Chapter 1: What are the highlights of Tim Cook's tenure at Apple?
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You are?
Yes. That's very exciting. Have you been to Disney World before? No, I've never been to Disney World before. That is very exciting. And so I have been looking up facts about, I'm a real like facts dad. I like to read the signs. I like to have this. Our fact checker would disagree with that statement, but go on.
Chapter 2: What challenges did Tim Cook face during his leadership?
And the most interesting thing that I learned about Disney World is the entire Magic Kingdom is elevated off ground level. And the first floor is all of these tunnels that the workers use to come and go and move stuff around. So you are literally on the second floor.
That is great news because my understanding is that all of Florida is sinking into the ocean. And so I feel like that'll buy them some time. Yeah. I'm thinking about pivoting to becoming like a Disney adult. What do you think about that? It's so funny that you mentioned this because I went to Disneyland in December for the first time in over a decade.
And I had so much fun that my fiance and I went back to Disneyland this most recent weekend with his family. No. And I thought, how many times can you go to Disneyland in one year before you just become a de facto Disney adult? And I think the answer is two, which means I think I am a Disney adult now. Yeah?
Yes.
Chapter 3: How has AI impacted job automation according to Andrew Yang?
I love it. Who knew? I did not predict this for you.
Well, I didn't either. And it's disturbing. This is great. I can't wait to hear about your Disney experience. This feels like a new, like, maybe this is something we could do together as friends. Just head down to D-World. Is that what the Disney girls call it? Yeah, it's one of the codes we hear on the walkie-talkies.
I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at the New York Times. I'm Casey Newton from Platformer.
And this is Hard Fork. This week, Diva Down.
Chapter 4: What is the potential future of Universal Basic Income?
Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO of Apple? What did he get right? And what did he get wrong? Then, Andrew Yang is here to discuss his early bet on AI taking jobs and why universal basic income may be making a comeback. And finally, hats off for some Hat GPT.
Well, Casey, the big news this week is that Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down.
Yeah, it is a really momentous occasion in the history of technology. Apple does not change CEOs all that often. And Tim Cook, while we both have a lot to say about him, I think undoubtedly just had an extraordinary run as a public company CEO.
Yeah, so Apple announced this leadership transition on Monday. Tim Cook is going to step into a new role as executive chairman. He's not leaving entirely. But John Ternes, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering and a longtime Apple guy, will become the next CEO. This is obviously not a company that has had a lot of CEOs. They tend to stick around and promote from within.
Chapter 5: What recent tech news is covered in the HatGPT segment?
And so I think this is about as expected a leadership transition as you could get. there have been rumors and reports that Cook was considering retiring for many months. But this made it official. And today we should talk about like what Tim Cook's legacy is, the highlights, the lowlights. How has Apple changed in the years since he took over as CEO?
And what do we expect out of John Ternus, the new guy? Yeah, lots to dive into. So let's talk about some numbers here, because I think Tim Cook's run at Apple is going to be remembered for just the overall growth that the company has experienced under his leadership.
Since he stepped into the CEO role in 2011, Apple's market cap has grown from $350 billion to around $4 trillion, so a 10x multiple there. Its yearly revenue nearly quadrupled. Its stock price has gone up roughly 2,000%. And a lot of the products that Tim Cook has overseen have been I would say surprising hits.
Yes.
Chapter 6: How does AI affect the retail industry in the new store experiment?
And I think this is like, if you want to be intellectually honest about Tim Cook's Apple, you have to talk about this particular dimension because I think the knock on Tim Cook was, well, he's not a product guy. He doesn't know how to launch new product categories, but you look at the past 15 years and he actually did.
Yes. So I think the biggest thing that he will be known for as a new device or as a new platform in his legacy is the Apple Watch, which I am wearing. You are wearing. I mean, everyone has an Apple Watch now. And I remember when the Apple Watch came out. there was this moment of like, oh, Apple's cooked. Like they can no longer innovate. This thing is obviously not going to work.
This is just a gadget for luxury users. And this is not going to sort of be useful enough for many people to shell out for. And then I think Tim Cook, to his credit, saw that health was taking off. The people wanted to track their steps. They wanted to know if their blood oxygen levels were changing or if their heartbeat was irregular.
Chapter 7: What are the implications of Meta's employee monitoring for AI training?
They wanted to have fall detection. And I think he really saw that as the way to bring the Apple Watch to the mainstream. And it worked like it is a huge category now. And I think it is genuinely the best thing that they have launched under Cook's tenure.
Yeah. Where I would give him credit was that when the first version of the Apple Watch came out, it wasn't entirely clear that it was a health product. It sort of had maybe one or two features in there, but Apple had to iterate on it over time. And that is what a great CEO does, right?
Along with your users, you figure out what your own products are for and how to make more of the stuff that people want and do less of the stuff that they don't want. And so I think the Apple Watch is just the best example of Tim Cook doing that during his tenure.
Yeah. And other Tim Cook success stories on the hardware side, AirPods obviously became a big deal during his tenure as CEO. I think this Apple Silicon bet that he made and oversaw was probably their most lasting success. They brought their chip design in-house. They sort of weaned themselves away from Intel as their primary chip provider.
Chapter 8: How can UBI address economic inequality in an AI-driven future?
And I think that is... underrated as a thing that they did that was risky, but that has paid off for them in a major way. They control their chip destiny now in a way that they did not when they were reliant on Intel. And it has given them the ability to like design custom chips like the M1.
Yeah. And now Intel is partially owned by the government because that's how badly it went for them after Apple started making its own chips. So yeah. Great for Apple, not great for Intel.
Yeah. So there are also some successes on the services side of Apple's business. They have grown in places like Apple TV. They now own a big, you know, major Hollywood studio, Apple Pay, Apple Music. These are now something like $100 billion business for them. And I think there have been some mixed successes on that side too.
I don't think they have secured the software dominance that they had hoped to. And it's caused them a lot of problems for things like antitrust. So I think his legacy will be a little more mixed when it comes to software and services, but still obviously a strong growth for them.
Yeah, this is one where I think my view is a little bit more mixed because on one hand, yes, this was like an unqualified success financially. But this is also the sort of stuff Apple started to do under a cook that I think undermine the love that people have for the company.
Because it seemed like with every passing year, there was another app on your iPhone that Apple was asking you to pay an annual subscription for. And I do think that some of these services really did distort the market.
You know, when Apple decided that they were going to get into music and they were going to be able to compete on unfair terms because all the other music streamers had to pay them a significant percentage of their revenue just to be on the app store. And Apple didn't have to do that. Spotify freaked out so much. They said, well,
I guess we're going to have to own the entire podcast market and also start selling audiobooks. And so decisions like that that Cook made wound up having these huge ripples throughout the industry that I actually do not think were positive overall.
Yeah, I think that's a very fair point. And I think that's a piece where maybe Cook could have done a little better during his tenure. What else do you think Tim Cook did well?
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