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In 2011, Steve Jobs' health failed for the last time,

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and Tim Cook took the reins of Apple Inc.

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This was a colossal shakeup. I mean, he wasn't just stepping up to the helm

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of a massive company that had revolutionized personal audio, mobile communication,

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and personal computing. He was stepping into the shoes of one of the largest personalities

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that the tech industry had ever seen. How could he possibly hope to fill them?

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In the early days, they didn't look so good. Apple lovers and haters alike

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would mourn the Jobs era. Whenever Mr. Cook changed something

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or failed to change enough, the comparison was just painful

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between Jobs' obsessive passion and his replacement,

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the awkward supply chain specialist. Surely then, he would turn out to be a poor steward

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of the Soul of Apple, a company that treated their products

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like art and fashion as much as like personal electronics.

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And yet, here we are 15 years later,

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as Tim Cook is in the midst of stepping down as CEO

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for a well-earned permanent vacation.

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And I can say without a doubt that while his haters were right,

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he didn't fill Steve Jobs' shoes. What they failed to predict

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was that he would make his own shoes, and that they would be pretty slick.

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Okay, not every move was a great success.

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And there are folks who fairly have criticized Apple's

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less fun design choices over the last decade and a half.

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But as someone who's more focused on the technology of computers rather than their style,

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I am actually more excited about Apple's future than I have ever been before.

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And that is in no small part because of Mr. Cook's crowning achievement, IMO.

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His careful stewardship of Steve Jobs' parting gift,

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Apple Silicon. Let's talk about that. And let's talk about our sponsor.

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It's like I've been working on my Tim Cook impression

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for nothing. When Tim Cook took the reins, Apple was on a win streak for the ages.

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Ever since the triumphant return of Steve Jobs, Apple had made PCs fun again with the iMac,

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turned personal audio completely on its head with the iPod and iTunes,

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and did the impossible with the mobile phone that changed the world.

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And those are just the highlights. By the time Cook stepped in,

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Apple had gone from the brink of death to a cool $300 billion valuation.

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And in his first year as CEO, Apple became the top smartphone manufacturer in the world.

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And why wouldn't they be? Android devices, sure, were finding some success

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after stealing the idea of the iPhone,

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but they were still relatively unpolished, both in terms of their hardware and their software.

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Meanwhile, Apple's flagship iPhone was the first

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to feature an ultra premium double-sided glass sandwich

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design that still dominates today. And it was the first to ship

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with a humble little processor called the A4. Contrary to what most people think,

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the A4 wasn't actually the first custom silicon designed by Apple.

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That honor belongs to the Scorpius CPU, a quad core concept chip

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that would have enabled true desktop multitasking, literally 20 years before Intel.

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But what the A4 was, was the first piece of silicon designed by Apple,

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Apple Silicon, you might call it, that ultimately made it into consumers' hands.

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And it was a game changer. While everyone else was stuck using off-the-shelf

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or at most lightly modified ARM cores, Apple created a chip that was so powerful

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that it could accommodate multitasking on the highest resolution display on the market,

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make video calls with its front-facing camera, and interface with new onboard IO like the gyroscope,

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all with, at the time, downright outstanding battery life.

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The iPhone 4, with the A4 chip at its heart, would remain part of Apple's lineup,

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first as an entry-level model, and then later as a budget option

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for developing markets for almost five years.

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But that doesn't mean that Apple rested on their laurels, at least not on the iPhone side of things.

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Within just 16 months, the previously groundbreaking A4 chip

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had already been replaced by the A5, which according to Apple, was twice as fast

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thanks to its more advanced architecture and addition of a second CPU core

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alongside vastly superior onboard graphics. And from there, the hits just kept coming.

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Now there have been times when the mobile CPU wars have been somewhat close,

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as competitors like Qualcomm or Samsung have attempted to leapfrog Apple Silicon.

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Even the Apple haters have gotta admit that under Tim Cook's leadership,

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Apple has executed nearly flawlessly

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on their mobile processor roadmap, delivering consistently industry-leading performance

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year after year after year, if only the same could be said of Apple's partners.

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The mid-2010s were a tough time for the MacBook.

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And thanks to some questionable design choices that limited heat dissipation,

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a pretty tough time for the Mac as well. But why?

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You guessed it, while Intel had also been enjoying a long streak of wins,

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starting from the 2006 introduction of the Core 2 Duo,

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by 10 years later, they had completely run out of gas

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and begun a troubling pattern of releasing new chips

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that were actually built on old manufacturing processes

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and just were not moving the bar for performance or for efficiency.

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At a time when Sir Johnny Ive was chasing thinner and lighter designs for Apple's products,

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this had a profound impact on their ability to innovate.

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Not helping matters was Apple's ongoing feud with NVIDIA due to the bump gate scandal

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that led to the untimely deaths of many GeForce-powered MacBooks in 2008.

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Apple removed all NVIDIA hardware from its product portfolio

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and then, even today, has never looked back.

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That's all fine and good until you realize that Apple's customers were relying on AMD's GPU team

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in order to deliver competitive GPU performance in their MacBooks and Macs.

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Hmm, little did we know though, Apple's leadership was cooking up a plan.

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Rumors of an ARM-powered Mac prototype have actually been around since as early as 2011,

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according to this article from CNET. But it wasn't until 2018

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that the first credible rumors began to circulate that Apple had deemed that their chip performance

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was actually good enough and a switchover

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from their floundering partner Intel was imminent.

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But why did it take them so long to make the call? To be honest, even with Intel's struggles

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and MacBooks overheating, I don't blame them. I mean, the transition from PowerPC to x86 Intel

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back in 2006 was still a pretty vivid memory

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in the minds of both the Mac user base, not to mention Apple's own software teams.

