Time to Think Different: Tim Cook’s leadership has run its course at Apple

Apple CEO Tim Cook
By MacDailyNews staff
Today, June 20, 2025, Apple’s stock price sits lower than it did in December 2023, a troubling sign for a company once synonymous with innovation and market dominance. This decline reflects deeper issues under CEO Tim Cook’s tenure, raising serious questions about his ability to steer Apple forward. With the stock struggling and the company facing mounting challenges, the case for a new CEO has never been stronger.
Apple, once the world’s most valuable company, has fallen well behind the world’s most valuable company Microsoft ($3.57 trillion) and Nvidia ($3.48 trillion).
Cook’s ascent to the top role in 2011 came with a reputation as an “operations genius,” credited with streamlining Apple’s supply chain and boosting profitability while also, unfortunately, shackling the company’s operations to autocratic, CCP-controlled China, handicapping its future.
See also: How Tim Cook’s Apple may have undermined America’s lead in technological innovation and even its national security – June 17, 2025
Under his watch, Apple’s market cap soared to over $3 trillion, a testament to the foundation laid by Steve Jobs, whose visionary product roadmap —culminating in the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch — propelled the company to new heights. Critics argue Cook has failed to replicate that innovation, relying instead on incremental updates and financial engineering, such as aggressive share buybacks, to prop up the stock price.
Apple, once the world’s most valuable company, now lags with a market value of $2.95 trillion, falling behind Microsoft at $3.57 trillion and Nvidia at $3.48 trillion.
The current stock performance underscores this stagnation. Since December 2024, when Apple’s valuation peaked amid holiday sales optimism, the share price has eroded, losing billions in market value. Cook’s attempts to diversify manufacturing away from Chinese Communist Party-controlled China to India and Vietnam have been insufficient and late, leaving Apple vulnerable. His diplomatic efforts with political leaders, including a reported personal $1 million donation to Trump’s 2025 inauguration, have failed to secure meaningful concessions, exposing a lack of strategic foresight.
Speaking of millions of dollars, Cook infamously, in a 2017 hissy fit over fake news, gave $2 million of Apple’s — not his personal — money to the ADL and SPLC, which has been called a “con” for “bilking gullible liberals”*. The company also matched two-for-one employees’ donations to the SPLC through September 30th of that year and even had Apple’s iTunes Store offer visitors a way to donate to the SPLC.
In a typically sanctimonious letter to Apple employees at the time, Cook wrongly claimed that President Trump made “a moral equivalence between white supremacists and Nazis,’ a claim that anyone who watched the actual video of the event (as Tim Cook should have done before wasting Apple shareholders’ money) and even the left-leaning Snopes has since rated as “FALSE.”
Cook should long ago have personally reimbursed Apple Inc. the $2+ million that he stupidly and embarrassingly gave to the ADL and SPLC in a 2017 knee-jerk hissy fit over fake news, with interest, and issue public apologies to both Apple shareholders and President Trump.
His failure to critically assess the situation before acting, not to mention never apologizing or making restitution. not only highlights a lack of due diligence but also erodes trust in his ability to lead Apple responsibly, especially when the company’s stock price struggles below its December 2023 levels.
The primary focus of a public company CEO is to maximize shareholder returns. Period. Not to insert himself awkwardly in TV show promos. Not to walk the red carpet at movie premieres, not to “save the planet” by planting mangroves or glom onto whatever fad strikes his fancy, abusing Apple’s brand and wasting shareholders’ dollars en masse along the way. (Cook has by now extracted some $2.5 billion from Apple; he should always have been using his own name and his own money for his own personal causes; not Apple’s brand and AAPl shareholder’s money.)
Again, the primary focus of a public company CEO is to maximize shareholder returns. Yet, Apple’s stock price right now is lower than it was in December 2023. So, to repurpose a phrase from Cook himself, “Why are you still here?”
Apple’s high-profile missteps under Cook like the botched, delayed Apple Intelligence rollout, the now-canceled “Project Titan” debacle which reportedly cost in excess of $10 billion, the decade-and-a-half neglect of Siri, and the underwhelming Vision Pro highlight a disconnect from consumer needs. Clearly, Cook lacks the visionary spark Jobs delivered routinely. Apple’s output under Cook is iterative and innovation-lacking, at best.
What’s wrong with Apple is that Tim Cook should have bowed out 3-5 years after providing continuity for the company as a caretaker CEO after Steve Jobs’ untimely death, not hung on, endlessly pumping out annual iterations of Steve Jobs’ innovations… burning tens of billions on failed projects (Scrapped Apple Car ‘a massive disappointment that will alter the course of the company’s history, perhaps for decades to come’ – Mark Gurman, March 11, 2024) and releasing a half-baked DevKit as a consumer product in order to cover for his glaring lack of vision (The Apple Vision Pro is ‘expensive, impractical, and clearly nowhere near ready for the mass market’ – Benedict Evans, March 22, 2024). – MacDailyNews, April 11, 2025
Apple needs a visionary leader who can navigate geopolitical risks, reinvigorate product development, and restore investor trust. Apple needs a charismatic leader who can deliver live on-stage presentations that capture the imagination and excite customers. Cook’s operational expertise is no longer enough and hasn’t been enough for many years; the company requires a charismatic visionary to reclaim its edge. As Apple stock languishes below its 2023 peak, the evidence is clear: it’s time for a new CEO to chart Apple’s next chapter.

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