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It arrived last night for Spanish time, but it is the news of the day. After 15 years at the head of Apple, Tim Cook will leave his position on September 1. It will be the moment in which a John Ternus50 years old and with 25 years in the company, will assume the position of CEO. From a sales shark, we will move to a hardware man. And, although Cook will leave Apple in an enviable position, Ternus will take the reins with significant debts and many open fronts. Let him Cook. Yeah jobs He was the idealist, cook was the executor. Most of the hardware of the Apple of the three decades with Tim at the helm was inherited from Jobs’ Apple, but Cook has made them shine. Products such as Apple Watch either AirPodsthe Mac line was turned upside down, giving sit down Intel to bet on its own chips and even the MacBook, which was not one of the economic legs of the business, has experienced tremendous success of the macbook neothe ‘cheap MacBook’. But under the mandate of a Cook who has developed his career doing numbers and not designing products, what has shone has been the services segment. Services > hardware. We already said it in 2024: services exceeded the combined revenue of practically all of Apple’s hardware except for the iPhone, which still represented approximately half of the company’s sales. Apple has gone from being a company recognizable for its devices to one in which the iPhone was still capital, yes, but in which wearables (AirPods and Apple Watch), accessories, home devices, iPad and MacBook They were capitulating to the software. Apple has been buying software (Pixelmator, for example) to strengthen its suite of applications, but it has also been moving to subscription models and opening new lines. AppleOnefor example, is the umbrella under which services such as Apple Music, Fitness+cloud storage, Apple Arcade either AppleTV. All with a monthly subscription, of course. Because the company has a complete line of services and subscriptions to compete against other alternatives. They are in all segments (music, video games, personal care, movies and series) and represent a lifestyle. But they also have their creative suite for compete directly with Adobe with apps like the aforementioned Pixelmator, Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro Proven effectiveness. If we talk about money, this translates into a beastly lever. Under Cook, Apple has grown, and it has grown in a big way: Income from 108 billion dollars in 2011 to more than 391,000 in 2024. Close to 4x. Capitalization which went from 320 billion to 3.7 trillion dollars in 2024, almost 11x. The margin left by services and subscriptions is greater and more direct than that of the iPhone, also allowing a constant cash flow that is not seen as much with hardware launches. An iPhone is purchased once a year, a subscription is paid every month. And all this leads us to talk about a different Apple than in 2011. If then it was the company of the iPhone and other devices, today it is a business that encompasses software and hardware. And there are not many who can boast of that. And Cook’s Apple has built this while creating an extremely streamlined and diversified supply chain with factories in China, India and Vietnam to adapt to regulations and market shocks. But although that is ‘Side A’ of Tim Cook’s film, there is a ‘Side B’. The limbo of the Vision Pro. At this stage we have seen many hardware successes, but also some devices that raise many questions. I don’t get into AirPower anymore (Do you remember AirPower?), but in the field of VisionPro. Apple’s VR/AR headset is a technological marvel, but also an expensive device, with compromises like that hanging battery and, above all, one that you don’t really know where it goes. Launched in 2024 at $3,500, they have not seen the light of day in many markets, they continue to cost the same and a renewal has not been presented in these almost two years. At that time, the other great promoter of VR, Meta, has moved to glasses that they have made a place for themselves among content creators and people who want to document their daily lives. It is evident that it is not the same product, but the underlying idea is: a wearable that you wear for much of the day to create content and consume it. In a different way (audio in the Meta, more video in the Vision Pro), but consuming content, in short. In these two years, we have not been able to give the Vision Pro a ‘killer app’, something that would really make them irresistible within the Apple ecosystem. Tariffs and Apple Intelligence. But if the Vision Pro can afford to be in limbo, these two issues cannot. First, the tariffs. That Apple is moving to other countries to stop depending so much on China is not a whim. Globalization has been breaking down with the most current protectionist policies. Not depending so much on China (which continues to happen) is necessary if Apple, like so many other companies, does not want tariffs to affect its products. It is a very complicated juggling act because the United States wants its companies to leave China, but China is consolidating like a huge marketwith Apple and NVIDIA being two of the companies more interested in continuing to penetrate it to get part of a huge pie. On the other hand, Apple Intelligence. Apple’s AI was introduced two years ago and not only is it not at the level of rivals like Google, they have to ask Google for help to revitalize Siri. Apple Intelligence It is the great pending task of an Apple that has not known how to compete in these early stages of the artificial intelligence race. 2026 is expected to be the year (even They have sent most of the engineers to an ‘AI … Read more