't seem ready. I don't know. And who knows? Maybe maybe people are trying to tee him up till so that he has good taste or whatever. Yeah, and to keep the stink off him. Yeah. But but yes, but the the the Ive and and Cook angle though was a little bit unique and weird too, right? Because I've famously was so close to jobs that it felt like any way that he would work with the new CEO and they made it work for years and years, but it was never going to be the same dynamic, of course. And so it was always sort of set up to probably not be as successful as it was with with jobs in that in that role. Right. Yeah, it just uh I just think that Cook can see that he I don't think he has regrets over it, and I don't think he has regrets over parting ways with Forestall. I think it worked out very well for the company. I think there's a fascinating oh my God, what if it had worked out some other way? What if Johnny Ive had just said look and and they backed the the proverbial truckload of money to Johnny Ive's house and said we'll do whatever it takes to keep you here and we'll give you a title chief design officer, whatever you want. And Johnny Ive is like, Nope, I really want to d design chairs and Ferraris. And I don't want to be here without Steve. I'm gonna leave in twenty twelve or twenty thirteen. And there's not I I wish you well. I I think my disciples, the people I'm leaving behind, I'm leaving the design lab in great hands, but my heart's too broken without Steve I'm gonna leave and Scott Forstall stayed. I think it's an interesting counter factual and I think the world would be very diff Apple would be very different. But I don't think S Cook has 'cause that didn't happen. I think I don't think Cook has regrets over it. But I think Cook sees how important is at Apple to managing extremely talented senior leaders under the CEO who have extremely big egos and strong opinions and to keep them aligned. How do you how do you coach the team full of all stars? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta be Phil Jackson basically who can who can sort of handle the Zen like philosophy of of yeah, coaching Shaq and and Goby and bringing Carlone and Del D. Or or Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan. And how do you get Dennis Rodman to be a team player? That's a huge part of the Bull story. Everybody remembers the the the I mean the the Bulls that that that documentary series is fantasti Incredible. I mean he used to get like twenty-five rebounds a game sometimes. I mean there's nobody's ever rebounded like him. And he was a nut. He was a complete nut. Yep, would fly to Vegas for his famous party thing and then come back and they slotted him into a a very rigid system. And the Bulls and it worked. That sort of Cook sees that. Phil Jackson is probably somebody Tim Cook looks at and says, Yeah, that guy had a job a lot like mine. And then went elsewhere and went to the Lakers and did it with Kobe and But he he never had to coach Donald Trump though or give him gold . So there was that. So and I think Turnus is that guy. He's the guy who has a I think has a very good relationship with both Jaws and Federighi and anybody else. Eddie Q. Eddie Q again, like you said and has been alluded to, Eddie Q's been telling Cook, I think Turnus is the guy, right? Eddie Q is has i I think everybody else uh everybody I know at Apple really likes Eddie, but Eddie is a very strongly opinioned man. Really. And they're all they're all gonna be like that because again, they've all Eddie Q and Jaws have been there for forty some years, right? Like they regardless of like their own personalities, the fact that they've been at one company that long, which does not happen in this day and age when in tech just speaks to like they obviously live and breathe this company and they feel like it's theirs and rightfully so to to many a degree. And so they're gonna have super strong opinions about it. And you're right that it's gotta be almost an impossible task to manage that those sort of personalities when they have that sort of tenure and that level of experience with the company. And and just to go back to what kicked this off, but those people are are because of the nature of they've been there so long, they're up there in age to the point where they are not going to be there that much longer, rel atively speaking. And so what does that mean for and and so like it's but it even speaks well to what you're sort of laying out there. And like Turnus could be the perfect sort of transitionary person, CEO , to take it from the current leadership stage and then bring in the people who are just the level below that. And I know that every we can I want to do one more segment here, but uh and we have to talk about AI, but I know everybody seems to be saying, well, AI is the big problem on Turnus' plate. Right. It is a problem on his plate. I think the bigger problem , the most important thing, is on his plate is bringing I agree because it's so it's been so long. Apple is so weird in that what we just talked about. People have been there for so long, but the leadership level in particular has been in place for so long that there never really has been this sort of big transition. There's been small ones here and there where people elevate my turnus who come up here and there, but we're at the point where they're all around the same age that they're all going to be transitioning out around the same time. And so there's going to be this massive turnover for the company. And that's that's almost like an impossible task, it feels like, in order to manage that. But he actually left kind of early, right? He left in like the early two thousands and then Bertrand Sirlet took over. And Bertrand had been there at Next2 was was Tavanian's right hand man. And Federigi left Apple for a while. I always forget the name of the company he was at, but nobody remembers it. But he but he had a background, he w had been at Next , then he left and sort of built up his leadership chops and then came back to Apple and it's been there ever since. They've only had three software people ever since the the reunification with Next in nineteen ninety seven. That's wild. Tavanian, Sir let, and and Federigi. And Federigi does certainly doesn't seem like he's leaving anywhere. And I think he's fifty six or fifty seven. You know I don't think he's going anywhere. They've only had two marketing chiefs . Phil Schiller. That's wild. Yeah, yeah. And now Jaws . Now Jaws is like sixty, I think, or sixty-one. Was he an intern? Like he's he's the longest serving one, right? If it wasn't for Chris Espinosa, employee number eight, who joined when he was fourteen years old , Jaws would be seemingly more of a freak. I I think Jaws I think Jaws told me this once. I I I think he w have you heard of the school, University of Michigan? Yeah, that's right. Michigan's a small school somewhere in Michigan. Somewhere in the Midwest, yeah. Um has had some sporting success of late. See it over my shoulder here for no one's watching, but I have a Michigan. No, nobody's watching. I have a Michigan football behind me. Yeah. Signed by Tom Brady, actually. There you go. Another another fine Michigan grad. But yeah, Schiller and then Jaws are the only two marketing ch product marketing chiefs the company's had since then. Hardware has had more turnover and hasn't had as many there was Dan Ricci before Deterns. Yeah, and they big Bob Mansfeld who retired but then came back with the power thing, I think. Right. Right. But which was another sign of hey, where's the next generation? If you know the Mansfeld and I loved Bob and I only met him a couple handful of times. They don't really usually put the hardware guys like Bob Mansfeld in the product briefing things that I get in the media, but I I in person he seems like exactly what you think he was like, which is awesome. He just seems like an awesome guy. But the hey Bob tried to retire and then we had to bring him back like twice. It's not a good sign about the next generation coming up. And r remember the other famous one of the famous sort of cook misses was Browlett, the guy that they hired to do retail, and they and Cook to his credit, I think, recognized the the mistake. It was only like six or seven months. And then they brought in Angelo . Did they have something similar with Mark Papermaster? Was it do you remember that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was a weird thing where they fought and they they did I c I'll I'll make a note for the show notes, but because I ha I went back to that reporting that I did. Papermaster came from IBM and IBM tried to hold him to a non disclose or a non compete. That's right. And then Apple fought and fought and fought and got him on board, and then when the antenna gate happened, they were like, Hey, this is Papermaster's fault. He's out. And jobs. Yeah, now I think he's at AMD. And he's been there for a long time. Yeah, he's still there. Super success there. Right. But and it came up recent ly in the context this is why I looked back at it, in the context of the way Cook dealt with John Gianandrea and AI. Wh Cook's style was to give obviously Gianandrea was deemed a fail ure and the the Apple intelligence for lack of I don't think it fiasco might be too strong because I don't think they're in a bad place. But the fact that they made an embarrass