Which CEO made a bigger impact on Apple: Jobs or Cook?

[Adeapplephone]

Which CEO do you think had a bigger influence on Apple’s course and history: Jobs or Cook?

 

[KaliYoni]

Amelio.

 

[theluggage]

Amelio.

No. Sculley.

He was at the helm when Apple hooked up with Sony to produce the PowerBook 100, introducing the set-back keyboard, wrist-rest and central pointing device layout on which virtually all modern laptops are still based.

He also invested in improving an obscure British microprocessor called "ARM"... and although the Newton was a flop, the ARM certainly wasn't ("Hold our beers!" say NVIDIA) and proved somewhat useful to Jobs & Cook down the line...

All joking apart - the CEOs from the interregnum deserve some credit for there still being an Apple for Jobs to come back to, after a decade during which it was almost impossible to compete with the mighty Wintel empire (even by building a better product) and pretty much all the other non-PC makers either went to the wall or switched to making clones.

 

[cardfan]

Is this a trick question?

 

[Madhatter32]

Good or bad impact?

 

[Ruggy]

The key word there is 'impact'.
I don't think there's much doubt Jobs was a true visionary and made Apple what it is today, but as CEO running a big company, I really think Cook is a better manager.
He's take Apple from being a really good company with some excellent products and grown it something really quite remarkable.
I know he gets a load of schtick here because he doesn't reinvent the wheel each year but he's been a really excellent CEO. Hard to imagine anyone could have done better and certainly when Jobs died everyone thought the company would probably collapse not go from strength to strength.

 

[Ulenspiegel]

Two different worlds.

 

[ipponrg]

Jobs for the Apple.
Cook for the AAPL.

Pick your poison

 

[Darth.Titan]

Considering the fact that without Jobs there is no Apple, I'd say the answer is obvious.