If you've ever had the embarrassing displeasure of interrupting a Microsoft Teams meeting by accidentally hitting the "raise hand" feature, then I have some good news for you. Microsoft is redesigning its online meeting software, which will move the raise hand button from the main toolbar and allow users to personalize the controls displayed there.
The update was announced on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap and is expected to roll out sometime in June this year. The changes will group the Raise Hand feature under the Reactions button "to reduce mis-clicks," according to Microsoft, which is handy because the two functions are easy to conflate at a …
John Ternus, left, and Tim Cook at Apple Park. (Apple Photo)
Tim Cook’s plan to step down as Apple’s CEO, announced Monday, will put the tech giant in the hands of a hardware engineer, John Ternus, returning Apple’s top job to its product roots after nearly 15 years under a leader who made his mark in operations and supply chain.
It’s the right call, said Mike Slade, a Seattle tech veteran who spent six years as an advisor to Steve Jobs at the company. Apple needed to pick an insider who understands the culture, Slade said, and ideally someone who knows how hardware comes together, inside and out.
Ternus checks both boxes.
“Apple’s the last company left where there are people that know how to build computers, in the U.S., at least,” Slade said. “If you know that, you have an unfair, intuitive ability to know what’s possible. That’s how crazy things like the iPod and the iPhone came to be.”
Ternus, 50, joined Apple in 2001 and has been there ever since, rising from the product design team to senior vice president of hardware engineering. He has overseen hardware across every major product line, including iPhone, Mac, iPad, and AirPods.
Cook, 65, announced Monday that he will become executive chairman on Sept. 1, when Ternus takes over as CEO of the Cupertino, Calif., company. The transition ends one of the most successful tenures in the history of corporate America: under Cook, Apple’s market cap grew roughly tenfold, and by literally trillions of dollars, from about $350 billion to $4 trillion.
Slade, a co-founder of Seattle venture capital firm Second Avenue Partners, started his career at Microsoft in 1983 and later ran Starwave, Paul Allen’s internet media company, which sold to Disney. He served as an advisor to Apple and Jobs on product and marketing strategy from 1998 to 2004, attending Apple executive meetings and working with both Jobs and Cook.
We’ve known Slade for years through Seattle’s tech community, and got in touch with him after seeing him quoted in the New York Times’ coverage of Cook’s departure. In that piece, he called Cook’s legacy one of “continuous improvement in every aspect and fantastic new products.”
Speaking with GeekWire via phone, Slade noted that he had recently been running the numbers on the market value of Microsoft and Apple under different leaders. Cook stands out for having grown Apple’s value from $350 billion to more than $4 trillion during his tenure, more than a 10-fold increase.
Throughout its history, he noted, Apple has rarely been a first mover in hardware. Music players, cell phones, and VR headsets all existed before Apple got to them.
“They just weren’t very good,” he said. “Apple made them good.”
That’s exactly the skill set a hardware engineer brings to the CEO role, he said.
Steven Sinofsky, the former Microsoft Windows and Office chief, called Cook’s run as Apple CEO “just an incredible incredible tenure,” writing on X that Cook accomplished “the rare combination of improved execution and strategic innovation.”
But the biggest question facing Ternus is one that dogged Cook in his final years: what to do about artificial intelligence. Apple has largely watched from the sidelines as rivals poured hundreds of billions into AI, and its own efforts, including a delayed Siri overhaul, have stumbled. Its AI chief, John Giannandrea, left last year after being gradually sidelined.
Alex Zenla, co-founder and CTO of Edera, a Seattle-based container and AI security startup, said Apple’s strength in recent years has been hardware, driven by Apple Silicon and a reversal of past missteps like over-thinning of Apple hardware.
Ternus oversaw many of those changes, she pointed out, making him a natural fit for the top job. Apple invested early in on-device AI through its Neural Engine, Zenla noted, and that positions a hardware-minded CEO well for what’s ahead.
“If Apple wants to shine with Apple Intelligence, hardware will continue to be at the forefront of their strategy, and ultimately I believe that bet will pay off,” Zenla said via email.
Zenla also praised Cook’s legacy on a personal level, calling him a source of pride as a fellow Alabama native and one of corporate America’s most prominent gay executives.
Slade said he doesn’t think AI is Apple’s problem to solve. The company’s edge, in his view, is building the hardware that AI runs on, and for that, you want an engineer at the top.
“I think the people who are going to be best at AI are not going to be Microsoft or Apple or Google or Amazon,” Slade said. Instead, he said, it will be companies like OpenAI and Anthropic that have been singularly focused on the technology.
Cook will remain involved as executive chairman, and Slade said that’s an important aspect of the announcement. The corporate and political sides of running Apple are areas where Ternus may not have deep experience, and Cook isn’t going anywhere.
But the core of the job is product, Slade said, and that’s where Ternus fits.
If he’d been asked in advance who Apple should pick, Slade said, his answer would have been simple: Pick an internal person who understands product. “So there you go,” he said.
Though Tim Cook is shedding his CEO title for the role of Apple's executive chairman, it appears he'll keep one of his most important duties: that of the company's Trump whisperer.
"As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world," Apple writes in a press release. Translation: he's sticking around to deal with thorny political relationships - in particular the one with President Donald Trump.
Throughout his tenure, Cook has navigated Apple through tricky political terrain. He's had to balance the company's massive business interest in China with US policymak …
We are living through a moment that will be defined not only by advanced technology and AI, but by the real-world infrastructure that makes it possible. And that infrastructure will be built the way critical infrastructure has always been built—by electricians, ironworkers, pipefitters, operating engineers, laborers, and the many other skilled professionals who turn plans into places and progress.
