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- [00:00]
Home Depot Announcer
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- [00:31]
Robert Arson
Burn your five pound weights. I'm Robert Arson. I'm an athlete and fitness instructor and I am telling you, unless you have been limited to lighter weights by a medical professional, they're honestly inexcusable. You need to be lifting heavy. And I'm talking especially to the women out there. Toned arms. What can your body do? This week on Project Swagger, what heavy means and rules to bring into your routine. Listen now.
- [01:01]
Podcast Host (Explain it to Me)
More and more Americans are finding themselves taking care of their kids and their parents at the same time.
- [01:07]
Robert Arson
Well, you know, I joke that there's a dark game which I was playing. Which family member will I disappoint today?
- [01:14]
Podcast Host (Explain it to Me)
How to care for others without burning out in the process. That's this week on Explain it to Me. Find new episodes Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:32]
Nilay Patel
Welcome to a live Vergecast, the flagship podcast of John Ternus, who we have to be nice to now because he's the new CEO of Apple.
- [01:41]
Dieter Bohn
How's that works?
- [01:42]
Nilay Patel
Hi, Nilay. It's been a day, my friend.
- [01:45]
Dieter Bohn
Yeah, it's been a day. Right at the end we're emergency podcasting.
- [01:48]
Nilay Patel
So the news obviously Tim Cook stepping down as the CEO of Apple. John Ternus, the not quite new, soon to be CEO of Apple. Neil just we got a bunch of stuff to talk about, but I'm just curious. Immediate reaction. Are you surprised A that this happened and B that it happened today?
- [02:10]
Dieter Bohn
I am very surprised it happened today. Like very, very surprised it happened today. Apple just turned 50. Tim Cook did a raft of interviews during that time in which he said he was not leaving anytime soon. So I'm.
- [02:26]
Nilay Patel
Which I would say is technically true. He's staying as the executive chairman. There's a quote that more or less makes it sound like Tim Cook's new job at Apple is to be the person who gets yelled at by politicians. Yeah. So he's not technically leaving. So I'm sure there will be people at Apple who will tell you he was not technically lying. And yet here we are.
- [02:47]
Dieter Bohn
Yeah, I mean, the role of executive chairman guy Guy who gets yelled at by. By Congress and by foreign governments is like a storied Silicon Valley role.
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Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [02:57]
Dieter Bohn
The immediate comparison I would make is to Eric Schmidt, who was the CEO of Google. He was the adult supervision for Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Larry Page became the CEO. Eric kicked himself upstairs to do politics and in particular like run around and get yelled at by Europeans. So this is a pretty standard arrangement.
- [03:15]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [03:16]
Dieter Bohn
Again, it's just the timing that really gets me because it's a sort of out of nowhere on a Monday evening. It's not like a Friday news dump. There was no rumble that it was going to happen and I in particular was expecting it to happen around the iPhone.
- [03:30]
Nilay Patel
Interesting.
- [03:31]
Dieter Bohn
Right. I assumed that we would get a John Ternus iPhone introduction and then a one more thing. It our hottest new product is John Ternus. Like I could. I had that staging in my mind. I wasn't expecting it sort of bomb to go off right after Apple 50. But again, the news is not surprising. I think we all knew it was going to be John Ternus. You and I have interacted with John Ternus many times over the past several years. He's always been very kind. He's in it like he is a hardware person. He will argue with you about USB C. So I'm excited for that turn for Apple in that specific way. And I'm not at all surprised that Tim Cook is going to stick around and manage China and manage Donald Trump. Like that is a totally different set of skills.
- [04:18]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, yeah. So is that. Is that your read of the breakdown? So basically John Tarnas, who was the SVP of hardware engineering, is becoming CEO. Johnny Sruji, who has been an interesting figure inside of Apple, there were rumors not that long ago that he was leaving. There's been this kind of executive parade out of Apple over the last 12 months. Some people saying essentially this is great news. Thank God they're gone. Like Alan Dye, who was doing design and a lot of people thought not very well. And then there have been a bunch of people who have left that were bigger losses. Johnny Struji, there were. There were rumors he was going to leave. He quashed those pretty aggressively. Is now getting John Ternus his old job, but then a little more. His new title is Chief Hardware Officer. And I believe you're the titles expert on the Vergecast. But I believe Apple is one of those companies that is very deliberate about titles. And so the idea that it's giving Johnny Shrugi a C suite title is a big deal. So this is like this is two hardware people being elevated to very important new positions inside of Apple. Should we take that as the sort of obvious sign that it feels like it wants to be that this is a company like doubling down on its hardware business?
