Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple CEO Tim Cook Earned $74.3 Million in 2025
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Does Apple not own the plane they require him to travel in? It seems like they’d be large enough for that to be a worthwhile investment over charter reimbursements…
It’s called a free market. If you’re not willing to work for it, which many aren’t, then that’s your choice. Plenty of people in the US who’d rather take a hand out than a hand up. In LA they are about to have burger flippers making $60k a year. That is actually absurd. That will price the poor out of food options. Everytime you bump the minimum wage or implement “living wages” inflation kicks in and the raise becomes irrelevant and makes things more expensive for everyone. The correct minimum wage is zero. Start there.
Last edited:
thebart
macrumors 6502a
Considering all the insane compensation CEOs get these days, that's pretty modest actually
I’d work one year and retire. This amount of money is insane.
And then we have people like Elon who wants to be the first trillionaire. Wealth disparity is way out of hand.
And then we have people like Elon who wants to be the first trillionaire. Wealth disparity is way out of hand.
For Elon to earn the package, he has to create $7.5T in wealth for other people.
Why are you people so caught up in “wealth disparity” when it’s literally none of your business and shareholders approve these pay packages for companies they own? Clearly it’s worth it to the literal owners of the company.
And poor is the default. Wealth creation is far more rare and difficult. Those who create wealth deserve the compensation and more. Without these people, your life would be far worse.
Tim Cook has been an absolutely phenomenal CEO responsible for $4T. A $75M pay package is an absolute deal. You guys have zero sense of business and reality. Oh, but he makes so much. Yeah, we want him to.
Your mindset is one of the many reasons you’re not in this position.
You have no say in it. Buy some shares and vote against his package. You’ll be outnumbered by people who understand business though.
Equality would be hell on earth. Apple didn’t exist and now it does. Should we chop it up equally distribute it? 😂 Who decides that? Then what? You think another Apple will just appear? You think the government will make it?
Real world doesn’t work like that my guy. Incentives have to exist or capitalists won’t invest. The people crying to distribute the wealth don’t know how to create wealth. They only know how to use the power of the state to steal it and redistribute it.
Tim Cook has a pay package approved by the owners of the company. He deserves every penny and non-investors deserve nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch.
Which is one reason you don’t get paid 3-4 million dollars…
(For the record, I’m with you).
The world is not black and white. It’s possible to have lower inequality than in the US, without having “equality”.
The countries in the world that are widely accepted to be the most well-functioning, that even POTUS looks up to, all have less inequality than US. All-out capitalism provably doesn’t work.
Complete nonsense.
It’s not poor people making things more expensive for everyone else.
When ceos, athletes and movie stars are given millions and billions while minimum wage workers can’t even afford food or health care, it’s their greed that drives prices up for everyone else, but they don’t care.
Same over here, with a minimalistic approach, even less.
However with those amounts portrayed here, working only for one month nets you 6+ million dollars.
If a guy at McDonalds is making $60k flipping burgers as his base salary, he’s making it more expensive for everyone else.
California's minimum wage is increasing in 2026 as Los Angeles debates $30 an hour
California's minimum wage is adjusted every year for inflation and an increase will take effect on Jan. 1, 2026. Some cities have a higher wage floor.
