Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing • Hacker News Board

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#91

Post by snowwrestler » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #48

snowwrestler wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Cook refreshing his 401k page every day to see if he’s ready to FIRE.

I know this is a joke. But when I was at Vanguard, something like 95-99% of our users literally just logged on, checked their balance and logged off. A decent percentage of the user base does that every day. So only a few percentage a day actually made a trade or anything else. I always found it pretty odd before I realized I only make a trade 1 or 2% of the time.

That’s how Vanguard keeps their costs so low, they just set a full page cache with 86,400 TTL and only a few people notice.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#92

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:47 PM UTC

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #73

havaloc wrote: post #9

Cook seems to be dragged for some of his decisions ( like China ), but he was the right CEO for the time. Ternus in turn seems to be the right CEO for this phase of Apple. I'm excited to see what Ternus does in the role! It's a homecoming of sorts having a product person and there has already been chatter he'll be more like Jobs in the role. If they can maintain their hardware lead and tighten up the software a bit,…

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to). I think Apple took some missteps…

> I do think the challenge for Apple going forwards (but also for Android) is going to be how to best take advantage of AI.

IMO one of their great advantages so far is that they have not blindly bought into the AI hysteria and wasted $billions on it. They've shown you can still have a great company without chanting the "AI is the future" mantra day in and day out. It would be pretty disappointing for a new CEO to drag them into the cargo cult and declare "We, too, must find something that we can do with AI."

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#93

Post by steveBK123 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:47 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #59

steveBK123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Ternus is the kind of leader who could bring 0->1 innovation back to Apple in some form. Maybe an Alphabet "other bets" type setup? Or simply just taking more chances on completely new product lines that may or may not pay off in 5-10 years (like VisionPro). I mean when was the last big new bet previous to VisionPro? Wearables, with the Apple Watch in 2015 is probably it, a decade prior. (AirPods are huge but f…

For a while people were talking about the "Apple car". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_car_project ; seemingly they gave up on it because they realized that FSD wasn't quite going to work. I'm not sure why they wouldn't just pivot back to making a regular EV, it would still be guaranteed to sell millions of units at a premium price point by being a Tesla without (a) That Guy (b) build quality issues like panel ga…

The other thing that always got me about the car was.. I wondered if the executives at Apple had all become too rich? Apple sells premium hardware but generally sells products in the 10s or 100s of millions of volume, so pretty mass market consumer good.

The car seemed to be solving the "what if we could make a $100k car"?

At some point of wealth people become so disconnected from normal everyday life of normal people that I suspect they lose the ability to identify problems & solutions that 200M consumers have/need.

I thought it was funny/telling that Ive's first product after leaving Apple was a limited edition collaboration project on a.. battery powered LED lamp for sailboats starting at $5k. He said it was inspired by the need for a durable lamp for his sailboat.

Not exactly bicycle for the brain / 1000 albums in your pocket / instant access to the world information kind of vibes.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#94

Post by schmommy » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:47 PM UTC

I appreciated Cook when I worked for Apple, but since, I've been disappointed with his lack of pushing the envelope like Jobs. He could have taken Apple to higher heights.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#95

Post by hattmall » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:48 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #59

steveBK123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Ternus is the kind of leader who could bring 0->1 innovation back to Apple in some form. Maybe an Alphabet "other bets" type setup? Or simply just taking more chances on completely new product lines that may or may not pay off in 5-10 years (like VisionPro). I mean when was the last big new bet previous to VisionPro? Wearables, with the Apple Watch in 2015 is probably it, a decade prior. (AirPods are huge but f…

For a while people were talking about the "Apple car". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_car_project ; seemingly they gave up on it because they realized that FSD wasn't quite going to work. I'm not sure why they wouldn't just pivot back to making a regular EV, it would still be guaranteed to sell millions of units at a premium price point by being a Tesla without (a) That Guy (b) build quality issues like panel ga…

