Apple’s John Ternus Era, Tim Cook’s Legacy, ChatGPT Images 2.0 is Actually Good

0:00He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector, John Ternus. Welcome to Primary Technology, the show about the tech news that matters. Obviously, massive news this week. Tim Cook officially stepping down as CEO, and John Ternus taking over on September 1st. We're going to get into all of that, Tim Cook's legacy, what to look for in a John Ternus-led Apple, and other news like ChatGPT 2.0 images came out, Gemini-powered Siri was teased actually at Google Cloud, Threads have a live chat event feature coming out or something, and people are actually using Jason's app out in the wild, and we're going to get into that

0:33as well. This episode is brought to you by Framer, Granola, Claude, and you, the members who support us directly. Thank you for that. I'm one of your hosts. Steven Robles is joined by developer Jason Aiton. How's it going, Jason? Developers doing a lot of work there, but I'm fine. If I say it three times, it's true. Three times in a row. Is that like common law? Yeah, that's right. That's what happens. Yeah. All right. No, that's, yeah, Jason's app. Well, I won't reveal. I'll let you reveal the name later. It's exciting. I'm running it right now on my Mac, and we're going to talk about it. And you have people testing it, like out there in the wild. I do.

1:03I do have people testing it, yes. That's super fun. Okay, last week, the quote, the movie quote that I opened the show with was, I sense injuries. The data could be called pain. Do you know what movie that's from? See, you always make the sense. It's not even familiar to me. All right. Well, that one was Terminator 2. Terminator 2. I was trying to find a record. It's probably been 30 years since I've seen Terminator 2, just to be honest. I was like, it hasn't come out 30, oh, wow, yeah. I don't know when it came out, but it's been that long. It definitely wasn't 30 years. And I kind of tweaked today's quote. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector.

1:35I didn't say the last part of that phrase because it would give it away. I don't know. The last part of the quote is a dark knight. Oh, he's the hero that Gotham needs but doesn't deserve. That Gotham deserves the needs or something, which I'm not saying that's John Ternus, but he is a silent guardian, a watchful protector. If you'd have said that part of the quote, I would have for sure. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. All right. A couple of five-star reviews before we get into all the Cook Ternus news. Jim Manist at 1,000 from the USA. He asked if the review gets to me faster with my 7 gigabit download speeds. Yes, it does. I actually got the review immediately.

2:06And battery percentage on phone dominant pocket front home screen dots. Dominant pocket front. Dominant pocket. Home screen dots. Okay. God, sorry. I was like, yeah, I had a stroke there. But Kojin27 from the USA, he corrected his review from four to five stars when I added background music, and then I forgot to add it in last week's episode. But I'll remember this one, so thanks for that. We're his second favorite tech podcast outside of Waveform, which I'm down for that. If we're your second favorite tech podcast, I mean, we prefer to be the favorite. Yeah, I mean, second favorite nothing wins a Webby.

2:38My goodness. We want to win a Webby. But you have to pay like $500. But we have to figure out how to say that fast. We want to win a Webby. We want to win a Webby. Would you also have to pay $500 just to enter or something? You know, when I worked at Riverside, I would always look into like the podcast awards and be like, how do I enter my podcast to be in the awards? And it's always like, well, to enter, fill out this 20-page application and pay $750. And I'm like, oh, okay. I see what you guys do. Every award, yeah. I can't say anymore because I work for a company that has an awards program, so I should just stop.

3:10See, this is like the, listen, ladies and gentlemen, anytime you travel, if you ever read one of those magazines where it talks about like the top 10 places to eat in Venice or whatever, it's all sponsored. It's all sponsored content. The top 10 places that gave us $1,000. That's the thing. Like, you know, people knock on like creators and sponsorship and disclosures. And like, there's so many industries where it's all sponsorship and there's no disclosures. Travel industry being one of the most heinous.

3:40But anyway, this podcast will not pay to get an award. If we get an award, I don't, we probably won't because we're not paying to be. We won't get an award. But if we do, it won't be because we paid. That's right. It'll be because someone made a mistake. But podcast 728 from the USA, he, I corrected that. I messaged the person on social media, but they were like, I can't see the transcript anymore because we added video on Apple Podcasts. Yes, it's a total Apple thing. I actually did an entire video on the best podcast apps and talked about all these distinctions.

4:10I'll link that video in the show notes. But he still gave us five stars, and I appreciate that. And Shahab from Canada said, horizontal tabs. That's at the top. That's at the top, right. Okay, that's the way it was intended. Yeah, that's right. Okay. And also Apple TV. Sorry, I was just poking on there. It's fine. I also use horizontal tabs across the top in one profile. I just use the vertical tabs in a different one. All right. And last couple of things. I launched another podcast last week. I kind of soft launched it, and I just told people. But I just, I wanted to start another thing. I don't know why. I had some, I got a good domain, and I was like, let me, no, that wasn't.

4:44The domain was the first thing I bought. I mean, that is a good domain. It is a good domain. I mean, top5.tech is the domain, which I thought was good. But no, I wanted a reason to write a regular newsletter. And then I was like, I should make this like an audio podcast, too. And then I was like, well, I should just do a video series. And so it's all the things. You can either watch this, listen to this, or read it. And yeah, every Friday, I'm just going to share five things. Something to read, watch, listen to, download, and something deep about tech. I already know what I'm going to be talking about tomorrow. But yeah, if you want to hear me again, it's a five-minute show.

5:17Like, it's just. If you want to hear me again. If you want to hear me again. No, but it's, hey, I'm trying to pick the five interesting things. Not just like new things. Like tomorrow, I'm going to be talking about something like an older podcast episode, but not something that you might have heard of. So anyway, if you want to sign up for that newsletter, or get it as a podcast, or watch it as a video, it'll all, it'll be everywhere. And then also, Will Kennard, we talked about, hey, there might be a industry for people who check vibe coding apps. And yeah, apparently it's an industry already.

