I'm quite curious what Tim Cook's legacy will end up being.
There is no question many of Apple's business experienced significant, impressive growth during his tenure. Amazing capital efficiency.
There is also no question Apple lost product velocity. Few new products were launched, and those that were had mixed success.
Tim was, at the end of the day, an elite financial operator. Apple shareholders were lucky to have him. Customers like myself probably have mixed opinions, and it remains to be seen how he set the company up for the future.
I'm just pointing out product velocity slowed. I'm far from the first person to say it, it's just a fact. In the five years before Cook we got first generation Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. Your list spans 14 years.
One could add the Vision Pro, MacBook Neo, Mac Studio, HomePods, and so on to the list as well.
The reality is everyone just wants another hit product like the iPhone, but its success was based on it being a personal convergence device. You can't really create a second carryable/wearable convergence device and expect it to be wildly successful at the level of the iPhone without it killing off the iPhone.
So far that revolutionary approach by third parties has not succeeded against the iPhone, and the evolutionary approach apple takes with the iPhone means there is no clear inflection point anywhere in the future where the phone form factor goes away.
Yes, a very successful CEO and he secured a great legacy. I was skeptical when Jobs stepped down, but under Cook innovation did continue, but primarily in hardware.
> Few new products were launched, and those that were had mixed success.
Tim oversaw the launch of the Apple Watch, Airpods, Airtags, Apple Pay, the Beats acquisition (which lead to Apple Music) and the launch of the M series chips.
He's had quite a few product launches under his belt, many of them company-defining products.
The M series transition was perfectly executed, but that trajectory was set up before Jobs left when they went all-in on in-house semiconductor design.
Apple released their first in-house ARM processor 16 years ago, and the M series is descendent from that lineage and acquisitions that got them started in that business such as PA Semi and Intrinsity.
Cook absolutely deserves credit for the successful desktop ARM transition, but building ARM processors in-house was in no way something he directed as CEO.
Jobs was likely very burned out on IBM failing to deliver a 3Ghz PowerPC G5 and one with a low enough TDP for a PowerBook.
So he switches to Intel because he needs chips, but the vulnerability still exists, and it's what happened again after the Skylake launch and the ensuing 4 years of terrible Macs designed for silicon that didn't exist.
Steve saw the danger, and probably acquired PA Semi because of it as well as the fact that PA Semi actually did deliver a power efficient PowerPC G5, even if it was a bit late.
Steve had the vision. Cook executed it very well. They both deserve credit.
To me, Tim Cook has turned Apple into a company that is both “doing amazingly well” and “in urgent need of a radical change in direction” at the same time.
FaceID, AirPods, Apple Silicon, Vision Pro (though it was flop was a good try). Overall, I would actually place Tim above Steve in terms of business, although maybe not from a Human Computer Interaction design novelty perspective
Tim Cook is a businessman who made the company bigger than Jobs could.
But he is not an aestheticist as much as Jobs was. See how Cook has been destroying the faces of iPhones and Macs, which had a huge dent or what is ironically called a "dynamic" island on the top of the screen. Back of iPhones is desparetely ugly.
Also he has not been presenting what makes us exicted. Apple's Siri is forgotten so that he has to rely on Google's Gemini instead of developing their own. While Samsung's Galaxy has been deploying its 7th foldable phone, Apple has done none. Leaks are usual so we can tell what he will show at its annual conference well before he acutually does and it gives us no surprise at all.
In a short term, "what Cook's Apple has innovated?" -- I guess zero. Rather, deteriorated.
As a long-standing user who started computer life with Performa 5220, keep using Macs as main machines and now run M3 MAX Macbook Pro to develop web apps, current Apple is never what I think it should be.
Making the company bigger is great. But what about their products and services? These are also where Cook has been leading to. He seems to forget Job's aphorism, "Stay hungry, stay foolish."
