Tim Cook, Well Done.

Opinion piece. My own views.

It was announced today that Tim Cook will step down as Apple's CEO in September. He is not leaving entirely, he will become the Executive Chairman, but the day-to-day leadership of Apple passes over to John Ternus, the engineer who has spent 25 years building the products we all use everyday. Tim has also written a letter to the Apple community, which is worth reading if you have not seen it. It is thoughtful and warm in a way that feels entirely genuine. Alternatively, you can read the full announcement on Apple's newsroom here.

So, what do I think of this… it definitely feels like a moment worth reflecting on.

What Tim Cook actually was

Tim came from operations. He was Apple's Chief Operating Officer before he was CEO, and before that his career was in supply chain and logistics. As a result, he was the person who industrialised Apple's manufacturing operation and turned it into one of the most efficient in the history of business.

Think about all the small details over the years. The size of an iPhone box. The weight of the packaging (as a result of omitting power bricks and cables). The way products are shipped. None of that is glamorous to talk about, but when you are moving hundreds of millions of units a year, shaving a few grams off a box means fitting more on a plane, more on a pallet and more in a warehouse. Those marginal gains compound into enormous savings, and those savings become margin. That is Tim Cook's fingerprint on Apple, and it is everywhere even if you cannot see it.

The services era

The other thing Tim grew across his tenure, was Apple's services business. When he became CEO in 2011, Apple's focus was primarily on hardware. Yet today, Apple Music, Apple TV+, iCloud, the App Store, Apple Pay, Apple Arcade, and Apple One generate tens of billions every year. That business is sticky in a way hardware never can be. A customer who subscribes to Apple services is a customer for life. Tim understood that earlier than most and built accordingly.

The Steve Jobs question

When Jobs passed in 2011 there was genuine fear that Apple's best was behind them. The worry among shareholders was real. Nobody could replace him. The products would get worse. The magic would fade.

Whilst Tim Cook couldn't replace Steve Jobs (and he never tried to), what he did was something arguably harder to do: he took one of the most scrutinised companies on the planet, in arguably the most difficult of circumstances, and made it the most valuable company in the history of business. Apple's market value has gone from around £300 billion when he took over to well over £3 trillion today.

That is not a caretaker performance. That is something quite remarkable.

John Ternus

The choice of John Ternus makes a lot of sense to me. He is an engineer who has spent 25 years at Apple and has been one of the most important people there for years. The transition to Apple Silicon, arguably the most significant thing Apple has done in the last decade, happened under his leadership of hardware engineering.

The question now is what kind of leader he is beyond the products. Tim was a world-class operator, but Ternus has a chance to define what Apple actually builds next. Given the potential pipeline, including the iPhone Fold, the MacBook Ultra, smart glasses, and whatever comes after Vision Pro - it is a genuinely exciting moment to be taking the job.

My take

I have followed Apple closely for the best part of two decades now, and I think people will look back on the Tim Cook era with more appreciation than they maybe anticipated they would. He took over in almost impossible circumstances, handled it with real class, scaled the business to astronomic heights and is leaving the company in better shape than he found it.

The services business alone is a legacy most CEOs would be proud of. The operational efficiency he brought is the reason Apple can do what it does at the scale it does it. And the fact that he managed all of this while being widely compared, to one of the most iconic figures in business history, and still delivered. That says everything.

A superb run, Tim. And if you every read this, thank you and best of luck from me!

For Apple, now it's Jon's Tern.