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During that time, many applications needed to be recompiled and then debugged by developers,

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which ended up costing consumers money directly,

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sometimes in the form of completely repurchasing their software.

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And that completely ignores that Apple themselves was stuck maintaining compatibility tools

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and parallel versions of their operating system for years.

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Then on top of that, developing your own chips,

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even for a company with the resources and talent of Apple is kind of a hassle, you know?

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And it's pretty nice if someone else could just do it for you.

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While I strongly believe that the Apple Silicon transition was inevitable, the second that the A4 was a success,

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I also believe that if Intel hadn't fumbled as hard as they did, it could have come as much as 10 years

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later to just avoid rocking the boat and allow Apple to allocate their resources

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to new product lines rather than the oft-neglected Mac.

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But with all that said, I don't think there's a person alive

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who would say now that the effort was wasted. Apple's M-series Silicon launch was a smashing success

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that vastly exceeded the expectations of all but Apple's most devoted of glazers.

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And this doesn't get enough credit, in my opinion. It wasn't just the hardware.

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Apple's execution around software compatibility with Rosetta 2 and their ongoing support

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for Intel CPUs and macOS has given their legacy customers

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over half a decade to upgrade their devices before they'll lose access to the latest software updates.

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That's a pretty decent amount of time in tech terms.

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Surprisingly though, it's actually not M-series Silicon

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that inspired me to make this video. And it's not even the AirPods. Another candidate for top Tim Cook success stories

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that rely on Apple Silicon for their competitive advantage.

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It was actually this. Every tech pundit worth their salt

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has been watching a couple of convergences taking place at Apple over the last decade plus.

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The iPad and the MacBook have been slowly,

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painfully slowly sometimes, becoming more and more alike, both in form and function.

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And when M-series Silicon showed up in the iPad, it had just about everyone,

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including me going, well, it's powerful enough now. macOS on iPad when?

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But then Apple went totally the other way. They zigged instead of zagged and they put the A18 Pro,

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a relatively inexpensive phone chip in their most affordable MacBook ever.

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Now in a vacuum, the MacBook Neo is already an outstanding product that deserves

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its millions of units of sales and more.

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But looking at the bigger picture, it is so much more than that.

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And I think it's gonna prove to be the most important move

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that Mr. Cook has made during his entire tenure. I've talked for years about Apple's inexplicable,

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near complete abandonment of the education market. When I was a kid, every machine in the school was a Mac.

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Love it, hate it, you had to use it. And an entire generation of children was raised believing

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that the left side of an app window was the appropriate place to click, to close it.

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And then they just stopped being affordable and stopped caring that young people,

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especially young students, had been completely priced out of their ecosystem.

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That's what just changed. For me, the 599 price for this was as big a mic drop

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as when Sony went on stage and said 299.

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And it would have been impossible without the vertical integration

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and supply chain mastery that Tim Cook oversaw. Also, right along the Neo's launch,

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Apple has completely overhauled their tools for education and fleet management,

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creating an alternative to Chromebooks and Windows machines that's so powerful that within days of its launch,

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it was already changing the industry. Anyway, the Neo has been so successful

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that it actually almost punched a hole in that supply chain management aspect

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of Mr. Cook's tenure. All that stuff has been so expertly managed

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that I feel like we'd almost started to take it for granted. Remember how you used to line up for a new iPhone

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and it would be backordered for ages all the time? I mean, any hot item has shortages.

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But I don't even remember the last time that we saw something like the Neo,

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where it was backordered for like a month. Apple's ability under Tim Cook's leadership

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to keep products in stock on time around the globe,

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even during disruptions, is nearly unparalleled.

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And I guess that's the wisdom of putting an awkward supply chain guy in charge.

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Under Tim Cook's leadership, Apple's gone from a valuation of hundreds of billions

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to multiple trillions, which isn't to say that everything's gone perfectly.

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The Apple Vision Pro almost feels like an intentionally bad product.

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I mean, a VR headset that refuses to acknowledge

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the two main use cases for VR, high fidelity gaming and high fidelity other things.

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But what were they thinking? But hey, maybe I'm looking at the small picture.

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Maybe Apple's VR efforts are gonna completely turn around with their rumored smart glasses.

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Kind of like we saw with the Apple Watch where it turned from a luxury gold-plated timepiece

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to a health-focused smart wearable. If that happens though, it won't be under Tim Cook

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who has taken a role as executive chairman. Well earned, sir.

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We haven't always agreed, but I respect the hell out of the hustle and I salute you.

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Which leaves only one question. What do I meme about on my personal Twitter now?

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No, actually there are more questions. Who's taking over?

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His name is John Ternis. He's currently Apple's senior vice president

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for hardware engineering and he was part of the team that introduced the iPad,

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which actually before the iPhone 4 was the first device to use Apple Silicon.

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And I gotta say, knowing almost nothing about the guy,

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I love this move. I love the idea of hardware geeks learning biz stuff

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and then getting an opportunity to bring their deep product knowledge

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all the way to the top levels of leadership. I strongly believe that Intel, for example,

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is much better off today because of Pat Gelsinger's short tenure as CEO,

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even if an imposter is getting a ton of credit for the balls that Pat rolled into motion.

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And as if Apple was legit trying to suck up to me specifically, John Ternis' replacement

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is gonna be John Suruji, the guy who led Apple Silicon Design

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during the A4's development. He's also getting a title bump to Chief Hardware Officer.

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So Apple is getting two new C levels from their hardware team.

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They can't make it any more clear how much of a priority the hardware is right now.

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And I gotta say, that is really exciting for me.

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Just like I get excited telling you about our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed this video,

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It's kind of a bloodbath, not gonna lie.