Steve Jobs famously said of Tim Cook, “Tim is not a product person, per se.” That has turned out to be an understatement, especially with the fact that the Apple Watch, AirPods, and even the Vision Pro concept began under Jobs.
I’ve closely observed Apple for decades and I believe that Steve Jobs never meant for Tim Cook to be Apple’s CEO in 2025.
When Jobs handpicked Cook as his successor in 2011, many believed it was a strategic move to stabilize the company during a tumultuous transition following Jobs’ untimely death. However, I contend that Jobs intended Cook to serve as a short-term CEO, a 3-5 year placeholder to mollify investors, not to lead Apple for nearly a decade and a half, stagnating its innovative spirit, jettisoning innovative executives, while relying on financial engineering, mainly in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars in buybacks, to prop up the company’s success.
Jobs, a visionary known for his relentless pursuit of groundbreaking products, built Apple into a cultural and technological titan with the Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. His genius lay in anticipating consumer needs before they did. Cook, hired from Compaq in 1998 as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations, was the operational mastermind behind Apple’s supply chain efficiency, going all-in on CCP-controlled China to maximize Apple’s profit margins.
Jobs clearly valued Cook’s logistical prowess, but I believe Jobs saw Cook as a caretaker, not a long-term visionary, expecting him to maintain stability for a few years until a product-focused, visionary successor emerged.
Under Cook, Apple’s market capitalization soared from $376 billion in 2011 to over $3.9 trillion in early 2025 making it the world’s most valuable company (it has since shed some $800 billion over the year, falling to third place behind Nvidia and rival Microsoft). Yet, much of this growth stems from financial engineering, service expansions like iCloud and Apple Music, and a steady stream of annual incremental product updates, rather than revolutionary Jobsian innovation.
The Apple Watch, AirPods, and Vision Pro were initiated under Jobs’ tenure, with their completion coming during Cook’s tenure. The Apple Car project, also conceived by Jobs, was abandoned after a long, chaotic, and costly period under Cook.
It’s clear that Cook lacks the disruptive, charismatic spark Steve Jobs infused throughout Apple. Basically, all of Apple’s successes under Cook are iterations of Steve Jobs’ products and services.
Cook’s lack of hands-on product involvement has slowed innovation, with half-baked products like the Vision Pro being launched to consumers too early and, unsurprisingly, failing to sell. Apple clearly missed the generative AI (GenAI) paradigm shift under Cook and has been struggling to catch up ever since. Steve Jobs likely would not have released the Vision Pro and visionOS in the condition they were launched under Tim Cook. Jobs very likely would have not neglected Siri (which he purchased) for over a decade and a half and would almost certainly have foreseen GenAI early. Very likely, Jobs focus on Siri would have led him and Apple to GenAI first. Visionary Jobs’ main focus was about creating “insanely great” products; Cook’s seems to be about iteration and other, side pursuits.
If Jobs intended Cook as a relatively short-term placeholder, the question remains: who was meant to follow? Speculation points to figures like former software chief Scott Forstall — who Cook rather quickly forced out of the company, ostensibly over the botched Maps launch (which way okayed by Cook, by the way) – and head product designer Jony Ive, who left Apple after years of feeling unchallenged under Cook. Jobs highly valued both executives, even granting Ive more operational power than Cook at the time of his death. Today, Ive is collaborating with OpenAI on a potentially revolutionary AI product, not working for Apple. The departure of these executives, whether explicit or tacit, conveniently solidified Cook’s long-term hold on the CEO role.
While Cook’s canned-video tenure has been financially stellar overall, Apple has for many years coasted and thrived on Jobs’ lingering momentum, propped up by Cook’s beige operational savvy and financial engineering. After Cook’s tenure finally, blessedly ends, only time will reveal if Apple can rediscover its Jobsian revolutionary edge.
SteveJack is a long-time Macintosh user, web designer, multimedia producer, and contributor to the MacDailyNews Opinion section who once described the iPhone some five years before Steve Jobs revealed it to the world.
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Speculation. If it turned out that Cook performed better, you would have never written this. All these after-the-fact articles are a waste of time.