- [05:30]
Dieter Bohn
Hey, Apple has always been a hardware business. It's pretty hard to get Apple software without Apple hardware. Except in the case of Apple tv, which is both a gadget, a service, a piece of software, a studio, a magazine insert. Who knows what is going on there. That's the only truly horizontal piece of software they have. That is people talk about Apple. Music is another one. Yeah, but that's about it really. I think Johnny Shi is really important Apple. There are a lot of people who thought that intel would poach him. There are big Jobs he could take that he is more than qualified for. I think Apple needs to keep him and you know, the future of their products is so intimately tied to their chip roadmap that elevating the person who has led all the chip designs into the role of sheep hardware officer, it makes a natural kind of sense. What we don't know is whether Sergey is any good at actually making hardware. He's great at making chips.
- [06:27]
Nilay Patel
He is very good at making chips.
- [06:28]
Dieter Bohn
There's lots of other bits and bobs that go into a great piece of hardware. That said, John Furnace is still going to be there. His background is hardware. You expect him to pay some attention to that as well. On the title front, Apple has usually like historically been really tight with titles. You can get up to SVP and that's, that's where you live. And famously Steve Jobs used to tell people that once they had an SVP title they had no more problems. Like their problems were their own. In the Tim Cook era that has totally been changed. Like everybody has had fake titles forever in the Tim Cook era. That's how he has managed his team. Like you're getting poached. You here's a Chief nothing title. Like Johnny, I have the Chief Design Officer title. It literally meant that he was retired. So I. It's unclear what this actually means in the day to day, but given their emphasis on owning the, the whole widget from chips to software to distribution to market, like you can see that this probably feels like more of a real title than not.
- [07:27]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean and I think I've been looking around seeing just sort of the immediate reactions. I went to CNBC where they started talking about the stock price and all this stuff this is going to mean and there is there's this swirl of stuff going on inside of Apple that I think is really complicated to pull apart and is going to be really interesting to see how it changes or doesn't with a new CEO. So there's Apple, the hardware company, right? Which it fundamentally is. Apple is the iPhone company more than anything else, but it also has these other giant hardware businesses. It sells a lot of hardware. It sells at huge margins. It has done so for a very long time. Apple is also increasingly a services business. And this is the bit of cnbc. I'm a financial genius now because I watched eight minutes of CNBC while I was getting ready for this. The Apple wants to be perceived as a software company making software margins, which is one of the reasons it has been pushing harder and harder into services. It has fought tooth and nail to continue to extract its 30% from everything that happens on the iPhone. There's a sense that, okay, even if the growth of our hardware business is going to stall, we're going to find more and more ways to make money from people. Then there is this mess that is AI and Apple intelligence and Siri, which Apple has largely whiffed on, but I think in a funny way has sort of come around on Apple, where, like, actually being the company competing to make the frontier model that causes the most problems is not a great place to be. And instead being the hardware on which everyone will do these things and thus you can extract your 30% rent becomes very important. So, like, there's. There's all this stuff just swirling around. And I feel like one easy read of this would be to say that, okay, Apple has seen all of this. And even if you think AI is the future, Apple's big bet is that being the hardware maker of the AI revolution is going to be vastly more important than, like, trying to go poach Demis Hasabis from Google to come run your company and be an AI company forever.
- [09:16]
Dieter Bohn
Yeah.
- [09:17]
Nilay Patel
Did I just twist myself into knots or does that make any sense?
- [09:20]
Dieter Bohn
You're. You're a little bit twisted, but let me help you untwist it, okay? The Tim Cook era is defined by Apple squeezing every dollar from every part of its business that it can. And, boy, has Tim Cook been good at that.
- [09:35]
Nilay Patel
He has.
- [09:35]
Dieter Bohn
And I'm not even saying the products are good or bad. I'm just saying it definitionally. The thing that Cook has done is say, well, we've run out of countries to sell iPhones in, and, you know, even if we spend all of our effort getting 10% more users to switch from Android. That won't move the needle because we're already so big. So what we're going to do is make all the apps, subscription apps and make all of our money every time you push a button on the iPhone. And we're going to fight tooth and nail with epic games about Fortnite in app purchases. Whatever it is that has worked on the other side. Every product line at Apple has now sprouted into 10,000 configurations. I can't tell you what an iPad is. There's so many of them that it, like, boggles the mind. And the iPhone is now 50 different iPhones. Oddly, the Mac has gotten more constrained. You know, you get the feeling Tim Cook doesn't pay as much attention to that. But like every other product, Apple is just like so many configurations at so many price points. Every price point from zero to $10 million, there's an Apple product for you.
- [10:40]
Nilay Patel
And there have been rumors recently about Apple both pushing further down into cheaper prices and higher into luxury prices. Like, this is a company that would like to sell you every imaginable thing at every imaginable price. Okay, so, and there's, there's the thing that Tim Cook is probably best known for, which is the like, unbelievable supply chain work that he's done over 15 years.
