Tim Cook on stage at Apple Park- image credit: AppleTim Cook on stage at Apple Park- image credit: Apple
He was a businessman instead of a designer, but as Apple CEO, Tim Cook also had to become far more of a politician than any of his predecessors. Here’s how he started at Apple, ran the company, and will end his career.
Tim Cook was Apple’s seventh CEO, he was the longest-serving, and he was only the third who wasn’t fired. Then it’s true that like every Apple CEO before him, he was white, male, and a similar age, but in business terms, he was also the most transformative of them all.
That includes being more business and financially transforming than Steve Jobs. Where Cook will never be as much remembered for products as Jobs still is, he was more of a businessman and, latterly, vastly more of a politician.
It is because of Tim Cook that Apple became the most valuable company in the world. It is because of him that Apple’s valuation topped $4 trillion.
And it is also because of both his politics and his logistical skill that Apple weathered Trump’s tariffs.
Rehearsal for success
Arguably Mike Markkula effectively had the role and responsibilities of a chief executive officer while he was recruiting Michael Scott to be the first official CEO. Following that, Markkula became Apple’s second CEO, while he was recruiting John Sculley.
Tim Cook (left) with Steve Jobs- image credit: Apple
But Tim Cook was officially acting CEO twice before getting the role full time. That’s because he filled in for Steve Jobs on at least the two extended periods when Jobs was on sick leave.
Then once more with the arguable exceptions of Markkula and Jobs, Tim Cook was the first Apple CEO to be promoted from within the company. He came in hot, then, knowing the company, and having been a key part of its success in the Steve Jobs years.
What Cook brought to the CEO role
Just as with John Sculley before him, Tim Cook needed no persuading to meet with Steve Jobs. And just as with Sculley, Cook had no intention of actually joining Apple afterwards.
Both men were just interested to meet with the near-legend who was Jobs. Then just as Sculley hadn’t planned to leave Pepsi, this was now 1998 and Cook was too well established as vice president of corporate materials for Compaq, after years being with IBM.
Tim Cook (left) with Steve Jobs- image credit: Apple
Professionally and financially, Cook was heading to what looked like the top of his field. It sounds now as if the sole person telling him he should join Apple was Steve Jobs, and it’s certain that everyone else Cook asked advice from winced at the idea.
Yet once more there was the allure of Jobs’s powers of persuasion. Jobs presumably wouldn’t have been thinking ahead to his successor as CEO yet, but still he managed to make Chief Operating Officer sound irresistible.
Apparently, the key to that was how strongly Jobs was directing Apple and conveying the kind of company he was making it into.
“[So] I was never going to find my purpose working some place without a clear sense of purpose of its own,” Cook said in a commencement speech in 2017. “I tried meditation, I sought guidance and religion.”
“I read great philosophers and authors,” he continued. “In a moment of youthful indiscretion, I might even have experimented with a Windows PC, and, obviously, that didn’t work.”
It’s easy to say now in hindsight that he made the right choice because of what Apple did become, and what he became within Apple. But it didn’t take years for hindsight to kick in, as a suddenly struggling Compaq was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2002.
Perhaps if Cook had stayed, Compaq might have better managed the price war it got into with Dell. But whether he could have mitigated against Compaq’s dark days, he joined Apple when it was only just out of its own worst time.
Steve Jobs had got Apple into safer waters by cutting away at costly niche products. Then Cook cut away at what he considered to be unnecessary expense.
L-R: Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, Phil Schiller- image credit: Apple
Most specifically, this is the point when Apple moved away from owning its own factories. That itself was a risky move because you’re only deferring costs by renting, and the new owners need to make a profit too.
But in Apple’s case, relying on third-party factories meant that it was no longer tied to its own expensive plants and facilities. It could change suppliers incredibly quickly, if necessary, and also order only what it needed, when it is needed.
This Just in Time manufacturing system puts the onus on these third-party firms to deliver components. That in turn meant that suddenly Apple no longer needed to hold stock, either of components or finished devices.
It was dependent on those suppliers, certainly, but before Apple, only Dell had seen the real benefits of this. “If I’ve got 11 days of inventory and my competitor has 80,” said Michael Dell in the late 90s, “and Intel comes out with a new 450 megahertz chip, that means I’m going to get to market 69 days sooner.”
