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   From: leroysoetoro@americans-first.com   
      
   https://fortune.com/2025/07/12/apple-ceo-tim-cook-leadership-stock-   
   outlook-ai-strategy/   
      
   It seems impossible that Tim Cook’s legacy as Apple’s spectacularly   
   successful CEO could be in jeopardy. But in recent months, and especially   
   in recent days, the impossible has become at least conceivable.   
      
   The latest tremors came when Apple announced chief operating officer Jeff   
   Williams would retire by yearend after 27 years. Just a day before, the   
   company’s top AI executive, Ruoming Pang, had left to join Meta, and weeks   
   earlier, another high-level AI researcher, Tom Gunter, had also left. The   
   image of a leadership exodus was forming.   
      
   More broadly, Apple stock is down 7.2% over the past year, while the S&P   
   is up 6.5% and the Nasdaq is up 12.9%.   
      
   Those events brought some of Apple’s most worrisome weaknesses into the   
   forefront. Above all: an apparent serious lag behind competitors   
   incorporating AI into products and services. Last year, with Hollywood   
   fanfare, the company introduced Apple Intelligence, a version of AI that   
   only Apple, creator of the world’s most user-friendly products and   
   services, could possibly create. But it isn’t working out that way.   
   Playing down Apple Intelligence so far, the company has a partnership with   
   OpenAI for some chores performed by Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri, and   
   it has reportedly considered a partnership with Anthropic and partnering   
   with or buying Perplexity AI.   
      
   For a company of Apple’s scale and stature, lagging behind its major   
   competitors on AI is like lagging behind the competition on the internet   
   in 2000. AI is a general-purpose technology, and those things don’t come   
   along very often. The internet was one. So were digital computing and   
   electricity. They change the world, and they revolutionize the business   
   landscape for every company.   
      
   With that in mind, it becomes clear how Tim Cook could be one of the all-   
   time greatest CEOs from 2011 to now yet might not be optimal for the AI   
   era.   
      
   As background, remember just how staggeringly successful Apple has been   
   under Cook. When Steve Jobs made him CEO, the company was worth about $300   
   billion. Now it’s worth $3.2 trillion—a remarkable compound annual growth   
   rate of 18.4% over 14 years. Few people realize that Cook has created far   
   more shareholder wealth than Jobs did.   
      
   But now look closer. Craig Moffett, a founder of the MoffettNathanson   
   research firm, is one of the extremely few Wall Street analysts who have a   
   Sell recommendation on Apple stock. He is also a Cook admirer. “By any   
   normal metrics he has had a wildly, wildly successful tenure,” Moffett   
   says. But then he examines how that success has been achieved. “They   
   haven’t produced a major new product outside of possibly the earbuds in a   
   decade,” he says. “Apple has done far more to innovate process than it has   
   product over Tim Cook’s tenure.”   
      
   No one can deny Cook’s record, Moffett says, “but to be fair, it has been   
   by exquisitely executing strategies and manufacturing products that were   
   set in motion years before.”   
      
   The issue of product innovation becomes especially important now because   
   it isn’t yet clear which products will be right for the AI revolution.   
   Jony Ive, Apple’s longtime design genius, left the company in 2019 and is   
   now working with OpenAI; rampant speculation has him creating a new device   
   for AI, maybe a pendant or a pen. If any such projects are underway at   
   Apple, they are deeply hidden.   
      
   Among known products, Apple’s Vision Pro goggles are a high-end niche   
   item, and its HomePod and HomePod mini smart speakers have been modest   
   successes. But if smartphones aren’t at the center of life in the AI   
   world, Apple could be hurting. “There is this nagging question among   
   investors,” Moffett says, “which is increasingly causing disquiet that   
   Apple is unprepared for something that transformational.”   
      
   Cook could still surprise us. After all, Apple is famously secretive.   
   Maybe it will suddenly reveal a stunning new device or service. Maybe it   
   will buy a major AI company or partner with one, changing the whole   
   competitive landscape. If that happens and succeeds, Cook could cement a   
   position as one of the all-time great CEOs. But if none of those events   
   happen sometime soon—they seem unlikely—then the Apple board of directors   
   must remember that no CEO is right for all seasons, and the advent of AI   
   heralds a new season fundamentally different from the past 14 years.   
      
      
   --   
   November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look   
   forward to America being great again.   
      
   We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that   
   stupid people won't be offended.   
      
   Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.   
      
   Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama   
   / Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.   
      
   Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the   
   The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood   
   queer liberal democrat donors.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)