- [11:01]
Dieter Bohn
Right.
- [11:01]
Nilay Patel
Like, you talk about squeezing dollars. No one in this business is better at that than Tim Cook. And so it's like, I think he has found a way to squeeze every dollar out of the company. And everyone with its products in every way is like a perfect summation of Tim Cook's status of Tim Cook and its legacy. And you can either like that or hate it, but it is, it is. Boy, has it been good for business.
- [11:19]
Dieter Bohn
It is impossible to understate how hard that is.
- [11:22]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [11:24]
Dieter Bohn
Very few companies or people can pull off the just the one product. We're going to make a new iPhone every year at iPhone scale, and they do it every year without missing a beat. That is one of the most impressive feats in business history and manufacturing history and anything history. Like, there are armies that don't operate as. With as clean logistics as Apple operates the iPhone supply chain. Yeah, that's remarkable. Here's my big criticism of the Tim Cook era. They don't make enough stuff. They simply do not have enough products. They're not taking enough shots. And when they do take the shots, they put too much pressure on them in weird ways. The example I always go back to just, I think it's funny, is the introduction of the Apple watch where they just overloaded the Apple Watch with expectations and hype. And Bono was there and we all had to pretend the Digital Crown was an input method.
- [12:21]
Nilay Patel
I knew you were gonna say, it's like.
- [12:22]
Dieter Bohn
It's just like. It's so funny to me. Like, the Apple Watch, the Digital Crown
- [12:26]
Nilay Patel
was going to be as big as the touchscreen. That's like a real thing that they
- [12:28]
Dieter Bohn
said they made that case and it's like, guys, you don't have to. You can just back. You can just have more products. You can just try more things and see what works. The Vision Pro is the same way. They just like, overloaded this VR headset with all of these expectations because they weren't trying enough things. Right. Because the Tim Cook era is so much about optimizing the things that already exist. And certainly there are products during his tenure that are very important. Like, AirPods are very important. You make. You can go down the list. There's a lot of important products that came up. But all. Even AirPods are like, now there's 50 variations of AirPods. Yeah. And so there just weren't enough shots. And I'm kind of hoping that the Turnus era combined with sort of the pressure of the AI era, where everyone is trying to find the new thing, because AI does feel like a meaningfully different way to interact with a computer, that they just take more shots. Right. Not in the, like, crazy Samsung way, but just in the, like, they should make a home device that you can talk to. They should expand AirPods and doing something else. And I'm kind of hoping that having a hardware person at the lead makes them, like, try more things without all of that pressure. I'm not sure that they will, but that's my criticism of the Cook era, is that it was so deliberate because everything had to scale to a huge number, that sometimes their failures were even bigger failures than they needed to be.
- [13:53]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [13:58]
Podcast Host (Explain it to Me)
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You know, those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips? That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance. With over 19,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs so you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride. Download the State Farm app or go online@statefarm.com like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
- [14:24]
Robert Arson
Honest to God, like skinny, I want to be jacked without context. Tone and sculpt are rooted in diet culture. We're inheriting a lot of nonsense that makes specifically women feel like they have to Shrink in order to expand. And I'm just saying, no, let's just, like, lift heavy and, like, take up space. That's the expansion. I'm Rebben Arson, and this week on Project Swagger, I break down the strategies that helped me build confidence and feel at home in my body, especially after two babies. Listen now at Project Swagger, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [15:02]
Estad Herndon
I'm Estad Herndon, and this is America.
- [15:04]
Nilay Patel
Actually, we're all talking to each other to see what did we do wrong? What did we not see?
- [15:09]
Estad Herndon
I'm in Washington, D.C. this week to interview Ruth Ruben Gallego. He's a Democratic senator from Arizona, and he's been thinking openly about running for higher office, but he's recently run into some hot water because of his connection to Congressman Eric Swalwell.
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Nilay Patel
I have to learn from this, and I will learn from this. But, you know, for me, it's not a 2028 question. It's about what it means to be a better first boss in my office and also a better senator to my constituents.
- [15:37]
Estad Herndon
This week on America, actually, we asked Gallego about predatory behavior in Washington, his plans for immigration reform, and more.
- [15:52]
Nilay Patel
I mean, I also think you can look at the relentless drive to scale everything as a big part of the reason Tim Cook has made the political choices that he's made. You present Donald Trump with a big gold plaque because you want to make more money selling iPhones like, it's.
- [16:09]
Dieter Bohn
It's just.
