10 years of Tim Cook – A brief history of Apple's current CEO

Exactly 10 years ago, on August 24, 2011 Timothy Donald Cook was named the new chief executive officer at Apple.

Mr. Tim Cook was personally recommended as Apple's next CEO by the legendary Steve Jobs, whom Cook has later called a friend and an inspiration numerous times.

Since Tim Cook became Apple's CEO, the Cupertino company has made a lot of changes that many speculate wouldn't have happened under Jobs. On this Apple anniversary, let's take a look at some of Tim Cook's highlights as a CEO. But first…

A quick backstory

Just who is Tim Cook and when did he join Apple?

Tim was born on November 1, 1960 in Mobile County, Alabama. His father Donald was a foreman at the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company, his mother Geraldine worked at a pharmacy store.

According to his mother (via Advance Local) Tim's first job was delivering newspapers. Described as friendly and diligent by his former school teachers, Tim's potential was apparent from an early age.

On April 1, 1976, over 2,200 miles away in Los Altos, California, two Steves founded Apple Inc.

Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and their business partner Ronald Wayne founded what would become the world's most profitable company, with its first product being a rough homebrew computer made by Wozniak – the Apple I.

Many years of struggles and success later, in 1998 Steve Jobs personally asked Tim Cook, at the time working for Compaq, to leave that then-successful company and join Apple, whose future was seemingly much less promising.

Regardless of the odds, Cook chose to follow his intuition and take the risk, leaving Compaq and joining Apple as a senior vice president for worldwide operations.



Whether it was truly down to Cook's intuition or thanks to Jobs' convincing personality, Tim Cook made the right choice.

Early work at Apple and taking over operations

Tim Cook proved to be capable of managing operations with cost reductions and company profits in mind. In 2007 Cook was promoted from senior vice president for worldwide operations to lead operations, then to chief executive two years later. Around that time Steve Jobs often had to take medical leave, as his health condition worsened due to pancreatic cancer.

While Steve Jobs was undergoing a liver transplant and a number of other procedures due to his chilling health condition, he entrusted Tim Cook to run Apple and oversee all of its day-to-day operations.

Eventually, exactly 10 years ago from today, Steve Jobs would have to step down from Apple and as a result, his most trusted person to take on such a responsible position – Tim Cook – would be named the new CEO of Apple, Inc.

Tim Cook's early highlights as the CEO of Apple

Under Tim Cook's leadership, Apple would eventually rise in stock market value and end up becoming the most profitable company in the world, surpassing other wildly successful giants like Amazon. But prior to that...

The first iPhone to be announced with Tim Cook on stage as opposed to Steve Jobs was the iPhone 5, which sports a flat-edge design that inspires smartphones to this day, namely the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13.

Behind the scenes, Tim's management of Apple led to changes in the company's executive team and allegedly the removal of "disagreeable" people, with aims to create a "cultural harmony" (via Forbes).

Tim Cook's different personality from Steve Jobs was becoming quite apparent to those who were at Apple at the time.

Later in 2014 Cook made the headlines for asking Apple investors to get out of stock if they disagreed with the company's focus on sustainability and views on climate change.



Cook's personality and values would become even more apparent later, during one of Apple's most notorious clashes with the US government...

User privacy above all else

In 2015, a San Bernardino terrorist attack that left 14 dead and 22 injured led to Apple's biggest display of user privacy protection. One of the two attackers had an iPhone 5C, which was recovered by the authorities, but was locked behind a 4-digit passcode.

Despite the small number of passcode digits, brute forcing into the iPhone would be impossible, as the smartphone was set to delete all of its data after 10 failed unlock attempts.

After the FBI and the NSA failed to unlock the iPhone, in early 2016 a federal judge ordered Apple to give access to the encrypted data on it, as thus far the Cupertino company wasn't cooperating with the investigators on this particular issue.

In an email to Apple's employees, Tim Cook explained why that was the case.



Apple did provide any data in its possession to the FBI in order to help with the case. However, giving special access to break into an iPhone was seen by Apple and Tim Cook as a potential user privacy threat that could end up affecting countless innocent iPhone users.



In the end, the FBI used the services of a third party hacker group to access the iPhone, but this event led to Apple gaining the reputation of a company that takes user privacy very seriously, regardless of anything else.

Thus, Android users who were becoming increasingly aware of certain smartphone privacy-related issues were more than ever inclined to turn their attention towards the iPhone.

Bigger iPhones and better "Pro" iPads

Among the more notable changes at Apple under Tim Cook was the inevitable choice to start releasing larger iPhones, a trend the smartphone industry was clearly heading towards from 2013 onwards.

Earlier we mentioned the iPhone 5, which had a 4-inch screen, larger than prior Apple phones. The gradual display size increase of iPhones would eventually lead to the massive 6.7-inch iPhone 12 Pro Max, but alongside such larger models, Apple still produces phones that are considered tiny by today's standards, namely the 5.4-inch iPhone 12 mini.



iPad users saw Apple's tablets evolve from an oversized iPhone to their own thing, finally getting support for external drives, file management, USB Type-C, and an own iPadOS operating system. But perhaps most notably, the powerful Apple M1 chip, which is also inside Apple's MacBook computers, is now in the iPad Pro, promising an even brighter future for the tablet.

Speaking of which, recently, and again under Cook Apple famously dropped Intel as its chip supplier for its MacBooks, and started developing its own in-house Apple M-series chips such as the M1, which, as mentioned, are now powering more and more Apple devices.



The design of iOS itself notably changed from 2012 to 2013 during Tim Cook's early years as CEO. While Steve Jobs originally liked the iPhone's interface and icons to resemble familiar and realistic real-world items (e.g. the Notes app looked like a realistic notebook), iOS 7 would introduce a design language that's sleeker, with flatter-looking icons and simplicity in mind. This remains Apple's iPhone and iPad UI design philosophy to this day.

Donations and climate change efforts

Tim Cook has been outspoken on many issues and events in recent history. In the especially difficult year of 2020 he shared his support for China and made it clear that Apple will be making donations for the recovery efforts not only in that region but in the US and Europe.

As mentioned earlier, Cook has also expressed his views on sustainability and global warming many times. Under his efforts, the iPhone company has reduced its carbon footprint significantly.



Apple eventually stopped shipping iPhones and certain Apple Watch models with a charging brick, also citing environmental reasons. A controversial move that some other smartphone makers have slowly begun adopting nonetheless.

CSAM scanning

After Apple made the news for valuing user privacy over all else back in 2015, and after years of marketing its phones as privacy-focused, recently the company somewhat confused its users by announcing that it will scan their iCloud photos for CSAM (or Child Sexual Abuse Material).

This move, although with clearly good intentions in mind, was immediately met with backlash and called potentially dangerous by many researchers.

Tim Cook's future at Apple

After taking the CEO position at Apple, following Steve Jobs' resignation, Cook has proven his competence as a leader who respects the value of user trust and privacy. His image has also been defined by his numerous calls to action in regards to global warming and his donations to charities and various communities during difficult times. From donating to Haiti communities after a devastating earthquake, to the aforementioned relief efforts in 2020.

In his words, Data Privacy is one of the top issues of this century, which prompted Apple to introduce the App Tracking Transparency feature on iOS and iPadOS, letting users reject apps like Facebook's requests to track their activity.

As for his future prospects, in April of this year, 60-year-old Cook has stated that while he might not be at Apple another 10 years, he's feeling great about his position right now.