embarrassing announcements at WWDC two years ago that they could not deliver on fell on Gian Andrea . And he was famously, again, in his public remarks, was not a did not think LLMs were the future of AI. It was more of a if anything, like I view that as much more of a just strategic mistakes that that he made. Like he made the wrong calls on things. were the future of AI five . And probably looked very good early on within Apple when they were having the success before before it was LLMs when it was just machine learning. And Apple was touting it and it seems Apple's at a great spot. Right. And their machine learning features are actually very good. Nobody's impressed. But when you search f search for dog in your Apple photos, you find all the pictures of dogs now. It's actually really, really good. That's not enough. But so what did they do? Well, they made some announcements early last year and said Rockwell's gonna take over a Siri and this and that, but was Gianandrea got to stay until December when they announced that he would be retiring, and he just got to leave very as graciously and gracefully as possible, when effectively it was like, Yeah, you're out and we're taking everything away from you. Whereas when there was the antenna gate issue with the iPhone four, Papermaster was fired like six weeks later. And that was still Jobs, right? Right. That was that's the difference between Jobs and Cook is if and if Jobs were still there, Gian Andrea would have been fired like in February when they had to announce the delay. We're not we're not going to ship the thing we said we were gonna ship in June? Oh. Okay, you're fired. I mean it would have. I I hate to play the jobs too But this is one where I cannot imagine that Jobs would have said, Okay, you can stay on the job for eight months and we'll let you go out gracefully in December. No. But that's the difference between Cook and Jobs' style. And I I'm not even saying one's right or one's wrong because I think both of them were very true to themselves. I don't I think it would have killed Jobs. If Jobs had lived, I think it would have killed him if he was still alive to let John Gian Andrea stay at the company for eight months for the sake of grace. And and it's not Tim's Cook, Tim Cook style to scream at a guy, you're fired. You're out right now. And and that's one of the sort of very high level praise that you would say of Cook, but is absolutely true and important is that Jobs uh famously of course told him, Don't do what I would do, do what's right. But like I I think you could I think you could knock him a bit for I think you could knock Apple overall in the intervening years for maybe s swaying too much to even though they're not explicitly doing what jobs might do, like they're sort of leaning in the direction of what jobs might do. But I do think Cook to, his credit, knew that he could not manage and certainly from a stage prejudice presence on down, but including the company, he couldn't manage in the style of jobs. Like he just wasn't g that it just wouldn't work to do And so he knew he was he was he was confident enough and and lived in his own skin enough to know that he had to do it sort of the way that he does things, which is not the way that Jobs did things. I think that's such a keen observation, MG. I think and I think that's where that advice from jobs, parting advice from jobs to cook was most applicable. And it wasn't like, hey, don't do what I would do when it comes to product, which it's like how could they not? Because I think that's actually you know should we cancel the iPhone? And I think that's true for Disney today. I think like Disney can look at a movie and say like, you know who would have loved this? Walt. Walt Disney, you know, who died in nineteen sixty six or seven sixty seven. You don't want to just do the opposite of what you know has been successful because it's the founder's not there, the guy who did it wasn't there anymore. Yeah. And the whole like argument over hand drawn animation versus Pixar style toy Story animation. Walt would have loved it. He would have been like, oh my god, this is amazing. Yeah. But I think, hey, how would he run the company? Don't don't try to be like me. You're not me. Do it your way. And I think that's where and the Gian andrea versus Papermaster thing is uh exemplifies it. I'll take a break here and thank our next sponsor. 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It also has, in addition to reminders, which integrate with the system reminder database and the Apple remind ers app, Finalist has its own tasks. And tasks are like to do items that only live in Finalist. So you can create and edit reminders in Finalist that are both in final ist and in a reminders app uh or tasks which are only in final ist and that makes a lot of sense to me there are certain things that I want to be in reminders and there's certain things that I want only in final ist and it really makes sense , visually very distinctive. It's built by one person, Slavin, it's Rodic . And there's a Discord community that shapes its direction. It's a super enthusiastic uh community of users. Slavin is a great developer. And since I started using it in December, I've actually been using the test flight builds just to watch it go. It is amazing how much better it is since December. And in December, it was already good enough for me to start using on a day to day basis. And it is improving at an unbelievably f fast clip. It is made and a native for iOS, iPad OS, Mac OS, and Vision OS, and it's just the kind of app that just it you really just need to check it out to see it. Uh one of the things that really makes it different from most to do tasks apps that I've ever tried is that instead of setting due dates for tasks, and you have a list of tasks and the tasks have dates. Instead, you add tasks to days . The tasks live in the days as opposed to days being assigned to tasks. I know that sounds like a nerdy distinction, but for me that really resonates and it really makes a lot more sense. With the top level items being days and days having tasks and events, it just makes it easier to go through time and maybe there's some things from like last week or the week before that just stay on those days and you never finish them and you never go back and you kinda don't need to. And there's always a list of all un finished tasks that you can go to to see them. See items from last week that you never finished if you want. But it's a great way to sort of keep your list of things that are at the top of your mind at a minimum, as opposed to having a giant pile of tasks that grows faster than you can finish them off. They're all there. You can leave them behind and move on. It's up to you. But I really like that. Good where do you go to find out more? Go to final ist. works great URL final ist. works slash talk show. And by going to that URL, you get six months free. I it's just an unbelievable deal. Way better deal than I would have expected. I think subscriptions are normally five bucks a month or thirty dollars a year. A lifetime license costs just sixty bucks. But if you go to final ist.orks lash talk show, you can just try it for free for six months just for listening to the talk show. And I'm telling you, it is worth checking out. Go check out finalistist at final .workslash the talk show. What else do you want to talk about with Cook or you want to shift to Turnus ? I mean maybe maybe Turnus, I think. So let me read P I haven't linked to it yet, but this is Stephen Levy's take a Wired. Uh good. I read this one today. And it's he he talked to Turnus and Jaws a month ago. And again, that's sort of the the the hey, this was all qu you you look back, it's like the usual suspects or the sixth sense or any of those movies where you get to the end and the the big reveal or the or as you as you like to quote, the prestige, right? Yeah. There is a similar moment in the prestige which is true might be Uh. Yeah. And then you were like, I have to watch this movie all over again. Right now. I have to start it. Yeah. And if it's midnight, you're like tomorrow night at eight PM we're watching this movie again 'cause I have to wa and then you watch it over again, you're like, Oh yeah . All those movies have that. And I think you can look at everything that's happened since the Financial Times leak and planned leak in November and see oh yeah. This is why Jaws and Turnus talked to Stephen Levy a month ago. This is why the MacBook Neo was announced in person. Exactly, exactly, exactly. The guy who came out on stage was John Turnus. Ah , this is why. Yeah, they were setting this up. Here's what Stephen Levy wrote. He talked to this is quoting Turnus. Turn us told him we never think about AI. We never think about shipping a technology. We want to ship amazing products, features, and experiences, and we don't want our customers to think about what technology makes it possible. That's the way we think about AI . End quote from Turnus. Now Stephen Le vy wrote, that's fine, but I look back to the mid 2000s when everybody was waiting for Apple to come out with a phone, when jobs finally delivered in January two thousand seven. The product defined the mobile era. It's a big ask for Turnus to do something similar for the AI age, but it's an opportunity that must be seized. AI threatens to disrupt the entire phone