Bold choices
Whether you rate Tim Cook or not, he doesn’t tend to come across as someone who makes wild decisions as CEO. But he did gamble as COO.
Specifically, when the iMac was being developed, it was Cook who booked an enormous amount of space on freight aircraft. He spent millions when conceivably the iMac might not have been finished in time.
Steve Jobs (pictured) and Jony Ive are the nest-known reasons for the iMac’s success, but Cook was also integral – image credit: Apple
It was, and the iMac was also a hit, so even at first glance, it looks like Cook’s gamble paid off. Apple had a huge success and also had the ability to ship that device to people.
Yet there was more to it. Cook had gambled on securing all of that freight space, true, but he also did it early enough that he shut out rivals.
Consequently, even if a PC maker had created a true iMac rival, they would not have been able to get it to customers. This was specifically because of Cook’s grasp of what could sound like a dull and insignificant topic, his expertise in business.
Apple had previously had CEOs who technology visionaries such as Steve Jobs, and it had also had business CEOs like John Sculley. During the 2000s, it looked as if Apple would have the partnership of visionary CEO Jobs and businessman COO Cook forever.
But then by the time of WWDC 2008, Apple was having to reassure people that Steve Jobs had just been feeling a little under the weather.
Not a product person
Now, of course, we know that Jobs was succeeded by Cook, but at the time, there were years of speculation. It was also different to today in that this time Apple seems to have managed announcing the handover from Cook to incoming CEO John Ternus, very well.
Back in the late 2000s, the change from Jobs to Cook was much more startling. Or at least, it was for everyone outside of Apple.
Tim Cook presenting at WWDC- image credit: Apple
Jobs had continued to be visibly ill for some years, but accounts at the time were frustrated with how Apple appeared to have no plan. Of course it did, and that plan was surely always to have Tim Cook take over permanently.
It was only as he actually took over, though, that the plan was revealed, and later we learned of Steve Jobs’s assertion that Cook “can do everything.”
Yet that quote from Jobs was said to his biographer, who reports that it wasn’t all the Apple co-founder said about Cook. Most significantly, Jobs is said to have been concerned that Cook “is not a product person.”
Jobs meant this in the way that someone like himself or Jony Ive would obsess over the details of a product. By all accounts, Cook certainly wasn’t like that, and it may well be that John Ternus is.
Yet arguably, Ternus can now be like this — and towards the end Jobs could be too — because of Cook’s business acumen. Clearly he wasn’t alone, and a 2025 estimate put the number of people working on logistics and operations at 7,895.
But where Jobs had grown Apple enough to make it safe from bankruptcy, when Cook was Chief Operating Officer, he grew it still further. Then when he became CEO, Cook drove the company to the unimaginable size it is today.
It’s that size and that bank balance that means, for instance, that only Apple has been able to even briefly ride out the current shortages of memory and processors without raising prices.
The time will come when it has to, and Apple has already cut various configurations of Macs as a result of the shortages. But it has been weathering this storm, and right before it, Apple also weathered Trump’s illegal tariffs.
We may never know even a fraction of what Apple did to minimize the impact of those tariffs that were so steep, and so changeable. But we do know that in the first few months of the situation, Apple spent $900 million revamping its supply and delivery chains around the world.
That’s a staggeringly low sum for a global reorganization, especially when the situation was one that would change at Trump’s whims. But of course it is also a staggeringly huge sum that would and probably did mean the end for other firms.
Under Tim Cook, if Apple never sold another device, it would still run at full capacity with its 164,000 employees, for around five years.
But if it is Cook’s leadership and expertise that meant Apple has escaped a lot of costs, it’s Cook’s leadership that has left it with reputational damage.
Cook and Trump
When Tim Cook steps down in September 2026, he is officially going to become Apple Executive Chairman. But really the job title should be Executive in Charge of Trump.
Steve Jobs never supported politicians or gave them random trophies, but then he never needed to. We can only guess how Jobs would have worked with Trump, if he even would.
Tim Cook (left) shows Trump the Mac Pro – image credit: Apple
Whereas we know that Tim Cook, in the main, has been willing to work with the administration more than some. He’s also been able to work with it more than most, to the extent that Trump has praised him for coming to “kiss my ass.”
Your opinion of how Cook works with Trump depends greatly on your opinion of both men. But if there’s any question over how differently things could have gone for Apple, there’s at least one clue.