- [16:10]
Nilay Patel
It's just what it is. And you can chalk that up to straightforward business logic. And I'm sure that's what Tim Cook would do. Like, this is the price of playing this particular game. But I think he. He has spent a lot of time during the Apple 50 celebration and even in some of his, like, his goodbye letter talking about the values and the beliefs of Apple. And I think the case against Tim Cook's legacy will be that he built this company into a hell of a business and kind of lost its soul. But what I wonder is, to your point about the products, I think the part of me that's really excited about somebody like John Tarnas is that there is somebody who thinks about and sort of lives inside of hardware, back in charge like that. That's just an exciting and cool thing. The flip side is he's been at Apple for 25 years. Like, this is not a cultural revolution hire on its face inside of Apple. Like, which is why I think you do this this way. If you're Apple, this is not Tim Cook being forced out. This is Not Tim Cook leaving on bad terms. Like, it's very clear this is being done in a way that everybody thinks sets Apple up for success. And in part that's being done because his successor has been at Apple for 25 years and knows the company just about as well as anybody. He's been on the executive team for five years. He's been a high level executive there since I think 2013. Like he, he is as Apple as Apple gets. And I think there is just something like in the walls at Apple that doesn't let you try and fail publicly. Right. Like I think all the time about this thing Google executives used to say, which is that one of the challenges of working at Google is that if you make something that doesn't reach billions of people, they'll kill it. Because Google's only focused on things that reach billions of people. So if they don't see potential for that, they'll kill it. But what Google will do is ship it. They'll ship, they'll ship every possible iteration of it, see what happens and then kill it. And I actually like the way Google does it is really haphazard and sort of ridiculous. But like, I also give Amazon a lot of credit. There was that run at Amazon where they were just like, we're going to ship every single thing we can even think of to make with Alexa in it. Some of it won't work, some of it will. This is the only way to find out. Apple is the precise opposite of that. Right. Like this is the thousand no's for every yes company. And you can chalk that up to Apple misses less often than almost everybody. But especially now at this moment where we have absolutely no idea what the next version of hardware is going to look like. Everybody thinks it's pins or it's glasses. I don't think it's either of those. I think it's something else that no one has done yet. It seems very unlikely that John Ternus is going to be the one who's going to be like, let's try a bunch of stuff in public and see.
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Dieter Bohn
Oh, I don't think that's gonna happen. And I'm making the comparison to Samsung on purpose.
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Nilay Patel
Samsung would ship them all too.
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Dieter Bohn
They would? Absolutely. And they have.
- [19:00]
Nilay Patel
Yes, they have already.
- [19:02]
Dieter Bohn
Samsung and Google and that version of Amazon. It's not like they won, right? Like Google has a bunch of very big products, but they are also well known for killing things that people liked. And Apple has its reputation for a reason. I don't think, I don't Think Ternus is going to break that? What I'm getting at is like only trying to manufacture big winners prevents you from ever seeing anything new. And it's what leads you to getting caught flat footed. Yeah. And by all accounts, Apple was caught flat footed by everyone using ChatGPT to just like fall in love with their laptop. And then they scrambled to understand it. They scrambled to launch Apple Intelligence. This failed because not everybody wants like super spell check to just interrupt them all the time. And then I got lucky because the turn that AI needed to take where it actually replaced like the touchscreen as your primary interface did not happen. Right.
- [19:53]
Nilay Patel
It hasn't yet.
- [19:55]
Dieter Bohn
Right. And you and I are talking like every week like there's some sort of app store for AI moment that needs to happen and no one knows how to do it or how it will work. And so that's not really what I'm getting at. What I'm getting at is they're not. There's so much pressure on every product to be a hit in the Cook era that they didn't make anything that wasn't hits. And so even things that you could make that were great in an Apple y way, they haven't done it. Like the HomePod. The people in our chat are talking about the HomePod. You could have just iterated on the HomePod.
- [20:26]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
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Dieter Bohn
There could have been a screen on the HomePod 500 years ago and they just didn't do it. I don't know why they didn't do it. I don't know what that argument looks like. I'm just sort of curious if having hardware people at the top changes the dynamic of that argument. And they say we have to at least start with something that we can make great. So when the time comes, it's ready. Like we've built the foundation for that. And I think they did that a lot in the Jobs era. Not for nothing. It was just Apple 50. So we've all read the coverage. Like you and I have both flipped through the David Pogue book. There was a lot more of that going on in the Jobs era. I don't know if John Dernis is Steve Jobs, but maybe some of that spirit comes back.
