Apple’s Tim Cook era: 14 years of prolific products, profits, and politics

Macworld

Fourteen years ago this month, Steve Jobs resigned and Tim Cook became the CEO of Apple. Given Jobs’s ongoing health issues, Cook’s ascension wasn’t unexpected; he had, in fact, filled the role during Jobs’s multiple leaves of absence. Cook was a familiar face and promised to be a steady hand at Apple, but if there ever was a tough act to follow, it was Steve Jobs.

But here we are, living in an era where Cook has now served as Apple CEO longer than Jobs did. The Apple of 2025 is quite different from the company Cook took control of back in 2011. Today’s Apple generates nearly four times the revenue that the company did when Cook took over, driven by more-than-quadrupling iPhone revenue. Back in 2011, there was one iPhone; now there are five, along with several iPad models, a wearables business that basically didn’t exist, an experimental headset, and a revitalized Mac powered by iPhone chips.

It’s been a ride. And while it’s not over yet, now seems as good a time as any to look back at what Cook has done and consider where he and Apple may be going in the future.

Right-hand man




Tim Cook (left) was on stage with Steve Jobs for “antennagate.”
Jason Snell

Cook worked at Apple for nearly 13 years before ascending to the CEO job; by the time he took that position, he’d been quite visible, appearing on stage with Jobs at the 2008 MacBook launch and the 2010 “Antennagate” press conference. It’s fair to say that even before Jobs began his struggle with cancer, Cook was performing the role of chief operating officer in a way that freed up Jobs to focus on what he wanted to do most–namely, help guide the development of Apple’s products. The pair clearly complemented one another.

It’s worth pondering if Cook has such a person at his side. For years, the assumption was that former COO Jeff Williams could be Cook’s successor, but Williams is retiring. One of Cook’s next great challenges is to identify and train his successor–the fact that even the clearest heirs apparent have a whole lot of question marks around them suggests that Cook isn’t planning on leaving the job anytime soon.

Cook as politician

Back in 2018, the New York Times suggested that Tim Cook was “the tech industry’s top diplomat.” It’s not a role that the operations guy from Alabama probably expected, but a need to grapple with global politics has grown along with Apple itself. In China, Apple has relied on its relationship with the government to give it access to the company’s enormous middle- and upper-class markets, and has ruthlessly optimized its production line in China’s factories. “Ruthless optimization” is a phrase that has Tim Cook stamped all over it.

And in recent years, Cook has also had to manage the United States government. In the first Trump administration, he trumpeted U.S. investments and appeared alongside the President at a factory in Texas that was assembling Mac Pros. It was mostly for show–the Mac Pro was Apple’s lowest-volume product–but it handed Trump a win. In the second Trump term, things have been rockier, but Cook has obviously felt that Apple is better off with the president as an ally than an adversary, resulting in Oval Office trophy presentations and ever larger commitments to American manufacturing.

Less generous is Cook’s attitude toward anyone who would threaten Apple’s business model. Regulators, especially those in the European Union, have discovered that Cook’s Apple will fight, resist, and maliciously comply with rules–but will eventually back down if absolutely necessary. Apple might accept that in order to operate in certain regions, it will have to change the way it operates, but it has also decided that it will fight every attempt to do so, tooth and nail. That approach clearly comes from the top.




TIm Cook’s efforts in politics is probably even more than what he expected when he became CEO 14 years ago,IDG

The products (and services)

The toughest part to follow of Steve Jobs’s many acts was his role as a guide of product development. Jobs had taste and intuition, and it enabled Apple to do some remarkable things. Cook is not that guy, and the fear was always that under his tenure, Apple would falter.

Did it? Depends on how you view things. From the perspective of investors looking for growth and profit, Cook has taken everything to a higher level. If you focus on product innovation, it’s more of a mixed bag.

While it’s fair to compare Cook to Jobs, it’s not fair to compare Cook to a fantasy version of Jobs where every product was a hit and there was an entirely new, rethought version of every single Apple product blowing your mind every single year. Jobs came up with clunkers, but he also followed a thread from the iPod to the iPhone while also talking the Mac off the ledge and infusing it with some cool. He also collaborated with Ron Johnson on building out Apple’s retail chain, which is an enormous asset that has aided the company’s growth.

