Eshu Marneedi

Tim Bradshaw, Stephen Morris, and Michael Acton, reporting for the Financial Times in November:

Apple is stepping up its succession planning efforts, as it prepares for Tim Cook to step down as chief executive as soon as next year.

Several people familiar with discussions inside the tech group told the Financial Times that its board and senior executives have recently intensified preparations for Cook to hand over the reins at the $4tn company after more than 14 years.

It has taken me over a month to link to this article because I thought I largely didn’t have anything to say about it other than “finally.” And in one way, that was my initial reaction to this reporting. (I’ll choose to ignore Mark Gurman’s separate report at Bloomberg claiming this entire report is false; the Financial Times is a reputable newspaper.¹)

John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, is rumored to be the most likely successor after Cook inevitably leaves, whether that be in 2026 or anytime after. But my biggest question is how much independence Ternus would have as chief executive. I would bet money that no matter when Cook leaves, he won’t truly abandon the company to retreat to a private island. Cook isn’t a normal billionaire, and I don’t think he has much of a life outside Apple. His primary work has been transforming Apple into the successful, multi-trillion-dollar corporation it is today. He isn’t a product person, nor does he have any technical experience — he just manages the books, and I think he wants to stay in that role forever.

To that end, I’d be legitimately shocked if he didn’t become the chairman of the board of directors, a position currently occupied by Dr. Arthur Levinson, who is 75 years old. As noted by Joe Rossignol at MacRumors, Apple’s corporate guidelines say that a member of the board cannot stand for re-election after they turn 75, effectively forcing Dr. Levinson to step down at Apple’s next shareholder meeting in 2026, when shareholders elect the next chairman. This gives way to two possibilities: (a) someone else, not Cook, takes the position of the chairman and remains in that position for the foreseeable future, or (b) Cook, who is 65, assumes the role next year, stepping down as chief executive. The latter option seems immensely more likely to me, knowing Cook’s personality and role at Apple.

Many commentators in the space have said they believe a primary motivation for Cook choosing not to retire is to appease the Trump administration, a stance I generally agree with. But this gives me pause: As chairman of the board, Cook would assume a more outward-facing role than Levinson, which nobody but the most involved of commentators is familiar with. Cook would attend dinners at the White House to honor murderers, encourage anti-First Amendment action to protect kidnappers, and engage in other unscrupulous activities that have certainly contributed to Apple’s besmirched public image. But he’d leave the day-to-day, more technical operations to Ternus, who I assume is less familiar with the aimless politics Apple engages in these days.

That’s a perfectly reasonable plan, and I think it’d fly by Apple’s shareholders easily — it might even nudge Apple’s stock up, knowing how behind the company is in the technical space — but it lessens my “finally” sigh of relief I signaled at the beginning of this post. Ternus would undoubtedly bring change to Apple’s core products. His leadership has transformed the Mac lineup from an aging, decaying product line that did immense damage to Apple’s reputation. Today, the Mac is a fantastic, class-leading line of personal computers, a claim I couldn’t make earnestly six years ago. Apple’s hardware is easily the company’s best, most competitive, and most meaningful product(s), and I trust Ternus would bring that same care to the rest of Apple’s offerings, especially software.

But this restructuring wouldn’t address one of my biggest complaints with Apple’s core leadership: the company has lost its soul. Its environmental work is effectively on hiatus to support the kidnapping and deportation of American citizens. The features Apple builds into its products to protect journalists and activists are undermined by Cook’s wining and dining with Mohammed bin Salman, the ruler of Saudi Arabia, who murdered a journalist. Ultimately, Apple is at a point in its history where it must make tough decisions, and with Cook — who would no longer be involved in day-to-day operations the second he becomes the chairman of the board — shadowing over Ternus, he’d be unable to make those decisions independently.

When I wrote about Cook’s fecklessness in August and even earlier before, I said he had to go. That means that Apple has to get rid of him for good.