Tim Cook Reflects on His Legacy in Final Weeks as Apple CEO

[ThailandToo]

Fun fact. In order to please shareholders, customers have to be pleased first. There is no universe in where you can rationalize why apples’ customers kept on buying and buying, at times to produce record quarters.

That those customers that bought and bought enabled the shareholders to smile.

We know very little about the man. His actions seems to suggest a person who cares about humanity, a philanthropist, someone who believes apple should help out as well. And someone who has the courage to make difficult CEO decisions.

I disagree on many fronts. One, shareholders aren’t locked into the ecosystem, customers are.

Tim didn’t do what made just the shareholders wealthy, all greedy CEOs do it to make themselves wealthy.

All the rest is marketing.

 

[techTAG]

Airpods and Apple Watch are both great products and they were released under Cook. 2 revolutionary new categories is not bad.

Neither of which were an Apple invention - sure apple did it best depending on who you ask, but they didn't come up with the idea.

 

[vantelimus]

Visionless.
Unless that vision was purely about profits.

But certainly not in terms of hardware.

Throwing money and resources on projects that were either too late, too expensive, or not a good idea to begin with. I'm not sure how many man hours (years) was lost on the AppleCar and VisionPro projects alone. His vanity and ego won over common sense and the VisionPro was green lit.

The Apple Car, project Titan, cost approximately $10 billion over the course of a decade (2014-2024). Apple's cumulative profit over those years was $744.4 billion. So, had Apple not run the project, they could have made about 1.3% more profit. You can call that money lost to the shareholders. I don't think you'll find many of them complaining about project Titan since the value of Apple stock increased ~1350% over the same period.

The Vision Pro project works for me. I use mine for hours every day. It has become an essential tool. But, then, I'm a professional using a professional tool. If it doesn't have enough Meta-toy in it for you, then I can see why you would hate it.

Instead he'll be remembered as making Apple shareholders wealthy through relentless penny pinching and milking users with incremental features.

He'll be remembered for increasing the value of the company through the introduction of new products and features that made the company one of the most valuable in human history. He'll also be remembered for these things:

New Products: Apple Watch (2015), AirPods (2016), HomePod (2018), AirTag (2021), and Vision Pro (2024).

New product lines within existing categories: iPad Air (2013), iPad Pro (2015), iPhone SE (2016), iPhone Pro and Pro Max (2019), AirPods Pro (2019), AirPods Max (2020), HomePod mini (2020), Mac Studio (2022), Studio Display (2022), Apple Watch Ultra (2022), iPhone Air (2025), and soon to be released iPhone Ultra (2026).

New services: Apple Pay (2014), Apple Music (2015), Apple News+ (2019), Apple Card (2019), Apple Arcade (2019), Apple TV+ (2019), and Fitness+ (2020).

Silicon innovation: A7 (2013), Secure Enclave (2013), M7 (2013), S-Series SiP (2014), W1 (2016), A11 Neural Engine (2017), Apple GPUs (2017), T2 (2018), U1 UWB (2019), M1 (2020), M1 Pro/Max (2021), UltraFusion/M1 Ultra (2022), New GPU architecture/A17 (2023), R1 (2024), C1/C1X (2025), N1 (2025), M5 GPU neural accelerators (2025/26).

Human interface innovation: Touch ID (2013), Optical heart-rate sensor (2014), Digital Crown (2014), Taptic Engine (2014), Force Touch (2014/15), Apple Pencil (2015), FaceID (2017), Inductive charging (2018), Electrical ECG (2018), Fall detection (2018), Blood-oxygen sensor (2020), Body-temperature sensor (2022) Apple Pencil rotation/haptic/squeeze (2024), Vision Pro eye/hand input and sensor array (2024).

Camera innovation: True Tone dual-color flash (2013), Optical image stabilization (2014-2016), Dual-camera iPhone (2016), TrueDepth (2017), Triple camera system (2019), Sensor-shift stabilization (2020), LiDar-assisted imaging (2020), 48-MP quad-pixel sensor (2022), tetra prism telephoto (2023), 48-MP three-camera architecture (2025)

And, I'm sure a missed a few.

 

[VeloxApple]

iOS 27, macOS 27, iPadOS 27, etc will all have one new standout feature and one major bug fix:

New feature: a CEO who actually is tech minded and innovation oriented

Bug fix: Removal of a CEO who stalled progress for the sake of a price ladder and bottom line

 

[svish]

Tim has taken Apple to new highs. Will definitely miss seeing Tim at Apple events.

 

[Contact_Feanor]

In the mobile space there really is no difference only what you are used to. They are both the same with security etc I know you choose to state other wise, but as someone in the business there really is no difference now. I am moving back to apple because 1. Microsoft has completely ruined every product in their portfolio, and 2. I am sick of trying to find alternative ways for my devices to work together. The ecosystem (as much as I balk at it, WORKS).

