2026-04-23 03:38:55
Daring Fireball t-shirts and hoodies are back. Order now, and we’ll start printing shirts at the end of this week and shipping them out next week. The hoodies are a new model from Bella Canvas, the manufacturer. Our previous hoodies were “heather gray” and the fabric was a blend of 50% polyester, 37.5% cotton, and 12.5% rayon. That model is being phased out. So we’ve switched to a new model that’s 85% cotton, 15% polyester, and a darker “heather black” color. The old ones were good, but the new ones feel even better.
2026-04-23 02:16:30
The New York Times (gift link):
A correction was made on April 21, 2026: Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated which day the New York Mets suffered their 11th straight loss. It was on Sunday, not Monday. Even the Mets cannot lose on an off day.
This is to New York Times corrections what “Headless Body in Topless Bar” was to New York Post headlines — perfection.
2026-04-23 00:35:37
Ben Thompson at Stratechery, “Tim Cook’s Impeccable Timing”:
Cook was, without question, an operational genius. Moreover, this was clearly the case even before he scaled the iPhone to unimaginable scale. When Cook joined Apple in 1998 the company’s operations — centered on Apple’s own factories and warehouses — were a massive drag on the company; Cook methodically shut them down and shifted Apple’s manufacturing base to China, creating a just-in-time supply chain that year-after-year coordinated a worldwide network of suppliers to deliver Apple’s ever-expanding product line to customers’ doorsteps and a fleet of beautiful and brand-expanding stores. There was not, under Cook’s leadership, a single significant product issue or recall.
That last sentence is something that Cook won’t get enough credit for. A major product defect or recall is just inherently more memorable than the lack of major defects or recalls. Compare and contrast to Samsung: 2016’s Note 7 was recalled for battery combustion; six other Samsung models caught fire in 2016 too; the early Galaxy Fold phones were an outright debacle. Nothing like that ever happened under Cook.
Cook also oversaw the introduction of major new products, most notably AirPods and Apple Watch; the “Wearables, Home, and Accessories” category delivered $35.4 billion in revenue last year, which would rank 128 on the Fortune 500. Still, both products are derivative of the iPhone; Cook’s signature 0 to 1 product, the Apple Vision Pro, is more of a 0.5.
I don’t think it’s worth discounting AirPods or Apple Watch as “derivative” of the iPhone. Yes, Apple Watch requires a paired iPhone, and while AirPods connect with Macs, iPads, and Apple TVs, they are of course primarily used paired with iPhones. But you can just as easily say that the iPhone was derivative of the iPod. And the iPod was derivative of iTunes. And iTunes was derivative of the Mac. And the iPhone was derivative of the Mac too, insofar as iOS and UIKit truly are stripped-down versions of MacOS and AppKit. Better, in my opinion, to simply give Tim Cook credit for overseeing the creation of two massively popular and successful new device platforms.
For Apple’s 2011 fiscal year, which covers the company’s last year under Steve Jobs, the company had $108 billion in total revenue. Inflation-adjusted that’s ~$159 billion in 2026 dollars. 2011 Mac revenue was $22 billion ($32 billion inflation-adjusted) and iPad revenue was $20 billion ($29 billion inflation-adjusted). iPhone revenue was $47 billion ($69 billion inflation-adjusted). So compared to where revenue was when Cook took the helm, the mostly-all-new-under-Cook Wearables category today is bigger than the Mac or iPad were under Jobs, and a very credible half the size of the iPhone.
Cook’s more momentous contribution to Apple’s top line was the elevation of Services. [...]
Last year Apple Services generated 26% of Apple’s revenue and 41% of the company’s profit; more importantly, Services continues to grow year-over-year, even as iPhone growth has slowed from the go-go years.
There was a legitimate widespread concern in the early years of the Cook era that the downside of the iPhone’s unprecedented success was that Apple’s financials were dangerously reliant on that single product. Even today the iPhone generates between 50–60 percent of Apple’s revenue each quarter, but it is quite obviously the growth of Services and Wearables that makes Apple’s overall revenue by product line look as balanced as it does. From Jason Snell’s report on Apple’s most recent quarter (the best in Apple’s entire history):
There’s a totally reasonable concern that the growth of Services will pervert Apple’s priorities away from hardware products. I think that’s why naming John Ternus, the head of hardware, as the new CEO is an important statement in and of itself regarding where Tim Cook sees Apple’s North Star: hardware products.