5:47Will Kennard sent me a link. He has a blog, which we'll link in the show notes, where he talked about vibe coding and how to optimize your vibe coded projects, and what to watch for. And yeah, it was a great article, but also, apparently this is an industry that is literally being created in real time. And that's pretty wild. Yeah, because there are a lot of people who work at companies that are just going to start using cloud code, and they're going to not have a job. And this is actually a great thing for them to do. That.

6:17So yeah, that's happening. So that was great. We'll link that in the show notes as well. Well, I don't know if there was really any news this week. Just kidding. I want it to be sarcastic at least once. So it is official. Tim Cook stepping down as CEO as of September 1st. John Ternus to become CEO. Tim Cook will move to the chairman of the board of directors of Apple. Johnny Surugi will be elevated to a position of his chief hardware officer.

6:48That's right, chief hardware officer.

6:51And every hot take has been said. And so what do you call a hot take that's well thought out? It's deep. It's not hot, but it's not cold. It's a, I don't know, a dish best served hot take. A marinated take. It's a, thank you. This is. I don't know. It's been sitting on the counter for a couple of days in its juices. That's right. But I feel like, you know, everybody recorded emergency podcasts. We did not. And, you know, there are a lot of people, I think, have been thinking about this for a long time. And we've talked about Apple CEO and Tim Cook.

7:23What is a product CEO? But the last few days, I've been thinking about it a lot. And I don't know. I want to talk about it several different ways. You know, I want to talk about Tim Cook and a little bit of his legacy and how it's kind of being seen and shaped now that he is officially stepping down as CEO. I did a video about John Ternus and kind of his history at Apple, which the video is doing pretty well, which is nice. But I learned some things about John Ternus I did not know before. And I'm excited. I'm optimistic about him being CEO.

7:55And so I'll link my video in the show notes. And Jason has a couple of articles we're going to get to as well. And then Gurman, can I just say Bloomberg? I was paying for Bloomberg some amount, but apparently it wasn't enough because I couldn't read some of it. I couldn't read some of Gurman's articles from this week. Or like, give us more money, please. You ran out of credit. Bloomberg was literally like, hey, give us more money. And I was like, for real? Like, do we really have to do this? But Gurman has been writing a ton.

8:26And he actually posted a photo. So after the announcement, there was an internal Apple town hall. And Gurman literally posted a photo that someone took inside the town hall of Tim Cook and John Ternus on stage addressing the Apple staff. And I was like, bro, I feel like some AI or detective, whatever, can like, what angle is this photo taken at what zoom level? And they could find out like what person inside Apple is sending Gurman photos of their town hall. That this felt like, I don't know, another level in like the leak culture.

9:01I don't know. So clearly someone inside Apple, so much so that they were at this town hall talking about the transition, sent Gurman a photo. That seems crazy. It does kind of seem crazy. You're right. Yeah. Before we get into it, I have a question. Please. Yeah. Where were you when you found out? And how did you find out? I think. Was it you text my text message? OK, I was just curious. Yeah, you texted me. It was Monday at 445 p.m. And you texted me the Apple Newsroom article with the word holy and nothing else.

9:32And I was literally in the middle of something. I forget what it was. And I was like, I'm OK, this is huge. I need to finish what I'm doing because the next two days are just this, like whatever it is, it is this. And I also thought, like, I want to make a video about this. I don't want to do a hot take video. I'm not going to try and make a five minute video right now. And so I finished what I was doing.

10:03I looked at your text. I was like, OK, it's happening. And this is not a drill. No, this is not a drill. And I thought, let me make a short slash real slash tick tock of just saying the thing. So I did that. And then I spent Monday evening doing some research. We're going to talk about that later and made the video just about John Ternus and went from there. But it was you. How did you did you get the notification from the Apple News? So, no, I've never been more angry in my life. No, that's not true. But I was driving and my editor texted me and I was driving an hour to a soccer game, which

10:39I love going to our kids to soccer games. But our daughter had a high school soccer game and I didn't even have my backpack with me because I'm going to a soccer game. Like, like I don't take my computer with me to soccer games, especially like so I'm driving. I got the text message. I texted you at 445. I had just gotten the text message. I was like just starting my trip for for a fleeting second. I was like, do I just go back home? And I'm like, no, I'm going to the soccer game. Yeah. So I ended up writing the article on my phone when I got there, like in the 30 minutes of

11:12the warmup. This is like a Patel story. I listened to the Verge cast when I like the live one because it had just wrapped up. And so I was I didn't listen to it live. I listened to the replay like shortly after that, but the YouTube stream and wrote the first article, which was about Tim Cook keeping his most important job. And then later that night I got home and I wrote, but I did text my wife. I'm like, listen, hon, Tim Cook just retired or he just announced he's retiring. And when I get home from this game, I'm going to have to I'm going to be locked down. Locked down.