The only thing we need in iPhones is call screening. Is that a thing? and recorder dictation for meetings. If iPhone provides us with both of that we will be happy. Oh, and I get the awesome fotogear retrogrip kit. ha ha.

As a Mac user since 2003, having used DOS and windows before that, if you don’t see the difference beside what you’re used to, you don’t get the Mac. Platform native Mac apps (not the simple ports) are qualitatively different than windows app. I don’t mean their quality is better (though it tends to be), but the way their workflow works is different. Just compare how the menu bar generally keeps similar order, shortcuts, arrangement, etc the same across apps, while the windows app has the menus at the top of the window, where a lot of apps try to do their own thing. The mac tries to keep the flow going between apps by offering developers a lot of pre-built capabilities that the apps inherit from the system (compare how every text app, even if you build your own with Xcode, will have the same capabilities as textedit just by having a text field). Windows offers every possible current and legacy capability, making a lot more diversity part of the system, but also gruesome and unintelligible and frankly confusing user interfaces possible. The philosophy behind macOS and windows is different. It’s not what you are used to, but what you prefer. The same goes for mobile: compare iPhone first apps to android only apps and the difference should be obvious.

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

The two stories above this one. Tim's legacy in a nutshell

 

[tonywalker23]

With Ron Johnson’s book coming out soon (Apple Store creator), we exchanged some emails and I had the chance recently to talk to him for about a half hour, and that led to me watching more online of him. That led to watching a speech that John Brandon (vp of sales during those years) gave at a business school overseas. Someone asked him what his hardest situation was in those years.

He said that he had hired someone to lead a team and things looked to be going super well. Things were going too well, and it ended up being people unethical in their dealings. He said he had to fire the leader he hired and 80% of that group (he didn’t go into great details and this is a situation in Apple history I am unfamiliar with).

He had to call Tim and tell him the situation and Tim asked him what he was going to do. John told his plan of trying to make things right. He said that Tim replied, “This is going to be really hard John but we are going to be a better company because of it."

That was a good part of the video. Maybe I am wrong since I can’t read into the heart and motivations of a famous person and know their inner thoughts and why they do what they do (seems like some online do have that ability), but that was a good segment. Was a reminder that perhaps for some biz leader it really isn’t about squeezing every $ they can out of every market; if it was they would have stayed and Tim would have told John to turn a blind eye to what was going on.

Congratulations on leading a multi-trillion dollar company and taking over for someone nobody would have the skills to replicate. I get excited to go to my small office and use my Apple products as tools in the process to hopefully impact a few dozen people’s lives each week. I can’t imagine what it would be like to follow SJ, keep things running well, and be able to leave on your own time having been successful while also being selfless enough to know when to let go and pass off the baton to someone who many people are pleased with and have high hopes for.

 

[bluespark]

His legacy in one word for me would be “pragmatic”.

I don’t even mean that in a negative way. He’s been highly effective. Being highly calculated and deliberate is often a good thing.

But I do hope Ternus brings some of that visionary energy back to Apple.

Agree completely. If your goal is a level and competent executive who reliably executes and reliably delivers value, Cook is the GOAT. I truly can't think of any CEO that has done all of those things over that period of time with that level of performance and minimal drama. His version of Apple performed in strong markets and in weak markets, navigating supply chain disruptions like they were speed bumps. But his version of Apple was never that exciting, and Apple's design flair and sense of "vision" atrophied under his leadership. I do think he was a good and decent man, and he will always have my respect for that.

My way-too-early-and-mostly-uninformed prediction for Ternus is that he brings back some of the style, vision, and excitement, and that he delivers less shareholder value. I'm good with that.

 

[Johnny907]

Buh bye, you bean counting dial tone. 👋

 

[I7guy]

I disagree on many fronts. One, shareholders aren’t locked into the ecosystem, customers are.

For shareholders to exit the apple
Ecosystem, most will want to make a buck or lose least. So there is a kind of lock in. On the other hand if I want to exit the Apple ecosystem I want to lose least also. Lock in is not a real thing.

Tim didn’t do what made just the shareholders wealthy, all greedy CEOs do it to make themselves wealthy.

“Greedy” is totally subjective and not measurable.

All the rest is marketing.

Ok.

 

[I7guy]

The problem is all of Apple's competitors are ensh*ttifying their products more quickly than Apple. If you want/need the best option in any category they sell, Apple's still the best, even though they aren't what they used to be in terms of UX.

