I present two screenshots I just took a few minutes ago, on September 1, 2026.
The first image is from Apple’s website. As of today, John Ternus is the new CEO of Apple, taking over from Tim Cook, who led the company since Steve Jobs’ death in 2011.
The second, of course, is from the Apple Maps app, correctly identifying the… uh… least great of the Great Lakes by the name it has had since long before either Canada or the United States existed as countries: Lake Ontario.
Now, of course, if you were to look at that same lake today on Google Maps, it would be incorrectly labeled as “Lake America” because… well, you know why.
I’ve been a map geek since I was a kid. Since before I had ever heard the name of the guy who decided Lake Ontario needed to be renamed. If you had told me that someday “She Makes Henry Eat Onions” would need to be changed to “She Makes Henry Eat Apples,” I’d have said “That’s about as likely as my very educated mother serving us something other than nine pizzas.” Well, times change. Still, the bar for renaming an international body of water should be even higher than the one for demoting a planet. (There are good reasons for renaming things, but a temper tantrum isn’t one of them.)
The timing of the decree that this change should occur was telling, because a similar decree was issued last year, and Apple fell in line almost as quickly as Google did. But not this time. What’s different?
This time, it was just days before Apple’s change of the guard. And just like how you “can’t” appoint a new Supreme Court justice in an election year (except when you can), I guess you can’t rename a Great Lake right before a new CEO takes over.
Where am I going with all of this?
For the past year and a half, let’s just say, Apple has handled certain situations in certain ways. And now they seem to be handling them differently. John Ternus is not Tim Cook. And John Ternus’s Apple is not Tim Cook’s Apple.
This seems like a rather absurd detail to dwell on, but I don’t think it’s an accident or a coincidence. Watch this space. (“This space” being Apple Maps.) Whether or not that lake gets renamed there will tell you a lot, I think, about how John Ternus thinks.
Postscript: I don’t really believe in synchronicity (nor do I believe my devices are surveilling me 24/7). But I also don’t think about planetary mnemonics, like… ever. The last time any phrase starting with “my very educated mother” crossed my mind was probably the same day I learned the term “dwarf planet.”
And yet, here’s something funny that just happened. I referenced that mnemonic in this blog post, and then, less than an hour later, as I have been working my way through the New York Times Connections archive, I happened to play the puzzle from April 23. I immediately spotted the most unlikely grouping of words.
