Why Steve Jobs Made Tim Cook the CEO of Apple

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Tim Cook joined Apple in 2011, and since then, the company has broken all of its prior records, increasing its market valuation to $1.9 trillion from $348 billion. Apple is still the world’s largest company, continuing to dominate the smartphone industry.

Steve Jobs once called Tim Cook “not a product guy.”

Nonetheless, he chose Cook because of his operations skills and mastery of Apple’s supply and manufacturing chain, primarily in China.

According to Bono, one of the reasons Steve Jobs chose Tim Cook to lead Apple is his eagerness to “try something different” and willingness to take responsibility when anything goes wrong.

“Probably inherently conservative, he was eager to try something new to solve a problem,” Bono wrote. “When something went wrong, he was prepared to take responsibility.”

After the resignation announcement of Jobs as CEO, Apple chairman Art Levinson said, “Tim is qualified to serve as our new CEO, and the board has full faith in his abilities. Tim has delivered exceptional performance over his 13 years at Apple, and his work has consistently shown his skill and prudence.”

In 2011, Steve Jobs died from pancreatic cancer. Jobs’ sudden death at 56 was a critical time for Cook. Silicon Valley anticipated that Apple would collapse. Because Apple had established a pattern of producing updated models every year, loyalists were concerned about what lay ahead for their favorite product innovation.

Before that, along with Ronald Wayne and Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs was a co-founder of Apple. But, Steve Jobs was the driving force behind the development of Apple’s major products, including the Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, and iPod.

Despite being a co-founder, Jobs was forced to leave Apple in 1985 because the board of directors felt he had not contributed significantly to the company’s growth. However, once Jobs left the company, things started to go wrong. Over the next 12 years, Apple had three new CEOs, none of whom had the necessary leadership skills to bring out profitability for the company.

In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to the company and took over as CEO. During that time, Jobs gave the business a line of his cutting-edge products, one of which was the iMac. Before handing over leadership to Tim Cook, Jobs’ creativity and choice to focus on creating a few great products rather than a large number of average products eventually saved Apple from bankruptcy.

Jobs’ had a friendly relationship with Cook. Cook’s supply-chain expertise helped the iPhone company achieve the high gross margins it’s now famous for.

Cook said that Jobs only shouted at him “four or five times” in his 13 years of knowing, according to Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli’s book, “Becoming Steve Jobs: The Revolution of a Reckless Upstart Into A Visionary Leader.”

Cook offered Jobs part of his liver when Cook discovered that Jobs and he had a rare blood type.

“He stopped me right away before I could even finish my sentence,” Cook said, adding that Jobs said, “I’ll never do that; I’ll never let you do that.”

Before working for Apple, Tim Cook spent 12 years working for IBM and other computer companies. He believed Jobs to be a creative genius and thought he might significantly affect Apple, turning the struggling business into a tech giant.

Cook made several significant contributions that helped Apple reach its current state. One of the first things Cook did after joining as the Senior Vice-President of Worldwide Operations was to close down Macintosh production and sign off new contracts with the manufacturers to reduce some of the pressures on the internal supply chain.

Until 2007, Cook was Apple’s Senior Vice-President, and during that time, he made several important choices that significantly influenced the company’s future. In 2005, he anticipated that Flash Memory would be a key component of modern technology. His foresight in investing in it early paid off with the development of significant devices like the iPod, iPad, and iPhone. He shaped the company’s reputation, allowing for greater market pricing for goods while maintaining low manufacturing costs.

In 2007, he was promoted to Lead Operations; in 2009, he was appointed Chief Executive.

According to a story from MacNews, Cook was under a lot of pressure and had a lot of duties at this time since it was clear that Steve Jobs would be a hard act to follow. However, Cook had a successful first year as CEO, earning him a spot on Time Magazine’s list of the “100 Most Influential People.”

Since Cook took control of the company in 2011, Apple’s shares have rocketed by over 1,000%, and the business’s market value has increased by over $2 trillion.

According to reports, the Apple CEO has at least two ambitious new product lines: a long-rumored electric automobile and a VR/AR headset.