Apple's CEO change and wild rumors: toxic advance praise

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The leadership change at Apple has not yet been completed, but rumors are already swirling: Vision Pro (partially) discontinued, MagSafe could be dropped, smart glasses with gesture control. What usually seeps through the relevant channels in moderation is now coming in waves – and that's likely no coincidence. Apple has a new beacon of hope: In September, John Ternus will take over the CEO position from Tim Cook, who will remain active on the board as Executive Chairman. Many observers associate Apple's future CEO John Ternus with someone who dares to do things. Someone who is trusted with the decisiveness that Tim Cook has not been credited with lately – especially in the AI sector, but not only there. And so, the rumor mill projects onto the not-yet-official CEO everything it imagines a courageous Apple to be: radical cuts, fresh start, end of compromises.

An opinion by Malte Kirchner

Malte Kirchner has been an editor at heise online since 2022. In addition to technology itself, he is interested in how it is changing society. He pays particular attention to news from Apple. He also covers topics relating to software development and podcasting.

Will MagSafe be dropped?

A closer look at the substance of the rumors is worthwhile. The end of the Vision Pro is the strongest of them – MacRumors reports, citing internal sources, that the hardware team has been disbanded and distributed among other projects, including Siri. Interesting in this context: According to tradition, Ternus himself was skeptical of the Vision Pro, at least in its hefty $3500 form. The CEO change would indeed be a good time to take the Vision Pro out of the running. Tim Cook has made it his own product – he will step out of the spotlight in September. However, a departure doesn't have to look like an admission that something didn't work. Apple could sell it as a general reorganization and make Ternus seem like he's taking charge: not a decision against the Vision Pro, but for a stronger focus.

The smart glasses rumors are also plausible – Apple is reportedly already working on at least four different glasses designs. The MagSafe rumor, on the other hand, is the thinnest of the three: attention-grabbing, but hardly tenable given Apple's accessory strategy and the Qi2 standard, which Apple itself helped shape.

Expectations that are too high are a straitjacket

For Apple, the excitement is not bad at the moment. The discussion stimulates interest. When even the discontinuation of MagSafe is rumored in the tech media as a realistic scenario, people at least attribute the ability to surprise to Apple. The company appears disruptive. Despite all the dismay about the plan, memories of the best Steve Jobs times are awakened: omitting a CD drive in a notebook? That also seemed like sacrilege at the time, which turned out to be a golden decision.

But that's precisely where the problem begins. We've experienced it with Cook himself: Expectations that are too high become a straitjacket for Apple. If the bar is set so high that only radical change counts as success, then any normal product year can only be read as a disappointment.

Throwing everything overboard would not be courage

Reality will be more sober: Ternus is not taking over a crisis-ridden Apple, but an Apple in continuity. He will spend his first year in office convincingly selling Cook's decisions, which are already exciting enough compared to previous years – the iPhone Fold, the anniversary iPhone in 2027, possibly a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen. Things that have been in the pipeline for years and whose course has long been set. And things that Ternus, as head of hardware, has also been significantly involved in.

An Apple that completely overturns its strategy overnight would not be a courageous Apple. It would be a chaotic one. Consequently, the current excessive rumors are, in a way, advance praise because they attribute to John Ternus something that was apparently no longer expected from Tim Cook. But they are toxic berries because they unnecessarily raise the already high bar for the new Apple CEO even higher. And he will likely have enough to do besides his daily tasks and new hardware introductions, for example, straightening out Apple's AI course, keeping third-party developers happy, and dispelling criticism of software quality. Healthy skepticism towards wild rumors, which are sure to increase in the coming time, is not pessimism. It is the prerequisite for evaluating Apple fairly.

(mki)