iPhone ecosystem by the end of the decade, it's unlikely that people will swipe on their phones to tap on Uber or Lyft. They will just tell their always on AI agent to get them home where that agent will have already figured out where they need to go and the car will be waiting without the friction of a request. There's an app for that, maybe replaced by let the agent do that . I am a big Stephen Levy fan, but I I think that's all wrong. As am I. Fun fact he married my wife and I, which is fun. Oh well then you're a bigger fan of Stephen than I am. I am. I'm good friends with him. And uh I did not know that. And the reason why my my icon is this Susan Kerr one is that that was a wedding present from it. But anyway, either neither here nor there. I am also a Stephen fan, but I also know where you're going with this. And I also disagree that I think that I think at a high level that's right. I think the timing is off probably right. I don't think that the in that time frame we're likely to see the iPhone displaced. I don't think that the app model necessarily even will be displaced. I think there will be differences I think there will be transitions and differences in the way that we do certain things. And there could very and I think there will very well be new devices that we use. But I do think like I'm of the mindset very much that the iPhone is going to be the hub for the foreseeable future. I think it's a question of what the timetable is. I don't think it's forever. But I do think that there's a world in which and I wrote about this when I was writing thinking through the the future of Turnus. There's a world in which Turnus' entire tenure is still dominated by the iPhone. Yeah. Oh, I think so. Think about the Mac . The Mac came out in nineteen eighty four. Personal computers around nineteen eighty. Let's that's forty two years. The Mac is a bigger and more people use a Mac. Apple sells more Macs today than ever before. And in fact the more people use them and they sell more of them might the the curve might actually have just taken a sharp uptick last month when the MacBook Neo came out. I mean literally I mean that that MacBook Neo might go down in history as a product that actually I think it will I like Does it double the base? I mean it's gonna be crazy what's gonna happen. Yeah. There the only problems that have come out about it are the fact that they've run out apparently run chips. They've run out of the binned five GPU chips and might have to restart for launch the new version early or something. Yeah, and decide what to do with all of the A eighteen pro chips that have six working GPUs and just say, Okay, now, you know, some of the MacBook Neos have six GPUs and some have five, or do they disable one but what a good problem to have. MacBook Neo plus. So is it crazy to think that the iPhone uh right now at twenty ish years in next year will it will be the 20, next year's 20 that, that it'll have 40 or 50 years. I don't think it's crazy at all. And I think if you stop thinking about it as the iPhone and everything you do on the iPhone today, because it you do different things on your i Phone today than you used to. And you just think is the main product a roughly card pack of cards wall wallet sized computer . The her device. Yes. But it's the iPhone. Yes. Right. It is roughly the size of what we now call phones. And it is a full Uni x computer with all day battery life that most people from not just adults but down to some level of teen or even pre teen have with them all day every day. It's a computer and it has always connected internet access. Is that the product that everybody carries around with them? And I I don't see anything that's changing that. That there is going to be a computer that you carry around with you and you go back to what Stephen Levy said here and it's by the end of the decade you may not tap on Uber or whatever you're just tell you're always on a AI agent to get you home. Well what are you talking to? You're at the restaurant, you need to get home, and you're gonna tell your agent to take you home. Who where is where is the microphone that hears the request? It's not in the air . I guess I guess they would say maybe we get to the point again, I it's timetable stuff though. Like maybe we get to the point where the airpod an AirPod-like device can be made by someone else that doesn't require tethering to the iPhone. Like that it has a modem in it, that it has a CPU in it, that it has anything else and it and that it could maybe it maybe it can even like of in the next five years can run models locally that are good enough to be able to do some stuff, but you still need to connect to to Uber in this example, right? To to call the car. Right. But what are you gonna watch when you're in the Uber ? Right? What are you gonna look at? Like the olden days, you're gonna stare at stare out the window. No, you're gonna want a screen and you want your shit on the window devil's advocate, I guess the the counter-argument would be that you'll have the meta gl ray bands on, right? And they have the little screen in them and so you can watch something that way. But I I again I think it's possible, right? You know that it's possible. Glasses made by somebody else and the glasses have a screen and you can be entertained with that. And again, the other function that the phone serves for people when they're out at dinner and they need an Uber. M I like to take a picture every time I go out to dinner with friends to or some multiple pictures. Just so I can't be able to do that through your airpods or whatever. Yeah, do it with your airpods or your glasses or something. But you do need a computing device with a camera in it. You need a computing device with a microphone in it. You need a computing device with an always on internet connection. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's very hard for me to imagine a world where people are doing that without six devices. You would need it's basically like the it goes back to the old argument in the earlier days of the iPhone, like the the best camera is the one you have on you, right? Like always. And is are you really gonna disintermediate the iPhone into six it's like bundling and unbundling. Are you gonna unbundle the iPhone into six different devices that you always have to carry around and that you have to charge and that need connectivity and all this? Or are you going to probab more likely the iPhone remains the main hub that you keep and maybe increasingly it's in your pocket because you have one or two other devices, including, by the way, for everyone, like right now, AirPods and or the watch, which are already those devices, and maybe now they augment that with either a pendant that that it's been some level of talked about or glasses or something else. But the key is the iPhone remains the central computing hub. And you're right. Don't think about it as a phone. It hasn't been a phone almost since the day it launched. That was famously one of Jobs' three pillars of it, but it's the least important part of it. It's the one that doesn't hold up. But but it was the most important selling point in two thousand seven. Yes. So it's not like it was the transition point to get people into it. And now it's not needed anymore. They spent so they spent so much time in that the best keynote of all time, uh talking about voicemail. And it just blew our mind. Because it was like oh visual voicemail stuff. It's awesome. It comes in like emails oh my god you can just swipe to delete you don't have to type star seventy seven it was in the first iPhone yeah uh um but but so and and so now this is like the endpoint this is the ultimate endpoint of the device though. From that from that keynote on on forward, we've now narrowed the device down to just a computer in your pocket. Like it doesn't yes, it still has the screen because that's sort of the the interface that you do the the everything you need to do. It's the least common denominator, the way to interact with it. But there's going to be future ways to interact with it. Again, AirPods and watch and glasses, and it all comes in through that phone though. And that's a that is like the nightmare scenario for Meta and the nightmare scenario for many other companies. OpenAI too. OpenAI and Johnny Ive and I. If they never can disintermediate the use of the phone. And there's also the practical well, even if it's theoretically possible and it will be eventually, right? Computers just keep getting smaller and uh i it and even when it becomes theoretically possible for your airpod sized devices to be your main computer with all day battery life and the internet connection that wherever you go. Or your watch or whatever, anything small like that, or your glasses, right? Any of these tiny devices. When do you reach the point though where somebody says, Oh, I'm going to put my phone on the shelf and I'm going to call Verizon or ATT or T Mobile and say, I cancel my cell phone plan right and I'm gonna switch to a pendant plan or an airpod plan or a glasses plan. When do they do that? And then they then they take they they're paying for a cellular networking plan or a satellite plan in the future, who knows? But they're paying somebody for always on internet wherever they go, from another device, and stop paying for the one on their phone, even though the phone has