Patrick McGee

And Apple has said, how high?

So my biggest question for John Ternus, who by all accounts is a likable guy, you know, competent guy, collegial guy, is whether he's genuinely the CEO.

So he comes in in September.

But Tim Cook, of course, is not retiring.

Tim Cook is becoming executive chairman.

And Apple's been explicit that the main thing that they want to keep Tim Cook around for is

is dealing with Washington, Brussels, and Beijing.

But that's the biggest open question I have about what's going to happen.

My best guess, and it is only an educated guess, is that Apple knows that there are two major things it needs to do over the next 10 to 20 years.

One is that they are very behind in AI and they need a better strategy.

If something's going to take 5, 10, 15, 20 years, you don't necessarily want someone who's 65 leading the charge.

You want someone who's 50 and can see it through for the long haul.

And the other thing is that if they really are going to undo or at least replicate, let's say, their China operations in another country, that also is a 10-, 15-, 20-year effort.

And why would you have the architect of the China strategy in the hot seat making those decisions?

It makes more sense for John Ternes to do it.

No, I mean, look, if Apple falls behind in AI, it's still the case that people are paying Apple a 15% to 30% subscription fee every time they use the iPhone to subscribe to Claude or ChatGPT or any number of the others.

What's unclear is whether Apple being behind actually is going to be a boon to them.

So, for instance, it's obviously clear that they blew a lead with Siri.

I mean, Siri came out, I want to say, in 2011, and...

the only time anyone uses Siri now is by accident.