No pressure: Apple’s new CEO needs to be Steve Jobs and Tim Cook at the same time

The market is likely underestimating how much of Apple’s next leg depends on execution risk shifting from product charisma to platform orchestration. A hardware-native CEO is incrementally bullish for margins because the company’s biggest near-term opportunity is not inventing a new category, but tightening the coupling between silicon, devices, and on-device AI so Apple can monetize premium hardware upgrades without incurring hyperscaler-like capex. That favors a slower, higher-confidence adoption curve for AI features — and in the short run, that is probably better for the stock than a splashy but unreliable software-first pivot.

The second-order implication is competitive pressure on Intel and other legacy PC ecosystem players. If Apple keeps deepening vertical integration, the Mac transition becomes the template for extending proprietary silicon advantage into adjacent endpoints, which further weakens Intel’s relevance in premium client computing and compresses upgrade demand for Windows OEMs that lack differentiated silicon. The more Apple uses AI as a reason to refresh hardware rather than as a standalone service, the more it reinforces ecosystem lock-in and raises switching costs across phones, PCs, wearables, and peripherals.

The main risk is timing: a new CEO premium can fade fast if the next 1-2 product cycles fail to show either a credible AI feature set or a new product with clear utility. Over a 6-12 month horizon, disappointment would likely express first in multiple compression rather than revenue misses, because Apple can keep cash generation intact even with modest unit growth. On the other hand, consensus may be too complacent about supply-chain geopolitics; a hardware-led strategy increases sensitivity to China, India, and US policy friction, making any tariff/export-control headline a more immediate earnings risk than the AI narrative suggests.