Fifteen years after Steve Jobs, Tim Cook leaves a dramatically different Apple

After 15 years, Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple’s top executive. At age 65, he leaves behind a hardware juggernaut that, under his leadership, brought about a global smartphone revolution and transformed Apple into one of the most profitable publicly traded companies in history.

With a reputation for logistical management, Cook first joined Apple in 1998, overseeing its worldwide sales and operations. In 2009, he temporarily began running day-to-day operations when the company’s legendary co-founder, Steve Jobs, took medical leave due to complications from pancreatic cancer. In 2011, just a few months before Jobs’ death, Cook took over as CEO.

Filling Jobs’ shoes was seen as a tremendous task, but company observers say that despite a more subdued demeanor, especially on stage, Cook met the challenge.

“Steve Jobs was never going to be an easy act to follow,” said Dipanjan Chatterjee, a principal analyst for market research firm Forrester. “Yet Tim Cook took Jobs’ legacy and transformed Apple into a durable, resilient financial powerhouse with explosive market-cap growth.”

In Apple’s announcement on Monday, Cook said he loves the company “with all of my being” and that leading it was the “greatest privilege of my life”. In a goodbye note specifically to Apple fans, Cook thanked them, saying he feels “a gratitude that I cannot put into words”. He will stay on as the executive chair of Apple’s board of directors, and John Ternus, 50, the company’s senior-vice president of hardware engineering, will replace Cook as CEO.

During his tenure, Cook made the already-successful tech hardware giant nearly untouchable by its competitors. He carried Jobs’ enthusiasm for well-designed, high-end consumer tech products and oversaw the explosive growth of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac computer lines, as well as the introduction of the Apple Watch and AirPods headphones. The company also waded into services while he was in charge, including Apple Pay, Apple TV and Apple Music, weaving together a network of devices with its proprietary operating system software, including macOS and iOS.

Under Cook’s leadership, Apple became the first publicly traded company to reach a valuation of $1tn – ballooning from $350bn in 2011 to $4tn today.

“After a lot of initial questions about an operations guy becoming CEO, Tim Cook unquestionably brought Apple into a new era that was driven by his vision to build a connected ecosystem of billions of devices,” said Bob O’Donnell, the president and chief analyst of Technalysis Research. “He didn’t need to know exactly what products were required, but he did understand the interconnectedness of it all and that, ultimately, is what brought Apple to where it is today.”

## Who could measure up to Steve Jobs?

The Apple that Cook took over in 2011 was a different company from the behemoth the world is familiar with today. In the years before Jobs’ death, the two men and other executives worked together to put a financially struggling company back on its feet after Apple nearly faced bankruptcy in the late 1990s.

Jobs was the face of the reinvention, which brought flashy live product announcements where hordes of Apple enthusiasts would jam into convention centers to see the unveiling of the company’s new electronics. Jobs would pace back-and-forth on the stage, in his signature black turtleneck tucked into blue jeans, while suspensefully extolling the wonders of Apple’s products.

The hype hit a frenzy in 2007, when Jobs introduced the first iPhone saying: “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” calling it a “breakthrough internet communications device”. The crowd whooped and hollered.

By the time Cook took the helm, the iPhone had taken off in popularity along with many other devices. Jobs had introduced the iPad the year before. While Cook became the host of the live product announcements, which have continued to be a mainstay for Apple’s branding and showcasing, he didn’t exude the same visionary charisma as Jobs. Cook would have to contend with comparisons to the late co-founder and his glamorous keynotes for his entire term as CEO.

Throughout Cook’s tenure, he also oversaw some missteps. Apple has been slow to invest in generative artificial intelligence and integrate the technology into its products, something shareholders have been clamoring for. And there have been hardware misses, including the lackluster $3,500 Vision Pro mixed reality headset, a possibly delayed folding smartphone that could have a “crease” problem, and a scuttled self-driving car project that cost the company some $10bn.

For the most part, however, Cook has continued to do what he started under Jobs – methodically building up the company’s market share and profitability and working to safeguard it from volatility. In that sense, he’s overseen Apple go from a disruptive and innovative Silicon Valley startup to a financially secure heavyweight that habitually delivers what an ever-growing number of consumers worldwide expect.

“While Cook has kept Apple’s growth trajectory moving at a steady clip, he has not overseen a step-change innovation that would reset Apple’s competitive position for the next two decades, as Jobs did with the iPhone,” Chatterjee said. “Cook’s legacy will be defined by steady, disciplined operational stewardship–proof that a company can be more than just exciting and visionary; it can also be immensely valuable to all its stakeholders.”