Apple CEO Tim Cook said he’s excited about the “new categories of products and services that are enabled through AI” during a meeting with company employees Thursday.
He didn’t go into specifics, but some of the new AI-powered devices reportedly on drawing boards at Apple headquarters have already leaked out. Here’s what’s coming.
Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke publicly for the first time Thursday about the collaboration with Google that will upgrade the Siri voice assistant with Gemini AI. He emphasized that the new Siri will “maintain our industry-leading privacy standards.”
Cook also said Apple will continue to develop its own artificial intelligence models, even as it uses Google’s.
Get set for Apple to report boffo results from its latest financial quarter on Thursday. Wall Street expects Apple’s earnings report to reflect a record-breaking holiday season, with analysts anticipating significant growth driven by strong iPhone 17 demand.
Revenue may be up as much 11% year over year. Apple hasn’t seen revenue growth that strong since 2022. This should lead to truly stellar earnings per share.
John Ternus, Apple’s head of hardware engineering, reportedly just added an even more critical role at the company, being put in charge of design for the first time.
The intent of the change might be to give Ternus the experience needed to someday become Apple CEO.
December 27, 2010: Almost four months after the second-gen Apple TV’s debut, Cupertino says it has sold 1 million of the streaming video devices.
The news shows that Apple’s set-top box is gaining momentum. However, Apple’s PR move — which included a preemptive press release issued on December 21 that said Apple “expects sales of its new Apple TV to top one million units later this week” — is also a low-blow shot at competitor Roku, which recently said it planned to hit the 1 million unit mark by the end of 2010.
December 22, 2013: After months of false starts, Apple finally secures a deal with China Mobile to bring the iPhone to the world’s largest telecom company.
With 760 million potential iPhone customers in the offing, the deal shapes up as Apple’s most important yet for growing its brand in China. In fact, Apple CEO Tim Cook says the country will soon become the company’s biggest market.
December 10, 2012: Apple fixes an early Apple Maps error that caused several motorists in Victoria, Australia, to become stranded in the remote Murray-Sunset National Park.
Previously, the egregious Apple Maps glitch showed the town of Mildura nearly 45 miles from its actual location.
In the aftermath, Victoria police describe Apple’s navigation app as “potentially life-threatening.” That’s pretty much the opposite of “it just works.”
December 5, 2002: Cupertino says it served its millionth unique customer in the Apple Store online, marking a significant milestone for the company. It is a benchmark worth celebrating for Apple, which launched its online store just five years earlier.
“Reaching our 1 millionth customer is a major milestone, and is proof positive that our online shopping experience is second to none,” Tim Cook, Apple’s executive vice president of worldwide sales and operations at the time, says in a statement. “The Apple Store is a popular way for a growing number of consumers and businesses to buy Apple products, and with extensive build-to-order capabilities, easy 1-Click shopping and free shipping on orders, it’s never been easier to buy a Mac online.”
Meet Steve Lemay, the new head of user interface design at Apple — the highest-profile software design job at the giant company, and possibly the world.
Unfortunately for Lemay, who has worked at Apple since 1999, he shares the same first name as the late Steve Jobs, who nicknamed him “Margaret” — a name that reportedly stuck.
Aside from being called “Margaret” internally at Apple, Lemay has a long and stellar design record at the company. He’s helped shape everything from OS X to visionOS. He is named on hundreds of patents and helped develop one of Apple’s most highly celebrated UI tricks.
This week on Cult of Mac’s podcast: The latest rumor about Apple CEO Tim Cook‘s retirement says he could step down as early as next January. We discuss the likelihood of that, and Apple’s succession plans, as we debate the company’s future.
Also on The CultCast:
Listen to this week’s episode of The CultCast in the Podcasts app or your favorite podcast app. (Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you like it!) Or watch the video live stream, embedded below.
Apple’s board of directors is reportedly amping up the search for a new CEO to replace Tim Cook, possibly as early as January 2026. The board recently “intensified preparations for Cook to hand over the reins,” according to a Saturday report from the Financial Times, which says the announcement of a new Apple CEO could come alongside the company’s post-holiday earnings report.
The story cited “several people familiar with discussions inside the tech group.”
November 11, 2015: Apple’s first iPad Pro goes on sale after months of speculation about the giant-size tablet.
With its much larger screen, professional-oriented targeting and dreaded (optional) stylus, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro represents Apple CEO Tim Cook’s cleanest break yet from Steve Jobs’ vision for iOS devices.
And it turned out all the better for it!
Apple set a new record for iPhone revenue in its most recent financial quarter. Total company revenue reached $102.5 billion, an 8% increase over the same quarter of last year. And earnings per share hit $1.85, a rise of 13%, the company said Thursday.
Plus, Apple CEO Tim Cook predicted the current quarter will be “the best ever in the history of the company” — and AAPL’s stock price shot up in after-hours trading.
October 29, 2012: Scott Forstall, Apple’s senior vice president of iOS software, is fired from the company after the disastrous Apple Maps launch. After Forstall is ousted, Apple divvies up the roles he previously handled among other high-level execs.
