I am not here to bury Tim Cook, but to praise him. Last month¡¯s announcement that the Apple CEO is handing the job to hardware chief John Ternus in September has been met by assessments questioning ¡°whether the company is prepared for a future beyond the iPhone¡± and how Apple¡¯s lagging performance in artificial intelligence is ¡°raising questions about whether Cook should lead from here.¡±
Cook seemingly built the world¡¯s most valuable company but fumbled his final act. Maybe so. Or maybe the man who created trillions of dollars in shareholder value is still seeing a few moves ahead.
The critiques didn¡¯t start recently. Thirteen months ago, John Gruber, a long-respected Apple commentator, wrote ¡°Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino.¡± Apple, he said, had promised a personalized Siri it couldn¡¯t deliver and run ads for features that still don¡¯t exist. The Cupertino, California-based company, Gruber wrote, had squandered credibility it had spent two decades building.
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