11:42Do you remember where you were when you learned that Steve Jobs had passed? I don't exactly remember where I was, but I do remember it. And I viscerally remember the like the the person who posted the Apple logo with the Tim with Steve Jobs profile. And I remember their home page. I don't remember where I was, but I do. I will always remember where I was when I found out Tim Cook was retiring because it's I know people think this is crazy, but like, honestly, a change in CEO at a company like Apple, who

12:16is only had eight of them and will have eight with Ternus and only three that anybody knows about the correct that that point is important. And it is is basically the biggest business news and very big tech news at every level of the stack. And I'm like, and I'm driving in a car. It is. That is the perfect storm of situation. I think I got a tweet to you or a text to you and I posted it on threads and that and then I had to keep driving. I still remember where I was when I heard about Steve Jobs passing and at the highest

12:48level, you know, Tim Cook was named, I think it was either interim CEO or full CEO before he passed. He was named CEO in August and he passed in October. Steve passed in October. But it was clear that when Tim Cook was appointed CEO, it was because of Steve Jobs' health. And yes, there was a bunch of news, you know, in the years leading up to him passing about his, you know, waffling out. And if you read the Apple 50 years, David Pogue book, he talks about like internally and those close to Steve, like they knew a lot was going on and they did not reveal a lot

13:23of it to the public in the years leading up to his death. He'd been sick for seven years. He was sick for a long time. Yeah. And so I think, I think and feel like this transition just at the highest level feels so different because that transition was obviously clouded by this CEO did not, Steve Jobs did not leave on his own accord. Steve Jobs had to leave because he was literally about to die. And that just the first part of Tim Cook's legacy that I think is the most positive and

13:57we should all take notice, like he took over from that, not from a CEO voluntarily stepping down and handing the reins to him. While Jobs did hand him the reins, it was out of necessity. And while Steve Jobs obviously chose the right guy because he has grown Apple tremendously and however you feel about Tim Cook's in the services revenue and the little things like he did his job and one of the things in a lot of leadership situations in businesses, when there's a beloved leader or CEO and they have been loved and the CEO for a long time, which Steve Jobs was

14:33before he died and he released all the iconic products like the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad to take over as the leadership role from that is typically untenable. And a lot of times in business situations, like it just doesn't work. Whoever CEO after that will be short-lived and will be seen as a failure and then there'll be another CEO that might last a little longer. The fact that Tim Cook was able to take over and has been CEO for 15 years is pretty astonishing.

15:05Whether he filled the shoes, I don't know if that's the right analogy, but he did his job, which was to take over as CEO of Apple, make it successful, grow it, and then hand it off to the next person to innovate for the next 15 years. He did that. Yeah. Oh yeah. Tim Cook is easily, I don't think you can make the argument, maybe, maybe Satya Nadella, but Tim Cook is easily the most successful CEO of all time. Like now he did bet some of that success is owed to Steve Jobs because the most successful

15:42product in history is the iPhone and Tim Cook reaped most of the benefit of that, right? Apple became the most valuable company in the world shortly after Tim Cook took over as CEO and it has mostly been the most valuable company in the world during the entire, his entire time. There've been time, like right now it's like third. It was the first company to 1 trillion. It was the first company to 3 trillion. And like it is, I can remember thinking like that is inconscionable to think that where are these, we're done. Time is over because once you've reached a trillion, like it was unfathomable that companies

16:15would reach a $4 trillion market cap. And there's like three of them now that maybe four, I don't even know where Google is right now. So Tim Cook is, is without question, the most successful CEO I think of all time. Like I don't, I don't know who you would say is more successful just in terms of all of the ways you would measure it and I just want to be clear. There are a lot of people who will, who I've heard argue, okay, sure. If you go by Tim Cook standard of the numbers, well, first of all, like you're the CEO of a public company. That is the measurement. Like just to be clear, that is how you define success.

16:45But also the fact that he just didn't break anything. I think you can make other than maybe some developer relations, but I think he, he had the wherewithal and this might've been his biggest strength. He had the wherewithal to recognize what had been set up before him and he had the wherewithal to follow his strengths. And some of that, some of his weaknesses caused some interesting inter, inter, inter, inter stitial problems, you know, with like, we get the butterfly keyboard, whatever. But I don't, I think if you had replaced Steve jobs with a product guy, Apple would be basically

17:20not a thing we think about much. I think, well, they still had the iPhone. I think they would not have been successful and may have not have like, let me, let me say this. So the timing was interesting because this has long been rumored. Gurman, Gurman has been talking about it for like the last year. I think the financial times or the information they predicted would happen earlier. And, you know, we even thought maybe after Dub Dub, they'll make the announcement or whatever. And so it does feel like maybe a little sooner than a lot of people expected during the town

17:53hall. And these are remarks that were reported to Gurman. I'm going to put the nine to five Mac article in the show notes so you can actually read it. He said that Tim Cook knew it was the right time to step down because three things had to be true. Well, product roadmap needed to be incredible. Okay. We don't know what that is, but I guess it's incredible. Vision pro three. Right. People's financials needed to be going, doing great. Check. And turn has had to be ready for the role. Again, Tim Cook would know that most of all.

18:23And so it seems like those three plus being 65 years old, retirement age, like it was, he made the decision, like it was time, time to go. And obviously this has been extremely calculated probably over the last five to 10 years, like this transition. Go ahead. Well, I was going to say, and Ben Thompson makes a good point that was not a part of that, but I think is worth mentioning, which is that Apple is at a point where it has to make decisions today that will affect the business in 10 or 12 years. So Tim Cook should not be the person making those decisions.

18:56Once you reach a point in your tenure where the critical strategic decisions that have to be made are clearly going to play out after you're gone, you shouldn't be the person making those decisions. And so when it comes to things like AI, when it comes to how that, whether Apple's going to decide to invest in building foundation models, or if it's just going to be the device where everybody runs it, like all of those things, that is a critical piece of this that I think is worth mentioning that Tim Cook probably recognized that Apple is heading into a direction where he will not be able to see it through.

19:27And so he, and he probably has some firsthand experience. Steve Jobs set things in motion that obviously Steve Jobs wasn't able to see through. And Tim Cook had the firsthand experience of being the person who had to simply figure out what did he mean by this? Like, I guess we're doing this thing. So about Tim Cook's legacy, when Steve Jobs was CEO of Apple in, you know, the years of the iPhone and the iPad, iPod, he was the nucleus of Apple. And it felt like Apple was synonymous with Steve Jobs.

