Calls for Tim Cook's resignation over Apple Intelligence miss that he has made Apple what ...
Apple's mistakes and even lies about Apple Intelligence are ultimately the responsibility of CEO Tim Cook, but he's not going anywhere -- and nor should he.
Tim Cook
It's true that the buck stops at the CEO, but without Tim Cook, Apple would not have so many bucks. So while there is much to criticize in how Apple has managed Apple Intelligence, there's also much we'll never know -- and no justification for wild cries for his apologizing or being fired.
This is what we know was wrong. Apple should not have released that ad showing a woman using Siri to remind her of the name of someone she'd met before.
It was an excellent ad. For all the hype over AI, there are rarely any use cases shown anywhere. And when a use is shown, it's something technologically impressive, or it's about buying something via your fridge.
Apple's ad was the first one where you thought yes. I would do that. I would use that feature.
Apple's ads show Apple Intelligence features that are fantastic -- and fantasy
So the fact that no, you wouldn't, because no, you can't, was wrong. It's not as if ads are documentaries, but there's a difference between "sequences shortened" and features being fantasies.
There's also a difference between showing Apple Intelligence as a demo at WWDC, and making it the reason to buy the iPhone 16e.
Tim Cook had final say on all of this, and Tim Cook actually said on video that "with iPhone 16e, we're able to bring Apple Intelligence to even more people."
Apple Intelligence seems to have suddenly turned a corner from successfully boring -- it didn't do much, but it did it well and privately -- to being inadequate. Apple is again being said to be behind the industry.
Looking from the outside, AppleInsider argued that everyone is a loser in the Apple Intelligence race. And then John Gruber went further, saying that Apple actively lied about Apple Intelligence.
Then leaping on this, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo was among many saying that there isn't the iPhone sales boost that Apple Intelligence was supposed to bring.
Apple Intelligence may have been launched too soon
Add to this the fact that nonsensical tariffs have led to Apple shares going down, and may mean prices go up, Tim Cook is not having an easy time.
Apple plays the long game
There's a presumption that all of these Apple Intelligence problems stem from Apple being forced to release the features early. That doesn't fit with how the company routinely ignores all criticism.
If it didn't, we'd have had a probably poor iPhone Fold more than five years ago.
Yet there is one piece of evidence that, for whatever reason, Apple is reacting to the rest of the industry. Sometime around Apple's "It's Glowtime" event in September 2024, the company abandoned talk of what it used to call Machine Learning.
Instead, from that point on, ML was barely ever mentioned, and everything was AI. There was no change in what Apple was doing, it was a change in the term it used.
There was then "Apple Intelligence," and Cook himself revealed that there had been debates within Apple about what to call it.
If the change from Machine Learning to Artificial Intelligence was very un-Apple, "Apple Intelligence" was typical of the firm. Not just as in it was prefixed "Apple" instead of the "i" of the Steve Jobs era, but in how publicly the name was derided, and then we all got used to it.
We will also get used to Apple Intelligence and what it actually does for us, when it does anything for us. And for the next few years at least, Tim Cook will be leading it.
What Tim Cook means for Apple
Steve Jobs himself reportedly worried that Cook was not a "product person." He seemingly does not have the interest, or perhaps obsession, over product design that Jobs or Jony Ive do.
Tim Cook (left) with Steve Jobs
But what he demonstrably had and has is better business sense than Jobs. For example, investor Warren Buffett explained the issue of stock buybacks to both Jobs and Cook, but it was Cook who did it on a massive scale.
Starting in 2012, Cook began the policy of Apple buying back its shares at intervals. Since then, Business Insider estimates that Apple has bought back over $500 billion worth of shares -- which is more than the value of Visa or JP Morgan.
Apple is at times the most valuable company in the world, valued at over three trillion dollars. According to figures by StockAnalysis, when Steve Jobs died Apple's market cap was $376.4 billion at the end of 2011.
Curiously, in 2011, that figure was also enough to mean that Apple was -- briefly -- the most valuable company in the world.
Cook doubled Apple's profit and revenue in under 10 years. But then in January 2022, the start of Cook's 11th year as CEO, Apple became the first company to reach a market cap of $3 trillion.
Tim Cook
If billions and trillions are hard numbers to imagine, here's another one. Apple could, if its valuation could be converted to cash without loss, give every person living in the continental USA a free iPhone 16e -- and then 13 spare ones. Each.
Or instead of laying out 64 iPhones to make one video, the group OK Go could completely cover 20.36 square miles with the iPhone 16e.
That's the size of New Haven, Connecticut, or Yonkers, New York, completely paved over with iPhones.
Or, based on figures from MacroTrends, Disney's market cap is currently $201 billion, so Cook's Apple could buy it almost 15 times over. Although he won't.
What Apple means for Tim Cook
Every Apple executive enthuses about how much the company means to them, and none talk about it financially. There must be ones who are in it for the money, but if Cook were in it for the cash, he could walk away from Apple Intelligence.
Whether he's truly passionate about Apple or would have been happy making any business grow, Cook is not some selfless saint. Instead, he is invested in Apple in every sense.
He could also be a lot richer than he is, though, and in fact he could be the richest man in the world, if he emulated Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk in how many shares he owns. While figures vary, Musk owns 13% of Tesla shares and Bezos owns 13% of Amazon ones, but Cook has 0.021% of Apple shares.
Cook also repeatedly sells off his shares, cutting his total down further. But if he were to own 13%, his personal net worth would exceed $470 billion, as of February 2025.
Rather than comparing him to today's Amazon and Tesla owners, though, compare Cook to Steve Jobs. When he died, Jobs's net worth was approximately $10 billion -- but most of that was Disney stock.