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Nilay Patel
Yeah, it's an interesting one. The HomePod's actually sort of a fun example because I think the thing the Jobs era, Apple did really well. Which ship the thing that got you to the thing. Right. Like one of the funniest parts for us going through trying to pick the best 50 Apple products ever was the first one, the one that was like the groundbreaking, brand new, incredible idea. Almost never was great. It was like a great idea. It was a big idea. It was a fascinating product, it was a fascinating launch. And then it's like the second or third one is actually when it became a really good product. And that requires a lot of dedication and a lot of interest in continuing to move the ball along again sort of in public. And there's been a little bit of that at the Cook era Apple, but to a much larger extent, it feels like what we've seen are much smaller ideas that are much less likely to miss. And when they do something that doesn't hit the HomePod being a perfect example, Apple kind of just pretends it doesn't exist. They just mothball it and don't talk about it anymore and sort of hope that it falls off the face of the earth. And the funniest thing about the HomePod is, like, lots of people who have HomePods really like them. They sound good. The problem was it was way too expensive. And so it's like if you just keep revving that thing, which again, maybe somebody who is sitting in the hardware in a different way and can see the roadmap differently and sort of understands how we get from here to there in a. In a much deeper way, looks at it and says, okay, I'm actually going to be able to sell the thing that we wanted to sell in three years. And, and, but I have to sell this one to get there. And that, that just requires being willing to play a different kind of game with your products then. I think Cook just really liked delivering perfect, polished objects. And when that's what you want, you. You can only make a certain kind of thing with a certain kind of risk tolerance.
- [22:54]
Dieter Bohn
Well, also, you know, the Cook era was defined, or the touch bar, which
- [22:59]
Nilay Patel
is the exception that proves all the rules.
- [23:01]
Dieter Bohn
We're never getting rid of this keyboard. No. I mean, the Cook era was defined by just absolute weirdness in the design part of Apple. Yeah, right. Again, it is interesting that this is all happening after Apple 50. So I can't help but think about the sweep here, but Steve Jobs, right before he died, just ran around saying two things that I think Tim Cook had to overcome. One, he kept saying that he'd figured out TV and he finally cracked it. And that was just a decade of bad ideas after that. And then two, he kept saying, johnny, I was the most powerful person at Apple. And so if you're Tim Cook, you're like, well, I'm not going to screw with that. And it turns out actually the most powerful person in Apple was Steve Jobs.
- [23:39]
Nilay Patel
Yep.
- [23:40]
Dieter Bohn
And he was. And Steve Jobs was like, no, we have to make products that work that people like. And Johnny, I was like, what if it was super thin forever? And there is something about that dynamic like made it happen. Right. And I think Tim initially deferred way too much to I've. And you could see that as Apple like hired a bunch of fashion designers.
- [23:59]
Nilay Patel
I mean that's a big part of the story of the Apple watch, right. Is that that was like the most form follows function thing Apple had maybe ever made.
- [24:06]
Dieter Bohn
And so. And then he brought that back and then there's, you know, just design turmoil at Apple resulting in what can only be described as the disaster of liquid glass. I still want upgraded Tahoe on my computers. I have a MacBook Neo and every time I open it and look at Tahoe, I'm just like viscerally angry at that computer. It's so cute and so stupid in the same breath.
- [24:28]
Nilay Patel
Apple doesn't notice.
- [24:29]
Dieter Bohn
That's one part of the Cook legacy is he managed through that. Jony, I've is no longer at Apple. The other part is this supply chain excellence and the ability to get more out of everything that they were making in sometimes very aggressive ways that cause them a lot of problems, but they still got the more. The question is whether all of that kept them from seeing new products for what they could be instead of putting pressure on something like the Vision Pro. And you know, the Vision Pro was like the subject of a Vanity Fair cover story because they couldn't let tech reporters actually at the thing because we would have all asked the questions that we all asked. We actually got the thing and there's just some dynamic there that you kind of hope that the, the actual product CEO, the person who's been building the products and thinks about the products in the beginning, changes in the culture. Now we all know that Apple's roadmaps are years long, right. So I don't, I don't think the whole thing is getting blown up tomorrow. But I'm, you know, you started talking in the beginning. They've gotten rid of a lot of executives. And you kind of wonder if that was Cook clearing the decks for Turnus to institute a culture change without having to be the person who fired everybody.
- [25:39]
Nilay Patel
Yeah, I mean it does seem very much like this has been in the works for a long time. I mean this has been. It's been publicly reported that Turnus was the obvious heir apparent for like many months. And planning like this takes a long time. And I think there's a reasonable case to be made that a lot of the org changes inside of Apple over the last year have been in one way or another about this change. And it is certainly true that for better or for worse, Turnus is going to have many fewer like Apple lifers to turn to than he might have otherwise. To be fair, he will still have lots of them.
- [26:20]
Dieter Bohn
Right. Like the.
