The latest tremors came when Apple announced chief operating officer Jeff Williams would retire by yearend after 27 years. Just a day before, the company’s top AI executive, Ruoming Pang, had left to join Meta, and weeks earlier, another high-level AI researcher, Tom Gunter, had also left. The image of a leadership exodus was forming.

Tim Cook has constantly been criticized, most recently over Apple Intelligence, but always for just not being Steve Jobs — yet the fact that he isn't Jobs is what has made Apple the technological and financial juggernaut it is today.