Steve Jobs famously said of Tim Cook, “Tim is not a product person, per se.” That has turned out to be an understatement, especially with the fact that the Apple Watch, AirPods, and even the Vision Pro concept began under Jobs.
I’ve closely observed Apple for decades and I believe that Steve Jobs never meant for Tim Cook to be Apple’s CEO in 2025.
When Jobs handpicked Cook as his successor in 2011, many believed it was a strategic move to stabilize the company during a tumultuous transition following Jobs’ untimely death. However, I contend that Jobs intended Cook to serve as a short-term CEO, a 3-5 year placeholder to mollify investors, not to lead Apple for nearly a decade and a half, stagnating its innovative spirit, jettisoning innovative executives, while relying on financial engineering, mainly in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars in buybacks, to prop up the company’s success.
Jobs, a visionary known for his relentless pursuit of groundbreaking products, built Apple into a cultural and technological titan with the Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. His genius lay in anticipating consumer needs before they did. Cook, hired from Compaq in 1998 as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations, was the operational mastermind behind Apple’s supply chain efficiency, going all-in on CCP-controlled China to maximize Apple’s profit margins.
Jobs clearly valued Cook’s logistical prowess, but I believe Jobs saw Cook as a caretaker, not a long-term visionary, expecting him to maintain stability for a few years until a product-focused, visionary successor emerged.
Under Cook, Apple’s market capitalization soared from $376 billion in 2011 to over $3.9 trillion in early 2025 making it the world’s most valuable company (it has since shed some $800 billion over the year, falling to third place behind Nvidia and rival Microsoft). Yet, much of this growth stems from financial engineering, service expansions like iCloud and Apple Music, and a steady stream of annual incremental product updates, rather than revolutionary Jobsian innovation.
The Apple Watch, AirPods, and Vision Pro were initiated under Jobs’ tenure, with their completion coming during Cook’s tenure. The Apple Car project, also conceived by Jobs, was abandoned after a long, chaotic, and costly period under Cook.
It’s clear that Cook lacks the disruptive, charismatic spark Steve Jobs infused throughout Apple. Basically, all of Apple’s successes under Cook are iterations of Steve Jobs’ products and services.
Cook’s lack of hands-on product involvement has slowed innovation, with half-baked products like the Vision Pro being launched to consumers too early and, unsurprisingly, failing to sell. Apple clearly missed the generative AI (GenAI) paradigm shift under Cook and has been struggling to catch up ever since. Steve Jobs likely would not have released the Vision Pro and visionOS in the condition they were launched under Tim Cook. Jobs very likely would have not neglected Siri (which he purchased) for over a decade and a half and would almost certainly have foreseen GenAI early. Very likely, Jobs focus on Siri would have led him and Apple to GenAI first. Visionary Jobs’ main focus was about creating “insanely great” products; Cook’s seems to be about iteration and other, side pursuits.
If Jobs intended Cook as a relatively short-term placeholder, the question remains: who was meant to follow? Speculation points to figures like former software chief Scott Forstall — who Cook rather quickly forced out of the company, ostensibly over the botched Maps launch (which way okayed by Cook, by the way) – and head product designer Jony Ive, who left Apple after years of feeling unchallenged under Cook. Jobs highly valued both executives, even granting Ive more operational power than Cook at the time of his death. Today, Ive is collaborating with OpenAI on a potentially revolutionary AI product, not working for Apple. The departure of these executives, whether explicit or tacit, conveniently solidified Cook’s long-term hold on the CEO role.
While Cook’s canned-video tenure has been financially stellar overall, Apple has for many years coasted and thrived on Jobs’ lingering momentum, propped up by Cook’s beige operational savvy and financial engineering. After Cook’s tenure finally, blessedly ends, only time will reveal if Apple can rediscover its Jobsian revolutionary edge.
SteveJack is a long-time Macintosh user, web designer, multimedia producer, and contributor to the MacDailyNews Opinion section who once described the iPhone some five years before Steve Jobs revealed it to the world.
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
The post Steve Jobs never meant for Tim Cook to still be Apple’s CEO in 2025 appeared first on MacDailyNews.