Thanks for the comment Captain Obvious. Of course if things were different things would be different. These articles are necessary to make the case for Cook’s retirement once a suitable replacement can be found. Jobs never would have settled for sitting in third place behind Nvidia and Microsoft following the greatest consumer tech product run in history.
Tim Cook does not get it. It can’t be he’s not made enough money but like most people insecure about their position they force out those who pose a threat ie those have the needed skills they don’t have.
Eventually they are left running a rudderless ship he should have resigned after the car fiasc billions spent with little return virtually all product development curtailed SIRI Intelligence and other new products on the drawing board he did not and does not get
Time to move on go
It seems Tim Apple prepares for his outgoing existing Apple CEO position. My 2 cents guessing.
Scott Forestall was forced out unfairly after the launch of Maps against his better judgment as it wasn’t ready. Bring him back. He was Steve’s closest tech dude and protege. That’s why they tossed him; he had the vision and they didn’t.
While I fully agree with Steve Jack as I often had and enjoyed the vision he’s had over the now decades I’ve been reading/following MDN I worry about who’s the “right” person if not the perfect person to fill that vision role. SJ definitely foresaw what would be today’s AI in buying Siri in the first place but 2 years later he sadly passed away. Cook completely neglected Siri and it shows. It was somewhat funny in the early 2010’s the mistakes Siri would make but that should have been the impetus to genuinely improve it, not let Google and Amazon fly past Apple.
Having been old enough to observe the mid to late 90’s Apple and argue that whole decade during Thanksgiving dinners that Apple was the superior computer interface even though by the mid-90’s Windows 95 took over the vast majority of market share. Seeing the merry-go-round of CEO’s before SJ came back in 97, I just fear we might get worse than Tim as a replacement now. I doubt Forstall would be back and Ive is definitely not coming back, so who then is the “right” person?
Craig Federighi, “Mr. Apple” if there ever was one since Steve Jobs. They aren’t hiring an outsider and Forstall and Ive are long gone and were never top leadership material.
Youth is now an important asset? That flips from your political guidance.
The “fire Tim” crowd here can’t even name most of the executives at Apple without relying on DDG or google.
This site uses word tags to identify content. Look at the dozens of non-Apple related figureheads and organizations and political entity tags, as this site leans hard on social politics. But not very much effort to seriously evaluate any current Apple leaders. Nobody wants to do investigative reporting or give credit to the people who day in & day out make very complex Apple operations work WORLDWIDE, since it’s about time you realize that the US market is no longer the largest demand. How about reviewing the track record of Sabih Khan? Do you even know what Isabel Ge-Mahe does? Is Phil Schiller still working hard or is he deferring most of his work to Tor Myhren? What specifically has Eddie Cue done in the past 15 years to justify his salary? Why are you not calling out the dead wood on the board of directors, like Andrea Jung, professional board member for any corporation who needs another female to join the club? Why does Apple have an ancient ex-Northrop Grumman executive on its board — you know very well that no engineering or manufacturing at Northrup Grumman uses any Apple products. Is Art Levinson too old to be effective?
When Jobs was CEO, there was a bit more focus on hardware engineering, but let’s not pretend the track record or financial results were all that spectacular. And no, there are no 42 year olds that are remotely capable of running a modern complex company like Apple. Today is not 1925, much as you wish it could be. When a corporation starts, engineering is the most important function. As the company grows, operations and human resources become paramount. As the corporation matures, investors demand financial performance. So you might as well get on with reviewing the credentials of Mike Fenger, because he’s likely on the short list for CEO consideration when Cook retires in 2030 or so.
This is a pretty bad take. Apple Watch development began after Jobs died. Vision Pro development did not begin over 14 years ago. The lack of Apple knowledge from this writer is preposterous for an apple blog
MDN has forgotten more about Apple than you’ll ever know:
Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
Work on Apple Vision Pro began under Steve Jobs – July 23, 2023
lol are you serious? A patent ? Apple has patents for a million things its engineers come up with. And the Apple Watch article has zero sources.
People who actually work at Apple have refuted this
Steve Forstall; end of subject….
Forstall is 55 but I think he would bring vision. Tim Cook booted all the people who were visionaries out of Apple including Ives, so he could implement his plan to make money but not seamless product experiences.