Jobs did own more of Apple, in percentage terms, than Cook does now, though. Jobs had about 0.24% of Apple.
Growth by design
Apple would not be the company it is today without Tim Cook. It would not even be close, and it might not have the financial security to invest in multi-year projects that might never pay off.
That appears to be what happened with the Apple Car. It surely isn't what will happen with Apple Intelligence -- which itself profited from the research done into the Apple Car.
And for a man said to be more focused on logistics and the business of Apple than its products, Cook has overseen some huge successes. Under him, Apple launched the Apple Watch, AirPods, AirTags, and the Apple Vision Pro.
But ultimately what makes Cook indispensable is that business sense and knowing how to play a much longer game than Apple's rivals. It is specifically because of Tim Cook that Apple has gone as far as it as with Services like iCloud+ and Apple TV+, for instance.
As iPhone sales continue to drop, Apple continues to rise because Cook has moved it to this broader base than just one product.
Apple Intelligence may ultimately be seen as a marriage of hardware products and software services. If it is, then as wrong as Apple and Tim Cook have been about how to promote it now, we will again see Apple being the model to copy for all AI.
Tim Cook won't resign over Apple Intelligence, and shouldn't. Calls for him to do so are folly. Instead, he will continue to reign over it.
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Comments
Cook was the perfect person to replace Jobs, but that was a long time ago.
https://forums.appleinsider.com/discussion/comment/3330877/#Comment_3330877
Back then I said the most important next step for him -- after many accomplishments-- was to pick a successor.
I don't think he should be fired over this AI thing. But after the Car debacle and now this AI thing, I think it's become increasingly clear that he really does need to work on identifying a successor and then retiring. He's done a good job, but it's close to time for him to go.
I don’t blame Tim Cook though as every tech company is expected to bet the farm on gen AI. Cook would be eviscerated by the markets if Apple didn’t have a gen AI strategy. There’s a lot of hype but no-one has a product that works as promised.
Could you please tell us which feature or features you felt that way about?
Aside from being raised to be hyperskeptical of anything said in an ads (and learned experience to exercise at least some skepticism about claims made in a keynote, reality distortion fields notwithstanding), I didn't have the author's reaction to the planned features of Apple Intelligence. I'm not saying that others may not have radically different reactions. I just want to know what the features that evoked them were in the author's case.
In actual experience, I've found Apple Intelligence features as rolled out of no particular use to me or downright annoying (I'm looking at you, email "sorting"), and as a personal preference (once again, others may feel differently), I don't want to share anything with ChatGPT or any other LLM, thanks, so that "feature" was always going to be turned off.
My iPhone is not new enough to offer Apple Intelligence, but neither my iPad Pro nor my desktop Mac have raised Apple Intelligence from the "No, thanks" grave of being switched off after OS updates on those systems, despite reports of that happening to other folks. May Apple Intelligence is good for something, after all? Namely, sensing when it's not wanted.... for some users.
Without Cook's vision for what Services could become, Apple would be in a world of hurt right now. We're not just past "peak iPhone,' it's past "peak smartphone," period, and there's no going back. The big doubt about Apple for years was, "What is it going to do when iPhone sales, inevitably, stall?" Cook developed and provided the answer: Services will eclipse iPhone profits over the next several years, not because iPhone profits are falling that quickly, but because Services revenue is growing much faster at margins near 80%. Apple is now the strongest it has ever been financially because it rests on the supports of Services, iPhone, Mac/iPad and Wearables.
Cook has overseen the development and deployment of Apple's own M processors, introduced without a hiccup and giving Apple a price/performance advantage it has never before enjoyed over competitors. And now he has overseen the development and deployment of Apple's first-ever modem--again without a hiccup--which will save countless billions in licensing fees and give Apple the ability to exploit the advantages of its own chip going forward.
But yeah, Cook has done nothing recently. Please give specific data about "declining quality" -- I'll wait. As for "missed deadlines" apart from Apple Intelligence... examples? The next version of Apple CarPlay requires individual negotiations with each car manufacturer, and I have no doubt that the apparent success of GM in abandoning support of both CarPlay and Android Auto in favor of a profitable system of its own has car makers considering whether they should follow GM's path.
Notice: the five blunders by Microsoft within the last 12 to 18 months.
But if the car, then why not blame Apple for their failures over their delayed TV set, the hot mess of the folding iPad, Macs still without a cellular connection, their flawed electric motorcycle, Apple ring, washing machine, solar powered router, 8” iPhone and all those other products Apple have never even announced. We know they were junk and were quietly shelved ….
Craig should have been axed some years ago though. iPad OS is a dog compared to what it could be, Apple Intelligence miss is on him etc.
Also puzzled why a company of Apples resources cannot keep rapid product development on all of their product lines in parallel.
Sorry, no.
I think a lot of Apple users know this and are simply not interested in AI - even if it’s Apple’s version. I get it. The last thing I want is some LLM making nonsensical statements in my e-mail messages to other people. I don’t need help writing. Get the heck out of my way. That’s why lots of Apple users are turning it off.
The only thing that worries me now is that if Apple relies too heavily on LLMs it can never have a reliable Apple Intelligence product. Why? Because LLMs hallucinate shockingly high percentages of the time. LLMs are just plain wrong - a LOT. I know Apple knows this. I know Apple has been developing neural processors for a long, long time. I know Apple has the best and brightest people. I know they are amazing managers - honest, caring, really great corporate citizens. So I trust they are doing the wise thing with Apple Intelligence, even if it takes longer. Doing things well takes longer. And I’m sick of those who can’t criticizing those who can.