this beautiful screen and has a camera that is always gonna be better. The camera in your phone is always gonna be better than the one in your glasses optically. Just because of physics. Physics. Yeah. Right. Size. Yeah. Right? Land size and stuff. In the same way. And maybe eventually the one in the glasses will get good enough optically in the way through AI, you know, yeah. The way that the phone cameras are clearly good enough that people take better pictures with their phones today, almost everybody, than they would with a thousand dollar big camera camera from Sony or from Canon or Nikon. Because most people don't have those cameras with them and, they're the what makes them better are things that people don't want to use, and they're not going to carry that thing around with them, right? They take in practical experience better photos with their phone today than they would with a bigger camera, even though optically it's not superior because it's good enough. And eventually the glasses or something will get the Right. You would you would counter it say, But the glasses you're always wearing. So therefore it's even better than the phone 'cause the phone is not it's sometimes in your pocket and not pointed at the moment that you w that you would miss. But maybe not because by that time the phone camera will be so good that the eight X camera will or t twenty X camera, whatever up to at the point, will let you take like these incredible photos from the back of the arena when you're shooting the stage. Oh no, I don't know. It's hard to see how we get there. The main computing hub in your pocket. And increasingly it does maybe stay in your pocket more as these other devices sort of come in and out of popularity. But it remains the main hub. And to your question about connectivity and whatnot, do you cancel eventually cancel your phone contract because you're using whatever the internet through your airpods or something? I think that they that we it just like sort of the the cable companies of old morphed into internet c now cable companies it basically becomes the connectivity companies are all just giving you one bill and you can already get this bundle together your watch and iPad and everything onto the same cellular thing. I think you're just paying for a data connection and all of your devices are able to access it and so you pay ATC or Verizon and basically all of your devices have a link into your account there. But I still think that the phone remains the main computing hub because it's going to have the best CPU and it's going to have sort of the best battery life and it's going to have the way that that brings all of those things together. Trevor Burrus And it lets the other devices do less. Think about battery life and Apple Watch shows the way where Apple Watch still and it could be today and you can set it up when you set one up for like an older parent, like if I got one from my eighty-eight-year-old dad, or if you set one middle aged adult can pair an Apple Watch with your phone and give it to your elderly adult parents or your small children and but still even then the Apple Watch is not really an independent device. It's tied to And think about the early years of Apple Watch and the way people everybody who had one knows that you kind of struggled to get through the day on battery life. In the early for years, that was sort of like can you get to the end of the day before you have to charge it overnight? Okay, now you okay I did. And it was getting better every year. But that's with the watch as a satellite device to the phone. That's with that. Imagine if the Apple Watch had been totally independent and was the main Yeah, it would have lasted for an hour. And so think about how much And it would have been so thick and think about how much lighter AirPods are than an Apple Watch. And think about how much lighter glasses have to be than an Apple Watch. You cannot have a Apple Watch Ultra on your fucking face. I mean it's it's it'll drive you crazy. Obviously technology progresses and all the stuff gets smaller and every and sort of battery life becomes sort of an inhibiting factor always, but still, like technology will will progress. But I do think like even at a more fundamental level, like it's just a question of what's more comfortable to use? Is it more comfortable to use a bigger screen when you want to browse, yeah, the internet versus doing it in your glasses or on your watch. And obviously, like it just depends on the context that you're in. And I just don't see a a world in which there's a context anytime soon where you wouldn't want a phone like screen device for a lot of what you want to do. Now, again, it's all going to be augmented by other things and you'll be able to do some new things like with always on AI through air airpods or whatnot that you can't do right now with a phone because it's in your pocket. But I do think like the the context matters for all these things and how you're going to use them. And I think it comes down to like form factors more than like people really want to displace the iPhone because we're looking for what's next, but I just think it remains again that that key computing point. And I think there is a Gnome's wearing underpants, step two dot dot dot between AI is an industry changing technology. LLM AI is an industry changing technology, dot dot dot, new form factors. And I don't know that that's there. And think about the other things over the twenty years of the iPhone's life that have happened. That it Apple it it the the other thing that I feel like Stephen kind of fell into the trap with it with the hype around AI right now by writing that and saying it that Apple needs an AI first product that's going to supplant the phone, is it's think about the other things that have come up that Apple just isn't a part of social media, right? Social media was not a big deal in two thousand seven. It really wasn't, or did not compared to today. And now Meta is one of the biggest companies in the world, right? It is entirely based and meta 's presence in the top ten or top five at times in market cap companies is entirely predicated on the role social media plays in the world. And the whole reason social media plays the role it does in so many people 's lives, hours a day, tons of screen time, tons of money and ads and the the way people get news and it it's it's all from the phone. One of the biggest companies and one of Apple's biggest rivals is entirely based on people having phones, but that's not it. Software as a service, right? The sales force and everybody else like them, all of that. All of those software is a serv ice companies are a part of people's lives because they're on their phones all the time. And that you can get into your company's whatever you're doing the software as a service for. It's all on your phone too. And it's integrated. And yes, computers were a big part of all these companies before everybody had an iPhone or an iPhone like phone in their pocket all the time. But it's way different now than it used to be. And Apple doesn't have to own that. And AI it It was a great feature. AI isn't even a feature. It it really is a technology. It's an important one, but I don't think it's one that necess say necessitates our pants are on fire. We need to come out with a product that is just about this. So here's the only push I would I would give on that. I think there might there could be I don't think it'll be any time in the immediate future, but there could be a world in which basically this is dic what what dictates this is sort of the interface. And so we had computers and then that went to phone and and touch obviously famously, the iPhone ushered in. If we do get to a world where voice becomes the maybe not the the overall thing, because I there's obviously times you don't want to use your voice, but becomes one of the main interfaces of computing and that is ushered in by AI. There is an argument to be made that we need some sort of newfangled device that's different from a phone. I still think it will be tethered to the phone for the foreseeable future , but that would be the case for there being some sort of in my mind at least, that would be the case for there being some sort of new form factor that comes up. It's not so much because of the technology itself, but it's because of the new inter face that sort of dictates it. Right. And there is I can see it. I'm not I'm not trying to be a Luddite here regarding hey what if AI keeps getting better at the rate it has over the last five years Could it be the case that you that you really just talk to your device and everything gets managed and you really you really don't have an email m app anymore. You just ask and see and it just m present like and presents a to do list back to emails that it's exchanged on your behalf. Right. And everything you do have screens 'cause we are visual creatures. We're always gonna have screens, but that what's shown on your screen is just presented on the fly at all times, like an ad hoc interface for everybody. Right I see that as possible, but I I don't see Apple as being lost by not saying, Oh, that's definitely the future at this point. I think Apple's in a better position than anybody to be the company to get there. I I agree for sure. Right now, I've written about this a little bit, and I think the other