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Hello, I’m Michael Sliwinski, founder of Nozbe - to-do app for business owners and their teams. I write essays, books, work on projects and I podcast for you using #iPadOnly in #NoOffice as I believe that work is not a place you go to, it’s a thing you do.

Where Tim Cook looked the other way…

🍎Apple,💼Business,⭐️Featured

Last week Tim Cook sent a letter to all of us Apple customers where he announced his transition from being a CEO of Apple and naming his successor in John Ternus. While most of the comments about this revolve around Tim Cook’s achievements of growing Apple to a $4T company… I want to focus on a different narrative and spoil the party a little by commenting on all the places where Tim Cook looked the other way and I believe he shouldn’t have. Where I believe he missed.

Where Tim Cook looked the other way…

What does Apple mean to me?

Apple has always been an aspirational brand for me. When I was rocking Windows laptops, I was dreaming of a Mac. I finally bought one in 2008 and never looked back. Together with my friend Augusto I coined the term #iPadOnly and to this day M4 iPad Pro is my main computer. I’m all in on Apple ecosystem having most of their products myself and in my family with many Macs, iPads and iPhones around me, as well as Apple Watches, HomePods and AirPods and the highest-tier iCloud Family subscription. On top of that I’m a developer of a productivity app called Nozbe which is available on all Apple’s platforms and is both on the iOS and Mac App Stores.

Saying I’m deep in the Apple’s ecosystem (aka “walled garden”) is an understatement. That’s why I care about Apple and I care about what Apple does.

And while many hardware decisions over the years by Apple have made me happy - just check out my current setup: iPad Pro, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Ultra, AirPods Pro, Mac Mini… many software and other decisions have been lacking in the Tim Cook era.

Developer relations as seen by Epic Games drama…

A few years ago CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney sued Apple over the in-app purchase fees. They opposed the fact that they have to pay Apple 30% of all of the transactions on the platform.

Basically the way it works is this:

Tim Cook’s Apple acts like by being on the App Store, a developer must pay for the privilege.

Because there’s only one App Store and one approved form of payment, Tim’s Apple focused on forcing it on all developers. They are a monopoly and they don’t have to compete with anyone — not even improve their poorly-done in-app purchase system.

During the trial, many documents surfaced proving not only that Apple wants “all the money” but that they feel entitled to it. I lost respect not only for Tim Cook, but also for Phil Shiller and others. And while Epic’s Tim Sweeney is no role model either, he exposed Apple’s attitude towards all of us developers.

Tim Cook shouldn’t have let it drag to trial. He should have made the 30% cut and in-app purchase optional — many apps would still use it, Apple would have to compete and keep improving it, and it wouldn’t hurt their bottom line. Instead, because of his obsession with collecting rent, they now have a tough relationship with many developers including some large ones like Netflix (no official Netflix client for Vision Pro and no big rush of new apps for this new platform).

Next time you hear Apple say “Services”, think “Fees” or “Rent”.

European Union and lack of DMA compliance…

I’m from Europe so I am biased, but here goes. As I mentioned earlier, App Store is the only way to put apps on your iPhone. There are no other App Stores… but there should be.

Europe has put pressure on Apple for years to open their platforms to competition. But Tim’s Apple wants to control it all. Our iPhone, our App Store, our Lightning port, our everything…

The Lightning port story is a perfect example. When they announced the iPad Pro in 2018 with USB-C, they essentially admitted their own port was holding the iPad back. Yet they still pushed four more iPhone generations with Lightning — all the way until the iPhone 15 lineup in 2023 — and I’m convinced they’d have waited even longer if the EU hadn’t mandated USB-C for all mobile devices.

The same stubbornness plays out with the App Store. Tim’s Apple doesn’t want competing stores, even though their own is littered with scam apps — and yes, Apple collects 30% from every transaction those scam apps generate. That’s a conflict of interest Tim Cook never wanted to acknowledge. Instead of embracing competition, he invented new rent-seeking schemes like the CTF (Core Technology Fee) — essentially a punishment for developers who dare to use alternative distribution. It hinders innovation and has pushed developer sentiment to an all-time low.

What makes this especially frustrating is the double standard. When the EU says DMA, Apple says “nah”. When China says remove the Taiwanese flag, Apple says “yes, right away”. When the current US administration expressed displeasure about the “ICE Block” app, Apple removed it without a valid court order. Apple fights hardest against the regulations that would actually benefit its own users and developers, while caving to authoritarian pressure without raising any issues.

If you want to understand the China dimension more deeply, I strongly recommend Patrick McGee’s book “Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company” (Amazon / Audible). The uncomfortable truth is that Apple’s deep dependency on China wasn’t forced upon them — it was a deliberate choice to maximize profits. They built the trap themselves and now they’re caught in it.

Cost cutting… at all costs!

When you cut costs you make more profits. And Tim Cook delivered profits over the years in spades. He was obsessed with profits and profit margins to a fault. The thing is, if you cut too much, you very often don’t make the best products. Here are some of the examples of how I believe he overdid it:

You can learn more about Tim Cook’s cost-cutting and spreadsheet-first mindset in the book I already reviewed for this blog: After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost its Soul by Tripp Mickle (Amazon or Audible).

Tim Cook was great for Wall Street, but not so good for Apple’s soul…

Tim Cook grew Apple into a $4 trillion company. That’s an achievement nobody can take away from him. But along the way, he made a series of choices that prioritized next quarter’s results over long-term trust — with developers, with regulators, and with users like me who care deeply about this company.

The three things I described — the adversarial relationship with developers, the reluctant and often dishonest compliance with fair regulation, and the relentless cost-cutting that to this day offer us a ridiculous free tier of 5GB iCloud storage, aren’t isolated mistakes. They’re symptoms of a leadership philosophy that treated Apple’s ecosystem as a rent-collecting machine rather than a platform to nurture.

Steve Jobs was obsessed with making the best possible product. Tim Cook was obsessed with making the most possible money from it. Both can coexist — but when money wins every time, you end up with a company that disabled a health sensor on Apple Watch not because of safety concerns, but because they didn’t want to pay a patent settlement.

John Ternus inherits a company that is still the most valuable in the world, still makes products I use and love every day, and still has the potential to be truly great. But he also inherits the cultural baggage of fifteen years of rent-seeking, developer alienation and regulatory bad faith.

I want to be proven wrong. But with Tim Cook remaining as executive chairman, the man who built this culture still has his hand on the wheel.

Think different, John.

Tuesday, April 28, 2026 /cook/