Last week, the Financial Times reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook may step down next year. This news seemed to have little impact on Apple’s stock price, but it certainly sparked conversations among Apple fans and armchair tech pundits. Some people have long criticized Cook as a bean counter and “ops guy,” believing he was not the right person to helm the 21st century’s leading consumer technology company, especially one previously guided by a product visionary like Steve Jobs.

Many of these same people are now hoping that Apple’s next CEO will be Apple’s current senior vice president of hardware engineering, John Ternus. They see Ternus as a “product guy” like Jobs. Or, probably more accurately, they see Ternus as a “product guy” unlike Cook. But I think that this does Cook a disservice. A

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