In May 2025, Trump visited the Middle East, and reportedly told Cook to come with him. Because Cook didn’t, Trump announced a 25% tariff on every iPhone imported into the US.
Trump also took the unusual step of admitting that it would be Apple, a US company, that paid the tariff bill. Up to then he’d falsely claimed that it was foreign firms that would.
Tim Cook (left) with Trump- image credit: Apple/White House
But then for all of the outcry and criticism over, for instance, Cook attending the controversial screening of the “Melania” documentary at the White House, Cook has resisted more pressures than some. Unlike very many US corporations, for instance, Apple has refused to drop its DEI program.
Cook’s products
Similarly, Cook may have accelerated or rearranged Apple’s investment in US manufacturing, but he’s refused direct orders to stop production in India. He has told Trump why the iPhone can’t be made in the US, and even convinced him of that.
Cook also showed Trump around a US factory that was assembling the Mac Pro. That isn’t an Apple product that has fared well during Cook’s time, but that’s chiefly because of something that did do spectacularly.
Under John Sculley’s time, Apple moved from Motorola processors to the PowerPC and saw a great performance boost. Under Steve Jobs’s time, Apple moved from PowerPC to Intel, and saw an even greater one.
Tim Cook in Japan, visiting Inoue, which manufactures Apple Watch Ultra bands – image credit: Tim Cook
But it was under Tim Cook that Apple moved to its own Apple Silicon, and the result was dramatic. Suddenly the new Apple Silicon Mac mini, the lowest-cost Mac, was able to go up against the most costly Mac Pro, at least in certain circumstances.
But still Apple Silicon simultaneously boosted the performance of every Mac, and levelled the playing field for them all too. The Mac Pro’s true competitor, the device that ultimately caused its downfall, was the Mac Studio which Cook launched.
During his time, he also launched the Apple Watch, AirTags, and AirPods. He launched the iPhone X in 2017, which became the model for all smartphones, just as the original iPhone had ten years before.
He did also then launch the Apple Vision Pro which, for all its marvels, is not quite as visibly a ubiquitous global hit as the rest.
But then they may not appear to get as much attention as devices like the Apple Vision Pro, yet Apple’s services have grown into a gigantic part of the company’s business. Under Tim Cook, we got Apple Pay, Apple Card, Apple Music, and the superb Apple TV.
Tim Cook around 2014 when he came out as gay- image credit: Apple
We did also get the reportedly struggling service of Apple Fitness+, and Apple News+ which is limited unless you’re in the US. And we also got Apple Arcade, which is fine, plus Apple Maps which ultimately became great.
For a man who isn’t into products, Tim Cook saw a lot of them launch during his time. He perhaps won’t be remembered for them as much as he will for how he worked with Trump.
But neither specific products nor particular administrations are what Cook himself believes his time will be remembered for. Describing Apple as a whole, rather than his own contribution in particular, Cook often said that it would be health that the firm will be known for.
“If you zoom out into the future, and you look back, and you ask the question, ‘What was Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind?’ it will be about health,” he said in 2019.
He said that at what would turn out to be just about the midpoint of his 15 years as Apple CEO. That’s one year longer than Steve Jobs, and Cook’s influence is not over.
Several of Apple’s previous CEOs stayed with the company after stepping down or being removed, but it was chiefly a contractual thing where they had no responsibilities. In Tim Cook’s case, the new CEO John Ternus is going to have him around as Apple Executive Chair to consult with.
Apple’s next CEO, John Ternus- image credit: Apple
At least for the first two years of his time in that role, though, it now appears that Cook’s job will be handling Trump. He’s demonstrated that he can do it, and do it over the long term.
But then Cook has also demonstrated more altruism than might be expected from the CEO of the most profitable company in the world. He’s repeatedly donated to charities, for instance, and while his salary was far from the highest for a US CEO, he has at times asked for it to be cut.
Then while the focus of this piece has been on Cook’s role as Apple CEO, he has himself used that role for a wider purpose. In 2014, he came out as gay, saying that he did so in the hopes that it might help people struggling with their own sexuality.
“Being gay has given me a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day,” Cook wrote in an open letter. “It’s made me more empathetic, which has led to a richer life. It’s been tough and uncomfortable at times, but it has given me the confidence to be myself, to follow my own path, and to rise above adversity and bigotry.
“It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you’re the CEO of Apple.”
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