I don't think this is true. Apple Watch is basically in a market of its own. iPad might have existed before Cook but he turned it into something people actually use for stuff. Vision Pro may not be a financial success but the tech is impressive and it's clear that work will pay off in the near term in other wearables. Apple Silicon is a phenomenal success. Apple TV is no longer a hobby and he's been at the helm while they've developed their entire services business. AirPods rule the headphone market. Not mention the numerous Mac variants he presided over.
Many of their acquired pro tools, and pretty much all of their server hardware and software, though much of that started before Cook took over. Plus the Mac Pro missteps were on his watch, as well as the current cancellation. Apple seems more and more unwilling to invest in niche hardware like the Mac Pro, except where they see it pushing the platform forward, like the Vision Pro.
Methinks this post conflates “rent seeking” with “return on investment” just a tad.
Economic rent is the extra money you can charge for owning a scarce resource. ML models are not waterfront real estate, they are IP. Other people can make more models if they can/want to.
Now, whether IP should be legally protected is a totally separate question, and while we in the West tend to assume the answer is obvious geohot would certainly not be the first person to suggest broadly applying private property rights to information makes questionable sense.
Also, the defining feature of capitalism is that it encloses what was previously common.
Land used not to be owned (feudal lordship was functionally different than private ownership.) Then, society shifted, land became private, and that was the beginning of rent. This is enclosure.
The whole concept of IP is to explicitly extend this process to ideas -- they are not free, they are owned, and I have to pay you to use them. This is also enclosure, precisely.
The "rent" in "rent-seeking" does not refer to "rent" it refers to "economic rent."
Totally different concept. But don't take my word for it:
> "Rent-seeking" is an attempt to obtain economic rent (i.e., the portion of income paid to a factor of production in excess of what is needed to keep it employed in its current use) by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth.[0]
> In economics, economic rent is any payment to the owner of a factor of production in excess of the costs needed to bring that factor into production. [1]
They started working on humanoid robots because Musk always has to have the next moonshot, trillion-dollar idea to promise "in 3 years" to keep the stock price high.
As soon as Waymo's massive robotaxi lead became undeniable, he pivoted to from robotaxis to humanoid robots.
Pretty much. They banked on "if we can solve FSD, we can partially solve humanoid robot autonomy, because both are robots operating in poorly structured real world environments".
Obviously both will exist and compete with each other on the margins. The thing to appreciate is that our physical world is already built like an API for adult humans. Swinging doors, stairs, cupboards, benchtops. If you want a robot to traverse the space and be useful for more than one task, the humanoid form makes sense.
The key question is whether general purpose robots can outcompete on sheer economies of scale alone.
I agree that each would be made slightly better with a more integrated system. But you could handle all of them in my hundred year old house with the form factor it was designed for: a humanoid. Probably pretty soon here for cheaper than each could be handled separately by more integrated systems.
For new builds, a laundry/utility room that includes the dishwashing and other "housekeeping" facilities is a no-brainer when there is a custom robot built to use those facilities as well as maneuver around the rest of the house.
For old/retrofit renovations it also makes sense, but otherwise, yes, a human-form robot makes sense.
The question is which is a better investment for any robot manufacturer in 2026?
The drop in demand for Tesla's clapped out model range would have meant embarrassing factory closures, so now they're being closed to start manufacturing a completely different product. Bait and switch for Tesla investors.
I wonder how long they'll be closed for "modifications" and whether the Optimus Prime robot factories will go into production before the "Trump Kennedy Center" is reopened after its "renovations".
Just reading your description, it sounds like there are two variables:
1. Prompt adherence: how well the models follow your stated strategy
2. Decision quality: how well models do on judgment calls that aren’t explicitly in the strategy
Candidly, since you haven’t shared the strategy, there’s no way for me to evaluate either (1) or (2). A model’s performance could be coming from the quality of your strategy, the model itself, or an interaction between the two, and I can’t disentangle that from what you’ve provided.