Cook’s Apple has excelled at iterating on existing products, optimizing and varying them as a part of a growth strategy that helps them reach a broader audience. One iPhone has appeal, but four iPhones provide a spread of prices and features to reach a broader audience. Today, there are iPad Pros and iPad Airs and iPads, rather than just a single iPad. Cook’s Apple sells old models at discounts to people who might otherwise never think an Apple product was worth the money.




The Apple Watch was the first major product unveiling under Tim Cook.Foundry

Cook’s stable of new products is a mixed bag, but it’s hardly barren. Under his watch, Apple came out with the Apple Watch, which has exceeded all (reasonable) expectations, and AirPods, which feel like a direct follow-on to Apple’s success with the iPod. The Vision Pro is a non-entity commercially, but represents a public bet on the future of augmented reality devices–whether that bet is good or bad will probably not be known for a decade. (If Apple of the 2030s builds a must-have set of AR glasses built on the back of a decade of visionOS work, we’ll see if Cook gets any of the credit.)

And then there are the sheer flops: A billion-dollar car project that never saw the light of day. A bunch of skunkworks robotic projects that may or may not make Apple a player in the smart home years after that category debuted and then stagnated. Missing the boat on Large Language Models also happened on Cook’s watch, and the jury’s still out on how damaging that will be to Apple.

I’d also say that, surprisingly for someone who was once in charge of the Mac at Apple, part of Cook’s legacy is his allowing the Mac to lose its way in the mid-2010s, a time when it seemed like Apple was trying to build the iPad up so that the Mac could be put out to pasture as a legacy device. The addition of USB-C and the controversial “butterfly” keyboard added to the sense of malaise. But to Cook’s credit, Apple pulled the Mac back from the abyss, transitioning to chips originally designed for iPhones and iPads and ushering in the most successful era (by revenue, anyway) in Mac history.

And then there’s Services, a category that is certainly a signature achievement of Cook’s reign. In fiscal 2012, Apple’s Services line (then called Other) generated about $15 billion in revenue. In 2024, it was $68 billion. That’s larger growth than iPhone revenue during the period, and that’s not all: Services revenue is enormously profitable. In the most recent fiscal quarter, Services product margin was 75 percent, versus 35 percent for products. Services exist to extract more money from people with Apple hardware, and the money they extract is almost pure profit. It’s one reason Apple’s profits increased 360 percent during the span, too.




Apple’s services division (which includes Apple TV+) has see enormous growth under Tim Cook.PC-Welt

The Cook Era

What’s Tim Cook’s legacy? He grew Apple into a globe-spanning giant in a way it just wasn’t back in 2011, manufacturing all over the world and becoming a huge player in the global tech scene–for better or worse. He increased revenue and profits, especially by riding explosive iPhone growth and adding a focus on services revenue. He has played ball with whomever he needed to, including Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, in order to keep Apple as profitable as possible.

It’s unfair to call Cook an uncreative CEO, because his Apple took some real innovative strides forward, especially in manufacturing and production. Cook’s Apple is a company that, in many ways, is successful because it won’t take no for an answer; even at an enormous scale, Apple is willing to invest in expensive new processes in order to build products that nobody else in the world is attempting to build. Maybe as a product innovator, his legacy is middling. But when it comes to building corporate value and throwing off profit to the delight of investors, he’s been a wild success.

My final thought on Cook, as he passes Jobs (and continues at CEO for who knows how long) is this: On balance, if his primary job was to make Apple grow–and it was–he has succeeded. He didn’t need to be Steve Jobs, he couldn’t be Steve Jobs, and he hasn’t been Steve Jobs, but by the metrics that matter to his bosses, all the butterfly keyboards and factory politics and money spent on self-driving cars are almost irrelevant.

But at the same time, when it comes time for Cook to step down and for a new person to step into the CEO role, that person should similarly not try to be Tim Cook. When Cook is ready to go, it will be time for someone different to bring their talents to bear and put their unique stamp on Apple.