“I love Apple.” Those were Tim Cook’s words. October 2011. The iPhone 4S launch. He was the new CEO then, eager to prove himself after taking the helm from a dying Steve Jobs.
Now it’s 2025.
Fifteen years have passed. The company is worth trillions. But this Worldwide Developers Conference is different. It’s a goodbye disguised as a hello. Cook steps up for one last time before handing the keys to John Ternus in September. There’s no manual for this transition. Cook stepped in when Jobs’ cancer got serious; there’s no precedent for this kind of handoff in Apple’s lore.
Uncharted territory.
WWDC has always been about hellos. Hello iOS. Hello Apple Silicon. Hello AI. But this year carries a weight the others lack. As Paolo Pescatore of PP Foresight put it:
“WWDC 2026 [sic] carries far more significance than a normal software showcase. It is as much a symbolic handover as a technical update.”
Will Ternus be there? Maybe. Maybe not.
He’s a hardware guy. Software events aren’t his native soil. He did show up for Apple Silicon’s debut during the pandemic lockdown, sure, but that’s rare for him. If he appears alongside Cook on stage, it’ll be a ceremonial baton pass. If not, he’ll likely save his proper introduction for the September iPhone event. That’s when he’ll really get to flex, anyway. Rumor mill says the next 12 months are stacked with new gadgets. A chance to start strong? You bet.
Cook, meanwhile, seems keen to avoid the drama. No long speeches. No tearful monologues. Just milestones. A quiet bow out, focused on what worked, ignoring the noise of retirement. He won’t steal the thunder from the OS updates—iOS, macOS, watchOS, iPadOS—but he sure will steal the thunder with Siri.
Getting Siri across the line
Siri is the ghost haunting Cook’s tenure.
It launched under him. October 2014 actually, but the acquisition was earlier, and the launch felt like his moment to modernize interaction. People laughed. The assistant was clunky. It lacked the sci-fi intuition everyone expected. Amazon’s Alexa came three years later and left Siri eating its dust for a decade. Privacy concerns? Yes. But the real issue was raw capability. Siri couldn’t think.
Until now.
Or so Apple claimed. They promised “Apple Intelligence.” They promised a smarter Siri. And then? Silence. Delays. More delays. Last month, the FTC slapped Apple with a $250 million settlement. They allegedly lied about what Siri could do. It was a messy patch of history right before the finish line.
This WWDC has to fix it.
Why? Because Cook doesn’t drop things at the 99% mark. Not when he’s leaving. Not when Siri is the thematic thread tying his 15-year reign together. Jobs bought the tech, but Cook nurtured the idea of a helpful, private digital companion. To walk away without seeing that through? Impossible.
Siri isn’t just a feature. It’s the brain for what’s coming. AirPods with cameras. Robotic home tablets. Things we don’t have names for yet. They need Siri.
So, picture this.
Advanced Siri. Finally working. Finally ready to live in the cloud, on our ears, in our pockets. Cook introduces it, hands off the reigns of the tech empire to Ternus, and walks away. Into the hills. To read books. To disconnect.
What happens next? Who knows. The stage is set. The curtain is rising. We’ll just have to wait and see how the chapter ends.