angle that I've been sort of noodling around and written a little bit about because of news, I think it was a couple weeks ago now, which is that I wouldn't be shocked if all of the if a lot of the big technology companies jump back into the smartphone game because they know that that Apple's position is such and Google to a lesser extent and Samsung as we've discussed. So there was a rumor that Amazon might be trying to get back in. And now I don't know how Meta is not going to try to get back in if the world we're we're talking about sort of plays out that way. They fa Mark Zuckerberg famously despises Apple because they have control over his ecosystem and including the new devices, the meta ray bands and whatnot that they're trying to do. And he's obviously pushing from all angles to try to from regulatory and whatnot to try to displace that I think that they're all gonna dive back into smartphones and it might not be the exact form factor that we've known, the candy bar sort of type style that we've known over these past many years, but they might try So I wouldn't be shocked if we see Microsoft, we see Amazon, we see Meta, we see everyone else basically jump back in. I would like to see it. I think competition is good. I do I really do. And I think the b one of the biggest problems Apple faces is that they don't have enough competition and it leads to complacency and arrogance. I really do. They can't help the fact that their competitors aren't that good. And other companies with an edge, like a not a not an edge, an advantage, but like a like a grudge, like the way that Zuckerberg has a grudge. That's good for Apple that he was motivated to do it. It's good that Bezos has instilled in Amazon a hey, why don't we take over the whole world mentality? I would love to see them take another crack at a phone. I I don't know that it's likely but I'd like to see it. Two more parts that I would call out for that, that potential future. One, I think , as these companies go down more, and this is related to Apple directly, as they all go down the r the path of trying to do their own chips more, right? Because they're all basically spinning up these projects to do it from an AI perspective. They want even and it's sort of it's sort of all bucketed together. But a lot of them aren't just building like NVIDIA GPUs, right? They're building different types of TPUs, different specialized chips in order to do inference in some cases, but also just to do different things. And still, even when you're running AI, you still need a CPU to coordinate all this stuff. And so a lot of them are also now going back into and thinking about building CPUs again. And so if they're building the CPUs already, what if you put that in a device, like a newfangled device that's a can made a mainstream I think you're gonna see I think NVIDIA is already rumored to be working on more mainstream computing devices. And as why else would would everyone else not do that? You would probably see Intel eventually get back into that world and and all of them again competing along those lines. Right. And so I do think that that you're gonna see about that. The counter to all of this is what we talked about briefly earlier. Apple has such an advantage not only in obviously supply chain elements, but also in the retail element, the way to sell these things. The reason why Google isn't selling trillions of pixels is you can argue like they're good or not. I think they're they're pretty good devices at this point. I have a pixel fold that I use as a backup device to try out Android. It's good. The problem is they have they don't have nearly the retail footprint in order to get the consumer traffic that they would need in order to do that. So they have to start carrier deals and do the old school ways of doing things. That Apple doesn't have to do right now. And I think that Meta is at a huge disadvantage. They're trying to open some more stores. They have two or three of them right now and they're trying to roll out more because they know even with their partnership with Extra Luxotica to sell the glasses in those stores. Like they're gonna need their own retail experiences. And Apple just has such a head start. I mean, even if you wanted to, it's it's not even like spinning up a data center. They have to buy retail space, at least up retail space all around the world. Right. And and Apple went very fast at that, but it still was like a twenty year process of expanding. There's no way to do that super fast. So still opening in some places. They're still doing things like last year was a big deal where they opened like a huge store in India. So even if the companies recognize this opportunity , maybe maybe try to go back into the smartphone game because they're building chips and because they have more hardware prowess than they did previously and there's just more competition out there in the world to to build these types of products. Like how are they going to sell them? Is it Amazon obviously has a way, but still people are going to want to use some of these devices before they actually actually go to purchase them. I've famously Firephone did not work. Yeah. And it's the retail stores are another form of hard ware because they are real. They are atoms , not ones and zeros. And Apple has a real advantage there. And I wrote about it. I do think I think it does make more sense to just in general, not just by Turnus' personal disposition personality, but which I think fits too. But I also think a hardware person is the right person at the moment of all this AI hype because it's grounded in reality. And that's what retail is too. It is grounded in reality. But this is also a good segue to the last thing I have on my list to talk about, which is Johnny Seruji. And that's the chips, right? Yep. And the the Ger man factor. And um there's two narratives around Seruji. The the one and it is only from one source, it is only from Mark German. And it was hot on the heels, literally at the end of the very week where Alan Die left Apple from Meta and Bloomberg German had the scoop, which I I don't know, but I believe and I know a lot of people at Apple believe came from Die because Bloomberg and German had the scoop at the same time Apple found out he was leaving. Apple had as little time to prepare for the Bloomberg story announcing that Dye was going to meta , which in the headline called it a coup for Meta. It was a very pro Allen Dye, very pro Apple or pro Meta, anti there's a big problem for Apple story, which suggests that Dye leaked it to German . And then at the end of the week, Gurman had a nobody else ever had this but that a story that said Johnny Seruji had gone to Tim Cook and said, Hey, I w I want more I want to I want more and if you don't give me more, I don't know if it was money, I don't know if it was a promotion of some sort power, I'm going to go to a I'm not going to retire, I'm going to go to a competitor. And that and then on uh that was like on a Saturday, I think German published that, which is unusual for Bloomberg to publish anything not on a side. And then by Sunday night or Monday morning, Suru gi had sent a memo to his entire team more or less calling bullshit on it and saying, I love my job, I love that I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere. Now, you could say, well, Gerbin was right, and when the story came out, Tim Cook called Johnny Suruji and said, Okay, this looks bad. What do you w I'll give you anything you want? And then Seruji sent the memo and stayed. And the other angle, which is my angle, is that the story was nonsense and there was no truth to it and that's the reason nobody but German had it and it didn't come from Suruji or anybody around him, but came from I g I would guess Meta. And that Meta just said, Hey, you know, we just took die, you know Johnny Seruji's sniffing around and we could use the chip guy and maybe he's not happy in doing this. 'Cause I this is what I I now again, I didn't talk to Johnny Seruji. I didn't talked to Johnny Suruji. But to believe the German narrative, you would have to believe that the the successful way for a senior vice president at Apple to get more at Apple is to threaten Tim Cook with leaving for a competitor . I don't I don't that that makes no sense to me whatsoever. I think if somebody went if Johnny Suruji went to Tim Cook and said that, I think Tim Cook would say go fuck yourself, you're out, go pack your office and get out of here. No Johnny Seruji is important. Go fuck yourself, you're out in eight months. Uh exactly for earlier discussion. I don't know though. I actually think if anything would set him off in a way that like John G and Drea at least tried and gave an honest effort and is just the wrong person for the job. Didn't hold him over a fire group. I think if somebody went to Cook and threatened him, I it might actually trigger the Steve Jobs go. So I'm calling security and you're being escorted out of the building. I that it I honestly think Tim Cook I I I I cannot fathom the idea that Tim Cook would take a threat. Gut instinct on this, and we'll talk to the broader Ger man thing and 'cause I think you and I s are aligned on the broader point about the succession itself. But like with the Suru gi element, my instinct was that there 's something to German's report here only because no inside information. Just the optics of the fact that they announced Ser uji's ascension to his new role at the exact same time they announced the Turnus Is interesting. Like it suggest that there was some sort of agreement that The CEO, and we would like you to take over a bigger role within the company. Now, I don't think that both things can be true, right? They could basically have said to him, look, you're counter part in hardware is getting elevated to the CEO role. That's not in the cards for you. Obviously, they wouldn't frame it like that, but you know what I mean. It's not in the cards. But we would like you to take on his responsibil some some of at least of his responsibilities that he's been doing because we want you to stick around like you're a vital part to this company. The chips are arguably the most important hardware breakthrough that we've had in the past decade. And so will you be up for this new challenge? And so that's why they announced them sort of in in conjunction with one another. But I do think that there's a world in which Suru gi maybe doesn't go to cook, but is sort of floating out there. He's also not a young chicken, right? He's 60-something years old. 61. 