Leander Kahney’s biography of Tim Cook hit stores Tuesday. In a piece for Wired, the author explained why he believes Mr. Cook is a better CEO of Apple than Steve Jobs. The proof, he said, is in the numbers.
Apple is the world’s first trillion-dollar company, a milestone reached under Cook’s watch. Apple reached this landmark valuation on August 2, 2018, when Apple’s stock hit $207.05. By comparison, when Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011, Apple’s stock was $50.53 (split adjusted), which valued the company at about two-thirds less: $300 billion. During his tenure, Cook has almost tripled Apple’s revenue. In 2018 Apple earned $265.6 billion, the highest annual revenue in the company’s history.
Check It Out: Tim Cook is a Better CEO of Apple Than Steve Jobs
Tim may be Apple’s best CEO in a business sense, and seems like he may be a nice guy as well, but Steve Jobs was a mad genius, an astonishing and irreplaceable figure.
Oh man is he dead wrong! This is the problem when value is measured in profit figures.
Apple never was about money; it was always about making cool, useful, life changing devices that would help people “make a dent in the universe”.
As good as Tim is with supply chain, human resources and new products, he cannot compare to Steve’s vision, personality, humanity and leadership. Steve had a clear idea about things and despite being an opinionated, often-rude-to-staff perfectionist, he always managed be sure to incorporate the humanities into their products. And he didn’t put up with poor quality of any sort.
The guy responsible for the iphone 4 antenna was fired for the “you’re holding it wrong” issue and there’s no way in hell he’d stand for the rubbish MacBook keyboards we have today or iPad pro’s being shipped bent and being told “it’s normal” due to the manufacturing process.
I doubt he would have put up with bending iPhone 6’s either and MacBook Pro’s shipping with just 2 ports. Heck, I think he would have even brought back the headphone jack to the iPhone after the outcry, much like they made the iPhone 3G headphone jack flush after people complained about the jack on the original iPhone. He did listen in that way and he understood how people use these devices.
Consider that at the last moment he changed the iPhone display to glass, from plastic, because he know everyone would be scratching the daylights out them in their pockets. He would have made sure the iPhone 6 would not bend, knowing that most people would carry it in their back pockets.
That’s how Steve was. He cared about Apple and about what it meant to users; j
he wasn’t driven by money but by doing something right.
Sadly the same cannot be said of Tim and the Apple of today. RIP Steve. We miss you.
Well, yes, but…never forget Apple was on the verge of dissolution when Jobs returned to Apple. His guidance and some very lucky market opportunities, not to mention a loan form Bill Gates, saved the company, and ultimately put it on a foundation that allowed the current management to prosper. Don’t get me wrong. Mr. Cook is the right man at this particular time in the company’s history, but had he been at the helm when things were the most dire, we might be in a very different place today. Both men were/are the right one at the right time.
Spot on!