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JS John Siracusa John Siracusa Software developer, writer and podcaster who spent 25 years as a full-stack web developer before going independent in 2022.

“The Vision Pro and the car were Tim Cook's two big swings. One of them shipped, one of them didn't. … AirPods changed the world a lot more than the Apple Car and the Vision Pro did. But no one was paying attention to that one. So I'm hoping Ternus is thinking we need to do more things like the AirPods. Not a big product. No one's going to put it on the cover of Time magazine. But actually, if it's successful, it'll be life-changing for a lot of people.”

Accidental Tech Podcast · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026

“The Vision Pro and the car were Tim Cook's two big swings. One of them shipped, one of them didn't. … AirPods changed the world a lot more than the Apple Car and the Vision Pro did. But no one was paying attention to that one. So I'm hoping Ternus is thinking we need to do more things like the AirPods. Not a big product. No one's going to put it on the cover of Time magazine. But actually, if it's successful, it'll be life-changing for a lot of people.” — John Siracusa, Accidental Tech Podcast

Context

The hosts were discussing what Apple's new CEO John Ternus should prioritize. Siracusa argues Cook's Apple chased big bets because everyone kept asking about the next big thing, while AirPods quietly became the product that mattered.

Transcript

Accidental Tech Podcast Around 1:44:55 into the episode
John Siracusa

Not the home products. They should do that. Well, that's true.

Marco Arment

…very good for like the stock price. You know, you can be pretty, it's pretty predictable, very efficient with inventory and stuff like that. But they didn't take a lot of like new swings under Cook. And the ones they did were sometimes really weird, like the car or the Vision Pro. I mean, they took

John Siracusa

two big ones. The Vision Pro and the car were Tim Cook's two big swings. One of them shipped, one of them didn't. And there's lots of small ones where Tim Cook took a lot of small swings of like, we're going to invest in a company that makes quartz critzels or micro LED displays. And a lot of those are just like fizzled out or whatever. But they were, it was not the type of thing of like, I've got an idea for a product. Let's just ship it and try it. Because as you pointed out, like, that's not, hasn't been…

Casey Liss

All right. This is from a different post in the beginning of October. Also, German. This is quite a bit for me to read. So buckle up. During early conversations about taking CEO role, Turnis questioned whether he was up to the challenge. I'm not you, Turnis told Cook. You do so many amazing things.…

John Siracusa

It's obviously retold game of telephone, but can't you totally hear Tim Cook doing his thing? Tim Cook has his inside, not his inside voice, but he has Tim Cook has the voice that he talks to the public with, and then he has the voice that we hear tales of him talking internally in the company…

Casey Liss

Oh, yeah. In recounting the story to employees, I guess there it is. Turnis describes it as a turning point. What Cook said, what Cook said that, quote, has really resonated and stuck with me, quote, is that he spent his time as CEO where he added, quote, the most value for Apple, Turnus said. And…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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