20:00Like it was almost one in the same, like the Venn diagram. You just thought of them together. And you saw that in every keynote. I mean, Steve Jobs was the one on stage for 80 to 90% of every keynote, demoing the products, talking about the products. Steve Jobs was Apple. Apple. And it's, I feel like, I hope they get back to in-person events as a side note, maybe with John Ternus now in the CEO seat. And while there were big names that you were familiar with in the Steve Jobs era, like you saw Johnny Ive in the videos where he was in the white room and you saw Scott Forrestal

20:33on stage talking about software, Bob Mansfield talking about hardware, and obviously Phil Schiller was there. They all felt peripheral. And I do feel like one of the benefits of Tim Cook not being the charismatic leader that Steve Jobs was is that it has allowed other names and faces to bubble up to associate with Apple as a brand, which I think is positive. Like, when one company hinges on a singular person, that's why it felt like such a huge deal when Steve Jobs died.

21:04It was like, this might be it. Like, who else? Who else can do it? But over the last 15 years, since Tim Cook is not the guy to be the one on stage demoing every product and doing it, now we know, like, oh, Craig Federighi. Like, I was not as familiar with Craig Federighi before Tim Cook. He was there doing stuff. But now he's like a character, a face of Apple. Same with Greg Joswiak. Like, people post about him on social media and take pictures with him. And we have Johnny Cerugi as like, you know, I just, I knew Bob Mansfield's name, but I wouldn't even be able to tell you what he did or whatever.

21:38But, like, we now see this, like, team of people and every keynote that's been prerecorded, like, you see all these faces and names associated with the products. And I think it's positive that you can now see all the people that are making these incredible products and who make up Apple, not just the CEO. And now I think we're getting a CEO that is closer to the product person of Steve Jobs. And hopefully we do see on stage more often, maybe even in in-person events. And we have this amazing team around him. And so that's one of the things I feel like that makes me optimistic.

22:10And while Tim Cook might have not had the charisma to be that onstage guy, but he had the business mindset, now we do have someone that could probably be the onstage guy and has been. When I made my John Ternus video, he was the one that introduced the Apple Silicon Transition. He was the one that introduced the Mac Studio and Studio Display. He was the last person to introduce the Mac Pro. John Ternus has been the guy in all these keynotes talking about stuff. And I don't know. I'm excited to see him be that guy. But I don't want to go too far down this because there's a lot of things to talk about. That has always been a weird thing. Steve Jobs was singular.

22:41He's just Steve Jobs. So it made sense that he was the person who was onstage. I don't know why people think that it has to be the CEO. Why were people disappointed that Tim Cook wasn't that guy when there were other people? I hope we still get to see Craig Federighi. I hope we still get to see John. I don't care if we see any more or less of John Ternus. I don't know why that matters. I think it's because when you know the person leading the company cares so deeply about the products and how customers will use them that they are talking about it in the announcement keynote.

23:16I feel like there's a weird sense of trust that is developed like in the background. You're like, oh, this person is leading the company and this person is introducing this product and this person knows how I'm going to use the product and is literally showing me what I'm going to do with this product. Okay, and they're leading the company, which means like the next few years, the next thing they ask. I feel like there's some kind of maybe even subconscious thread that goes along with that. So maybe that. I just think that is an arbitrary requirement that you're good at talking publicly.

23:46I agree with the other parts. I actually think I would push back. Tim Cook may not be someone who is like a product designer. I don't know that there was anyone at Apple who cared more about the experience that people had with products. I don't know that he knew how to articulate that necessarily. I don't know. But I think he like watching that Wall Street Journal with I think Ben Collins like he wasn't great at talking about them. I think he sincerely cares that people be delighted by the products. And I think it's fine that he also not be really great at communicating it because he was smart enough to put people up.

24:19That is. I actually think that's a more important quality than talks good on camera and so going to be on stage all the time. Steve Jobs did that. But again, Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs, people give him all the credit as being a product guy. Steve Jobs is product sense was sort of a yes, like a feel. He wasn't the one who is even the original. Like, I mean, I wasn't around when they made the Apple one, but like he didn't make that thing was right. Like, no, but he had the intuition of and again, Pogge uses this example a lot.

24:52The iPod mini was selling like crazy, the most popular iPod yet. And when Steve Jobs, when they introduced the Nano, they killed the mini, even though it was their best selling product. And everybody around him said this is dumb to like cancel the mini for this product that is not proven. But Steve Jobs was right. And the Nano sold even more, the iPod Nano. And so I feel like that intuition, whatever it is, while he didn't make the product with his hands, he knew how people would respond to the products. And it feels like Ternus has that air about him.

25:25And obviously, Tim Cook trusted the people around him. And he did put good people around him to make good products. I mean, that's why Ternus is here. You know, like Ternus was responsible. And that's one of the things I said in my video, Ternus was responsible for like the entire iPad lineup, all the way up to like the new one and the entire AirPods lineup. And in recent years, the iPhone, like he has been leading those teams. But that's Tim Cook. I do want to I want to go to your article, because if you read anything, you know, the newsroom article with the announcement is fine. You know, it's interesting. The community letter from Tim, which we were talking about him articulating about products.

25:58And I feel like this letter from Tim is one of the best things, the best communications he's ever given. And it's like it's a shame that it's on his way out, because it feels like the most transparent. And I believe it. You know, I believe that I feel like it's earnest. And in this letter, he talks about how every morning he reads emails from Apple users around the world. And he feels like he feels that. He feels the connection to them and he it the importance of what they are doing and how it affects people. And you said it more eloquently.

