Tim celebrates 10 years as head Cook at Apple

Tim Cook, WWDC 2019. © Apple

Ten years ago, on August 24, 2011, Steve Jobs resigned from his position as CEO of Apple for health reasons (he died 6 weeks later). That same day, Apple announced that Tim Cook, then COO and interim general manager, was taking Steve’s place effective immediately. Tim Cook, born in 1960, started his career at IBM where he spent twelve years. After a brief stint at Compaq, he came to Apple in 1998 with a mission to clean up production and logistics..

In those last 10 years, Tim Cook transformed Apple into the most valuable and profitable company in the world. Apple generated record revenue of US$ 274 billion last year. Today, its market value exceeds US$ 2 trillion, and it earns an average of US$ 10,000 per second, of which US$ 3,600 is sheer profit. The company holds nearly US$ 200 billion in liquid assets, up 100% from 2011, and the company’s size has also more than doubled, with 147,000 full-time employees -- up from 60,400 the year Jobs left his post. If you had spent US$ 1,000 on Apple shares the week Steve Jobs resigned, they would be worth nearly US$ 11,000 today, not including dividends.

But measuring Apple by its financial performance alone tells only half the story. Compared to an outstanding product visionary like Steve, Tim cuts a less impressive figure. Only two new product lines (excluding gadgets like AirTags) have appeared in the past decade: the Apple Watch and the AirPods. That being said, it might be the Mac’s transition from Intel to Apple’s ARM chips that will be one of Tim’s greatest achievements, though it might be a bit early to tell.

⇨ The Verge, Sean Hollister, “Tim Cook’s Apple, ten years later.”

2021-08-24