This one’s from the heart – I just hope that someone listens

Cupertino must have been a stressful place to be over the past few months.

Or, to be more accurate, Apple Park in Cupertino must’ve been a stressful place to be.

Every year, the eyes of Wall Street and the tech universe fall on Apple and Tim Cook to get a better idea of what the next twelve months will hold in store for us, Apple fans and users, as we gather for WWDC.

I’m sure even a WWDC veteran like Tim Cook was feeling the pressure more than ever as he recorded his part of this year’s events. I mean, this is a man that has had the President gunning after him personally over the past few weeks, but I reckon that will have fallen into insignificance compared to nailing this keynote speech. He knew how important this conference would be.

It was noticeable, however, how small a part Cook played in WWDC 2025, and I’m certain that was planned and no mistake. Keeping him out of the firing line is my best guess as to what played out there.

The stakes are high for Apple right now. Mistakes have been made – plenty of mistakes, and it’s time to play catch-up.

From my point of view, Apple over-delivered on my expectations at WWDC this year, and most important of all, they have clearly listened. But for the long-term health of the company, we mustn’t let one strong event paper over the cracks that are appearing at Cupertino.

Look, I have no clue as to how the company is run, but what I can write passionately about is the current state of Apple. And when you start to look at the facts, it’s patently obvious, something is wrong within Apple Park, and from my point of view, the rot started at the very top.

There’s no doubt that Cook is an amazing force as a businessman. His pedigree is unquestioned, having spent long, successful stints at both Compaq and IBM before joining Apple.

Before becoming CEO of the company in 2011, he’d been responsible for all of the company’s worldwide sales and operations in his role as Chief Operations Officer, and also headed up the Macintosh division for a while too.

Sure, he has been at the helm of overseeing Apple become one of the highest valued companies, but in so doing, has the company also lost its way?

This has had me wondering, has Apple, during the Cook years, lost its soul?

It didn’t need to be this way

It’ll be no surprise to you that I decided to start writing and making videos about Apple, as I like what the brand represents, and the gear they give us to use. I care about the company.

And it’s because I care that it hurts to see Apple in this malaise. Part of the trouble is that Apple has one playbook. It seems as though their approach is that it’s always worked in the past, so why shouldn’t the Apple way continue to work now?

But here’s the thing – everything changes, for all of us, and even the mighty can tumble. Their hardware is probably the best it’s ever been, but outside of that, the company appears to be a mess. Hear me out until the end, and you’ll see what I mean.

Apple silicon was the revolution of the decade. It changed the way Macs behaved and what we could do on even the cheapest, lowliest of Macs. It changed the landscape for not only Macs but PCs as well. Tech needs Apple to lead and innovate as it pulls the rest of the industry with it.

Everything improves if Apple is on point.

By rights, Apple silicon should have been the defining moment of Cook’s tenure, but sadly, it was almost the last time that Apple showed that innovative brilliance that used to be their cornerstone.

Messy days at Cupertino

It was a year ago that Personal Context and Apple Intelligence were first dropped into our ether, and with hindsight, that was the start of the rot.

Unless I have completely missed the mark here, it went wrong because they lied to us. Personal Context, at least in the way it was depicted on-stage never existed. It had never run on a single device, anywhere. This wasn’t bad marketing; this was panic that turned into a blatant mis-truth. Chasing the AI dragon burned them.

Last year, Apple knew they were behind the curve on AI, but instead of steering a wide berth, or simply saying they weren’t ready, they plundered on, assuming their tried and tested playbook would come through.

If they simply had said, ‘We have some big plans for you with our AI, but we want to take time to deliver what we feel you deserve,’ I think they’d have gained some respect. Instead though, they have made themselves look foolish and have become the butt of endless jokes. And for that, they’ve only themselves to blame.

Yes, it’s clear to see that they have learned something from last year, as we nearly got an apology from Craig when he said they didn’t want to ship a bad Siri, as you deserve better.

Is it a case of a day late and a dollar short, possibly?

Make no mistake, this mess came about from arrogance and mis- mismanagement at the very highest level.

They got it wrong for all sorts of reasons. Starting late on the AI road trip didn’t help, but there’s also been loads of top-tier management infighting, as well.

For instance, software chief Craig Federighi was reluctant to make large investments in AI, and AI chief John Giannandrea openly stated that he thought people didn’t want AI chatbots on their Apple devices.

Apple’s original take on giving us an improved Siri was to just bolt on a new intelligent Siri to the existing old, dumb Siri. It was a halfway house that was never going to work. Anyone in the real world could tell them that, to be polite, Siri is somewhat limited.

But, all too late, they’re now taking AI very seriously, and have an AI team permanently stationed in Zurich working on it day and night, around the clock, working on building a new LLM-based engine for Siri. This new Siri will be more conversation-based and way improved at synthesising information.

This time, let’s hope they get it right, as time and patience are running out!

From what we saw at WWDC, it looks as if Apple at least now has a cohesive plan of how they intend to integrate AI into our ecosystem, and from what I can see, the future looks good.

But they should never have been in the position of playing catch-up in the first place.

Lambs to the Slaughter

Apple versus Epic has become something of a folklore, but again, it’s a mess that never needed to happen.