26:29And so I'll put I'll put I'll put your article in the show notes. This is the Inc.com. I'll put the Apple Newsroom article. You talk about the farewell letter. But you have a line in this article. I just want to point out because I think it's really good. And I think it does relate to leadership of all kinds. He says, you have to you say, Jason Aiton says, quote, You have to admit that whatever system you built to protect your time could also be filtering out the exact signal you need. Otherwise, you end up slowly disconnected from the business. Cook built a career on refusing to be disconnected from the people sending those emails.

27:01And I think that's a really salient point, because leaders and people who have are very time constrained because they're the CEO or whatever, they will limit or eliminate some of that connection. Like, I'm not going to read emails from just random people who put Tim Cook at Apple dot com in the to field. But he didn't. So, yeah, you say you said it more eloquently. Yeah, well, and I think we knew this is actually I'm glad he put it. I'm glad he wrote the letter. I agree. It's one of the best pieces of communication from Tim Cook.

27:32But I think that this is some people are better writers than talkers. It's fine. Like, yeah, right. Probably some people think that I'm one of them. That's fine. But I think that it was an important thing. And he has actually talked about this before. And this is why we see those Apple Watch commercials at the beginning of of a keynote or whatever. Not commercials. Films at the beginning is because of this sort of thing. And he made a point of of not just allowing them to show up in his inbox, but internalizing those things.

28:04And we can see that, like, features and decisions and the way that Apple has talked about it have come from some of these emails. And I do think that staying closely connected to your your customers is extremely important, especially for someone like Tim Cook, who maybe doesn't have that innate sense of like. And I don't know that Tim Cook has less of an innate sense than Steve Jobs. I think Steve Jobs was just far more confident in his opinion that his opinion about a thing was right. And so everyone just did it. And it turns out that most of us who like Apple agreed with that opinion most of the time.

28:38Right. And one of the distinctions that Gurman talks about in one of his Bloomberg articles, which, yes, I paid $35 this month so I could read all these articles because I wasn't paying enough before. People inside Apple described Tim Cook in meetings where there was a decision to make or they were at an impasse on trying to decide something. Tim Cook would defer. He would ask the people around the table, what do you think about this? What should we do about this? And the similar people would say when John Ternus is in a meeting, he will be much more decisive.

29:11And he will say this is like, let's do this and go from there. And I guess if you if you want to take any trait and say this is closer to Steve Jobs than that, that probably feels like the thing that they will do the most of that makes them more like Jobs. When Tim Cook defers to others, which is a good quality, like I do think collaboration and delegation are great qualities of a leader. And when it's not your strength, you are a better leader if you delegate those questions than if you try to make the decisions yourself and you make poor decisions, you know, if you don't have that.

29:46So he was probably correct in asking the room. He put great people around him and they made the decisions. But we're getting a new CEO, John Ternus, who has been at Apple for 25 years, has literally built and led the teams that built the iconic products that are there today. Of all the things that people say, like the software is one thing about the Apple devices today. And you could say what you want about iOS 26, a liquid glass or whatever. But the hardware is always universally agreed to be the best.

30:17The new M5, the new MacBook Pros, the iPhone 17 Pro, everything is incredible. And that was Ternus. That's been Ternus for the last however many years. He's led the hardware teams for that. And so having someone that is closer to the Steve Jobs CEO who will be decisive. And here's the thing. Sometimes you make a wrong decision. And we're going to get to in a minute about what Tim Cook has said his failures have been. When you are that decisive, you do run the risk of making a mistake and something happening like the iPhone 4 antenna gate or whatever.

30:53And you might have to backtrack like what Steve Jobs gave out free bumpers or whatever. But I do think that kind of decisiveness and forward motion lends itself to more innovation than not. And so that is why I guess I'm hopeful that John Ternus, now being the CEO for however many years, some things might break or might not be great. But I think we'll see more innovation because there's going to be a decisiveness to say, yes, let's do that. Like, let's do the folding iPhone.

31:24Who knows if anybody wants this, but let's do it. Let's do the AR glasses. Let's push it. And, you know, let's get it out there. And I feel like Steve Jobs was a bit like Steve Jobs kind of had the confidence to say, like, we're going to put this out there because I know the customers will want it. I don't know if John Ternus is that confident. You know, I don't know if he has that kind of Steve Jobs in like I know people like we tell what people what they want. You know, that's literally what Steve Jobs would say that we want. You know, we tell them what they want. You have to show them what they want. And maybe Ternus has that, too. But that is one of the reasons why I'm optimistic about the innovation at Apple going forward.

31:55I think Ternus will bring that with the decisiveness, with the direction. Yeah, I just hope they don't become Samsung, right? No, they wouldn't do that. Well, you just described, let's just put the stuff out there. I actually think that Apple's biggest strength has been that they are very, very conservative about what they're willing to put out there. Yes. Sometimes maybe to their detriment. Sometimes maybe. But, like, they put the Vision Pro out there. Not exactly a resounding success. Incredible piece of hardware. Right. Yeah, exactly. Incredible software. Right. Not a thing that anyone cares about. Except for me, I still use it every day.

32:25But I just think that, like, I don't know. I think Steve Jobs, when he says we told people what they want, he doesn't mean you will like this because we told you to. What he means is he could see around the corner. Right. He knew how people would experience something and how they would feel about it before they did because it was new to them and they didn't have it. So when he says he would tell people what they should think or what they should like, what he just means is, like, he could see it before people who had never experienced it could. And so they moved in that direction and they told people.

32:56They didn't just ask people. Because what he knew is that if you just ask people what they want, it's the Henry Ford. We just want faster horses. Like, right? We don't want the automobile. We just want faster horses. It's like, yes, but you've never seen an automobile. I promise you it's better. Like, you have to just trust us on it. So I don't know. First of all, I'm being contrarian to some extent. I think Ternus will be a great CEO. I think he was the obvious choice. I think that that's great. I think expectations are way too high on him. And people are pinning all of the things that they thought were deficits of Tim Cook as hopes on John Ternus.