I believe that Cook’s focus on Services over the last decade was in no way about shifting the focus of the company away from its roots. Nor was it about growth for the sake of growth. I think it was about bringing balance to the balance sheet, to protect the company’s core mission of creating devices.
2026-04-22 11:03:18
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2026-04-22 03:17:34
The president of the United States, on his blog this morning (all capitalization, punctuation, and missing/wrong words verbatim):
I have always been a big fan of Tim Cook, and likewise, Steve Jobs, but if Steve was not taken from the Planet Earth so young, and ran the company instead of Tim, the company would have done well, but nowhere near as well as it has under Tim. For me it began with a phone call from Tim at the beginning of my First Term. He had a fairly large problem that only I, as President, could fix. Most people would have paid millions of dollars to a consultant, who I probably would not have known, but who would say that he knew me well. The fees would be paid but the job would not have gotten done. When I got the call I said, wow, it’s Tim Apple (Cook!) calling, how big is that? I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to “kiss my ass.” Anyway, he explained his problem, a tough one it was, I felt he was right and got it taken care of, quickly and effectively. That was the beginning of a long and very nice relationship. During my five years as President, Tim would call me, but never too much, and I would help him where I could. Years latter, after 3 or 4 BIG HELPS, I started to say to people, anyone who would listen, that this guy is an amazing manager and leader. He makes these calls to me, I help him out (but not always, because he will, on occasion, be too aggressive in his ask!), and he gets the job done, QUICKLY, without a dime being given to those very expensive (millions of dollars!) consultants around town who sometimes get it done, and sometimes don’t. Anyway, Tim Cook had an AMAZING career, almost incomparable, and will go on and continue to do great work for Apple, and whatever else he chooses to work on. Quite simply, Tim Cook is an incredible guy!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Matthew Yglesias, on Twitter/X, first:
You can see in Trump’s take on Tim Cook what he really likes about tariffs, which is nothing to do with economics and everything about how it makes business leaders dependent on his goodwill.
and second:
Also appreciate that Trump threw in a hot take about Apple being better off without Steve Jobs.
The man loves to post!
Yglesias is exactly right re: Trump’s obsession with tariffs. There is zero underlying economic philosophy behind them. He likes tariffs because he sees them as a way to exert political power. I’d add only that Yglesias is being a tad deferential/euphemistic when he says “makes business leaders dependent on his goodwill”. Trump himself used the right phrase to describe why he likes tariffs — they get business leaders to “kiss his ass”. Trump’s own words.
Yglesias’s second point is directly related to the first. There’s no evidence that Trump and Jobs ever met, personally, but Trump admired Jobs and has an intuitive understanding that Jobs would not have kissed his ass, and to Trump, that’s the most important thing about Cook. Rightly or wrongly, Cook took/takes that one for the team. Jobs wouldn’t have (and, if he had lived, would have probably sent COO Tim Cook to do it), and Trump knows it.
Lastly, hat tip to Trump for the self-deprecating reference to his having mistakenly addressed Cook as “Tim Apple” at a public meeting back in 2019. He’s still funny when he’s in the right mood.
Bonus: Mekka Okereke color-coded each sentence of Trump’s post in four categories: (1) praise for Cook; (2) belittling other people; (3) self glorification; and (4) putting his own name in all caps.
2026-04-21 11:59:41
It’s a profoundly different feeling today than the last time Apple’s CEO announced his transition to chairman of the board, and his chosen successor was promoted to replace him as CEO.
In August 2011, Steve Jobs was sick. For years he’d managed to stay a step, sometimes two, ahead of the pancreatic cancer he’d been battling since 2003, but no more. Jobs wrote, in his letter to the company’s board and the Apple community: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”
Unfortunately, indeed. Cook inherited a company with extraordinary potential growth in front of it, but in deep existential grief. He led the company — and its community — through that grief and achieved that potential.
The transition Apple and Tim Cook announced today is entirely different. No one’s hand was forced. There is nothing unpleasant. Apple’s business is firing on nearly all cylinders. This year’s iPhone 17 lineup is arguably the best ever. The Mac is more popular than ever — exemplified just last month by the introduction of the $600 MacBook Neo, a machine so fun, with a price so low, that the only problem is that it’s selling so well that Apple is reportedly running out of A18 Pro chips to put in it. The iPad lineup is strong, AirPods remain dominant, and I see Apple Watches on wrists everywhere I go.
