Tim Cook could be Apple’s CEO for at least another half-decade

Apple CEO Tim Cook
The departure of Apple’s chief operating officer, Jeff Williams, is just the beginning of a broader management overhaul, Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg News, though CEO Tim Cook is staying put for the foreseeable future.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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Whether or not you think Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook should step aside, the reality is clear: He’s probably not leaving anytime soon.
Despite being mired in Apple’s biggest crisis in years — its artificial intelligence debacle — Cook has earned staying power akin to other captains of industry. Think of Bob Iger, the 74-year-old CEO of Walt Disney Co., or Jamie Dimon, the 69-year-old leader of JPMorgan Chase & Co. Though Cook turns 65 in November, there’s a likely scenario in which he remains in charge of the iPhone maker for at least another half-decade.
Jeff Williams, Cook’s longtime No. 2, just announced plans to retire later this year. That means there’s no immediate successor ready to take the helm. There also haven’t been signs internally that Cook is getting ready to leave or begin the process of grooming a replacement.

See also: Steve Jobs never meant for Tim Cook to still be Apple’s CEO in 2025 – July 9, 2025

Moreover, the board doesn’t feel the need to make a change. Apple’s directors are Cook loyalists like Arthur Levinson, Susan Wagner and Ronald Sugar. They’ve largely let him run the business without interference. Like most public company CEOs, Cook is judged primarily on Apple’s stock performance. While shares are down 16% this year, they’ve surged about 1,500% since he became CEO in 2011.
There’s no question Cook bears responsibility for Apple’s current struggles. That includes the company’s AI missteps, an aging product lineup, the erosion of its design-focused culture, a decade-long drought of breakthrough mainstream hardware, and its growing tensions with developers and regulators. But there’s also no question that the board still sees him as the only person capable of turning things around.

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MacDailyNews Take: Any reasonably competent manager could have taken what Jobs handed them and iterated products for 15 years. Apple’s somnambulant Board only sees the remnants of Job’s work, competently managed.
After what Steve Jobs built, a chimpanzee could run Apple profitably for many years. (Yes, even Steve Ballmer could do it.) — MacDailyNews, April 10, 2017
The problem, as is now plainly evident, is that when you do not have a visionary for coming up on 15 years, you miss the next paradigm shift. So, now, because non-visionary Tim Cook, a glorified operations manager, was wasting time, focus, and money blowing tens of billions on a failed EV project and an overpriced, non-selling AR/VR headset, Apple is way behind in genAI, struggling embarrassingly to catch up, and facing the prospect of a myopic, charisma-free, aging CEO clinging on for “at least another half-decade” because Apple’s BoD, half of which were stocked by Cook with loyalists* (Cook himself is the Board’s tie-breaking vote), has as much vision as Cook himself.
Good times.
“Oh,” some might say, “but Tim has taken Apple to the very top!” Did he really? Or did he just ride Steve’s rocket? Imagine a CEO capable of adding his own fuel. How much higher and farther would that rocket be today?
Drew Bledsoe looked like a pretty good quarterback – until Tom Brady took over.
A visionary CEO would have taken the company far further than it is today. A visionary CEO would have recognized the potential of acquiring, say, a Netflix or a Tesla on the cheap. A visionary CEO wouldn’t today be desperately scrambling to come up with some homegrown generative AI, years late, as usual (see HomePod). A visionary CEO would have recognized the threat that China posed to his company and worked to extricate his company far sooner.
Tim Cook is reactive, not proactive.
Tim Cook couldn’t see it then. Tim Cook can’t see it now. Tim Cook won’t be able to see it tomorrow.
“Tim’s not a product person, per se.” – Steve Jobs
A visionary CEO would generate excitement, anticipation, and wonder. Instead we have all of the thrill of a conveyor belt, slowly moving, sometimes not even, for 12+ years and counting.
Someday, hopefully sooner than later, watching the paint dry will blessedly be over. Steve Jobs painted a masterpiece. Tim Cook stands there fanning it.
Imagine live keynotes, multiple times per year, revealing exciting, surprising products, delivered on stage by a CEO capable of sparking wonder and excitement in his own right. Instead, we endured years of sleep-inducing keynotes which have now devolved into canned, pre-recorded, highly edited industrial videos because the CEO couldn’t do them well live. – MacDailyNews, January 3, 2024

“What we have here is a company that was once led by a visionary who set the agenda for entire industries, now led by a reactive caretaker who heard somewhere that VR headsets and electric cars were the next big things (probably read it in Wired), so that’s what he had Apple do, while completely missing artificial intelligence, especially generative AI, and now is scrambling to catch up to something Steve Jobs would have focused on long before anyone ever even heard of OpenAI.” – MacDailyNews, March 6, 2024

The BoD should also skip the whole Tim Cook gets the Chairmanship reward after he finally retires as CEO. His billions of dollars of overpayment over the years are more than enough reward. A clean break from this plodding, dithering “Iterative Caretaker” period would be best for the company. – MacDailyNews, July 9, 2025

What should happen at Apple:
1. Tim Cook retires (yesterday, preferably)2. Cook does not get Chairman of the Board position3. Apple hires a charismatic, visionary CEO in the mold of Jobs4. Company returns to path of inventive innovation
What likely will happen at Apple:
1.…
— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) July 14, 2025

*Four current Apple Board members were appointed during Tim Cook’s now-excruciating tenure as CEO (after August 2011): Wanda Austin, Alex Gorsky, Monica Lozano, and Susan L. Wagner. Cook, who joined the board in 2011 upon becoming CEO, has actively sought new board members since at least 2014, suggesting he has influenced the selection process for appointments during his tenure.
See also:
• Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
• Work on Apple Vision Pro began under Steve Jobs – July 23, 2023

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