- [26:21]
Nilay Patel
The executive suite at Apple is filled with people who have been at the company for decades. I think, like, would it have been fun if Craig Federighi had been named the CEO instead? And we just got to make fun of his hair the whole time. Sure. But he's still, and presumably not going anywhere. So, like, I think if you're. If you're waiting for a completely different Apple to appear from this, I think. I think you're wrong. But I don't think that's what you're saying. What I think you're saying is, like, this is a company that can continue to be Apple but maybe act a little more like Apple when it was smaller and not Apple when it was big. Right. Like, this is classic. Apple became the biggest company in the world. And you, you are incentivized in every way to act really differently when you're the biggest company in the world than when you're just like, trying to make fun of IBM at press conferences. Yeah. I mean, Apple is here to be that.
- [27:10]
Dieter Bohn
Apple is the global economy. I have a lot of criticisms of Tim Cook to issue.
- [27:15]
Nilay Patel
Sure.
- [27:15]
Dieter Bohn
I think the way that he is cozied up to Trump in ways that are contra to Apple's values, his own values, a lot of his customers values. There's a lot to criticize there. I think the way Apple has sort of kept up the way Apple has kept China at sort of arm's length even as they participate in the repression of the Chinese government, is he's done it masterfully. Is he still responsible for some. Of course he is. Right. The way that Apple has treated developers, you can issue all kinds of criticism. Tim Cook, he has built the company from something that was of medium size to the thing that like, the global tech economy operates around.
- [27:55]
Nilay Patel
Yep.
- [27:55]
Dieter Bohn
TSMC exists at the kind of scale it does because Apple ships that many iPhones. If TSMC goes under, nobody gets an iPhone anymore. Right. Well, that has, like, arguably kept a bunch of world wars from happening. Like, that's Apple's scale. I don't envy him for having to manage through all of that.
- [28:13]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [28:14]
Dieter Bohn
But I I. One thing that I think is easy to criticize is I don't think Tim Cook runs around having ideas for new products. And so Apple product development is executives having to argue through a gauntlet of their competitors and peers inside of Apple to get their product to the finish line and then ship it to people. And that has put too much pressure on it. You get the feeling John Ternus, who is a product person, is going to wake up and be like, we should do more MacBook neos. And then that might just happen because he's confident in his ability to make and ship products. And I think that little bit of culture change might be important for the future of Apple in a way that, you know, they've still got Tim Cook to run around and present Donald Trump with gold trophies for existing or whatever Donald Trump needs today to keep the tariffs low. And that. I'm. I'm just curious if that dynamic actually changes how Apple approaches its products. Because that's the most. That's all. Any big. The only reason anyone's in the chat is because the products are good. Yeah, it's gotta be because they're watching this in their Vision Pro right now. I hope my head is gigantic.
- [29:13]
Nilay Patel
Don't worry. It always is at any screen size.
- [29:20]
Dieter Bohn
From Iran to Venezuela to China, what is driving President Trump's foreign policy? Both Russia and China are big losers if there's a transition in the nature of the. Of the Iranian government, which again, is why I think we have to see this campaign through. I'm Jake Sullivan.
- [29:37]
Home Depot Announcer
And I'm John Finer. And we're the hosts of the Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week, Trump's former national security adviser, HR McMaster and deputy national Security Advisor Matt Pottinger join us.
- [29:50]
Dieter Bohn
The episode's out now. Search for and follow the Long Game wherever you get your podcasts.
- [29:56]
YourRichBFF
This week on Net Worth and chill. I'm breaking down the institution everyone's talking about right now, but nobody actually understands the Federal Reserve. With all the drama happening between Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell, you're probably seeing headlines and wondering what any of this has to do with your money. Spoiler alert. It's everything. I'll explain what the Fed actually is, why it exists, and how this one institution controls the interest rates on your mortgage, credit cards, student loans, and more. We're diving into why raising or cutting rates isn't just boring policy talk. It's the difference between affording a house or watching prices spiral out of control. Plus, I'm breaking down the current controversy over Firing Fed board members and why both Republicans and Democrats are firing freaking out about it. Because this fight isn't just political theater. It could mean real chaos for your wallet. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com YourRichBFF.
- [30:54]
Nilay Patel
I do think, I mean, I would, I would think if I'm becoming the CEO of a company like that, being able to say, here is a person at the company who has been here a long time, who has all of the cachet and all of the relationships, who can just go do that for me sounds amazing. Like, if I'm John Ternus, this has got to be the best possible outcome where Tim Cook can go off and, and make the deals and kiss the rings and glad hand with whoever you need to and give the plaques to whoever he wants to and you just get to make products. Like, I'm sure it doesn't actually sort out perfectly that way, but like, that's gotta be the dream.