33:28And I don't think that that's fair. And I think it sets him up for a real bad situation. Because John Ternus has worked with Tim Cook for 15 years. He calls him his mentor. I don't think we're going to see a dramatically different, you know? And John Ternus was not a product designer. He's a hardware engineer. He was the guy who figured out, huh, if the MacBook Air is going to be this thin, how does it all work together? Where do we source the stuff from? He wasn't the... I mean, and also, like, he was the butterfly keyboard guy. That's a fair point. And he was the one who thought the MacBook Pro should only have USB-C ports.

34:01Was that him or Johnny Ive? I'm pretty sure he was the one that engineered that. Yeah, but Johnny Ive was still there calling a lot of shots. So that's my point, is, like, those are product design decisions, so... Right, and I am not, like... Obviously, Ternus is Apple DNA through and through. He's been there for 25 years. Sir, Tim Cook for 15 years. I don't think he's going to be a radical change, to be clear. But I think the needle will move. I don't know how much it will move, but I think it will move slightly away from hyper-conservative, maybe, to, like, release innovation.

34:37Artificial intelligence, I think, is the clear example. Apple has been way on the conservative side and now have fallen behind because of it. But maybe, and this is just an assumption, but maybe with someone like Ternus at the helm, they will move slightly faster in these new areas and might make for more innovation going forward. It's a hope. I'm not saying... And listen, their product roadmap, like Tim Cook literally said in that town hall, our product roadmap has to be incredible. So it makes it clear the roadmap is set for at least some time.

35:09You know what I mean? Like, we probably won't know the effect Ternus has had on the products for two to three years. Like, listen, iPhone 18, that's in the can. Like, that's done. Well, but it's also Ternus. He just wasn't CEO. Right, right, right, right, right. That's what I'm saying. All the products they're going to set out in the next couple years, that was all Ternus anyway. Right. But things like the AI, like I think about the interview that Joanna Stern did with Greg Josuek and Craig Federighi, like, I'm sure the two of them and Tim Cook talk a lot about AI and they were like, no one wants a chat app.

35:40And now all the rumors are that the next voice assistant on the iPhone, come iOS 27, will be a chat app. And so something is happening there where they are shifting to maybe just accepting the world and what people actually want. But I'm hopeful that Ternus has more of that bent. Not that it's a 180 turn, but just a slight bent toward like, all right, let's move a little faster. You know, and he's young. He's 51. He's the age Tim Cook was when Tim Cook became CEO. And so, you know, we have another 10, 15 years. Yeah, again, I think it was the right decision.

36:10I am optimistic. I just want us to be careful that we don't put all of our hopes on John Ternus because first of all, I mean, you shouldn't put your hopes and dreams in Steve Jobs either. But John Ternus is still not Steve Jobs, right? And John Ternus is coming out of the Steve Jobs era and the Tim Cook era. And he will define the era that comes after very differently. I think he's set up for success much better than like Bob Chapek was at Disney, which we're going to talk about Tim Cook sticking around a little bit. But I think, like, I don't think we're going to have that kind of a situation.

36:42I think he's in a better situation than that. And I think it's because Tim Cook's main priority, I think John Gruber said it really well, Tim Cook's main priority was just Apple. Like, just, you know, if Steve Jobs' greatest product was Apple the company, Tim Cook did the best job anyone could have done of just letting that flourish, right? And we'll see. Maybe the products within Apple will flourish more under John Ternus. And I think that that's good to have somebody who has that kind of a sense.

37:12But people are like, well, they're going to bring back in-person keynotes now because John Ternus is there. I'm like, I don't know that that makes the thing. But interestingly, when the MacBook Neo, there was an event in New York and there was one person on stage doing stuff live. And it was John Ternus talking about the MacBook Neo. And there's some interesting photos after that event in the press area, people who were there. There's, like, pictures of John Ternus by himself standing by the MacBook Neo. And John Gruber pointed out, like, that's the last time that will ever happen. Because now whenever John Ternus is in the room, there's going to be a swarm of people.

37:44And I think the one word I feel like to describe Tim Cook's era, he was the best steward Apple could have hoped for. He stewarded the company, made it what it was today. And I think John Ternus will continue to steward it and something. I think there will be something else there. Well, the reason that's such a good word is steward means to manage something that belongs to someone else. No, really. That's what it means. And Tim Cook, in two ways, did that. He managed something that, in his mind, I think still belonged to Steve Jobs and belonged to shareholders.

38:20No, like, for real. Like, I mean, I think Tim Cook was the single best at that. And Jon Stewart, I think, Jon Stewart. Jon Ternus. Jon Ternus is a steward. I think what he will do is continue to steward the company in a very different way in some ways. Like, he's going to be managing something that is much bigger than him, right? He came up in a very different way at Apple. And I think it'll be, I think, but I don't think, like, no one should expect Apple to have the same kind of exponential growth over the next 15 years than it did today.

38:50Well, I don't think that would even be possible just from a practical, like. Just from math. From math, the amount of people in the world, and the products that actually are ubiquitous. I mean, AI is taking all of our jobs, and we're all going to have universal basic income anyway, so it doesn't matter. I don't know. Well, on that note, I do want to talk about Tim Cook, what he's staying on to do, the failures that he admitted to, and Johnny Cerugi being around. I'm glad he's sticking around. I'm glad they elevated him to do that. Well, before we do, let's take a break, and let's thank our friends at Framer.

