Farewell, Tim Cook: An era-defining CEO who hung on too long

The useful part

Macworld If Apple CEO Tim Cook retired on his 60th birthday, back in 2020, this article would be considerably easier to write. We'd start with the phenomenal strides made by the company under his watch: We could discuss the cultural impact made by the Apple Watch and AirPods, the canny pivot to services, and the regulatory storms navigated with deft tact.

How it works

• Ultimately we would agree that his quieter, more dependable qualities had been sadly underrated in comparison with the flashier genius of Steve Jobs, and bid him farewell with an outpouring of positivity.
• Instead Cook stuck around, perhaps influenced, towards the end, by the sound of senior executives stampeding past his office on their way out.
• The mass exodus was carefully orchestrated, he insisted, knowing that his own departure would only make things look worse.
• That departure has now finally arrived, and John Ternus will take the top seat tomorrow.
• Those additional six years have made Cook's corporate eulogy rather more of a challenge.

What to take from it

On the product side, there have been groundbreaking and successful launches, but the produ...