calmatters.org
False. Flat-out false. And lazy. Apple, bought NeXT in 1997 for $427 million ($400M in stock, $27M in cash) explicitly to bring Steve Jobs back. That deal alone put roughly $300 million in Apple shares in Steve’s hands. In 2003, he received another 5 million shares. After Apple’s stock splits, that totaled about 5.5 million shares. Steve returned in 1997, became CEO in 2000, stepped down in 2011 due to health, and passed away later that year. That’s 14 years back at Apple, 11 as CEO. If Steve were alive today, those Apple shares would be worth around $35 billion. Add his Disney holdings (~$16 billion) and you’re north of $50 billion. Let’s stop pretending he “worked for nothing.” He didn’t. He just structured compensation differently and got paid like a founder. Now Tim Cook. CEO since 2011, still CEO in 2026. Fifteen years. Total compensation roughly $1.8 billion. That’s it. While overseeing one of the greatest increases in shareholder value in corporate history. Apple didn’t just grow under Tim—it became the most valuable company on Earth and stayed there. Only Microsoft and Nvidia even belong in the same sentence when it comes to market-cap gains during the same era. Steve Jobs was an innovation god. He rebuilt Apple, created entire product categories, and changed consumer technology forever. Tim Cook turned that vision into an industrial-scale money printer—supply chain mastery, margins, capital returns, and execution at a level no CEO class teaches. Different skill sets. Different eras. Same outcome: dominance. Trying to paint Tim as “greedy” while canonizing Steve as some underpaid monk is historically illiterate. You’re not comparing apples to apples—you’re comparing apples to Zunes. If you think Tim Cook is greedy, explain why Apple shareholders are richer than at any point in human history—without pretending Steve Jobs was doing charity work.
I7guy
macrumors Westmere
Tim has worked to earn it. Know what’s obscene? What some athletes get paid. It’s all relative.
You just want more legalized theft. More wealth means the possibility of more disparity but that isn’t a bad thing. If I have a million dollars and Elon has $600B, there is massive disparity. But who cares? We are both better off. He has $600B bc he created wealth, jobs, and products for others that markets value. Why do I care what he has? I am free to pursue my own $600B.
Other countries have massive disparity between rich and poor but the poor have NO CHANCE to be anything but poor because of their inferior system.
BTW, the US is not even CLOSE to “all out capitalism.” Two thirds of government expenditures are some form of welfare taken through legalized theft, and unconstitutional on top of it.
Last edited:
Completely false. For one, “Poor people” are not a static group. I was poor once. You move up the ladder and improve yourself and there is a great deal of movement between economic classes for the same person.
Also, markets set prices. Read some economics. As a company, you can try to charge whatever you want, but in the end, markets decide the price. No one will buy a product or service if the “greedy” businessman sets too high of a price. Competition protects us and only GOVERNMENTS can give special privileges to some businesses to box out competition. That is the actual problem. Special privileges from govt suppresses competition in free markets.
Again, you people have it backwards. These people are not “given” anything. They have a skill or service the market rewards. You don’t get to steal their labor and redistribute it, even though that’s what’s happening and you just want more legalized theft.
Greed is the number one human quality for helping your fellow man. That’s why the Idaho potato farmer wakes up at 4am. He doesn’t care about you, but he makes sure you have those potatoes because it’s good for HIM. Greed is a natural human condition that makes the world go round, and it’s proven to work. If I am free to pursue my own interests, it’s better for everyone.
Last edited:
It's just how it is in our economy.
That’s only a valid argument if labor is the only major cost, but beef prices, insurance, rent, etc all absolutely dwarf labor as cost centers for McDonalds. There’s no reason McDonald’s can afford to pay better elsewhere than they do in the states without burgers being astronomically priced but not here, they can afford it here too, they just arent forced toIf a guy at McDonalds is making $60k flipping burgers as his base salary, he’s making it more expensive for everyone else.
California's minimum wage is increasing in 2026 as Los Angeles debates $30 an hour
California's minimum wage is adjusted every year for inflation and an increase will take effect on Jan. 1, 2026. Some cities have a higher wage floor.
Statistically speaking most people either stay in the same economic band they were born into or drop lower, the American Dream isnt reflected in modern reality
You have this backwards, free markets *require* government regulation and intervention. Adam Smith was very clear, and it’s been borne out since. Loss of regulation and direction from government creates loss of competitiveness in markets and is a catalyst for the conditions for collusion, improper monopolies, and destroys a free market
Welcome to living in a society, no one does anything on their own, you benefit from the labor of everyone, past and present, for the platform you stand on to build your own wealth - and you give back to it in turn for the next person. Not only is that how it needs to work it’s pretty much the only way it can work. It’s not theft to tax and redistribute, it’s a necessary rebalance to compensate society for the things it gave you to make it possible for you to succeed.
Ok, Gordon Gecko
Which is, of course, why agricultural subsidies dont exist… oh, wait
No