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41:02Our thanks to Framer for sponsoring this episode and our friends at Granola. There are so many tools to try to record or transcribe your meeting, but a lot of times they're locked into the application that you're using, whether it's Zoom or Google Meet or Riverside. Well, Granola is a tool that can kind of get behind all that. It runs on your Mac as an app, and it's just going to take your audio and do all the fun AI stuff. It's an AI-powered notepad built for the way people actually meet. So you take rough notes like you normally would, and in the background, Granola securely transcribes the meeting, turns everything into a clean, structured, actually useful notes when the meeting ends.

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42:07You can try it totally for free for three months. Just go ahead to granola.ai slash primary. That's granola.ai slash primary to get your time back. The link is also in the show notes. Get three months for free at granola.ai slash primary. Thanks to Granola for sponsoring this episode. And finally, yes, our friends at Claude. Now, we're going to talk later in the show that the next part won't be sponsored. This part's sponsored. But Jason did use Claude to provide code an app. And I'm using Claude pretty much all the time to build shortcuts, to ask it for research things now.

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43:42That's Claude.ai slash primary. Check out Claude Pro, and that includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.ai slash primary. Thanks to Claude for sponsoring this episode. All right, I want to talk about your second article, which Tim Cook, he's moving into the chairman of the board at Apple. So he's still going to be around, he's still going to be doing things, and mostly this line, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world. And this was one of the reasons why a lot of journalists and people in the tech space were like, maybe Tim Cook's not going to leave until the administration changes, because Tim Cook has been, you know, heavily involved with doing things and kind of smoothing things over with tariffs or whatever, so maybe he won't leave.

44:27Well, now he can continue to do those same things, but doesn't have to be CEO. He can do that as chairman of the board. Yeah, I think Nilay Padil said it best on the first cast where he talked about, like, you just can't introduce the current president to a new guy.

44:41He's not going to learn a new guy at this point. It's going to have to still be Tim. It's just got to be Tim. And I do think, like, it is his most important job. I don't know that he wants to do this, but I think what it does is set up John Ternus for the best amount of success. I imagine that Tim Cook is going to show up at board meetings and then go talk to policy people, and I don't think you'll see him a ton in Cupertino for a while to give John Ternus as much runway as he can and as much opportunity to put his own impression on it.

45:14And then when it's kind of like when, this is a terrible analogy, but it's like after, was it Hurricane Katrina, when George W. Bush sent Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, I think it was, to go, like, raise money for him or something like that. It's like, you're going to call on the other statesmen and be like, Tim, I keep getting calls from the White House. I haven't been answering them. Do you think you could get on a plane right now and go to Washington, D.C.?

45:46Why are you still here? Could you please go to Washington, D.C.? And so, I mean, I think it's great for Ternus that Tim Cook will be around still handling those things. And just in the general running of Apple, like, this is, again, a difference between Tim Cook taking over CEO and Ternus. Tim Cook could not go to Steve Jobs and ask him a question, like, what should I do in this situation? Where is the toilet paper in the executive bathroom? Where did you hide my Vision Pro inserts? Because I can't find them.

46:16Why are there just boxes of Vision Pro in this office? Like, why are there thousands of them? I thought we sold a couple million. Why are they? Why are they all in your old office? That's right. So, that is an advantage that John Ternus has, is that if he has a question or needs help with the supply chain or whatever, like, Tim Cook is literally here, going to be the chairman of the board probably for years. Like, Ternus has that resource. And that's something, to Tim Cook's credit, he didn't have that opportunity to be able to ask Steve Jobs and yet was as successful as he was.

46:52So, that speaks to, I think, Tim Cook's just being a great CEO, but also optimistic for the next phase because he's around and gets to do some of the dirty work. Yeah, less than five years. That's my guess. Less than five years as chairman of the board? Yeah. Why would he be around longer than that? The guy wants to retire. If he wants to be. I don't know. I guess it's up to him, right? I bet, I bet, I mean, I bet it's less than five years. I don't think that this is a permanent decision of, like, we should just do this for a long time. Right. I think eventually he'll go spend money or get involved in philanthropy or something.

47:28I don't know. Like, but I just don't think, you can mark it down five years from now. My guess is that it'll be. Maybe he'll be in Nike commercials. You know, he loves Nike. Maybe. You know what I mean? Maybe him and Jeff Williams are going to go start, like, an athletic, you know, wear clothing brand. Isn't Tim Cook on the board of directors at Nike, too? I don't know, but I think Jeff Williams is on the board of director of somewhere, right? Did he just join a board? Maybe. Yeah, he's served on the board since, like, 2005.

47:59Oh, Disney. Disney. Jeff Williams just joined the board of Disney. That's right. See, these guys are going to be around. They're going to be around. But also, so the last thing about Tim Cook, and then we'll cover Seroogia and some other lightning round news. In the town hall that Tim Cook did at Apple, and I'm going to show this article because I paid $35 just so I could read it. So if you want to join our membership program, join the primarytech.fm slash join. Is that right? Just click bonus episodes and ad free, and you can support the show right there.

48:30That'd be great. So Tim Cook, this is in the town hall. He talked about some of the failures during his tenure. One, not a failure, but he fondly remembers the Apple Watch as probably, like, his high point. You know, he did get, that was a main product he got to introduce. The Apple Watch in 2014, which was the introduction, and then it went for sale in 2015. But Tim Cook was on stage. He got to do that announcement. He sees that as a huge win. Then also, he remembers the Apple Maps launch and missteps like AirPower, the wireless charging mat, which never came to be, and also the decade-long self-driving car project, which also never

49:06came to be. But when he talks about Apple Maps, which, again, I think is a good mark of a CEO. He said, you know, we apologized. This is him talking. Quote, we apologized for it, Apple Maps, and literally said, go use these other apps. They're better than ours. And that was some humble pie, but it was the right thing for our users, and so it's an example of keeping the user at the center of the decisions we make. I think that goes to your point. Like, Tim Cook, you know, he reads those emails every morning. He did care about users and heard, you know, how they were using it and what they should do.

