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We’ve arrived at something of a crossroads for the world’s favorite smartphone manufacturer and maker of shiny things. On August 24, 2011, Steve Jobs resigned as Apple CEO and Tim Cook took over. Today, September 1, Cook leaves the CEO role as new CEO John Ternus steps in.

Fifteen years ago, Apple had to prove that it could survive without Steve Jobs. We now know the answer to that question. Yes, it could — but it stopped behaving quite so much like the maverick company that had thrived on innovation, arrogance, and boldly striking out into new territory. Under Cook, Apple became more disciplined, more predictable, and increasingly focused on refining its established product lines.

It’s perhaps unfair to paint Cook purely as a custodian and refiner of Jobs’ greatest hits — Apple did release the Apple Watch and Vision Pro under his guidance, after all — but history will remember him as the great refiner rather than as a creative genius like Jobs. As Cook hands over the reins to Ternus and Apple prepares for its next chapter, let’s look back at his tenure and how he changed the company.

The first thing Cook did was not try to be Steve Jobs. When he inherited the role, Cook was looking at a product lineup that was the envy of every smartphone and computer manufacturer in the world — Apple had the iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod, App Store and iTunes — and he exploited it to the max.

Cook turned Apple into an incredibly efficient global machine, and perhaps we should have seen it coming. Before becoming CEO, he had been Apple’s COO, responsible for worldwide sales, operations, and its supply chain.

Cook turned Apple into a money machine. When he took over, Apple was worth just under $350 billion. That was nothing to be sniffed at, but this year its market value briefly crossed $5 trillion. Apple’s entire revenue in 2011 was $108 billion; in Q3 2026 alone, it generated $109.4 billion. Incredibly, Apple now makes as much money in three months as the company Cook inherited made in an entire year.

Considering how many services Apple now runs, and how much money I give it every month, it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always like this. When Steve Jobs was in charge, Apple was very much a hardware and software company. Of course, it had iTunes, which gave it incredible connections to the music industry because of its iPod heritage, but in those days you bought music; you didn’t rent it. Now that has all changed.

In 2011, when Cook took over, Apple essentially had iTunes, the App Store and AppleCare. Cook-era Apple gave us Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Pay, Apple Card, Apple News+, Apple Arcade, Fitness+, iCloud+ and the much bigger subscription business around them. It was an impressive shift in Apple’s direction, giving it a reliable stream of recurring revenue while pulling customers even deeper into its ecosystem.

Rather than arriving with a bang, the Apple Watch was something of a slow burn. It’s hard to imagine it now, but at launch it felt as though Apple didn’t really know what it wanted the Watch to be. It was several things at once — a fitness tracker, a fashion object, an app platform and a luxury item. There was even an 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition, with prices ranging from $10,000 to $17,000.

In classic Tim Cook fashion, however, the product was refined over time. Apple added increasingly sophisticated health features, including ECG readings and fall detection, allowing the Watch to build up a much more useful picture of your health. What started as a product with a heart-rate monitor and three activity rings developed into a health and fitness watch that deserved its place in the market.

AirPods were a different story altogether. I remember people thinking they were too expensive for earphones, but they hadn’t factored in how easy AirPods made connecting Bluetooth earphones to an iPhone, or switching between other Apple devices such as a MacBook and Apple Watch. They were a big success almost immediately.

Together, Apple Watch and AirPods also made the iPhone more valuable. They weren’t simply accessories; they extended Apple’s ecosystem onto our wrists and into our ears, making its products harder to leave behind.

Apple silicon is probably Cook’s biggest technological achievement. Moving the Mac from Intel processors to Apple’s own chips in 2020, while bringing its huge library of existing software and millions of users along with it, was an immense challenge. Yet Apple made the transition look almost routine.

The M-series chips transformed the Mac. They delivered far better performance per watt, substantially longer battery life and much less heat than the Intel processors they replaced. Suddenly, even Apple’s thinnest MacBook Air could offer the sort of performance that had previously required a much bigger, hotter and noisier machine.

The transition also gave Apple control over the Mac’s technological roadmap and brought its computers onto the same fundamental architecture as the iPhone and iPad. Apple had changed the Mac’s processor architecture twice before, but the smoothness of the Apple silicon transition showed that Cook’s Apple could still make an enormous technological bet — and execute it brilliantly.

Perhaps Cook’s most important contribution was turning privacy into one of Apple’s defining principles. Cook repeatedly described privacy as a fundamental human right, but Apple also backed up that language with features that materially changed how its products worked. Even today I still associate Apple with privacy, and I think a lot of other people do as well.

Under Cook, Apple introduced the controversial App Tracking Transparency, which forced apps to ask before tracking people across other apps and websites. It added privacy labels to the App Store, Mail Privacy Protection, Sign in with Apple and more on-device processing, while expanding end-to-end encryption across its services.

Apple even took on the FBI in 2016 rather than create software that could bypass the security of a locked iPhone.

