Apple Grandmaster Tim Cook Is Playing 3D Chess With AI

I come not to bury Tim Cook, but to praise him. Last week’s announcement that the Apple Inc. CEO is handing the job to hardware chief John Ternus in September has been met by assessments questioning “whether the company is prepared for a future beyond the iPhone” and how Apple’s lagging performance in artificial intelligence is “raising questions about whether Cook should lead from here.” Cook seemingly built the world’s most valuable company but fumbled his final act. Maybe so. Or maybe the man who created trillions of dollars in shareholder value is still seeing a few moves ahead.

The critiques didn’t start last Monday. Thirteen months ago, John Gruber, a long-respected Apple commentator, wrote “Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino.” Apple, he said, had promised a personalized Siri it couldn’t deliver and run ads for features that still don’t exist. The Cupertino, California-based company, Gruber wrote, had squandered credibility it had spent two decades building.