Apple got greedy and decided to stick to that fabled playbook of theirs yet again and tried to bully their way out of the problem. If only they had given up a tiny bit of the App Store five years ago, then there is a very real chance that they may not be facing the huge changes to their beloved App Store and massive loss of revenue that they now face.

Again, this rot, we now know for certain due to what we saw in court, came from the top dog, Mr Cook himself.

A few weeks ago, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers tore into Apple, and in particular Apple’s vice president of finance, Alex Roman, whom she accused of providing false testimony under oath.

The fact that Roman was sent to court by Cook to tell these fabrications is shocking!

The Judge said that Roman gave testimony that was replete with misdirection and outright lies in connection with when Apple decided upon the spurious 27% commission fee that they’ve been charging developers for Apps purchased outside of the App Store.

She was furious that neither Apple nor its counsel corrected the now-obvious lies and feels so outraged that she’s referring the case to a U.S. attorney for possible criminal contempt proceedings against both Apple and Roman. Rogers said;

“Apple willfully chose not to comply with the Court’s Injunction and did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers. If Apple thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination, it was a gross miscalculation.”

She feels that Apple’s alleged deception has merely compounded its original violation of the anti-steering Court Injunction.

But you know, she originally rejected claims that Apple operated a monopoly, although she did rule that Apple’s anti-steering conduct was anti-competitive and ordered the company to allow developers to link to alternative payment methods outside of the App Store.

At this point, some humility rather than blatant hubris may have been the way to play it. But sadly, that isn’t the Apple we have under its current leadership.

It’s set to run

Of course, Apple appealed the judge’s decision, as you’d expect, but it’s clear that they’ve pushed their luck one too many times, and the courts are getting rather fed up with their antics.

Apple’s appeal to delay the order being put in place was immediately denied. The court was not persuaded that blocking the order was appropriate after looking at Apple’s chances to succeed on appeal, whether Apple would be irreparably harmed, whether other parties would be hurt if the order is halted, and what best supports the public interest.

The court is fed up that they continually failed to comply with what they were being told to do – which was to simply open up the App Store just a little bit.

Since that ruling a few months back, the changes have been rapid, with apps like Spotify & Kindle adding links in their apps to make purchases on the web.

Epic’s Fortnite is back in the App Store, too, although interestingly, only 40% of people are taking advantage of the new payment option. You see, the majority of people will still take the path with less friction, but Apple kept wanting more and more.

Greed consumed them. To his credit, Phil Schiller was the only one at the top table to say no, we’re earning enough. But his voice wasn’t heard. Cook shouted louder, and the others followed his wishes.

Adding to confusion

From start to finish, their quest to confuse, stall and mislead has been staggering.

Simple tasks like how the links and buttons should appear were unreasonably complicated. They could have made them clear, rich-text buttons, but instead, they tried to get away with ugly, clumsy text links.

Rather than a subtle notification that you were about to leave the App Store, Apple decided to make it a giant, full-screen splash that was designed to irritate and annoy.

At every turn, Apple attempted to make things ugly. All the judge had originally asked was that Apple stop behaving in an uncompetitive manner, but instead, they chose to tease and taunt her. She became so exasperated that she then demanded to see documents, emails and Slack messages to find out what had been going on in the background.

She read for herself, for example, that the Apple Design team discussed how to make the on-screen notifications scary! When they were directly asked about this point, they tried to get away with it by saying scary doesn’t mean scary in design terms!

These examples are what I meant when I said that they’ve pushed their luck too many times now. The courts are not afraid any longer to challenge the might of Apple.

Taking stock

Apple needs to take a harsh look in the mirror at the harm it’s bringing to its own doorstep.

The only part of their business that has been growing every quarter over recent years is Services. Not Mac sales, not iPhone or iPad sales, but Services. Not only is it growing, it’s also massively profitable, yielding around 70% gross profit. And the bulk of the services income doesn’t come from Apple TV or Apple Music subs – it comes from the App Store and in-app purchases.

They have now become part of a perfect storm that could suddenly see Apple become weakened. Even with their wealth, some harder times could be right around the corner.

They’ve lost a chunk of change from losing their grip on the App Store.

They could lose the $20 billion that Google pays them every year to be the default search engine in Safari, if Google loses their antitrust case.

There is the fallout with Trump to factor in, too. He has his sights set on making Apple bring production back to the U.S. Even if Trump fails at that, there is still the tariff fiasco hanging about, which will affect margins.

And on top of all that, they are woefully behind in the AI war, which has also cost them money.

All of a sudden, Apple doesn’t look quite the rock-solid company it once was, and a lot of this could have been avoided.

What next?

Sure, Cook has taken the company to financial success unheard of, but it’s at risk of losing its heart. Apple first and foremost must be a tech company and not a Wall Street asset.

Under Cook’s guidance, and by all accounts, he is very hands-on, the crown has not only started to fall, but it’s fallen off the cliff face. Rapidly!

Yes, they delivered a great Keynote speech full of what we’d been asking for, and it showed they had been listening. But how much of that had to do with Cook, I wonder?

Is this the time for Cook to go? One thing is for sure. If he survives and decides to stay, that trusted and often used playbook of Apple’s is going to need to change.

I’m sure the sunny days will return, but by that time, what damage will have been done?

All of this is what leaves me Cupertino Dreaming!