So as presented, the benchmark is basically useless to me for evaluating models (not because it’s pointless overall, but because I can’t tell what it’s actually measuring without seeing the strategy).
That's a fair point. You're right that without seeing the strategy, you can't fully disentangle what drives the differences.
But the strategy itself isn't really the point. Since every model gets the exact same prompt and the exact same market data, the only variable is the model. So relative performance differences are real regardless of what the strategy contains. If Model A consistently outperforms Model B under identical conditions, that tells you something meaningful about the model.
And honestly, that blend of prompt adherence and decision quality is how people actually use LLMs in practice. You give it instructions and context, and you care about the result.
You're right though that the strategy being private limits what outsiders can evaluate. It's something I'm thinking about.
To be more specific: the prompt defines a trading philosophy and tells models what to look for in the charts. But the actual read and the decision is entirely on the model. Using your framing — it's closer to "here's inspiration, now maximize money" than "implement this exact strategy."
Which means improvisation within that framework is exactly what's being measured.
I suspect this sort of thing starts to happen when UX decision-making gets decentralized. No single god-king would allow six or more different new icons; the lack of uniformity is obviously nonsensical to anybody, but not necessarily to a disorganized collective of anybodies.
Hate to break it to you, but many kids actually do better away from their parents than with them.
It's extremely sad, but a consistent finding in early childhood education is that the children who thrive most in daycares tend to come from the least advantaged backgrounds.
So a policy of paying parents to stay home would mostly benefit kids who are already well off.
Kids are social and like playing and learning from other kids. Daycare lets them do just that. It’s a great thing and every toddler I’ve met who wasn’t in daycare was behind in something. Especially verbal skills.
Plus daycare allows women to continue their career progression. It’s soo important. Not every woman wants to end their career as a mother to a young kid. Daycare enables successful women to thrive and still have families.
Your anecdote is just that. All of it is highly dependent on the child, their environment, and the 'educator'. Please don't make assumptions based on your limited exposure; it's not helpful.
Your "it depends" argument is that some kids aren't social, don't like playing with other kids, are better off not having exposure to social interaction with peers and practice talking.
If this is the criticism then it's a glowing endorsement of daycare and school.
No; it depends on the 'educator'. A daycare that doesn't have kids interacting in a positive way could be just as detrimental as a parent that doesn't socialize their children externally to the home.
I'm just gonna throw this out here: Well-off kids who barely know their workaholic parents have different but equally bad issues for society, than the poor kids do.
Those poor kids have learning deficits. The "well-off" kids often have morality deficits.
A mom or dad raising them properly might help them more than being Student #642 in a government childcare facility.
This isn't an argument against childcare. My children attended preschool for 3 years before Kindergarten. But I'd rather that people got equal support to have a stay-at-home parent so that people can choose.
From what I’ve seen, the research leans the other way. For example:
Children from more advantaged families were actually more likely to view unfair distribution as unfair, while poorer children were more likely to accept it. [0]
Mother’s work hours show no link to childhood behavioral problems, it’s schedule flexibility that matters. [1]
For working-class families, more father work hours correlated with fewer behavioral problems.[2]
The idea that “well-off kids” end up with morality deficits because their parents work a lot doesn’t seem to hold up.
You aren't wrong but calling it being "Student #642 in a government childcare facility" the wrong way of looking at it. Children grow up best when they are allowed to play with other children. Modern society robs kids of that and helicopter parents are bad for society.
I agree with you vigorously on both those points. I am skeptical however that NM will be able to create a lot of healthy, play-based environments for so many kids.
The market already has incentives to create them -- a ton of good places have waiting lists nationwide, showing unmet demand even at the current price. This suggests the price will need to go higher to attract enough people to do this job. It seems their "$12,000 value" estimate is based on an optimistic belief that they will be buying childcare for their citizens at current prices. When they realize there aren't that many slots available at current rates of pay, will they be okay significantly increasing the costs of the program?
So, my expectations for these facilities are very low and that's a big part of my concern.
