When all is said and done, I doubt anyone will cite 2025 as a key year in the history of Apple. The company admitted that it couldn’t deliver on a promise it made back in 2024, and it shipped a bunch of impressive but incremental improvements to its existing hardware devices. The iPhone Air is a fun product, but is hardly setting the world on fire. 2025 was, above all else… a year.
On the other hand, 2026 feels like it will be momentous for Apple in numerous areas. After a few years of calm, it feels like the storm is upon us.
The beginning of the end
The death of Steve Jobs was a dangerous moment for Apple. The company needed to show that it could still thrive without its co-founder and longtime CEO. As a result, it elevated Jony Ive to a position of even greater prominence, giving him control over all Apple design. It also entered a remarkable era of growth and executive stability, which soothed any questions Wall Street might have had.
But Apple is now stocked with long-term senior managers who have made enormous amounts of money in Apple’s rise to all-time highs, and many of them are nearing retirement age. Things remained relatively static until 2025, when a few key executives began to cycle out. Those departures weren’t the end of the story, they were the start of it. Next year will see the beginning of the exit of the old guard and the debut of a bunch of new faces (most of whom have actually been working in obscurity at Apple for a decade or two).
Apple Tim Cook won’t step down in 2026, but the preparation for his successor will be in the works.
Apple
It all starts with Tim Cook. Cook just turned 65, and we live in an era where that’s hardly retirement age. Still, it’s hard to imagine that Cook will want to stay at Apple for a long time. Many accounts suggest that the company has stepped up its succession planning, and I would expect that there’s nobody more in favor of that than Cook. Consider: Cook got the job of Apple CEO thrust upon him due to Jobs’s illness, and never really got to use Jobs as a sounding board after he became CEO.
I don’t think Cook wants to do that to his successor if he can help it. So while I’m not outright predicting that Cook will step away from his job as CEO, I do think he’ll begin the public process of transitioning to a new role. I fully expect that Cook will follow in Jobs’s footsteps to become the chairman of the Apple board, and then, at a future date, he’ll resign as CEO and appoint his successor. The result: Cook gets to provide extended oversight and guidance that Jobs sadly wasn’t able to provide to him. As chairman, Cook can also focus on international politics and trade, giving the new CEO time to settle into the business of keeping Apple operating smoothly. It’s the careful and conservative move, which fits Cook perfectly.
We’ve already seen the start of it, but with Cook cranking up the engines of succession, I expect many other Apple executives to begin their own exit planning. They may not all leave–Phil Schiller’s continued presence at Apple suggests that it’s very hard to say goodbye–but I expect many of them to shift into new roles and let trusted lieutenants take on more prominent titles and responsibilities.
In five years at the most, Apple will be run by people who were not key players in the Steve Jobs era. Time marches on.
The Mac Pro was last updated in 2023. That was likely the very last update.
Foundry
The Mac: Expect the unexpected
After a few years of continuity, I expect some big changes when it comes to the Mac.
Rumor has it that we might see the very first touchscreen Macs this coming fall, w