In a world that can feel increasingly virtual, there are millions of skilled trade professionals who remind us of a simple truth: what happens next still depends on uniquely human skills and what we can create, build, wire, weld, install, and maintain.
At Microsoft, we are honored to partner with North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU) to invest in the people who build with us. Today we are announcing an expanded partnership to support a strong, skilled workforce pipeline and help workers across North America build the skills needed to succeed in an AI-powered economy.
We believe that the North American skilled trades workforce is one of the most talented workforce systems. This week, thousands of these talented workers from across North America gather in Washington, DC for their annual Legislative Conference, an annual convening that reflects both the enduring strength of the trades and the country’s need for what they do.
As part of our Community-First approach to AI infrastructure we committed to investing in the places where we build, in the people who build with us, and in the long-term capacity of local economies. AI is a tool we will use, and I believe it will help in ways we plan and manage work, but it will not replace the experience, judgment, and craft that define the trades. Instead, it can amplify those human skills: helping people work more safely, learning more quickly, and delivering higher-quality outcomes on increasingly complex job sites.
Bringing AI literacy to millions of trades professionals
Our collaboration with NABTU is built on a simple but powerful idea: the people building the future should also be equipped to thrive in it.
Over the past year, we have worked together to bring AI literacy directly into the apprenticeship and training infrastructure that NABTU operates across all 50 states and Canada. More than 1,500 instructors in hands-on training centers nationwide have already participated. That early momentum confirmed that when you meet workers where they are, with content designed for how they actually work, the true benefit of AI can be felt.
Today, we are expanding that effort significantly. Beginning now, no-cost AI literacy courses tailored specifically for the skilled trades are available on LinkedIn Learning, open to instructors, apprentices, and journey-level workers across North America. One course is designed for faculty and staff in apprenticeship training environments. The other is built for apprentices and journey-level professionals who are on job sites every day. Upon completion, participants earn an industry-recognized AI literacy credential—a tangible marker of readiness that travels with them throughout their careers.
We are also extending our partnership to TradesFutures, NABTU’s affiliated nonprofit that recruits, prepares, and connects people to union construction apprenticeship programs across 34 states. Through TradesFutures, we will expand awareness of careers in data center construction alongside AI literacy and link opportunity with infrastructure being built today with the skills that will define tomorrow. The training will be available to all TradesFutures Apprenticeship Readiness Programs, which operate in community-based workforce development settings, high schools, correctional facilities, and labor organizations.
Building on a foundation of partnership with labor unions
There is a question at the center of every conversation about AI and work: who gets to participate?
For too long, the answer has defaulted to those already inside the technology sector or sitting behind desks. But the reality of the AI economy is far broader than any single industry.
At Microsoft, we believe that AI literacy should be as foundational as safety training on a job site. It is not about turning electricians into software engineers. It is about ensuring that an apprentice learning to install electrical systems in a data center also understands the technology those systems support and can use AI tools to work more safely, more efficiently, and with greater confidence.
That philosophy aligns directly with how we think about jobs and skills at Microsoft Elevate—not as a one-time event but as an ongoing investment in human potential that increases the opportunity for all.
This work with NABTU is part of a broader pattern of partnership between Microsoft and the labor community. In December 2023, Microsoft and the AFL-CIO announced a first-of-its-kind partnership between a technology company and a national labor organization focused on AI. That agreement established a framework for sharing AI insights with labor leaders, incorporating worker perspectives into technology development, and shaping public policy that supports frontline workers.
Since then, through our Microsoft Elevate initiative, we have continued to deepen our engagement with workforce organizations, educators, and community institutions. From partnerships with the American Federation of Teachers on the National Academy for AI Instruction to the National Education Association and National Association of Workforce Boards, our work with community colleges across the country, the thread that connects all of this work is a commitment to meeting people where they are—and making sure they have the skills and credentials to move forward.
The road ahead
Technology only fulfills its promise when it lifts people up, and the opportunity here is enormous. For this sector, for every industry that depends on it, for organizations of every size, and for individual workers and entrepreneurs. But it will only be realized if AI is designed and deployed around the realities of the work. In the trades, that means tools that are practical, trusted, and tailored so that AI can help more people stay in the field doing what they love, while opening doors to new kinds of growth.
Think about what that can mean for a contractor who’s running a small shop after a full day on the job: AI that helps draft and send invoices faster, reconcile receipts, and keep paperwork from piling up late at night. Or AI that can sift through public records—permits, zoning updates, capital plans, and procurement notices—to spot building trends in a community and flag where demand is headed next. Or tools that help identify bid opportunities and assemble first-draft scopes and materials lists based on prior jobs. On the job site itself, we believe AI can support safer work, such as summarizing daily plans, translating instructions, and surfacing the right checklist or standard, so people can focus on the work that requires human judgment.
There remain big questions about the impact of AI, and while we do not yet have all the answers, we do know that the future will not be built by technology alone. It will be built by the people who show up every day with skill and purpose to construct the world we all want to live in. If we continue to work together, AI can help expand opportunities: stronger businesses, safer job sites, better projects, and more people able to earn a great living in the communities they call home.
Ryan welcomes Mike Swift, co-founder and CEO of Major League Hacking, to the show to chat about the never-ending need for software developer communities and entry points into programming; MHL’s recent acquisition of DEV and how they’re creating a place for shared knowledge, building, and publishing; and why now is the best time to be both an artisan and a builder in a world with AI software development tools.
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