Apple said Monday that Tim Cook, its chief executive for the past 15 years, will hand over the reins to John Ternus, head of hardware engineering, in September. The transition, which will occur around the launch of the next iPhone, will end the era of financial highs and multiple product lows.
Mr. Cook took on the difficult role of leading the company after the death of Steve Jobs, the founder known for his mercurial leadership, sharp vision and delivering products people want to own. Although Apple has become a multibillion-dollar company under his leadership, Mr. Cook has never shaken the impression that he not a “product guy” like Mr. Jobs.
Many of the best-selling products unveiled during Mr. Cook’s tenure — namely iPhones, Macs and iPads — were iterations of earlier Apple hardware. At the same time, most of Apple’s new products, such as the HomePod smart speaker and the Vision Pro headset, were reactions to similar gadgets from competitors and were either too flawed or too late to make a dent in the tech universe.
When I interviewed him, I found Mr. Cook to be articulate, charismatic, and in command of his company’s details, but it had been a long time since Apple had a new, mainstream product hit.
Finally, the next big thing that finally arrived—artificial intelligence—came not from Apple, but from research labs like OpenAI and Anthropic. And since Apple dropped its Siri voice assistant many years ago, which could have been a contender in the AI race, its main rival, Google, will provide the AI technology for a future version of Siri.
There’s a lot to think about and a lot to hope for. As a tech writer who has covered the company for two decades, I offer my wish list for what Mr. Ternus will do with Apple.
Apple should dare to be weird again.
When Apple was a much smaller company, it experimented with edgier ideas. For one thing, it introduced a variety of iPod music players with novel designs, including a tiny touch-screen iPod that launched in 2010. This iPod, which was the size of a belt buckle, seemed odd to me at first, but many customers quickly realized that it could be attached to the strap and worn around the wrist. This inspired Apple’s designers make an Apple Watchwhich was one of the bright spots under Mr. Cook.
Apple should take a risk and embrace weirdness again. Give us a robot assistant. Some elegant electric vehicle. (If not a car, maybe a cool bike?) Something cool that solves a real problem for consumers rather than Wall Street investors looking for more growth. Some new ideas may fall flat, but in the end they lead to great products.
Apple could make AI cringe less.
One of Apple’s strengths has been making quirky ideas more palatable and appealing to regular people, not just the techy suburbs of Silicon Valley. (Exhibit A: Look at the white stubble hanging from everyone’s ears right now.) In that regard, AI technology could use Apple’s special touch. Chatbots and various AI tools are known for both their abuses and their benefits – generating so-called deepfakes, cheating at school, and copyright infringement, to name a few.
On the other hand, Apple’s AI technology, Apple Intelligence, is so limited that it cannot be easily used for nefarious purposes. Now the company has an opportunity to focus on providing AI tools and applications that families can use in a positive and constructive way.
An obvious example is Apple’s AI image editor, the “Clean Up” button to automatically delete photo bombs and distracting objects. It’s a feature that a lot of people would find useful, but it currently does a sloppy job of removing objects.
Apple’s latest AirPods, which can automatically translate foreign languages in your ears, are another practical example of how artificial intelligence can be used to enhance capabilities. Apple should focus on making it more. (Bottom line: A nicely designed iPad app that uses AI to automatically create a study guide or flashcard from lecture notes would benefit students.)
Apple should make fewer products better.
Apple now sells so many different models of iPhones, iPads and Macs with slight variations that it’s hard to keep track of which product does what without a spreadsheet. It’s hard to imagine why some of these products need to exist. (For $1,000 you can get an iPad Pro that has a faster chip than the regular iPad for $350 — or for $600 you can get an iPad Air that also has a faster chip than the regular iPad.)
While having so many models for many different customers sounds nice in theory, consumers trying to buy an Apple product may find the lineup confusing.
There’s another downside to maintaining all these products: Over the past few years, the company has let go of a lot of talented engineers, and a common complaint is burnout from trying to do too much in too little time.
Apple should fix its relationship with app developers.
In the past, there was a gap between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, which was mostly created by the number of apps available for each platform. Apple, which was the first to introduce the App Store in 2008, started with thousands more apps than the Google App Store. Currently, Google’s App Store, Play, has millions more than Apple. And if you were to choose an iPhone or an Android phone, the experience would be mostly uniform, as many developers create the same apps for both operating systems.
Previously, the differences were more pronounced. Apps created exclusively for iPhones were more sophisticated and functional than similar apps on Android devices. Improved iOS apps still exist, but they are outliers, in part because many app developers have grown frustrated with Apple’s strict policies. Playing better with indie developers would help restore what once made it feel special to be an iPhone user.
