Here’s a surprising fact: CEO Tim Cook has been at Apple longer than its iconic co-founder and former CEO, the late Steve Jobs, meaning it’s now conceivable that the person with the most influence on what the Cupertino tech giant has become in 50 years and will become in the next 50 is Cook. But that’s probably not how Cook, who has been with the company for 28 years, sees it.
“He’s a thousand-year-old guy… and I loved him,” Cook said in a recent interview with CBS News’ David Pogue (author of Apple: The First 50 Years). The company, which is almost allergic to looking back, has been, as Cook said, forced to flex new muscle and find ways to celebrate the milestone, including the interview, Pogue’s next book and possible festivities and content not yet announced on the official anniversary date, April 1, 2026.
It was bleak, to be honest…
Tim Cook on the state of Apple in 1998
Cook covered a variety of topics, including what’s special about the company (people and culture), and acknowledged that his tenure covers more than half of the company’s history. Still, I took note of his reflections on how and why he decided to join Apple in 1998, and it mostly boiled down to Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, and his vision.
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“The company had been adrift without Steve,” Cook said. Steve Jobs founded Apple in 1976 with Steve Wozniak, but was forced to resign just a decade later. He wouldn’t return until 1997 and the company was not in good shape.
“To be honest, it was bleak,” Cook told Pogue, recalling concerns about making payroll and whether or not the company would be successful.
Look
Difficult times and an inspiring leader
I remember those days and how Jobs got $150 million in funding, from Microsoft no less, to keep the company afloat. In 2012, when I had the opportunity to ask Cook about his decision to join Apple, he revealed that when he initially got the call from the headhunter for an interview, he said no because he hadn’t been at Compaq for that long. What’s more, Compaq was a big PC company and at the time, well, Apple was struggling.
Cook finally relented and took a red-eye flight to meet Jobs on a Saturday.
“The truth is, five minutes into the conversation, I want to join Apple,” Cook told me at the time.
I heard echoes of that comment in the story Cook shared with Pogue about the original interview process that brought him to Apple.
“I was sold on my first meeting with him and wanted to throw caution to the wind and join,” he told Pogue.
The truth is, five minutes into the conversation, I want to join Apple,” Cook told me at the time.
Tim Cook in 2012 explains why he wanted to join Apple
Jobs was always a charismatic showman on stage, but what could he have said in that first meeting that inspired Cook so much? It turned out that this was a new and operational counterintuitive strategy.
At a time when everyone else in the tech industry was taking aim at the company, “he was taking Apple deep into the consumer at a time when I knew other people were doing exactly the opposite,” he told me in 2012, adding that Jobs even revealed a little about the product that would eventually become the iMac.
“I never thought following the herd was a good strategy. You know you’re meant to be average at best doing that, and so I saw something brilliant in that,” Cook added in that 2012 conversation.
The best possible advice.
When Jobs asked him to become CEO, he also gave Cook a great gift: “Never ask what I would do, just do the right thing,” Cook reminded Pogue. Cook was relieved of the burden of “What would Steve do?”
Still, Cook admits that he thinks about Steve Jobs every day and made it clear that this is still the company that the two Steves built in a garage 50 years ago.
“[Jobs] “Principles are the DNA of this company, 50 years after it was created, and hopefully 100 years from now and 200 years into the future,” Cook told Pogue.
Maybe that’s why there has always been something different between Apple and its customers.
What’s next?
“Apple was the only technology company I knew, including the one I worked for,” Cook said in 2012, “and I had worked in a system where if a customer got angry with the company, they would yell and scream loudly, but they would still buy.”
“At Compaq, if people got mad at Compaq, they just bought from Dell. At Dell, if they got mad at Dell, at that time they just bought from IBM, so people moved freely back and forth, but an Apple customer was a unique breed, and there was this emotion that is like that, but you don’t see it in technology in general. You could see it and feel it in Apple customers, and then I knew it was different.”
Perhaps Cook is finally in the mood to reflect because his long journey could be coming to an end. Rumors continue to circulate about his succession plan, with most experts pointing to Apple Hardware leader John Ternus as a likely successor (Apple COO Sabih Khan is a hidden candidate). Cook previously said he wouldn’t leave “until the voice in my head says, ‘It’s time.'” However, Cook was noticeably absent from the recent MacBook Neo unveiling, and Ternus was front and center.
Whatever the near future holds, Cook seems willing to look back on Apple’s first half-century: “There’s great value in looking back and feeling grateful for the journey, feeling grateful for all the characters who have been a part of that journey.”
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