Mac daddy: Apple’s new boss
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.5 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tim Cook is stepping down after overseeing 15 years of spectacular growth. We take a look at his successor. Japan’s rural women are disproportionately heading to cities, and their home towns are working hard to lure them back. And a historical examination of boredom, and why Britons have perhaps less of it than they should.
Guests and host:
- Tom Lee-Devlin, business editor
- Moeka Iida, Japan reporter
- Catherine Nixey, culture correspondent
- Rosie Blau, co-host of “The Intelligence”
- Jason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”
Topics covered:
- Apple, technology, CEO, John Ternus
- Japan, demographics
- Britain, boredom
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist |
| 0:02.0 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 0:15.0 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:30.0 | Among the demographic quirks of modern Japan is a growing flood of rural women into cities, |
| 0:35.3 | with grave consequences for their hometowns. We discover what local governments are doing to keep more women from going or to lure them back. And once upon a time, boredom was seen as a scourge, a danger, a sign of societal decay, and Britain's had it real bad. These days, it could be said, they're not bored enough. |
| 1:06.0 | But first... |
| 1:13.8 | One of the world's largest companies is getting a new boss. |
| 1:18.2 | Apple has announced that John Ternus will be taking the reins in September. |
| 1:24.7 | The changeover is not exactly a surprise, but the choice of successor is worth a closer look. |
| 1:30.7 | One of really the hallmarks of Tim Cook's 15-year tenure at the helm of Apple has been his incredible reliability, and that seems to be true even when it comes to succession. |
| 1:36.7 | Tom Lee Devlin is the economist's business editor. |
| 1:39.7 | Many had expected Tim Cook to step aside this year, and his choice of replacement was not really |
| 1:45.6 | a big surprise. Still, it's hugely consequential. Apple's new boss is faced with this incredibly |
| 1:52.0 | daunting task of remaking the company for the AI era. So tell me, first of all, about the new boss. |
| 2:00.6 | Taking over from Tim Cook is John Turnus. He is Apple's head of hardware engineering. He's had a long |
| 2:07.2 | career at Apple. He spent almost half his life there. And he's really led the iPhone's successes |
| 2:12.3 | in recent years. He worked under Steve Jobs, Apple's founder, and called Tim Cook his mentor. And he's worked across all sorts of product lines at the company, being involved in the development of the first iPad and the airports. |
| 2:24.9 | And really, he shares a lot of the understated qualities of Tim Cook, but also his unflappability. |
| 2:32.6 | Tim Cook won't be leaving the company entirely. He will be |
| 2:35.4 | sticking around as executive chairman, but the day-to-day management of the company will be |
| 2:40.0 | shifting to John Turnus. And you said a handover was not entirely unexpected. Why the change now? |
... |
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