> Hate to break it to you, but many kids actually do better away from their parents than with them.
Is this based on something?
There's research left and right shows that children under 36 months at group nurseries are linked to increased aggression, anxiety, lower emotional skills, elevated cortisol (stress hormone), which is associated with long-term health and developmental risks.
Infants and children do better with one-to-one care at home by their parents and familiar faces, rather than strangers in a group setting.
Perhaps there is something about the environment of an economically disadvantaged household that could be improved by a stipend which allows at least one parent the breathing room to dedicate full time attention to the child instead of a job (or multiple jobs). I don't think the findings you mentioned cut against that idea at all.
I hear you saying the benefit of dedicated caregiving for children mostly helps families with less economic advantage. I'd agree with that, and suggest that OP's proposal capitalizes on exactly that. I'm not convinced of what may be implied in your argument that low-earners make for bad parents and that children should be separated more from their parents for their own good. Let the internal dynamics of a family be solved first, before saying we need to separate parents from children more.
Moreover, those with more economic advantage are unlikely to take a stipend in exchange for staying home. That's not a good deal when keeping the job pays so much that they can afford to pay for childcare.
It is precisely those with less advantage who will take the deal.
So I don't agree with your prediction that such a stipend mostly benefits those who are already well off.
My daycare was called preschool. It allowed my mother to focus on my infant brother during the day while I was literally two blocks away running around, coloring and learning shapes. Show and tell was my favorite.
The most obvious example is the children of addicts. It’s hard to imagine a kid is better off stuck at home with druggie parents than spending the day in daycare.
A good example of bottom quintile policy. Because the bottom quintile has a better outcome with a certain approach, it becomes standard care for everyone else.
A realistic stay-at-home subsidy would max out around $30k. Your proposal only meaningfully shifts incentives for the bottom income quintile. For everyone else:
- Upper-income families can already afford to choose whatever setup they want.
- Middle-income families couldn’t take it because it’d mean too steep a drop in income.
So the alternative you proposed economically benefits the bottom quintile while leaving their kids worse off. For everyone else, it probably either doesn't matter or gives them cash they don't need as much.
Another day, another person not getting discounted cash flow.
Models trained in 2025 don’t ship until 2026/7. That means the $3bn in 2025 training costs show up as expense now, while the revenue comes later. Treating that as a straight loss is just confused.
OAI’s projected $5bn 2025 loss is mostly training spend. If you don’t separate that out with future revenues, you’re misreading the business.
And yes, inference gross margins are positive. No idea why the author pretends they aren’t.
As a researcher, I can totally agree, but at the same time this isn't super straight forward. Things get weird because you can't just translate from one GPU to another. There isn't a clean calculation for that. There's also other issues like parallelism. Sure, your model is stable with a batch size of 8192 but that's across 1 node, it might not be stable with that batch across 2 nodes. This is a real frustrating part and honestly I don't think most people even are aware such issues exist.
Right now I'm just happy when people are including parameter, GMACs (or FLOPs), and throughput. I always include those and the GPUs I used. I also frequently include more information in the appendix but frankly when I include it in the front matter the paper is more likely to be rejected.
I can tell you why this isn't happening though. There's a common belief that scale is all you need. Which turns into "fuck the GPU poor". I've published works where my model is 100x smaller (with higher throughput, and far lower training costs), and the responses from reviewers tend to be along the lines "why isn't it better?" or "why not just distill or prune a large model?" There's this weird behavior that makes the black box stay a black box. I mean Yi Tay famously said "Fuck theorists" on twitter
There is no question many of Apple's business experienced significant, impressive growth during his tenure. Amazing capital efficiency.
There is also no question Apple lost product velocity. Few new products were launched, and those that were had mixed success.
Tim was, at the end of the day, an elite financial operator. Apple shareholders were lucky to have him. Customers like myself probably have mixed opinions, and it remains to be seen how he set the company up for the future.
reply