John Ternus to become Apple CEO

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Tim Cook’s Legacy

  • Widely seen as an exceptionally effective “operations” CEO: supply chain, logistics, and finance scaled Apple from ~$350B to ~$4T market cap, with much higher revenue and strong margins.
  • Credited with Apple Silicon transition, Apple Watch, AirPods, AirTags, Apple Pay, services, and major growth in privacy branding.
  • Criticisms: slower “hit product” velocity vs Jobs era; heavy tilt into services/lock‑in/ads; canceled or niche efforts (Vision Pro, Apple TV+, Mac Pro, Apple Car); software quality and UX perceived as declining.
  • Mixed views on his political legacy, especially relationship with US administrations and use of gifts/donations to secure regulatory goodwill.

Choice of John Ternus as CEO

  • Seen as a clear “hardware guy” choice; many are cautiously optimistic this means continued strength in devices and possibly higher quality standards for software.
  • Some hope he brings hardware’s testing/QA discipline to software; others note leading software like hardware can backfire given different lifecycles.
  • Surprise that other visible execs (e.g. software and operations leaders) were not chosen; some speculate age, track record, and recent exec reshuffles played a role.

Hardware vs. Software

  • Broad consensus: Apple hardware over last 5–10 years is excellent and often best‑in‑class (M‑series Macs, laptops, watch, AirPods, industrial design), though cameras, battery, ports, and gaming GPUs are cited as lagging specific competitors.
  • Many see macOS/iOS/iPadOS as increasingly buggy, slow, and inconsistent, with UX regressions (e.g., “Liquid Glass” design, System Settings, windowing/spaces, Safari quirks, aging Finder, Apple Music, Photos, Siri).
  • Linux and Windows are frequently mentioned as better for power users, development, window management, or composability, though Apple is still preferred by many for “whole package” polish.

Privacy, Lock‑In, and Politics

  • Strong appreciation for Apple’s relative emphasis on on‑device privacy and not monetizing user data like Google/Meta; others say this is primarily positioning aligned with its hardware business model.
  • Concerns about push‑notification metadata, law‑enforcement cooperation, and omission of some data from transparency reports.
  • Heavy criticism of platform control: App Store rules, difficulty sideloading, mandatory WebKit on iOS (outside EU), lack of official Linux drivers, and ads in App Store/Maps.
  • Some hope new leadership will soften anti‑competitive behavior and reduce in‑OS upsell prompts; others think shareholder incentives make that unlikely.

Regional Software Quality & Maps

  • Apple Maps heavily debated: considered “fantastic” and a credible Google Maps alternative in some US and select markets, but “borderline useless” or error‑prone in many parts of Europe, India, Poland, etc.
  • Discussion highlights slow global rollout, poor POIs, routing oddities, roundabout instructions, and localization issues, versus Google’s enshittification, ad load, and its own errors.

Expectations for the Ternus Era

  • Hopes:
    • A “Snow Leopard‑style” cycle focused on stability, performance, and UX consistency.
    • Less aggressive services/ads push, more respect for power users, developer tools, and maybe better support for alternative OSes.
    • Smarter AI integration that leverages Apple’s local‑compute advantage without pure hype spending.
  • Fears:
    • Continued enshittification via ads and lock‑in.
    • Little change because incentives (services revenue, shareholder pressure) remain the same.