OPINION Apple's pending leadership transition affords the company a rare opportunity to return to its roots and once again serve as a source of inspiration instead of frustration.

CEO Tim Cook has served shareholders well, but he increased the company's value at the expense of Apple's image and reputation.

Apple's image – as depicted in its iconic 1984 commercial and its Think Different ad campaign – has always been something of a fiction. Thanks to the legal concept of fiduciary duty to shareholders, public companies have to spend most of their energy on "think profit."

But marketing ideally both reflects and informs corporate aspiration and culture. Steve Jobs' description of the personal computer as a bicycle for the mind helped frame the value proposition of the digital age.

But toward the end, as the iPhone was taking off, Jobs found it more profitable to make a toll road for his mind cycle. Apple became the gatekeeper to the iOS/iPadOS kingdom. And Cook continued that rent-seeking legacy quite profitably, charging developers up to 30 percent of app sales for a 12-minute security review and fighting "sideloading" – otherwise known as installing your own software.

The control Apple demanded has forced the company to embrace hypocrisy – crowing about how privacy is a human right while cooperating with governments that violate human rights and denying privacy to employees. When you make yourself the gatekeeper, you're the first stop for any adversarial process or authoritarian government. If Apple were more hands-off, it would have cleaner hands.

What's more, Apple's gatekeeping has made it the focus of antitrust litigation around the globe. The company's platform monopoly has been great for profit, but it harms the rest of the world by hindering competition. 

Now, as Cook prepares to step aside, Apple is embracing advertising, which has never been compatible with privacy, by putting ads on Maps. Did Apple customers ask for that?

It's not just Apple ignoring the wishes or standing in the way of its customers. Microsoft and Google have been shoving AI services down people's throats, alienating customers by neglecting the products that people care about like Search and Windows. Social media giants like Meta have embraced "slopaganda" while trying to evade liability for the effect their digital exhaust has on mental health and public discourse. The tech industry has succumbed to "enshittification" and fallen from favor.

When John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, takes over as chief executive officer in September, he will have the opportunity to reorient and reinvent Apple.

• Claude Desktop changes app access settings for browsers you don't even have installed yet
• Vibe coding upstart Lovable denies data leak, cites 'intentional behavior,' then throws HackerOne under the bus
• Anthropic bakes memory fixes into Bun 1.1.13 as developers complain of leaks
• The spaghettified DBMS chart that shows Oracle's crown is slowly slipping

The tech industry is at a turning point. Google's dominance of web search is fragile and rivals are poised to reinvent how online content discovery and distribution work in an era of agent-based automation. Apple has bided its time, but it cannot sit on the sidelines forever if it wants to remain relevant.

A refresh is needed. Apple products under Cook – Apple Watch, AirPods, AirTags, HomePod, and Apple Vision Pro – haven't been nearly as impactful as the iPhone or Mac. Coming up with novel hardware is a challenge – nearly everything has a processor nowadays. But a changing of the guard may open the door to new ideas.

Making its products easier to repair and to extend would be a good start. And Ternus already faces regulatory pressure in that direction. In 2027, for example, the EU will require removable batteries in electronic appliances. Apple hardware would be so much better if it encouraged modification, repair, and recycling.

Apple's services strategy has been successful but extractive. Ternus has the opportunity to do the right thing and treat mobile devices like actual computers. He could allow people to install software from outside the App Store – something they can already do on macOS and other platforms.

Apple does not guarantee security for App Store apps, and in the absence of that, it offers nothing but convenience and toll taking. Imagine how much better Apple's services might be if it faced competition from rival app stores and payment processors. And imagine how market opportunities might expand if Apple focused on federation rather than empire.

Apple's AI strategy has been clumsy. But the company's hardware turns out to be quite good at local inference, particularly with the help of its MLX framework.

The past few months of escalating AI service limitations, particularly from Anthropic, GitHub, and OpenAI, and of increasingly capable local models like Google's Gemma 4, suggest that it won't be long before local AI presents a viable alternative to cloud-based models for many tasks. Apple ought to strive to make local AI useful as soon as the technology allows it.

With Private Cloud Compute, Apple could even become a leading provider of cloud-based AI, perhaps even on other platforms. It could buy a seat at the table by purchasing Mistral, or perhaps even a larger AI biz facing a cash crunch.

Not much needs to change, and in some ways Apple is already moving in the right direction. For at least the past decade, Apple omitted the names of public relations contacts from its press releases. That was during the height of Apple secrecy and imperiousness. Then around 2025, PR contact email addresses started to appear on select press releases. That shows there's room for two-way communication, as opposed to dictums and declarations.

Apple could do more to put its people out front, particularly as AI becomes more important. Its engineers and product designers could engage with people on social media and at conferences. It could publish more research work and blog posts about product features. It could engage with the world, participate in public discourse, and focus on technology that helps people.

No one wants more ads or more technical barriers. As AI proliferates, Apple should focus on humanity. ®

More about

• AI
• Apple
• Development

More like these