What Tim Cook built

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Are we really looking at a situation [with] the breaking apart of a global economy, along with the rise of artificial intelligence changing how business gets done?” Keep reading for a preview — edited for length and clarity — of our full conversation. Anthony: The decisions that Apple makes also trickle down to a bunch of other companies, because there are all kinds of startups that maybe don’t build their entire business on the iOS platform, but certainly a significant part of their business comes on the iPhone. Kirsten: I think it’s been really interesting to see the different pockets of the tech world responding to whether this is a good or bad move and [asking] what were the successes of Tim Cook and what does Apple need now? var playerInstance_jwplayer_6a7dff276837f = jwplayer( "jwplayer_6a7dff276837f" ); playerInstance_jwplayer_6a7dff276837f.setup(); If you look at a certain camp, it is very much like, “John Ternus is a product guy and this is going to be amazing” and it’s very nostalgic and going back to Steve Jobs.

But I think what people forget is that Tim Cook actually made another product, which was completely around operations. And there has been some really interesting coverage, in even books that have done deep dives into this. His operations strategy is an Apple product.

And it changed whole economies. The question to me is: What happens when a strategist and operations guy leaves? Who is filling that void?

Because you can make great products, and that’s very important in the Apple universe for sure. But you need to have an operations strategy. And the world is changing, it isn’t the same as it was when Tim Cook was first building this out.

Sean: It isn’t, but it’s hard to imagine a better running start to get as a new CEO than the company that Tim Cook has built. As much as people complain about some of Apple’s products stagnating, the iPhone hasn’t really changed the design in many generations, whatever new products you do get are very kind of niche and overthought, like the Vision Pro — for all of that, the company’s numbers just sort of keep going up. They’re bringing in a ton of revenue.