Tim Cook was the best Apple CEO for his time — John Ternus' tenure will be defined by AI

By almost any measure, Tim Cook has been one of the best tech CEOs ever.

He diversified product lines, launched new lines of business, expanded across the globe, and grew Apple's overall market value ten-fold.

Cook is the rare public tech figure who has, for the most part, survived the vagaries of a public life.

Did he disappoint many when he appeared to bend the knee before the United States' divisive President? Absolutely, though if you understand Cook, and you listen to his explanations , you know why he did it and how it actually fits into his worldview.

Generally, though, Cook's been on a 15-year-long winning streak that was made possible by both sticking to the strict ethos of Steve Jobs' original Apple charter and by pragmatically doing things his own way.

I once wrote that Steve "Jobs was Apple." Tim Cook made Apple.

Where Steve Jobs' mercurial personality was intertwined with Apple across its products, development, and marketing, Cook's fingerprints are so absent from the company he's run that you might wonder if he has them. (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff) Cook became a celebrity at Apple, but without the rabid hero worship Jobs would sometimes foster.

I'd argue, though, that in an era of a million rising individual influencer personalities, Cook may have been exactly the CEO Apple needed.

He commanded the stage at keynotes and even engaged in some playful "acting" for short comedic product segments , but Cook has clearly never been interested in building on a cult of personality.

When the opportunity to speak in his own biography arose, Cook characteristically deferred to the people who know him.

As a result, his voice is largely absent from a tome purporting to tell the story of his remarkable life.

As Tim Cook wraps up his last week as Apple CEO, how would you grade his tenure? August 28, 2026 Cook built it to last What Tim Cook has done is build an Apple for the ages.

At his fifth anniversary , I wrote about how often he proved "he was about choice." It wasn't a complete departure from Steve Jobs, who diversified the iPod line, but Cook carried that idea through virtually every product category.

In the iPhone, this has provided the freedom to offer not just a wide range of iPhones, but handsets at a wider range of sizes and prices, opening up the cachet-filled handset to an even bigger audience.