Prof G Markets Tim Cook Sat Out the AI Race — Will the New CEO Pay the Price?
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Apr 22, 2026 
Tripp Mickle, a New York Times Apple reporter and author of After Steve, joins Patrick McGee, an award-winning journalist behind Apple in China. They dig into Tim Cook’s legacy, Apple’s deep China ties, slowing innovation, cautious AI strategy, and why John Ternus could face a brutal test as Apple enters its next era.
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Vision Pro Impressed Then Failed In Real Use
- Patrick McGee uses Vision Pro as proof that Apple can still engineer marvels without creating products people actually keep using.
- He bought the $3,500 headset, planned to write his book in it, then returned it after six days because it felt useless after 45 minutes.
Operations Discipline May Have Choked Apple Creativity
- Apple’s innovation problem may stem from operations gaining more power than product creativity as scale forced rigid manufacturing deadlines.
- Tripp Mickle says making 200 million iPhones yearly locked teams into fixed schedules that narrowed experimentation and preserved the same lineup.
Apple's AI Restraint Could Be Genius Or Surrender
- Apple’s low AI spending could prove either disciplined brilliance or a historic miss, because it may profit as the hardware gateway without owning the models.
- Patrick McGee notes Apple squandered Siri’s head start, so if AI becomes a platform shift larger than the web, Apple looks strangely passive.
