苹果CEO交接：Tim Cook卸任，John Ternus接任

All right, Mark, this is a huge passing of the baton. Talk to us about this moment. How do you see it? Uh, this is a major change for Apple. In some ways, it's a bigger change, uh, than the transition from Steve Jobs to now. Uh, when Tim Cook had taken over from jobs in 2011. Obviously that was a blockbuster with jobs being the company's visionary and product creator. But cook had already served as interim CEO, uh, three times by the time he took over full time as CEO.

Right. And it was more sudden. So you sort of thrown into that jobs obviously, unfortunately wasn't around. Uh, cook is now going to be around and this is going to make things a little bit more interesting. It'll be fascinating to see how quickly turn this is able to reshape Apple in his own image. So Tim Cook was a supply chain genius. He was CEO before he became CEO. And what he was able to do is really, um, perfect.

How Apple sourced, uh, the materials for its various products. What is John Turner? His genius. What? What? You know, what area has he kind of perfected that he brings to the table? So remember when you had an iPhone, I don't know, five, ten, 15 years ago, and you would drop it and it would shatter immediately? Yes. Or get a giant dent in the glass would be everywhere. When was the last time you dropped your iPhone and the thing broke into a million pieces?

Can you remember? Probably not. I know, I've been dropping it quite a bit, but it stays intact. The case gets dented a little bit, but that's about it, right? Yeah. So that's the hallmark of John Turner's. Uh, what he's done is he's made Apple's products a lot more reliable using better materials, better processes to make them longer lasting. Right. And so Turner is going to continue with hardware innovation. They didn't necessarily replace him with a new hardware chief.

They elevated Johnny Fuji who was running the Harbor Technologies group. But Turnus is still going to be setting the agenda when it comes to Apple product development and heavily involved with that as CEO. I mean, he told employees that Tim Cook told him the best thing he can do is pick his spots, and those spots should be where he could add most value. And he believes adding the most value will be through hardware engineering and product development and inception.

And he's going to leave a lot of the nitty gritty stuff, right? The operation inside procurement, supply chain, legal, government affairs, services, software to his lieutenants on the executive team, leaning on them pretty heavily. It's cooked it in many areas. So stocks have been going up. Apple stock has been going up. It seems like investors are excited about this change. But it also seems like this is a pretty pivotal moment for Apple.

There are new very splashy products on the line. Scarlett and I were just talking about the foldable iPhone that everyone's kind of anticipating. Is this a very high stakes moment, or do you think this is a pretty safe transition? Oh, I mean, I think it's both I think it's a safe transition, but it's also high stakes and that they need to get these new products right. They've been working on this major new product roadmap for half a decade, and it's time to start seeing the fruit of that.

Uh, and we will, starting with the folding phone. Uh, next Wednesday, the 18 Pro Pro Max. Minor changes, new colors, better cameras, faster processors, watches, you know, new silicon, uh, new features and what have you. Uh, related to fitness tracking and heart rates. Uh, but the bombshell is going to be that foldable iPhone. And then that big new smart home device will be coming this year as well. Facial recognition.

You walk up to it knows who you are, and it'll preload all your content. Uh, basically like an Alexa, uh, Echo Show on steroids. But it's all your Apple stuff, so people are pretty psyched for that, too. So I guess one knock against Tim Cook was that he probably did not move the needle enough for Apple. And I, um, Apple kind of lagged behind its peers. And in some ways that might have worked out for the better as well, given that Apple didn't have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars the way that, um, its big tech peers did.

What does John Turnus bring to the table when it comes to AI development? I innovation? Uh, nothing. I look at this. It's so funny. Like in the NBA sometimes, uh, or in sports in general, a team will fire a coach because, uh, they didn't like their performance in one regard or another, and they'll elevate the assistant coach and will become the new head coach. And it's like, dude, you were there the whole time, right?

Where was your impact? Uh, and it's like, there's always a hope that you bring in someone new who was already there, and you're going to see a major, uh, major change. I think job number one fraternity is making those shifts related to AI and making it a bigger priority. But he's been there the whole time, too. And the guy running AI now has been there the whole time, too, right. That's our software chief, Craig Federighi.

And so the big changes to the AI leadership there happened already last year when cook fired the head of AI, John Jean Dreyer, and put in the head of the vision Pro as the head of Siri. And so I'm not expecting anything majorly different undertone is uh, from I in the short term, uh, then cooked it because if those changes were going to happen, they would already be, uh, in motion. And I'm not seeing that. Uh, but again, these things take time.

And so we'll see what happens. But I don't think the shift from cook to turn is, represents, uh, some major earthquake of changes that are going to happen immediately. Does Apple need to get into I mean, I'm not sure. Cannot afford to not do that, but also maybe it's in a different space. It's a little unclear. I think once we see the IPO's of OpenAI, uh, and anthropic happen, I think once we see how good these models get, you know, I was talking to someone yesterday and where OpenAI and thought are heading is not just them providing models, but these being models that could build their own models and build their own models.

So things are about to get pretty scary here. And so it would be nice for Apple to take a stance against this. Yeah. But it feels like it's something they fell into backwards. So we'll see what happens. I'm not expecting some sort of Apple AI revolution. What doesn't? Didn't OpenAI hire Jony Ive and are building out their own hardware for their AI offerings? So if anything, OpenAI and perhaps anthropic are moving into Apple space.

Uh, can't speak to anthropic. I don't know if they're doing that, but in terms of OpenAI, yes. Then Apple is suing, uh, suing them to a very large degree. And they keep throwing, uh, pot shots at each other. And so we'll see what happens there. You know, OpenAI put out a filing overnight that basically said that they can't get anyone from Apple anymore because everyone from Apple is too scared to come to OpenAI now thinking they're going to be sued, too.

And so we'll see how this shakes out. Uh, Mark, do you get a review copy of this foldable phone? Oh, yeah. It comes out. Absolutely not. I'm going to have to buy my own. But, uh, my colleague Chris Welch. Hopefully we'll get a review unit and he'll review, uh, the copy that Apple provides. And I'll review the one I bought in between the two of us. Hopefully Bloomberg readers will get a really good idea and probably different perspectives on, uh, what this phone is like.