Tim Cook is 65 years old, has been CEO for 15 years, and is going out on top. Looking only at the numbers, Cook is the GOAT. But Cook, by all accounts, would be the first to tell us he doesn’t want to be judged by the numbers alone. Or as he famously put it himself at a shareholder meeting, early in his reign, “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI.”
Jobs made the right pick for his successor. And while only time will tell, it sure feels today like Cook has too. Cook has never been a product person and to his credit, he never once pretended to be. (That was John Sculley’s downfall, in a nut.) With the table set by the budding iPhone and nascent iPad products Jobs left behind, Apple didn’t need a product person at the helm in the 2010s. They needed someone to let the existing products blossom and expand. Today, it feels to me like Apple needs a product guy at the helm again. Someone with the itch to spearhead the creation of new things. Of course Cook’s successor came from within the company’s ranks. And John Ternus, more than anyone else at the company, seems like that person.
Here’s Cook, quoted in Apple’s announcement today: “John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future. I could not be more confident in his abilities and his character, and I look forward to working closely with him on this transition and in my new role as executive chairman.”
Regarding that new role, Apple’s announcement states:
As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world.
Back in December, linking to the Financial Times’s blockbuster scoop accurately foretelling this announcement, I predicted:
I would also bet that Cook moves into the role of executive chairman, and will still play a significant, if not leading, role for the company when it comes to domestic and international politics. Especially with regard to Trump.
Sounds right. The only problem I can see with this arrangement is the potential for Cook to stand over Ternus’s shoulder — keeping Ternus in his shadow. That doesn’t sound like Tim Cook to me. A Bob Iger situation, I do not foresee.
After I gathered my thoughts back in August 2011, under the title “Resigned”, I wrote:
Apple’s products are replete with Apple-like features and details, embedded in Apple-like apps, running on Apple-like devices, which come packaged in Apple-like boxes, are promoted in Apple-like ads, and sold in Apple-like stores. The company is a fractal design. Simplicity, elegance, beauty, cleverness, humility. Directness. Truth. Zoom out enough and you can see that the same things that define Apple’s products apply to Apple as a whole. The company itself is Apple-like. The same thought, care, and painstaking attention to detail that Steve Jobs brought to questions like “How should a computer work?”, “How should a phone work?”, “How should we buy music and apps in the digital age?” he also brought to the most important question: “How should a company that creates such things function?”
Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself.
I remember writing that piece with such a heavy heart. It hurt. But there was hope. Those words stand up, and I can quote them today in the context of Cook handing the mantle to Ternus with nothing but the hope, and none of the hurt.
CEOs typically leave companies in one of three ways: with a hook, on a gurney, or on their own terms. Cook, seemingly, is doing it entirely on his own terms. One can reasonably argue with certain of his strategic decisions over the years. I certainly have. But I don’t think you can argue that Cook ever did anything for any reason other than what he believed was in the company’s best interest. Not his personal interest. Not employees. Not users. Not shareholders. Not developers (ha!). The company’s interest always came first. There’s a nobility to his singleminded focus on Apple itself, as an abiding institution, and his faith that what’s best for Apple will ultimately prove best for everyone involved with it: employees, shareholders, users, and, yes, even developers. If he’s made mistakes, they’re errors in taste, not mistaken priorities. He is the ultimate company man at the ultimate company.
Cook has transformed Apple in his own image. The company is much more predictable now than it ever was, or could have been, under Jobs. It now runs on an annual schedule that can be printed on a calendar. There is far less drama, and no scandal. And there is seemingly no drama, at all, in this particular transition, despite the incredibly high stakes and the (justifiably) large egos in Apple’s leadership team. Cook inherited the greatest company in the world. He’s handing it over to Ternus in even better shape than what Jobs handed to him. Even the timing of the announcement and the transition, on Apple’s annual calendar, seems perfect. Cook oversees one last WWDC in June, then Ternus takes the helm on the cusp of Apple’s announcement of new iPhones in September. It’s hard to imagine a more orderly, confidence-inspiring, exciting-but-not-at-all-surprising, this-feels-right way to do this.
All of that, I am sure, is just the way Cook wants it.
And, if you agree that Apple itself was Jobs’s greatest product, Cook really is a product person after all.
