Big news out of Cupertino: Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO, with hardware engineering chief John Ternus set to take the helm this September. Tom and Jeff spend a few minutes on the transition — then welcome back guest Bill McLean for an honest, no-hype check-in on AI tools: what they're actually using, what's working, and where the marketing is writing checks the technology can't cash.

In this episode:

  • The Tim Cook → John Ternus CEO handoff and what a hardware guy at the top might mean for Apple's software
  • Which AI platforms Tom and Bill settled on, and why ChatGPT got dropped
  • Claude Co-Work in real life: web scraping, YouTube analytics, and why you still have to babysit it
  • The "dopamine hit" problem: why AI-generated ideas can kill your motivation to actually do the work
  • How Bill replaced his Squarespace subscription using Claude Code with zero coding background
  • Why context might be AI's real superpower and why Apple could have the biggest edge
  • MCP integrations worth building: Readwise, Craft, Apple Reminders
  • Why Claude projects and skills outperformed an Obsidian vault for real workflow results
  • A must-read New Yorker profile on Sam Altman

Links from the show:

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Intro Music: Psychokinetics - The Chosen


Transcripts and some images are AI generated and may contain errors and general silliness.

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