Siri, where does Apple go next?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Guardian.
Today, Apple took over the world. Where can it go next?
Here's a question for you. What are you listening to this on? Is it an iPhone? Do you have AirPods in? I'm guessing there's a good chance you do. Sorry to Android users. More than any other, there is one man responsible for just how widespread Apple products have become. Tim Cook, who announced his departure last week. In the last 15 years, the so-called world's most boring CEO has turned the company from a multi-billion dollar one to a $4 trillion giant.
What significant changes are happening at Apple with Tim Cook's resignation?
Apple has transformed how we live, work, communicate, and on an even bigger scale, it has reshaped the way tech companies do business, do politics, and hell, even global supply chains. But where it was once leading, Apple is now lagging on the AI race and on the very thing that it built its reputation on, product innovation. And now another Apple lifer, John Ternus, is taking over the top job. Does he have the vision or the bite to lead the company through what could be one of the most disruptive decades in Silicon Valley? From The Guardian, I'm Nosheen Iqbal. Today in Focus, the future of Apple. Blake Montgomery, you're the tech editor at The Guardian US. Welcome back to Today in Focus.
Thanks for having me.
Now, for the last week, there has been a lot of chatter about Tim Cook stepping down from Apple.
Big breaking news. Tim Cook has stepped down as the CEO of Apple.
I mean, this is arguably the biggest news that we're going to hear from Apple all year. Tim Cook transitioning to the executive chairman. He's led the company since taking over for Steve Jobs in 2011. And, you know, it's not every day that you get a notification on your phone about the CEO of a company changing jobs. And yet we did. And here we are. So just how big at this point is Apple?
Well, it's worth $4 trillion, which is kind of an unfathomable amount of money. It's worth more than the economies of a lot of countries. And the change of one person helming such a huge planetary-size enterprise is a precedent-changing thing. 166,000 people work for the company. Their devices are in billions of people's hands. It is going to have effects across the world, even if you may not notice it immediately.
And so how big a moment or even risk is this for one of the world's biggest companies?
As far as a risk... It is more like electing an establishment president to lead a country than electing a Donald Trump, for example. This guy, the one who's replacing Tim Cook, is named John Ternus. He was the president of the hardware engineering division. So he's going to be focused on the innards of the phone and the computer and the watch and really focusing on the technical elements. So it is not the choice of this person to succeed. The papal throne is not seen as a radical departure for the company.
How did Tim Cook transform Apple during his tenure?
And I don't think your iPhone is going to be a square in the future.
And so what kind of shape was the company in when Tim Cook took over?
It was quite a different company 15 years ago when he took over. It's still in a strong position. It was worth like $300, $350 billion by no means a small company. But Steve Jobs had just died when Tim Cook took over. And there were quite a lot of questions of whether he could live up in any capacity to the things that Steve Jobs had done.
But unlike most companies, Steve Jobs defines Apple. His replacement, Apple's chief operating officer Tim Cook, has filled in for Jobs before with great success. But brilliant as he is, just about every analyst on the planet will tell you he's no Steve Jobs.
Cook takes over in 2011. So Apple is on the rise towards becoming one of the biggest companies in the world. But... It was by no means guaranteed that it could do the revolutionary globe-spanning things that it does now that we kind of take for granted. But a lot of that is due to Tim Cook. No one describes him as a genius in the same way that people revere Steve Jobs. I don't think there will be... biblically long biographies of tim cook that people mine for their own inspiration however there is an obvious aptitude that he has for the kind of global supply chain management that apple has to navigate as well as this kind of diplomacy that you might do as the head of one of the biggest companies in the world that has led apple to these like heights
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:01
2
What significant changes are happening at Apple with Tim Cook's resignation?
1:01–3:56
3
How did Tim Cook transform Apple during his tenure?
3:56–6:42
4
What challenges does Apple face in the AI race?
6:42–7:56
5
Who is John Ternus and what is his vision for Apple?
7:56–26:32