61 years old. And so maybe he's floating out there. Look, we're about to go through the CEO transition. I don't know what my future looks like at the company. Again, this is all just me playing this out in my head. Again, maybe not to Tim Cook, but maybe to others within his his orbit at Apple, and just being like, I don't know what am I signing up for another decade, like under this new CEO who I like, who I get along with and everything, but what does my role look like? And I don't want to keep doing the same thing that I've been doing because I'm I've had success at that and I want a new challenge. And so maybe they say like, hey, we're elevating John Turnus. John Turnis does XYZ. We think you can handle XYZ of his XYZ alongside what you've been doing. And what do you think about that? And so there's a world in which it's not a it's not necessarily like a ultimatum that he gives, but it's just like uh I'm thinking about what my future looks like at the company. And I you couldn't I couldn't say it better myself. There could be something like that, and then one or two sources removed, it gets to German and it it all of a sudden. Yeah, it's like a game a telephone. Right. And in the game a telephone, now it's an ultimatum and a threat. And that wasn't the case. But you could even argue then that that's why Seruji reacted the way he did, which was maybe a l mildly disingenuous in the scenario that we're playing out, but it's also like I didn't mean it that way. So I'm not talking about leaving. I just I was I was floating out there, I I'm sixty one years old, I'm trying to figure out what my path forward is. One of the other ways to look at it, he is sixty-one, and the fact that he's sixty one, and again, it it's a lot, I think for Ser uji is a lot like Craig Federig wherehi, th like I said, where else could Craig Federighi go as a software executive whose expertise in he'd be the first to tell you it's very, very, very explicitly software. Where could he go that would have anywhere near the domain and the effect and just the prestige of leading Apple software at this stage in his career? In theory, he could go like we said, we could go to Google. But he's not just Craig Federic is not just a manager, right? He's not just a guy who could have been it's the the head of fabrics at Nike or the head of roller coasters at Disney theme parks, he knows Apple's technology. Like like he he tal a couple years ago on my show, he was talking about the fact that one of his hobbies is writing apps. He writes apps in Swift UI. people at Apple and he's talking about like the API calls. Like he knows the frameworks. He knows the code. It's not like all the code is going to him for line by line approval, but it could like you could get in a meeting with him and he could be talking bringing up source code and talking to you about it and he knows what the fuck he's talking about. He's not gonna have that level of expertise anywhere else because the software he has an expertise with is very specific to Apple. And Johnny Ser uji is like that with this chip thing that' theyve built up. They're not just chips in general. And there's obviously any number of competitors would love to have be in that position. The question then becomes like the IP like what could he reasonably do at another company if he's not doing exactly what the what Apple has been doing? Like does is his does his level of expertise in in the way that he's made the A level chips and the and the M series chips does that translate to doing a slightly different and maybe it does because there are arm sort of variants, right? And so like maybe there is a world in which he can do that elsewhere. Where though? Qualcomm? I don't know. Qualcomm, isn't it Qualcomm who poached, they make Snapdragon and they poached a lot of Apple talent with big, big money. And someone their chips have gotten better and have kind of closed the performance gap with A series chips. But what with Johnny Serugi going there? It's not like he's got all these chips in his head, like he leaves and he's got the M five Max chip his head and can can take it and say now we've got an M five Max. I mean I think the reality is what any of these people the only real option for them to do is not to go because like why do you go to another big company I think the only answer is they might want be tempted to go down the startup path. It's hard it 's hard to think about. I know.' Its hard to think about w with but still like there's a world in which you could be a co founder, say, like the technical co founder of a startup that's a b that's that on paper, given the talent that you be have around the table, would be able to raise X billions of dollars or at an X billion valuation. And then all of a sudden your comp, which is tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, is equity that could on paper be valued at billions of dollars. I'm just making an argument. That's like the one the one scenario you could see I'm just saying too I'll go back to Forrestall. Forestall was I think only in his forties when he he got run out of Apple in twenty eleven and never he he's never come back to tech. There there just aren't pla ces to go after. When you reach the pinnacle at Apple, there's nowhere else to go but down. And other than a startup, a true because then you're like you're not even trying to compete. Right. But I really don't I I don't see anywhere else that Suru gi could go. If he goes to Qualcomm, he's gonna make what? He's gonna leave Apple to go to a company to make the chips they're getting their ass. I agree by Apple's chips. There is a world a world in which he would do a chip startup. Look at what those are getting acquired for right now. Right. And it and his level of expertise not necessarily around. That wasn't the rumor though. The rumor that German reported was that he would leave for a competitor. And the only competitor that you could say actually beats Apple in chips in any way right now is NVIDIA. But it's a totally different Apple makes chips that NVIDIA doesn't make and NVIDIA makes chips that Apple doesn't make. But there But there are rumors that Nvidia wants to do more GPU CP Us. They do some of their own already, but that's do more GP and purpose. I don't see them hiring somebody from Apple given the history between the companies and it but on the other hand the chief designer went to Meta , you know, I think I think somebody going to Meta is more surprising than somebody from Apple going to NVIDIA, but it's about the same level. I just don't see it. I I think at age sixty one, he's riding this out. So my other the other way of looking at this promotion and timing it to the announcement stuff Turnus and Cook. And it is funny, Ben Thompson and I talked about this on Dithering where the the news from Apple hit the wires at four thirty PM on mu on last Monday. And Apple's newsroom post didn't up till four forty or so. But in between it so it was out there and people suddenly started tweeting about it ' itcause was on the PR Newswire, whatever the service is called. And it's like, is this true? And you I I was reloading Apple's newsroom page and the first story to come up was Johnny Surugi named chief des chief Hardware Officer. And it's what? That's the news? Oh. And that's the old news. Yeah, and then you look at the story, and the story says has a quote from Tim Cook, Apple CEO, and it's a Johnny's been great and whatever, he's awesome. And then the next paragraph has a quote from Turnus and it says Turnus, Apple's incoming CEO, says that And it's like an amazing way to announce. We're like, this is how they announce it. And then like one minute later the other story came up and I think they released the one a minute ahead of the other so that the other one would be at the top of the page. Yeah. But there was this one minute period where it seemed like the way they were announcing it was with a quote in the second paragraph . It was so weird. It is weird that they announced them at the exact same time. Exact same time. So why? Why do you think they did that? If if it's not for ego reasons for Johnny Suru gi? Like I don't I it could be a little. It could just be a pat on the back. I it could be