[cwp]

It's not that I think there's someone more skilled at operations. It's that Cook got Apple into this situation. He was the one that reimagined Apple's manufacturing strategy, closed their American factories and moved everything to China. He then spent 20 years expanding, refining and doubling down on that strategy. And it was brilliant. Jobs could not have saved Apple without Tim Cook. But the time for that strategy has passed.

To get out of China, Apple will need to again reimagine all its operations from first principals, and they need someone who is intellectually and emotionally free to do that—even able to repudiate Cook's past decisions in order push Apple in the right direction. Just as Ballmer couldn't lead a shift away from Windows and it took Nadella transform Microsoft, Tim Cook will not be able to remake Apple.