I must admit that I am rather sad that Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO of Apple. During his tenure, he’s seen the launch of what I would consider to be three of Apple’s greatest achievements in the past 20 years: the Apple Watch, and Apple Silicon Macs (e.g. the M series).
The Apple Watch has played a vital role in my health (its sleep apnea detection forced me to go and see a doctor, and I now have a CPAP machine) and continues to do so by monitoring my steps and other vital signs to improve my overall fitness and health.
The Apple Silicon Mac, when it first launched, proved that moving away from Intel was a very smart move despite launching in the middle of the COVID pandemic. I personally thought it was strange timing, but thankfully, I was proven wrong. The M1 series proved to be an absolute powerhouse of a computer, which is still going strong 5 years later – many people are still perfectly happy with the performance of their machine despite the M5 series potentially being three times (or more) as fast. I will always try to get a Mac for work – to give you an example, my current work M4 Pro MacBook Pro allows me to work completely untethered all day and still have enough juice for the evening. It’s extremely power-efficient and fits in well with the university’s energy policies – probably more so than the standard Windows laptops.
And I’ve always seen Apple gear as a good investment; it’s excellent value for money in both the hardware, software and services. I’ve got fair and decent pricing whenever I’ve sold Apple kit (unlike my Windows laptops). In terms of services, under Cook’s management, we’ve seen the launch of Apple TV, which has given us some of the best science fiction (For All Mankind, Severance, Silo, Pluribus) and drama (Slow Horses) and factual content (Long Way Up, and Long Way Home) I’ve seen anywhere. News+ is a great aggregation of newspapers and magazines, and Apple Music provides me with a quality music service where I can upload my own music library across all my Apple devices easily and without fuss – all in excellent quality.
Apple hasn’t always gotten it right, and they can be quite stubborn at times, but ultimately, the whole experience has been far more positive than with other technology providers. The most recent annoyance was having to prove to Apple that my 83-year-old dad, who only has an iPad, is old enough to browse the web. For me, my Apple account was old enough to immediately pass, but there was a lot of kerfuffle with credit cards, which I wanted to ensure did not end up on the account (which, thankfully, it didn’t). However, I blame the UK government for this more than I do Apple, which I suspect was ordered to implement it sooner rather than later.