that this is sort of like a Phil Schiller to Apple Fellow moment for Surugi. Phil Schiller is not like on a beach uh sipping corona. Despite what that name sort of suggests, it sounds like a Tolkien is like out in the fields having fun. Since stepping down as uh senior vice president of product marketing and Jaws his longtime right hand man taking over, Phil still runs the app store, which has become ever more complicated, and it's ever more complicated now in this moment of vibe coding. And he runs all of Apple's events, all of the keynote movies and the actual on press events and stuff like that. Phil Schiller still runs. It is a full time job. It's not as full time as it was when he was senior vice president. I think he had because he was doing those things then too. But this could be and it it's been I forget what year that was. I think it was like twenty twenty? It was a long time ago that's still there. And this could be that type of moment for Ser uji where you get a new title. Maybe some stuff will be off his direct plate, but it also opens up. It's a moment of a promotion and it's a way of saying, hey, this guy too, who was Turnus' peer and has had done great things for Apple, and I think gets along extremely well with Turnus, I think. I think there were some reports that suggest that at least, yeah. And it would it would also jibe with announcing this at the same time and Turnus is like, Yeah, let's make him chief hardware officer. I love that. Like I I get uh you're still the CEO 'til September, but yeah, let's do this. Then come early September, September first, September second, a week before the iPhone event, Turnus is named CEO on the first and then on the second. What can Turnus do is his first action as CEO , he can name a new senior vice president of Hardware and a new senior vice president of Silicon . And Turnus and Ser uji can name him together. You know, that there's got two name two new senior vice president s, one for chips, one for hardware to replace because that's Turnus' title until September 1st is still senior vice president of hardware. And the first action Tim Cook took as CEO was promoting Eddie Q from I forget his old title to a senior vice president of whatever his title was at the time, but now it surfaces. Eddie Q was a big deal at Apple, and Steve Jobs by multiple reports of this would all would take Eddie with him into negotiating rooms. Steve Jobs liked Eddie Q so much that as good in negotiating rooms. Especially on the media stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no, not just media stuff, like Intel, like when they went in and were like like Eddie Q was in the room when they were went in and said, Okay, we're we'll do this, but we here's here's our terms for switching the Mac to Intel chips. Eddie Q was in the room with Steve Jobs. But he wasn't. I forget he's very close to Steve and always very close to Tim, but he didn't have a senior vice president title, didn't have his face. We knew Until Cook came in. Until Cook came in. And it's a great thing to leave for a new CEO to do as their first action is to name it. It's like a cabinet. Bringing in Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So promoting Johnny Suru gi to C chief hardware officer, you're just putting a new title on a picture that's already on this leadership page. What's what's left for Turnus on September second or first or whatever day is to add one or two new pictures to that page. And like how much does it matter for Apple because this came in with Johnny Ive too. Like there is a difference obviously between SVP, which is still the upper echelon and the leadership team, versus C suite, right? Like the chief chief uh fill in the blank. And so Surugi is now on C suite level, technically, with new title, whereas he was S V P before. So I in your scenario, I assume there's something to that. And it's also interesting that they didn't give him though the more obvious CTO role. No. Because that sort of implies something that I it depends. It's different at every company, but it's interesting that they do it. Well, CTO would be all technology, and that would imply that Federigi reports to him. And he doesn't. It's just hardware. And I think in the way that Chief Design Officer was a one time title for Johnny Ive, I think Chief Hardware Officer is a one time title for Ser uji for as many years as he has left. And it could be two or three years or something, and then we'll be like, oh, he was on his way out. Could be five, six, seven years. He is sixty-one. It could be ten years. I don't know. Maybe he'll be here for till he's seventy years old. I don't know. But I think it's only for him and when Seruji leaves, there's no new chief hardware officer. It just goes He's got a bunch. He is he is it's it's a very large. There are a lot of people in that division. And he is the face of it, so he's the one who gets the keynote time when they talk about new silicon and new M series chips. And he does have a very fun on camera persona, that sort of stern almost military style. Like he he seems a little scary. It it adds gonna kick your ass. Did he feel from PA semi? Yes okay. Yeah, and just so just like with Federigi, that's the thing. Apple silicon is Ser ugi's life's work. It really is. And it's it is wholly integrated to within Apple now. It is it is inseparable from Apple's uh any of of App all le's future plans. But it is his life's work. That's what makes it impossible for me to him imagine doing anything but doing this until he retires. Whether he's retiring soon or far in the future, this is his life's work and it is still an ongoing concern. It has there sure there is as much work to do as there ever was. And because remember, it's not just the CPUs, like it's all of these other tangential chips that Apple has been doing that they that they the different series chips, and there's the ongoing rumors, whispers that they are continuing to work on their own infrastructure to potentially do AI, more AI work like in servers, just not necessarily going head to head again with what NVIDIA is doing, but in some ways, you know, perhaps doing that. And that would obviously be his purview as well. Yeah, exactly. So I wanna get this clear. I'm I've got the senior leadership page up right now and Ser uji's title still it's it it actually hasn't been updated, which is a little surprising. 'Cause I don't if they said that that was effective. Are they waiting until September first or something? I don't know, but his current title on the page is and I'm glad they haven't changed it so I can get it right. Senior Vice President Hardware Technologies and Turnus is Senior Vice President Hardware Engineering. And again, uh you know, how much is in the title and how much is the person, right? It's more of the people than the title. Like the next senior vice president of hardware engineering is not going to have Turnus' future ahead of him because Turnus only spent a few years with the title before becoming CEO. And presumably the next person to be named senior vice president of hardware engineering is not going to be the CEO in three years. Hopefully that something something bad has happened to him. Very bad when it happened. Yeah. Right. That's the way I see it. I do not see this as there was any sort of threat. I don't A, I don't think Surigi I don't think there's anywhere he could go. And B, I do not even more so. There is no way Tim Cook would respond to a threat from somebody who is replaceable. Johnny Ser uji is very important, but he is definitely not an irreplaceable man. No way. Again, I think that there's a way to to sort of have both sides be somewhat correct in this. Yeah. And I think doing it now it's a very big feather in his cap that it's a way of making the promotion carry a little more we ight where Apple is saying this is so important to give him the new chief hardware officer title that we're doing it on the same day that we're announcing this other thing. That is how important Johnny Ser uji's contributions to the company are and will be in the future. And thank you, Johnny. And Turnis can say, and I love him and we work great together and we have great things ahead. For some reason this popped into my head earlier when I was writing. Is he the sort of the biggest technical rock star left at Apple now, do you think? Is there 'cause everyone has their own their own areas of expertise. But from a pure technical perspective, I would imagine that he's the most in impressive technical resume and and what he's done with those chips that Apple has? Maybe, you know, and I guess i i i if Vision Pro has a brighter future ahead Rockwell, maybe, but probably Rockwell's not picture isn't even on that page. So I mean I You saw this. This was more I guess it was this week. German had a new report that Rockwell is potentially unhappy. I I've got nothing so I don't know what to doubt about it. And it's one of those things where we'll either see it play out and you could say, Oh, there's one that German got right or it won't but I feel like that doesn't happen i i if he is still here in five years Anything wouldn't happen anytime soon that he's gonna see through his work with the AI with Federig on AI to get that shipped out the door, but that it could be a next year thing. But also that per potentially he was perturbed that he thought that maybe he was on a path to CTO