Patrick Moorhead Covers the tech industry broadly: cloud infrastructure, enterprise software, semiconductors, and increasingly the economics of AI data centers and chip supply c...

“Apple didn't hire a visionary. It really promoted the engineer who built the moat.”

The Six Five with Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman · September 2026

Moorhead said it in a speed round on Apple's change of chief executive, having already called the incoming leader a continuity pick in an interview back in April and seeing no reason to revise it. His read is that the appointment protects an advantage Apple already has rather than betting on a new direction. Newman spent the following turns on the outgoing CEO's buyback record instead.

The Six Five with Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman · 2026-09-07 Listen to the episode → More from Patrick Moorhead →

Transcript

The Six Five with Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman Around 24:04 into the episode

Patrick Moorhead

I mean, that's not too far from the truth, or you've already been on.

Daniel Newman

That is not true, by the way. I'm just fudging. I'm just fudging. There's plenty of room for the both of us.

Patrick Moorhead

…clinging this out. Astra, artificial analysis said, same performance, 62 on intelligence score between it and its predecessor. So 5.6 sold. That makes absolutely no sense. So another proof point that benchmarks need an overhaul here. Hey, this can be a speed round here. John Turnis officially takes over as Apple's CEO, probably the first hardware bet in the AI era. You know, I don't think Apple, Apple didn't hire a visionary. It really promoted the engineer who built the moat. That's the hardware company that's around the moat. And I've been considering Turnis a continuity pick on my CNBC interview back in April. That's exactly what I called him. And by the way, continuity is not bad. Tim Cook took all of Steve Jobs' ideas and monetized it and scaled it and did an amazing job on that, but didn't come up with any new products that weren't dreamt up by Steve Jobs that…

Daniel Newman

Yeah, I mean, welcome, John. I appreciated him jumping on X right away. I also got a good laugh on Tim Cook's updated profile. He took all, you know, he just keep it simple, stupid, just went chairman Apple, you know, from having all his descriptions. But also, like, you know, it's a new era. I…

Patrick Moorhead

Amazing.

Daniel Newman

So his engineering is also second to none.

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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