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Tim Cook's tenure as Apple CEO ends September 1 when he takes the role of executive chair. He will be replaced by John Ternus, a 25-year Apple veteran and head of its hardware engineering division. I get the sense Cook's professional obituaries will focus on his steady hand, execution success and lack of intra-company drama. All of those are virtues but I suspect the media, ever in love with a narrative of its own concoction, will use them as cudgels. Consider this an attempt to balance the record ahead of Cook's damning with the faintest of praise.
Cook is quiet and private, making it easy to paint him as a bland managerialist who coasted on the success of the iPhone. In Ternus, Apple once again has a "product guy" at its helm, a term loaded with enough subtext to sink a battleship. You can feel the implication that it's only "product guys" who have the vision, taste and knowledge to innovate. By extension, Cook was never "a real nerd," but an empty finance guy that never understood what makes Apple tick.
If there's one thing Silicon Valley loves more than money, it's a mercurial genius upon whom they can rest their dreams. Figures with a capital-V vision who invent new product categories with a flick of a wrist, captains of industry who inspire awe and devotion. And making enough money that even a Rockefeller would start thinking "gosh, that's a bit much."
The Jobsian myth-making obscures his talents and minimizes the number of misses he had along the way. Jobs' first tenure at Apple ended in failure and NeXT, for all its innovation, didn't survive as a standalone hardware maker. Many of his ideas were too big and ambitious to succeed and his refusal to compromise made them sink. His time in the wilderness made him a better manager, and a far better storyteller. But to suggest Jobs was gif
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Cell phone plans can get exceedingly complicated, so Comcast's pitch for Xfinity Mobile's simplicity is rather appealing — particularly at a time when everything is more expensive than ever. Today, the company is announcing two simple plans priced at $30 and $45 a month that have some serious perks for their prices.
The $30 Mobile Select plan covers the main basics, including 50GB of "premium" full-speed data; Global Travel Pass to cover yourself when traveling in 215 different countries; and Xfinity's Wi-Fi PowerBoost. That latter feature takes advantage of Xfinity's wide network of Wi-Fi hotspots around the country. Your phone will automatically connect to those when you're out and about, and you'll get priority speeds of up to 1 gigabit on those networks as well as at home.
The $45 Mobile Plus plan adds some pretty significant perks. For starters, you'll get unlimited premium data and 4K video streaming (the Select plan limits you to 720p). But more significantly, the Plus plan promises device upgrades at literally any time. At this point, most carriers offer ways to upgrade before the typical three-year device payment plan is up, but as someone who did that late last year, I can confirm that the constantly changing promotions around phone upgrades make it hard to know exactly what you'll be eligible for.
Comcast, however, says that Mobile Plus subscribers can literally upgrade their phone at any time. I asked how it would work if I was crazy enough to switch to a Galaxy S26 six months after getting an iPhone 17 Pro, and they said it would be no issue, regardless of how much I had beat up my iPhone. I'm trying to figure out if there's a catch, but the company's representatives were very adamant about "anytime upgrades" being as uncomplicated as they said.
Similarly, the Plus plan also includes lifetime device protection, another thing that most carriers charge separately for. This extends to any connected device on your plan like sma
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