After all the seemingly obvious reports that Tim Cook would not be in the new iPhone launch video, there he was. He was there for a purpose, and he was there because yet again, only Apple could do this.
That’s because while there must be countless CEOs who insist on being the star of their corporate videos, there aren’t many with the public profile of Tim Cook. You could well argue that his making a cameo in the new iPhone veent was ego, but it felt as if it were more about the viewer than the man.
And there were so many viewers. Within an hour of the presentation finishing, YouTube was showing that 26 million people had watched.
They’re not all AppleInsider readers, they’re not all technology fans. Instead, the giant majority would be people who are interested in the company’s products, and who know that Apple puts on a good show.
These are not people who would necessarily have learned that Tim Cook was stepping down in advance, although he got worldwide coverage at the news the day it happened. They are not people who would already know who his successor was and go “oh, right, that Ternus guy.”
So while Cook’s cameo would make little sense to someone watching an Apple video for the first time, for most people this was when the succession happened. This was the Doctor Who-like regeneration, with John Ternus stepping in to bring a new take on a familiar role.
iPhone launch as a show
This is polarizing, here, even amongst our staff.
Since Apple moved from live presentations to pre-recorded videos, it has done a genuinely superb job at shaping the whole show. It’s much more complex than just rolling out a series of presenters to the same stage, but it never looks like it is.
The last time Tim Cook appeared to step down, he ended up in a “Severance” promo video – image credit: Apple.
We’re used to seeing Apple presenters speak from places around the world. In some years, it’s even all designed so that the first presenters are shown in morning sunlight, and the last ones are at night.
Maybe that’s a callback to how long the live presentations used to be.
In this case, Apple even directly acknowledged that it was making a show. It opened with a series of fantastically-well filmed and way over-budgeted clips of people describing the best ways to open such a show.
It wasn’t 100% effective, though, starting with how if you were a long-time viewer, it was a near repeat of Steven Spielberg’s intro to the Apple TV+ launch back in 2019.
Then just as with the over-extended “Mother Nature” sketch in 2023, this opener outstayed its welcome. The same idea was repeated six times before we got to the main one, the voiceover talking us through a zoom into Apple Park.
Finally there was the climax, with the big reveal of the presenter, Tim Cook. He got the famous Captain Kirk shot from original Star Trek, too. Cook is mostly in shadow and there’s just a dramatic light across his eyes.
But then he chuckles, says “no, no, no, no, not me.”
Cook then gestures back to someone behind him to the far distance, and adds “That’s your guy.”
Tim Cook then exited frame and had one more line tying this all back to the repeated gag about how best to start a video. “That’s your opener,” he says, wrapping up his last appearance, and also the 2 minute and 36 second-long intro video.
The baton was passed in the most public way it could be. It was like every spin-off TV drama with a familiar character guest-starring to help bring across fans of the old show.
It was legitimizing the opening moments of the new series. That’s all a guest cameo can ever do, though, and it’s up to the new show to keep viewers watching.
Which John Ternus did as effortlessly as if he’d done this a dozen times before. Mind you, everyone expected a folding iPhone so few were likely to stop watching this time.