Design chief Jony Ive assumes leadership of the Human Interface team. Craig Federighi becomes head of iOS software. Eddy Cue takes control of Maps and Siri. And Bob Mansfield “unretires” to lead a new technology group.
October 14, 2005: Tim Cook takes the reins as Apple’s chief operating officer. His new role as Apple COO continues his upward climb through the company’s ranks that will make him CEO less than six years later.
“Tim and I have worked together for over seven years now, and I am looking forward to working even more closely with him to help Apple reach some exciting goals during the coming years,” Steve Jobs says in a statement.
October 5, 2011: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs dies at the age of 56 in his home in Palo Alto, California.
Jobs’ official cause of death is respiratory arrest arising from complications related to a rare type of pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed with cancer eight years earlier, and officially stepped down from his role as Apple CEO in August 2011, just weeks before his death.
President Donald Trump invited Apple CEO Tim Cook to the White House on Wednesday to announce Apple’s new investment of an additional $100 billion in domestic manufacturing. It’s part of a new program designed to bring more of Apple’s supply chain to American shores.
In an unusual all-hands meeting Friday, Apple CEO Tim Cook assured employees that Apple won’t drop the ball when it comes to artificial intelligence. Calling AI “as big or bigger” than the internet, Cook said the company will rise to the occasion.
“Apple must do this,” he said. “Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab. We will make the investment to do it.”
In addition to hyping the company’s AI efforts, Cook expressed excitement about all the “amazing” new Apple products in the pipeline. And Apple software chief Craig Federighi told his colleagues not to worry about the long-delayed smarter Siri — a key component of Apple’s AI-infused future.
With the surprise retirement of Apple COO Jeff Williams on Tuesday, all bets are off concerning the next CEO of Apple.
Williams, a 27-year Apple veteran, was widely regarded as the likely next CEO of Apple when Tim Cook eventually steps down.
But with Williams out of the running, Apple senior vice presidents John Ternus or Craig Federighi are now seen as the most probable candidates for the top spot.
But I think it could be someone else entirely — and it’s a pick I haven’t seen anyone else make.
Here’s who I think might be the next CEO of Apple, and why.
Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer in charge of the company’s global operations since 2010, will retire later this year. Even before then, though, his position will be filled by Sabih Khan, who currently serves as senior vice president of operations.
Apple described the move as “a long-planned succession” in a press release on Tuesday. The move certainly ends years of speculation that Williams would someday take Tim Cook’s place as Apple CEO.
Apple’s App Store ecosystem reached a milestone in 2024, facilitating $406 billion in developer billings and sales in the United States alone, according to a new study Apple commissioned. And over the past 5 years, App Store sales growth means U.S. developers’ earnings more than doubled, the iPhone giant said.
“For more than 15 years, the App Store has created incredible opportunity for app developers, entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a press release Thursday. “That includes the many U.S. developers who are innovating, building their businesses and finding exceptional success on the App Store.
“We’ll continue to invest in powerful tools, technology, and resources to help developers in the U.S. and around the world take their apps to new heights and create transformative experiences for users,” he added.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said Thursday that he expects the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump to add at least $900 million to the company’s costs during the current quarter, which ends in June.
Speaking with investors after the company announced its quarterly earnings results, Cook also said Apple will assemble most of the products it sells in the United States outside of China this quarter to avoid the tariffs fueling an ongoing trade war between the two countries.
When companies talk about quarterly earnings, executives often deploy language designed to puff up, excuse or obfuscate their companies’ recent performance. The goal is to excite investors over implied future success. And ultimately to give the company more money. Always. More. Money. The Apple quarterly earnings call takes place Thursday afternoon.
But when you’re the iPhone giant — with a mind-blowing market cap and a seemingly never-ending supply of hit products, including ongoing growth in services — you typically don’t need to craft hopeful-yet-non-material statements or deflect questions designed to get at the true bottom line.
So CEO Tim Cook and new CFO Kevan Parekh will report on all the numbers (former CFO Luca Maestri stepped down January 1, 2025). Because many tariff impacts are yet to come, analysts predict a 4% revenue increase year-over-year, plus a jump in earnings per share. Note that Apple starts its fiscal year with Q1 in the previous year’s holiday season, so calendar quarters trail its fiscal quarters.
In another significant leadership reshuffle at Apple, a little-known robotics team will soon move from AI chief John Giannandrea’s oversight to John Ternus, Apple’s senior VP of Hardware Engineering, according to a new report Thursday.
This shift follows last month’s decision to remove Siri from Giannandrea’s responsibilities after concerns about execution on product development.
In a shake-up aimed at revitalizing Apple’s aging Siri voice assistant, the iPhone giant brought in Mike Rockwell to lead a comprehensive overhaul now in progress, according to a new report. First, the former head of Vision Pro software continues revitalizing the Siri leadership team in the Vision Pro team’s image.