I started with the iPhone 4. It was the pinnacle of skeuomorphism with iOS 6. Very cartoonish by today’s modern Liquid Glass design. While some may prefer the former look I don’t find the “ensh*ttifying” of their products to be a thing I recognize. Their UX is still very good and kudos to Apple for keeping it consistent over the years.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

The CEO that actually took away features from newer products, while steadily jacking up their price.

I’m sorry, you must have misread, this article is about Tim Cook, not Steve Jobs.
You know, the man who removed the floppy disk drive from the iMac, removed the camera from the iPod Nano, removed the firewire port from the 2008 MacBook’s, removed the optical drive from the MacBook Air, removed the 160 gigabyte iPod classic, only leaving a 120 gigabyte. only to bring back the 160 gigabyte model the following year. Removed buttons from the iPod shuffle, removed 64 bit with the first Intel Macs only to bring it back later that year…
Remove front row and the Apple remote from Macs so that people would buy an Apple TV instead.

 

[Schizoid]

A jolly nice bloke and a good egg, toodle-oo old bean.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Neither of which were an Apple invention - sure apple did it best depending on who you ask, but they didn't come up with the idea.

None of Apple’s products were inventions, under any CEO, ever.
The iPod wasn’t, the iPhone wasn’t, the iPad wasn’t, the macintosh certainly wasn’t…
Every single one of Apple’s products was the result of other companies creating technologies that Apple absorbed into product ideas, nothing more.
Even down to Apple’s operating systems and most of their applications, the majority of them resulted from acquisitions of other companies.
Multitouch on the iPhone, a result of an acquisition.
The iPod, a result of Toshiba introducing a mini hard drive.
iTunes, Logic Pro, Mac OS X, apple Maps, Apple Music, the vast majority of iLife, all only made possible because of acquisitions.

 

[Squuiid]

His legacy? All I'm going remember is ads in Apple Maps. Awesome.

 

[hajime]

Let’s have a big celebration when this guy steps down. I have had the most productive years when Apple was under Steve and the most unproductive years using problematic Mac under Evil Tim with that Ivy guy.

 

[Yr Blues]

Liquid Glass, Apple Intelligence, Vision Pro, Apple Car, Apple Price Hikes, and the future pointing to lease-only products.

What a legacy.

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

Visionless.
Unless that vision was purely about profits.

But certainly not in terms of hardware.

Throwing money and resources on projects that were either too late, too expensive, or not a good idea to begin with. I'm not sure how many man hours (years) was lost on the AppleCar and VisionPro projects alone. His vanity and ego won over common sense and the VisionPro was green lit.

Instead he'll be remembered as making Apple shareholders wealthy through relentless penny pinching and milking users with incremental features.

Honestly one of the best breakdowns of Cook’s reign of terror. He also put a lot of questionable people in charge (*cough* Dye) and got a lot of good people ousted (*cough* Forstall and Ive).

The sad part of it all, was that Jobs was pretty much irreplaceable because apparently no CEO anywhere wants to empower users over profits. It’s just a mad dash towards en********ation and endless price gouging. You know if we ever make it to Mars (LMAO), the air won’t be free. Total Recall will become a reality.

 

[Steve Adams]

And laying people off to hire H1Bs…

H1B?

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

In his tenure, do you think he ever said ‘no, that’s not in the interest of our customers and/or the ethics that Apple was built on”? I think not.

Actually he was always famously quoted as saying “how will that feature help me sell more iPhones”. Apple makes about 60% of their entire revenue off that single line of devices. Which is insane because they have a litany of other products and ever-growing services.

 

[Steve Adams]

I hope you vote with your $$$. It may not be obvious but to please stockholders, customers have to be willing to buy your products and services. Ask BlackBerry how pleasing stockholders went for them.

Blackberry's problem wasn't pleasing stockholders, it was the dumb CEO went to war with Gary Bettman and the NHL trying to get a professional hockey team in Waterloo Ontario. He hyperfixated on that because Bettman told him NO. He was doing this for apporox 3 years or more and just let blackberry go to crap.

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

H1B?

“The H-1B is a classification of non-immigrant visa in United States that allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations, as well as fashion models, or persons who are engaged in Department of Defense projects who meet certain conditions.”

—wiki

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

Blackberry's problem wasn't pleasing stockholders, it was the dumb CEO went to war with Gary Bettman and the NHL trying to get a professional hockey team in Waterloo Ontario. He hyperfixated on that because Bettman told him NO. He was doing this for apporox 3 years or more and just let blackberry go to crap.

The BB CEO (Balsillie) was so hated as a person that when he tried to buy a sports team, the prior owners refused the sale on principle lol. The crazy thing is he is actually pretty influential in Canada as an “innovator”. Let thank sink in lol.

 

[Nyx1]

One thing about him i hate he not make acquisition about foundry on the past.