Roger Fingas
In denying rumors that she's lined up to replace Tim Cook whenever he exits as CEO, Apple's senior VP of retail — Angela Ahrendts — borrowed a phrase from U.S. President Donald Trump.
"Fake news, fake news, silly, no," Ahrendts said in a video interview with BuzzFeed News, released on Tuesday. She was joined by Cook, and spoke with BuzzFeed at last week's launch of the new Michigan Avenue store in Chicago.
Cook avoided the question.
"I see my role as CEO to prepare as many people as I can to be CEO, and that's what I'm doing, and then the board makes a decision at that point in time," he commented.
Cook separately replied to the prospect of severe shortages of the iPhone X, which goes up for preorder on Friday at 12:01 a.m. Pacific time, 3:01 a.m. Eastern. Multiple reports have pointed to production bottlenecks caused by the phone's TrueDepth camera.
"We'll see what happens," he said, "but we'll be working as hard as possible to make as many as possible."
On the topic of Trump — whose name is on a hotel within sight of Apple Michigan Avenue — Cook dismissed the possibility that the President might retaliate against opposition on matters like immigration and LGBT rights. Trump infamously attacked Apple during his election campaign, but has also bragged about bringing related jobs to the U.S. Cook has attended White House meetings and made phone calls.
"We stay out of politics but we do engage on policy discussion," Cook said. "But we don't go back and forth on personality kind of stuff. That's not what we're about. I think most people look at that and even if they disagree, they respect if you're coming from an authentic place."
Christine McKee
Amber Neely
Andrew O'Hara
Malcolm Owen
Mike Wuerthele and Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
52 Comments
Wow, kiss Apple good-bye if it does turn out to be true. Apple has already lost a lot of its innovative spirit with the death of Steve Jobs. Tim Cook is a great supply chain guy but is having difficulty doing much more than polishing the iPhone line as much as possible. To even suggest that a marketing executive whose experience is primarily in fashion goods would be an appropriate leader for one of the greatest technological companies in the world is ludicrous.
Apple would do well to take a note from Microsoft. Steve Balmer did his best to ruin it because he simply didn't have the technical ability to see where the company needed to be in five-to-ten years. Now they've finally got someone back in the big chair who has degrees in electrical engineering and computer science as well as an MBA. You need to be a high-level user of your company's products to be able to predict where the future lies. Nadella is doing a lot to turn Microsoft around.
Apple needs to be grooming a talented engineer with great design skills to be the next CEO.
My only concern about who ever replaces Tim, the board should not pick someone to appease some social pressure or PC Police. They need to pick the right person not just any person. In the end it going to be had to find the right person. Steve picked Tim, but the board will pick the next person and too many on that board have social agendas they trying to drive forward and will use Apple success to drive those agendas.
Everyone needs to stop using the term “fake news”. The use of the term normalizies it. This was a rumor. There is a important difference between fake news and a rumor.
Jeff Williams is the most likely candidate in my book.