a CTO type role if the Vision Pro had worked out and and all that stuff. So who knows? But again, this all this all speaks to just there's going to be an immense amount of of sort of natural turnover when when Turnus sort of takes the helm because of age related stuff. And some of it it's not necessarily gonna happen immediately, but within the next few years, a lot there's gonna just gonna be naturally a lot of turnover and and unmet people just always leave when when new people come in. It just is what happens. I wonder though who's gonna leave. I mean and again Jaws is a little close to retirement age, but he's not. So I don't know that Apple is such a weird and diff unique comp I wouldn't be surprised if there are no departures that they've all been announced. Federigi, I definitely don't think is going any. I mean, let's look at the senior leadership page. Phil Schiller eventually, I guess will step down as Apple Fellow and and seed those things. I don't know anything about that, but Kavan the the chief financial officer, who cares? He just got elevated. He just got elevated. Deirdre O'Brien, you know. She's been talked about potentially retiring. Yeah. But is that really central to I mean, she's done a good job running retail. Is that really gonna does anybody really can anybody just off the top of their head say when Angela Arnst left I f almost f totally forgot about that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't see it. Speaking about fashion background and stuff. Right. I think is it i it's it's very telling that he he's I think he's probably got a long runway ahead of him as COO and that by all accounts Tim Cook loves him and operations are as good as ever. But there's a reason why he's never been in a keynote, right? He's he's he's a true operations guy . Who's gonna leave? Jaws? I don't know. I don't see I don't see Jaws wanting to leave, and he's not that old. Federiki's not going anywhere, and Eddie Q. That's it. So who's gonna leave? I They're all gonna retire eventually, but I don't know that some of them won't. In terms of forced retirement, and Microsoft famously now is doing this this buyout thing, right? To try to get people to sort of retire. But people like how long do people reasonably stay at Apple? I guess there's there's people like Chris Espinoza and stuff, who's who because he started so young is still in his sixties, right? But there's no one in their seventies. Do people stay with within the we've never gotten here before, you know? Yeah, I guess it's there is the benefit of being a forty fifty year old company. Right. And that is the one of the advantages is being a fifty year old company that was founded by people who were so young is that it was it's remarkable how many of them ha are still around now to remember it, which is great. But the other aspect of it is we've never no who else is aged out, right? There aren't that many people. It says Phil Schiller was born in nineteen sixty, so he's sixty six. Sixty six, yeah. Yeah. So I don't even know I don't even think Phil's going anywhere. I I I I doubt people work people work later later and later. So Yeah. So I think this idea that hey, come September and October, or maybe after the stuff gets you know, October, maybe new Macs get announced, that by the end of the year, like December this year when they showed Gian Andrea the door and a couple other people retired, right? What's her name who was in charge of the environmental stuff? Lisa Jackson. A couple other people had planned retirements. That just unfortunately retired the same week that Alan Die jumped ship. It could happen that that some of the but I would be I would actually be more surprised than not. I think that the that it'll be a couple of years into Turnus' run as CEO before we start seeing some of these people retire. I don't think Eddie Q or Jaws or Phil or it's certainly not Federigi are going anyw here. The fact that Turnus has been there for twenty-five years, half of his life, which is incredible, like just speaks to like he he doesn't necessarily have quote unquote his guys, because his guys are are the people who are there? Yeah. So I I And I guess I think we'll see. I don't so I don't think it'll happen right away, and I think the telltale sign will be in the keynotes when if we if and when we start seeing more younger people take more time away from people whose faces we're familiar with. And it if and until then, I don't think it'll happen. What is I know we're running uh coming up on three hours here. Just really quick . Who takes over design mantle now? I guess they have the people in place, but they haven't but they sort of have bifurcated it, right? Yeah. Well it has been. Die was only ever in charge of software and I forget the guy's name is in ostensibly in charge of hardware. The question is under Turnus, do they kind of make faces out of the people in charge of design again? Yeah. Right? Or do they see it as a mistake that they gave Alan Dye FaceTime in the keynotes and let him jump, or do they do they elevate somebody? I don't know. Uh and the other kid who who young guy who left and went to a startup. Remember from the people died. An awful lot of talent went with Johnny Ive to Lovefrom and I.O. But there's it's no surprise there were an off there's still there's an awful lot of designers who were still there and who worked under Johnny Ive. So that's a a thing to watch. Definitely what what the story is with design and how much FaceTime those people get in keynotes. And the one the one last thing I wanted to ask you, because this is what I sort of focused on in in writing today. How do you think Turnus will do as the actual MC of these these events when he picks up the iPhone? Obviously he's done it a few times we've got a MacBook Neo. I think he'll do great, but I do think the format will stay the same. It which he'll just take over as Tim Cook as the guy in front of the press who announces the movie that's the real announcement. And I think all the Hey, maybe it's Tim Cook who wanted to make movies and not have live events is way too simplistic . And everybody at Apple is fully aware and they're they have the nostalgia for the live events and they know exactly what we're all talking about when we say we miss them and they miss them too. But they if they 're talking to people involved, the list of pros and the list of cons is heavily in favor in Apple's perspective to the way they've started doing it in the COVID era. And that's uh so and I don't think there's anybody in the company who disagrees with it. So I think he'll just take over the good morning. He'll just need his own he'll need his own catchphrase. Yeah. But I I don't I I don't even think there's any question about it. But who knows they did a they did a neat thing with the Neo Yeah, yeah, yeah. He did partial right live there. I I have the sneaking suspicion based on nothing that they're gonna try to bring back the energy, at least for the iPhone event, and have him sort of come out for a first thing. You don't think so? No. Not to not to do I think they'll have him come out, but they but the people out in the world don't see it. Like I'll be there hopefully knock on wood at in the Steve Jobs Theater and he will come out on stage, but Tim Cook is always coming But they have the technology to stream that live now. They can do it. They can do it. I would I j keep your fingers crossed. I'm root I I hope you're right. I would be very excited to be in the room for that. But I I would bet very large that it's not even being discussed. We'll see. We'll see. And I think he would do fine. And I think that it would be a good way to introduce other people , but I trust me, I have talked about this and the list of pros from Apple's perspective in in the new format is so overwhelming that it's it's not even a close call for them. So don't get your hopes up. It's smaller things like the Neo, not the iPhone. The iPhone is going to be a a pre-recorded keynote. More things like the Neo rollout though? I could see them doing that. And guess what? It was Turnus who took the stage and spoke for five or ten minutes. Yeah, if they could do smaller events all around the world, which he's been doing for a while, right? He's doing even a few years ago, he's doing like the the Halloween events and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. All right, MG, I knew it was good having you here and the fact that we've almost made it to three hours shows it. Before I let you go, I wanna wanna forget. I wanna I wanna pimp your stuff. You're writing your column in your newsletter at spyglass.org , which is uh to me, you've r you have found your voice. I don't know. You've tightened it up and it's thank you. You're you're killing it there. And then once a month you're on the big technology podcast with Alex Kantrowitz. I was on I'll put a link in the show notes. I was on in February twenty twenty four, but I think I was on before YouTube . Oh really? I think 'cause the link I have only goes to the Apple Podcasts, but it's it's wherever you can find your podcasts but the YouTube, I'll put a link to the the YouTube version of that. Which is very good. And you guys still haven't talked about this, so hopefully I haven't I haven't gotten you to Monday of every month. So we're coming up. It'll be on Monday, yeah. Yeah. Coming right up that we'll talk about it.