- [31:31]
Dieter Bohn
I mean, I just every time, like
- [31:33]
Nilay Patel
nilay, what if your job involved no management of anything outside of just making the verge.com that would be pretty good. That's what I'm saying.
- [31:43]
Dieter Bohn
Although at some point, you know, Eric Schmidt left Google and they're like, well, we don't want to do this. You're soon there. You'll do the handshakes. One thing that I think about a lot is this is going to sound reductive, but I think this is true. I think this is a real consideration when you are a company of Apple's global scale and influence. I don't think Donald Trump can know a new guy right now in 2026.
- [32:09]
Nilay Patel
Sure.
- [32:10]
Dieter Bohn
Like, I think if Apple was like, Donald, Tim is leaving, there's a new guy. He'd be like, what? No, bring me Tim again.
- [32:19]
Nilay Patel
Travis, our producer, pointed out that Tim Apple sounds a lot better than John Apple.
- [32:24]
Dieter Bohn
Maybe actually Donald might be able to get John Apple. But like, legitimately, however you feel about the president, like, I think you have to concede, like, you can't throw new characters at him right now. He's very distracted by a lot of things. So I think like, maybe if there wasn't that dynamic, you'd be like, John, you're going to take the whole thing. But I think Tim Cook's job is to manage through the end of the Trump presidency because that is still very volatile and policy by truth social post is a thing that exists for all of these companies and you can't just throw a new guy in the mix. Yeah, like, it needs to be the Guy, he knows. And again, you can have all kinds of feelings about how that is, how Tim Cook has managed that. I have all kinds of feelings about it. But it, it does seem like a constraint. It's not like he, maybe, maybe Tim really just wanted to retire. And that's just not a choice. It's not a choice in 2026 if you're the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world.
- [33:19]
Nilay Patel
Yeah. We've been saying all along that you can't just leave at this particular moment if you're one of these CEOs.
- [33:24]
Dieter Bohn
Yeah.
- [33:25]
Nilay Patel
Like this just. This is the game you've signed up to play. That's what the money is.
- [33:28]
Dieter Bohn
Somebody else is watching on their Vision Pro.
- [33:31]
Nilay Patel
We love all of you.
- [33:31]
Dieter Bohn
How many. If you're watching on your Vision Pro, can you. Can we just get a hand up in chat? There's two of you. I'm just dying to see if there's three.
- [33:37]
Nilay Patel
And also, what would you give it out of 10? Please tell me. All right.
- [33:41]
Dieter Bohn
To people who are still on their Vision Pro watching us on YouTube live, it's tens out of ten all the way.
- [33:46]
Nilay Patel
That's very fair. And just know we love all of you and your strange spending choices. Real quick, before we get out of here. WWDC is in, give or take six weeks. What do you. What do you look ahead to differently knowing that this is coming? Do you have any different feelings about what Apple's about to show us? This is ostensibly a really big wwdc. This is when we're supposed to see the new Siri that we've been promised for a long time. This is when Apple fixes or doesn't fix liquid glass. This is, this is the future of Apple's software business in a meaningful, important way. I think I'm just curious what you look ahead to six weeks from now. The fact that this is announced now and not later.
- [34:30]
Dieter Bohn
Sorry, I'm completely distracted by the fact that we now just have like a Vision Pro chat, like fully Vision Pro themed chat of people giving 10 out of 10. It's very good.
- [34:40]
Nilay Patel
Okay, this gives me an idea. At some point, I don't know when, but at some point we are going to do a vergecast only for the Vision Pro.
- [34:48]
Dieter Bohn
I don't know how we're going to
- [34:48]
Nilay Patel
do this, but it is only going to be playable in the Vision Pro and it will be just for all of us.
- [34:54]
Dieter Bohn
So that, I mean, I'll. If John Gruber does it again, I'm confident there'll be. That's What I'm looking forward to most WWC is a live talk show in Division Pro. Here's. I'm actually curious about staging. I'm not somebody who like overreads keynote stories or announcements. My belief is always the products speak for themselves and the stories the companies tell and how they tell them are sort of secondary. You can, you can say whatever you want about the new iPhone. People are going to get them and they're going to, they're. It's how people use them that actually matters in this case. You got a new CEO, you got a new way of working. I thought the way they did the MacBook Neo was utterly fascinating. You and I were both at that event where I will never forgive myself for getting the, getting the screen technology wrong. Now I'm just embarrassed again just thinking about it. John Ternus was there. He was wandering around talking to people. Yeah, it was great. It was very loose, it was very casual. He was very proud of the product that day. It was very. If you were like looking to see who would be the next CEO of Apple, like his presence in New York that day was very much like, oh, this is going to be the next CEO of Apple. Like that was. It was very obvious. Everyone was there to meet him and there was. The laptop was very important but he was very present. I'm wondering if at WWC they get away from these ultra produced infomercials that had, I think really just sort of taken the life out of Apple events in a very real way and they just let him do it. And again, I don't put a lot of emphasis on companies keynote presentations. I think the products speak for themselves. But in this case that's a thing that I'm looking for because those ultra produced infomercials, Apple really likes them, they travel a long way. People watch them on the Internet at much higher rates than people would rewatch the live events. But isn't this a moment to be like, okay, the ultra corporate Cook era is over and the new product CEO is going to take over and talk and talk about the products in a way that makes it feel like he understands them deeply. Which was not a thing Tim Cook could do. Right. Again, you can have a lot. You cannot deny his overall success.
