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:

• Bill McLean on YouTube: youtube.com/@BillMcLean
• Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted? - The New Yorker

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