An Apple car would be crazy expensive to develop and not really a guaranteed sell at all. There's millions of people that are very loyal to Apple of iPhone and wearable but going to an Apple car is a HUGE jump.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#96

Post by foobarian » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #73

havaloc wrote: post #9

Cook seems to be dragged for some of his decisions ( like China ), but he was the right CEO for the time. Ternus in turn seems to be the right CEO for this phase of Apple. I'm excited to see what Ternus does in the role! It's a homecoming of sorts having a product person and there has already been chatter he'll be more like Jobs in the role. If they can maintain their hardware lead and tighten up the software a bit,…

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to). I think Apple took some missteps…

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#97

Post by hattmall » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

heroicmailman wrote: post #25

steveBK123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Ternus is the kind of leader who could bring 0->1 innovation back to Apple in some form. Maybe an Alphabet "other bets" type setup? Or simply just taking more chances on completely new product lines that may or may not pay off in 5-10 years (like VisionPro). I mean when was the last big new bet previous to VisionPro? Wearables, with the Apple Watch in 2015 is probably it, a decade prior. (AirPods are huge but f…

I'm honestly shocked they haven't done more with HomeKit and in-home devices. Give me a low-power, always-on, iPad-mini style display on my nightstand, on my fridge, on my kitchen countertop, as a desk companion... there are so many things they could do with that form factor. They could even just offer me a dock or a mount as an accessory in most cases and it'd probably juice iPad sales, but they don't even do that.…

Yeah IOT / connected home seems like the most reasonable area but they are probably waiting for the market to mature a bit.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#98

Post by simonh » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #59

steveBK123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Ternus is the kind of leader who could bring 0->1 innovation back to Apple in some form. Maybe an Alphabet "other bets" type setup? Or simply just taking more chances on completely new product lines that may or may not pay off in 5-10 years (like VisionPro). I mean when was the last big new bet previous to VisionPro? Wearables, with the Apple Watch in 2015 is probably it, a decade prior. (AirPods are huge but f…

For a while people were talking about the "Apple car". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_car_project ; seemingly they gave up on it because they realized that FSD wasn't quite going to work. I'm not sure why they wouldn't just pivot back to making a regular EV, it would still be guaranteed to sell millions of units at a premium price point by being a Tesla without (a) That Guy (b) build quality issues like panel ga…

Nobody "uses" rack mount servers as artefacts, the way people use other Apple hardware products. Not in the same sense, so I don't think Apple can really bring much of the kind of value they usually do. In practice Apple data centres are Linux facilities, and that's fine. Maybe if they could come up with a really compelling reason to put Apple silicon in a data centre, but we can do that now with racked Minis or Studios.

https://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmac-studio/overview.h...

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#99

Post by reducesuffering » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:54 PM UTC

aworks wrote: post #43

retired wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being eligible for Medicare, Cook can finally afford to retire.

Likewise he can probably defer his Social Security payments until 70, in order to get the higher benefit... +1 for Medicare for the non-rich, though. I'm a retiree and the monthly payment is about 1/4 of what I was paying for health insurance before I was eligible.

> defer his Social Security payments until 70, in order to get the higher benefit

People repeat this but when I ran the math on earlier Social Security payments it seems like the accrued $, by the time you're eligible for the higher benefit, is plenty similar as bonus income.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#100

Post by samsolomon » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:54 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #92

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to). I think Apple took some missteps…

> I do think the challenge for Apple going forwards (but also for Android) is going to be how to best take advantage of AI. IMO one of their great advantages so far is that they have not blindly bought into the AI hysteria and wasted $billions on it. They've shown you can still have a great company without chanting the "AI is the future" mantra day in and day out. It would be pretty disappointing for a new CEO to dra…

Honestly, I'm pretty bullish on Apple and AI. I think there move is in local, open source models. These are getting better and better for generic ChatGPT—type tasks. I'm kind of waiting for Apple to ship their own Ollama. And it's going to be a huge win for both them and consumers.