Apple Vision Pro isn't dead, Ternus talk, & AI rumors on the AppleInsider Podcast

**Wesley Hilliard** (0:05)
Hello, and welcome to the Apple Insider Podcast. This is your host, Wesley Hilliard speaking. There's a bonus at the end of the show as well. And this week, I'm joined by Mike Wuerthele, our managing editor, and he's gonna be sticking around for this one. And we're gonna be talking about how we get work done at Apple Insider and things surrounding that topic. Mike, you're here again after a power outage affected our original recording. So this is take two, how are you?

**Mike Wuerthele** (0:30)
You know, I'm great. All my fans are off. My system is mostly restored.
Had some kind of weird brownout. My half my network is broken. But yeah, I'm fine. Thanks for asking.

**Wesley Hilliard** (0:42)
Yeah, that's never fun. I feel like the brownouts are worse than the blackouts, honestly.
But jumping back in, we're gonna be talking a little bit about some topics we covered before. You were here on Thanksgiving and we actually covered John Ternus and Apple Home Hub and this whole CEO transition. We're gonna be hearing some echos here. But what are your thoughts on the CEO transition? Tim Cook announced he's gonna step down, become chairman, and Ternus is gonna step in as CEO on September 1st.

**Mike Wuerthele** (1:15)
Well, obviously, you can't tell when the new guy takes over, if it's the same decisions the old guy would have made. But Apple has a pretty consistent lineup. You really couldn't feel the effect of Tim Cook on Apple for four or five years after Steve handed the reins over.
And it's not like Tim Cook is going anywhere. He's gonna be chairman of the board.

**Wesley Hilliard** (1:35)
Right. And that's kind of, the Internet's full of very loud people. And I've already seen, we'll get to some topics later of see, look at what John Ternus is doing. And it's just like he's doing nothing. He's not the CEO.
So this is just what we have to deal with as writers at Apple Insider. But yeah, go ahead.

**Mike Wuerthele** (1:59)
No, here's the thing, right? So there's going to be earnings later today. We're recording this right now. Right now it's 12.19 Eastern time.
And I suspect that most of the conversation after Apple announces the results for the first half hour and makes their statements, is going to be about Ternus taking over. And it's ridiculous. Those kind of questions right now are about as ridiculous as those analysts trying to get information about future Apple products out of those guys at the end of the announcement. So let's like William and I wrote, let's let John Ternus be John Ternus.
Let's quit it with the, well, Steve Jobs would have never let's quit it with the, well, I don't know, Tim Cook would have done something different. Let's just quit it with that. It's a logical fallacy. It makes no sense now. It has made no sense for the last 16 years. So let's not start that all up again. Let's just not.

**Wesley Hilliard** (2:53)
Yeah. Obviously, they're going to be all about the transition and if Ternus is going to have a different strategy. I've already seen tweets from analysts we know and talk about here on the show, saying things like, well, Ternus hates Apple Vision Pro, so he's going to get rid of that immediately. It's just like we don't know any of that. Also, how do you know he doesn't like it? Where's that information coming from? He's never once hinted that he doesn't like this product.
In any case, I think we should ignore all of this, honestly. It's just noise. We're still going to get iPhones in the fall. We're still going to, like the product launches that were planned for the next year aren't going to change because a new CEO stepped in.

**Mike Wuerthele** (3:35)
The product announcements for the next four years aren't going to change because a new CEO stepped in. Let's be perfectly clear about that.
So we're in the iPhone 18 crazy time, right? Where all these rumors are coming out and all these things are being said about the iPhone 18 and Pro and when everything is coming out. Apple has already got the iPhone 19 in initial phases or the iPhone 20, whatever they're going to do next year. They've got at least a guideline for what they're going to do for the next five years because chip taping out and so forth takes forever.

**Wesley Hilliard** (4:04)
Yeah, the supply chain is a giant monolith to move and turn. People seem to forget that anytime they talk about Apple and its decision making.
It's kind of why I'm still bearish on the iPhone Fold coming out this year because it seems like they're not going to start production until late July at the earliest, and that's a little scary for even Apple.