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Tim Cook: The Man After A Legend

Jacob Chung |
August 24, 2011 | 11:42 p.m. PDT

Senior Tech Editor

Tim Cook will take over as CEO. Will he be able to follow in the shadows of Steve Jobs? (credit Apple)
Tim Cook will take over as CEO. Will he be able to follow in the shadows of Steve Jobs? (credit Apple)
In a surprising yet not unexpected fashion, Apple’s chief executive officer Steve Jobs abdicated from his post Wednesday.  Jobs, in his bid farewell, made his final move as executive officer effectively putting Tim Cook, his protégé, next in line as CEO.

Though his authoritarian methods and affinity for hands-on micromanaging may have seemed controversial to his critics, it’s difficult to argue the genius of Jobs. 

''People think it's this veneer -- that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works,'' Jobs once said about the iPod in an interview with the New York Times

Under his mindful watch portable media devices, phones and tablets were revolutionized. What’s more, his remarkable personality on stage and innate sense in determining the desires of consumers attracted investors worldwide. And with the end of the Jobs era concerns of Apple's future are looming. 

The Successor

As Apple’s former chief operations officer Tim Cook coordinated the supply chain of Apple products and was in charge of sales worldwide. But before Cook became Jobs’ protégé, he was a success in his own right. 

With an academic background in industrial engineering and a master’s degree in business from Duke, Cook was well on his way up in the corporate ladder. Gaining experience in industry leading companies like Compaq and IBM, Cook was recruited in 1998 to join what was somewhat of a gamble with then Apple computers. 

“In 1998 there was no iPad or iMac or iPhone. There wasn’t even an iPod,” Cook said during his 2010 commencement speech for Auburn University. “While Apple did make Macs, the company had been losing sales for years and was commonly considered to be on the verge of extinction.”  

Cook—whose subtle southern drawl gives away his humble Alabama upbringing—admits it was his intuition not his analytical thinking that overtook him while making the decision to leave Compaq to join with Jobs in Apple. But it was such ambitious intuitions that allowed for Apple's recovery. 

With Jobs at the helm, Cook as co-captian and a team of well sought after executives, the company grew to be one of the most valuable companies in the U.S. at one point even overtaking Exxon to be number one.

Board Support

Cook, all the while, proved to both the company and its board members that he was a capable successor on three separate occasions: in 2004 when Jobs took a leave of absence for his pancreatic cancer surgery; 2009 when Jobs left for a kidney transplant; and again in 2011 for another medical leave of absence. 

Through it all, Cook has gained the backing of the board. 

From Apple’s Press Info:

“The Board has complete confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO,” added Levinson. “Tim’s 13 years of service to Apple have been marked by outstanding performance, and he has demonstrated remarkable talent and sound judgment in everything he does.” 

And though investors may have been concerned by the 5 percent dip in Apple’s stocks post announcement, analysts say the trading of the posts was foreseeable and there is no cause for panic. 

From the Los Angeles Times

"Don't panic, remain calm," said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners. "This is not unexpected."

"He clearly has some major health issues going on," Gillis said. But "deteriorating or not deteriorating, chairman is the perfect role for him to continue providing artistic input."

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