49:36But now he says, Cook said, quote, now we've got the best map app on the planet. We learned about persistence and did exactly the right thing, having made the mistake. So now we're adding ads. No, he didn't say the last part. But I do think it's a little ironic. He's like, we have the best map app on the planet, and we're going to monetize it. Yep. We have accumulated a large enough base of users now that we can get eyeballs into money. That's right. We're going to show them ads. But no, that was him talking about, and you know, I still kind of wanted to see AirPower.

50:08I wish I could get some kind of AirPower prototype on eBay, but you know. And then Johnny Suruji, who I think it is hilarious that Mark Gurman reported that he was almost out. And then Johnny Suruji leaked the memo that, no, he's not going anywhere. And now he's been elevated, maybe to help him stay around, maybe to encourage him to stay. But Apple's chief hardware officer. So he's going to be around for a little while making those great M chips and all the like. Yeah. And I mean, Johnny Suruji is one of the most important people at Apple because Apple Silicon,

50:40Apple Silicon, Apple Silicon, whatever, is such a critical piece of their strategy. I mean, I'm sitting here with a MacBook Neo. It's running full blown Mac OS on an iPhone chip and not even a new iPhone chip, an old iPhone chip. Yeah. And it's phenomenal. Right. Like, it's incredible. So yeah, keep the guy around as long as possible. Keep the guy around. And I will link Gruber's article as well. You know, he talks a lot about Tim Cook and Ternus. And one of the points he makes, a part of Tim Cook's legacy that will probably not get a

51:10lot of airtime, is that there were no like recalls or major product failures under his tenure. And there's a great video from the Artemis 2 moon flyby where they took a photo of the Earth with the iPhone. And like, it was the Zoom. And to Tim Cook, Greg Joswiak, like, they didn't tweet about the iPhones being on the spaceship until they came back and were safe. And as soon as they like got out of that pod in the Pacific, they hit tweet. And they sent the tweet like, hey, we're so glad they took the iPhones on this trip, which

51:43again, smart, you know, just ops, you know, you don't want the thing to burn up on reentry and have been touting how cool it was that you got to be a part of it. That. And so, you know, they were smart with that. But I think part of the reason NASA put iPhones on that spaceship is because while Samsung makes great products and for a long time has not had these kind of issues, there were a couple of Samsung phones that like blew up. I think one even on a plane. Like also, this just occurs to me that the biggest scandal surrounding Samsung's cameras

52:13is that if you took a picture of the moon, it just replaced it with a generic photo of the moon. Oh, I didn't even think of that. Now I wish they had brought it to see like, what is it going to do? Well, it generated an AI photo when we're literally right next to it. Oh, that would have been hilarious. I do think that this does explain the timing. If you're Tim Cook and NASA just published pictures with your most recent product, your flagship product, the entire world is watching and paying attention to this. I don't know that there's anything more you can accomplish in your role.

52:44It's just, I'm done. I did it. That's fair. Yeah. The iPhone literally went to and around the moon. So anyway, I'm, I'm optimistic about the next phase of Apple. I don't expect some kind of crazy like innovation. This, like, I don't think you're going to have AR glasses in September. You know, I don't think we're going to see that, but I'm bullish on Apple moving a little quicker, maybe in areas like AI and to, you know, try some, do some new stuff. Like let's innovate on some new product, product categories. And yeah, I'm excited to see what Ternus does.

53:16That's it. Yeah. I will say the keyboards, he did have, those, those were recalled multiple times with butterfly keyboard. Well, yeah, they did. They fixed it. And then it's like, oops, and then they fixed it. And it's like, oops. And then they just had the, they had the whole keyboard replacement program for like years. I don't have any inside information on this, but I'm going to just blame Johnny Ive and say, Johnny, I've required something. And so Ternus had to make it happen. But I'm just saying you said there was no recalls on, and I think the keyboard is a pretty big, big exception to that. It's a fairly important piece of, I mean, as someone who uses keyboard all day long,

53:47it's pretty important. That's fair. But of all, but it didn't blow up. You know what I mean? No one had a keyboard blow up. Touche. No keyboards caught on fire. All right. Let's do a lightning round of stuff. And then we've got to talk about your app. I do want to mention ChatGPT and OpenAI announced GPT Images 2.0. And say what you will about image generation. You know, I'm not all that. But every once in a while, I do put a thumbnail through an AI system to see, like, how it can adjust the image. And so I did a test with 2.0, and I will say it is markedly improved.

54:18And so this was a shortcuts thumbnail that I never used this thumbnail, to be clear. I used a different one. But this was what ChatGPT gave me as an image before. So before Images 2.0, which looks a little, like, a little crazy. Like, let's be honest. I don't look great in this image. But I gave the same image and the same prompt to GPT Images 2.0, and I got this, which was much better. The text is sharper and clearer.

54:49It didn't garble any text. I don't look very shiny or round. It's called Giamatti. Exactly. Like, I look real, like, more real. And so GPT Images 2.0 did better. This was the original image for what it's worth. And it's me with just some shortcuts overlaid. And there was the prompt, if you want to see what I did. I gave it pictures of Gambit and my picture and told it to do the thing. And yeah, GPT Images did a much better job than whatever was before it. It just had the AI image, just weird things with a face.

55:21Like, it makes it super smooth and, like, yeah, it's weird. You have to tell it to use accurate skin textures. Oh, is that a thing? You just tell it? That's a real thing. I mean, I'm not saying it would have made this picture better, but it is a real thing. Okay.