Of course, privacy also became extremely effective marketing for Apple, and it was a lot easier for Apple to go down this route when it made money from hardware instead of selling ads. Apple's record on respecting privacy in China isn't spotless, but under Cook it felt like Apple genuinely cared about protecting your data.

Tim Cook isn't actually leaving Apple. He's still on the board, just not the CEO. While Cook’s record of being in charge has been more than impressive, he never quite managed to produce a product that changed the world the way the iPhone did. The Apple Vision Pro was perhaps his biggest attempt, but its timing was unfortunate. Just as it tried to persuade the world to put on a headset, Apple was being blindsided by the rise of generative AI, which left Siri looking seriously underpowered.

Perhaps judging Cook’s reign against the Apple that produced the iPhone is unfair — a product like that is a once in a lifetime event. Now it is John Ternus' turn at the helm, and he’s going to need to get a grip on Apple’s AI experiments and produce a coherent vision for the future. Tim Cook has put him in a very good position.

The Shards episode 8 is streaming on Hulu for US viewers and Disney+ internationally soon, and you won't want to miss it after last week's tense double bill.

In Homecoming part 1 and 2, we saw a homecoming queen crowned (naturally), creating some tensions between Debbie and Susan. With the latter winning something again, this strained friendship group is only becoming more complicated.

But with The Trawler still out there, teen drama around popularity seems irrelevant. The killer's identity has not been unmasked yet, and is anyone really safe? Disturbingly, the killer left the severed head of Matt for Bret to find, and that unsettling visual has no doubt stuck with you.

We'll be picking up after this shocking moment in episode 8, titled Hamlet. Here's what you need to know about it.

For US viewers, The Shards episodes 6 and 7 will drop on Wednesday, September 2 at 6pm PT/ 9pm ET.

Here's when you can stream the new episodes in other countries.

• US – Wednesday, September 2 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
• Canada – Wednesday, September 2 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
• UK – Thursday, September 3 at 2am BST
• India – Thursday, September 3 at 6:30am IST
• Singapore – Thursday, September 3 at 9am SGT
• Australia – Thursday, September 3 at 11am AEDT
• New Zealand – Thursday, September 3 at 12pm NZDT

The season finale is right around the corner, as episode 8 marks the penultimate episode of The Shards. It's just one episode this week after last week's double bill, but I'm sure it'll be no less thrilling.

For dates as well as the episode titles for the upcoming The Shards releases, take a look below.

• The Shards Episode 1 “Pilot”: Out now
• The Shards Episode 2 “Don’t You Want Me”: Out now
• The Shards Episode 3 “Help Me! Rhonda!”: Out now
• The Shards Episode 4 “Robert’s Party”: Out now
• The Shards Episode 5 “Murder on the Dancefloor”: Out now
• The Shards Episode 6 “Homecoming Part One”: Out now
• The Shards Episode 7 “Homecoming Part Two”: Out now
• The Shards Episode 8 “Hamlet”: Wednesday, September 2
• The Shards Episode 9 “Stairway to Heaven”: Wednesday, September 9

• Sony is launching a new free ad-supported service on PS5 consoles
• Its 100 live channels cover a wide range of titles across film, TV, news, sports, and more
• Live TV on PS5 is available to US users now, with availability for Canada and other regions to follow

Sony is dipping its toes back into free streaming channels with its new Live TV on PS5 platform — following platforms such as Tubi, Google TV Freeplay, and The Roku Channel.

The gaming and entertainment giant announced Live TV on PS5 yesterday (August 31), revealing that PS5 owners in the US can now access the service’s 100 ad-supported live channels and on-demand titles. Sony also has plans to expand Live TV on PS5 to Canada and additional regions, and will roll out the free service to Bravia TVs later this year.

For a new free streaming platform, Sony is already going big with its entertainment offerings. As far as its movie channels go, Live TV on PS5 has a slew of titles spanning action, horror, sci-fi, and more, all while housing popular anime titles from Crunchyroll.

The service also has a rich catalog of TV titles, including shows such as Community, The Shield, Hell’s Kitchen, The Walking Dead, Forensic Files, Unsolved Mysteries, Deal or No Deal USA, and Fear Factor.

Movies and shows aside, current affairs and news viewing is also available for free, offering programming from NBC News Now, Fox Weather, and LiveNOW from FOX. Additionally, you can also access channels including FOX Sports, NASCAR, NBC Sports Now, and UFC, so sports fans aren’t being left out of the experience.

Just like other platforms in our roster of best streaming services, Sony will keep Live TV on PS5 refreshed with new programming, titles, and channels to expose you to new content and keep you on your toes. Hopefully its library won’t remain stagnant and outdated, but it’s not as if Sony doesn’t know what it’s doing — it’s dipped its toes into the FAST channels waters before.

PlayStation Vue was a live TV service that allowed you to watch titles without the need for a cable box, before Sony axed it in 2020. It’s safe to say that PlayStation Vue was a widely admired service, and countless PS owners have been reminiscing about its nostalgia on Reddit following the announcement of Live TV on PS5 — however, whether the new platform will be a welcomed addition is debatable.