- [37:00]
Nilay Patel
Yeah.
- [37:01]
Dieter Bohn
But the criticisms are also fair game. And Tim Cook did not sit around. He never like sat down with us and was like, let me talk to you about the iPhone screen. Every other executive app would be like, I know you have feelings about this. This way I'm going to get into it with you and that was just not Cook's vibe. So I'm, I'm very curious if they start making it clear that Ternus has different strengths in some way at wwc.
- [37:25]
Nilay Patel
It is a fun way to think about those performances and they are very much performances as reads on who the CEO is and so what these things look like just as a reflection of Ternus's own personality and like what he thinks he can do on stage will be really interesting. I also think my, my Galaxy brain theory is that they did this because they think Siri is going to work. And, and like I don't think you do this if you then immediately are like, oh God, we're gonna fall completely flat at WWDC again and everybody's gonna hate Siri yet again. I think this, this to me feels like Apple thinks it's playing offense and not defense in a very real way. And I think like you, unless you think Siri is good, which it's not and hasn't been for a long time, but maybe it will be. I, you can't possibly be playing offense right now.
- [38:12]
Dieter Bohn
Can I just say, someone in our chat just said, I wonder if John Ternus becomes more open to gaming. No, like he's been there too long. It's in his blood to be like, I will say that the Mac is good at gaming and lie to your
- [38:22]
Nilay Patel
face, but he will, I, I can say confidently continue to ship you five year old games on your Mac at intervals that don't make any sense.
- [38:31]
Dieter Bohn
Is there a version of Assassin's Creed from two years ago that you've been dying to play? It will be in the next game. I promise you it will be there. That's what Ubisoft is for. Yeah, I mean I, you know, they, they licensed Google's models. It seems like a very complicated deal in which they get a lot of access that other people don't get, which makes sense. We, we're seeing Google start to pull it off on Android in small ways. Allison has tested the agentic features in Android. It's starting to work in small ways. Yeah, I, I, there's some evidence that it can do some of the things they want it to do. There's also some evidence that just letting Siri be a front end to Gemini will just be fine.
- [39:08]
Nilay Patel
Yeah. Or that maybe everybody hates AI and actually Apple is just going to like turn us, is just going to get on stage, light a Siri flag on fire and be like AI sucks hardware forever. And that's the new Apple.
- [39:22]
Dieter Bohn
I would take that, that would be the greatest Apple keynote of the past 15 years.
- [39:27]
Nilay Patel
I would enjoy that very much. I would. I would go to Cupertino for that one. Um, all right. We should get out of here. You and I both have children to feed and other stuff to do, but we're going to talk a lot about this the rest of the week. Our team is spun up on a bunch of coverage, a bunch of reporting. We have all kinds of stuff coming. You and I will be back on Friday show, presumably talking about this. Unless Sam Altman does something. You never know.
- [39:47]
Dieter Bohn
Yeah. What you got here was the pre reporting where we, we just reacted. Now we have all of our ideas. We have to go report them out.
- [39:53]
Nilay Patel
Yeah. Now we're going to go learn some stuff and then we will come back on Friday show with even more stuff. Thank you to everybody who's here in the chat. Thank you to all the folks on our team who got this done. Rude of anyone to put out news after 4pm But. But I'm glad to be here with you. This is so.
- [40:09]
Dieter Bohn
Wait, wait. Now we have a conspiracy theory. Someone says there's no YouTube chat on the Vision Pro. I don't know the answer and I never will, so I don't know what to tell you. All right, well, shout out to the people lying about being in the Vision Pro and the people who are in the Vision Pro Pro.
- [40:26]
Nilay Patel
Add that to the reporting list of stories I have no interest in accomplishing. To all of you in the Vision Pro, we love you, Neili. Thank you. It's good to see you, buddy.
- [40:36]
Dieter Bohn
Good to see you, man.
- [40:36]
Nilay Patel
That's it. That's the first cast.
- [40:38]
Dieter Bohn
Rock and roll.