Apple’s Culture Inversion: 2008 “Thermonuclear war” with Google, to 2026 “Best Friends.” Conviction Vs Iterative Convenience.

Jobs - the leader who vowed to go thermonuclear on Google’s Android, was replaced by a leader who now peddles the snake oil of “collaboration” as a strategy. Two quotes, two eras – and one culture that traded conviction for cowardice. Tim’s goose is now cooked by his own Greek tragedy of errors.

Tommo_UK

31 Jan 2026 — 5 min read

From Jobsian thermonuclear attack-is-the best-form-of-defence, to Cook’s rent-a-brain strategy: Apple’s 30‑year slide from conviction to convenience

My article about Google’s triumph over Apple and the kow-towing of Cook to Gemini, with the imminent transplanting of Gemini into “Apple” Intelligence and Siri, generated some profound comments. I decided they needed a separate article to surface them.

**Here’s Friday 30th January’s article, which generated the eviscerating and definitive conclusion about Jobs vs Cook, which cannot be “un-seen” once read.**

Minimal backlinks to my previous work on this. Because the following scenario and illustrations speak 100,000 words:

Apple had a fifteen-year lead in agentic AI, chose to bury it, and is now renting Google’s brains at up to five billion dollars a year.

Because it cannot build its own.

Cook has surrendered Apple’s stack in the diametrically opposite manner to the evolution of MacOS9 into OSX in 1997-1999 when Apple acquired NeXT and Steve Jobs to rescue it from the disaster of Mac OS9

Back then, it did this for a cost equivalent to 140% of its then-annual net income.

It was a bet the farm on the future and paid off as one of the most successful moves in corporate history, creating the world’s most successful and valuable company in the process.

Jobs ensured Apple owned the stack. Until he passed away, and Cook & Federighi took over the reins.

Now, Apple’s then-sworn enemy - Google and its “stolen” offspring, as Steve Jobs rightfully named Android at the time - the mobile OS equivalent of Windows 95 trying to rip-off the MacOS GUI in 1995 - is Tim Cook’s closest friend.

Not because “the enemy, of my enemy, is my friend,” but:

Because Apple doesn’t have any capacity any longer, not because it need friends. It needs help.

And has had to rent it from Google, the same Google Steve Jobs said he would spend every dime of Apple’s $40B destroying for copying iOS with Android,

If you think it’s business as usual at Apple, and “Google running Apple Intelligence is “OK” because “at least Siri will work,” think again. You are saying…

… presumably you would have been happy if in 1997 when faced with buying or renting a new OS for the Macintosh,

Apple had chosen to license Windows NT from Microsoft in a Macintosh skin instead of buying in NeXT and Steve Jobs and building OS X - which has outrun all other systems now for almost 30 years. This almost happened,

IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE WITH THIS ARTICLE THEN SIMPLY:

Read the captions - they’re all that’s needed to tell the story of Tim Cook’s utter failure to retain the culture that Jobs built, and settle for iterative mediocrity.

“I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”

“I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to.”

“And I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong.” ~ Steve Jobs after Google’s launch of its first official handset in 2008.”

The iPhone and iOS proceeded to destroy the incumbants, dominate its markets and ruthlessly suppress competition through excellence, innovation, and ambition - and of course, the App Store.

—VS—

“We believe that we can unlock a lot of experiences and innovate in a key way due to the collaboration.

You should think of what is going to power the personalized version of Siri as a collaboration with Google.” ~ Tim Cook, Apple Q2 2026 earnings call, after 15 years of failure to deliver Siri - and the destruction of Apple Culture.

So what did Cook really do, so reviled as to deserve 50 lashes and keel-hauling? If you have to ask, read the quotes again.

Cook of course, with Federighi, lobotomised Siri, ruined it, ditched every attempt to resurrect it for fifteen years.

Botched the late attempt to rectify this with a premature launch of a half baked idea (let alone product) of something he cringeingly called “Apple Intelligence,”
Cancelled it for two years when it failed utterly, and instead of building or acquiring its own stack,
Eventually conceded defeat after 15 years of trying,
Hired another guy from Google,
And rented Gemini from Google - because Apple’s Siri and AI top execs were leaving faster than Apple could hire replacements - including their head of data centres.

Two CEOs, One Company, Zero ambiguity.

If you’re an Apple shareholder who got rich on Steve Jobs’ convictions and execution, where’s your conviction now, in Tim Cook’s ability to leverage Apple for the next 30 years?

Here’s one URL to link to, because when the news broke last November, my own reaction was immediate:

**When Pigs Fly, WIth Lipstick On, and Siri Rents Brains From Gemini, Apple Intelligence.**

Tommo_UK, London, Saturday, 31st January 2026

With many thanks to subscribers Dan Scropos and Alessandro for their contributions in the comments of yesterday’s article

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N.B. If you’d like a bit more of a shit-story lesson, here’s the timeline:

When did Google launch Android? (“Hard facts only, ma’am”)

There are four distinct milestones, which are often conflated. Here they are precisely:

a) October 2003 - Android Inc. founded

• Founders: Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, Chris White

b) July 2025 - Google acquires Android Inc.

• Android becomes an internal Google project

c) November 2007 - Public launch of Android (platform announcement)

• Google announces Android publicly alongside the Open Handset Alliance

d) October 2008 - First commercial Android phone released

• HTC Dream / T-Mobile G1

💡

The rest is history. And almost 20 years later, Apple is still just “The iPhone Company (with high financial and insurance margin services keeping its earnings afloat). Google just won the race by being the tortoise.