Sony’s decision to kill off physical games and shift to digital ownership is still under intense scrutiny, not to mention the uproar that came when Sony deleted 500 movies users paid for following a licensing conflict. So there’s still the burning question regarding ownership: if everything is digital, do users really own it? There’s also the question of how different Sony’s FAST streaming service is to existing platforms.

In the Reddit discussion mentioned earlier, some users flagged that a lot of the FAST channels available on Live TV on PS5 are strikingly similar to the ones already available on services such as Tubi and Pluto TV, as one user said it ‘sounds like the same channels as [my] Roku TV’. Similarly, another commenter wrote that Sony’s streaming platform looks ‘like a copy of Roku TV, where they only show reruns and older shows, or lesser known shows’.

The common denominator with the best free streaming services are the providers, as another user highlights in the thread, so running into the same types of programming across these platforms isn’t out of the ordinary. For users who use their PS5 consoles as their main media hub, it’s a solid free upgrade and it’s there if you want to use it. At the same time, you can already download Tubi and Pluto TV on PS5, so the competition is tough.

ChatGPT Work’s new event-triggered scheduled tasks offer an intriguing alternative to the compulsive email checking that fills my days. The feature essentially acts as an AI-powered secretary, screening your Gmail inbox, Slack channels, and other communication channels, then alerting you or responding as you request in a prompt.

I decided to use the feature as an aggressively selective email assistant. ChatGPT could watch everything arriving in my inbox, but it was only allowed to interrupt me when a message created an actual obligation, and it should suggest how to respond and have a draft ready to go.

Event-triggered tasks are available on eligible plans in ChatGPT on the web and mobile. I used ChatGPT on the web and connected my Gmail account when prompted. You can see the prompt I used below.

The current event triggers support new Gmail messages, which can optionally be narrowed by sender or subject. I wanted ChatGPT to judge every incoming message by its contents, so I left the trigger broad and made the instructions selective.

That distinction matters. The trigger decides when ChatGPT wakes up, while the prompt decides what it does once awake. In my case, every new email could prompt a run, but only messages meeting my criteria were supposed to produce an alert.

I closed my inbox and waited to see how the afternoon went.

My original prompt was fairly basic. I told ChatGPT, "When I receive an email that requires me to do something, or comes from a family member, tell me what I need to do and draft a potential reply."

It still left plenty of room for interpretation, and I was wary of spam getting listed as something I needed to do something about, but it came down to being a good test for ChatGPT.

After a bit, I did clarify to ChatGPT that it should alert me about any email with a single sentence explaining who was writing and what they might need from me. I also made sure to add that the AI shouldn't reply without my input.

I also opened ChatGPT’s notification settings and made sure task alerts could reach me outside the inbox. Depending on the account and notification category, ChatGPT can offer push, email, or text message delivery. I avoided email for obvious reasons, since an email announcing that ChatGPT had found an email would have possibly confused the AI.

With the task running, I shut Gmail and returned to everything else I had planned for the afternoon. For the first several minutes, I still felt the pull to check, but eventually, I stopped thinking about it.

The absence of constant email checks made the afternoon feel longer in a good way. I could finish a task without repeatedly glancing at another tab to make sure the internet had not developed an emergency specifically for me.

The first ChatGPT alert concerned a message from my bank about two hours after setting up the alert. ChatGPT identified the sender, explained why the email appeared to require attention, and told me what I needed to review. I opened that message directly, made sure it didn't actually require a response, and closed down the inbox.

The second alert came from a family member. This was a more interesting test because family messages rarely contain the tidy language that makes conventional email rules useful. They can require a decision or a quick response without the more business-style setup and keywords in professional messages.

Still, ChatGPT recognized that the message expected something from me and brought it to my attention and wrote a brief reply draft for me to approve. I added a little, but ChatGPT nailed the main points I needed to make, and it wasn't the kind of email that needed a lot of personal detail, so a few minutes after the alert arrived, the response was out the door.

The last alert concerned tickets I had recently purchased and a change to the itinerary for an upcoming event. In this case, the alert was very necessary as it changed some of the other plans for that day, and I had to let others know of the shift. That wasn't in ChatGPT's suggested response, of course, but just getting the heads up was useful.

Those were the only three times I looked at Gmail all afternoon. Other messages arrived, but ChatGPT did not summon me to look at them. When I went to my inbox afterward, I clocked only two emails that I might have wanted to deal with earlier, and neither had to be handled immediately. Nothing terrible happened because I didn't see a promotional email at the moment of delivery.

Anyone trying this should begin with a short test period and review the first few runs in ChatGPT’s Scheduled section. If ordinary receipts keep slipping through, add a clearer exclusion. If requests from real people are being missed, explain what counts as an expected response and allow ChatGPT to flag uncertain cases.

I would also keep the first version informational. Ask ChatGPT to summarize the obligation and point you toward the email, then make the decision yourself. It's a feature worth trialing. Many AI tools try to prove their value by producing more text, more summaries, and more notifications. This one worked because it knew when to leave me alone.