World's blandest man steps down from CEO job to spend more time in tastefully appointed home

Have you heard? Apple's Tim Cook is stepping down after 15 years leading the iMaker's business. He'll become executive chairman and hand the reins over to John Ternus, a senior VP of hardware engineering, effective September 1.

You can't fault Cook's performance on a pure financial basis. Since he took over, Apple's stock is up over 18-fold. Annual revenues and profit have grown roughly 4x, to approximately $416 billion and $112 billion respectively in Cupertino's last fiscal year ending September 27. That's massive growth from a massive base.

During this time, Apple also established itself as a designer of cutting-edge chips, with its own Apple silicon now used in Macs and iDevices.

But over the same period, Apple lost its sizzle. Its most successful brand new product was a set of wireless earbuds that appeared with what looked like a ridiculously long ...