Bob Iger, Disney Chairman and CEO, wrote the appreciation piece for Tim Cook:
Apple is known for elegant, innovative products that change the world by transforming how we connect, create and communicate, as well as how we work, think and act. Its continued success requires a leader of great courage and character who demands excellence, upholds the highest ethical standards and routinely challenges the status quo, including encouraging vital conversations about who we are as a culture and a community.
Tim Cook is that kind of leader.
Behind his soft-spoken demeanor and Southern manners is a focused fearlessness that comes from deep personal conviction. Tim is committed to doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time and for the right reasons. As CEO, he’s led Apple to new heights, and he continues to build a global brand that is universally recognized as an industry leader and widely respected for its values.
This is all fine but, to me, does not come close to expressing the kind of appreciation that Tim Cook deserves. Not being critical of Iger or Time. It’s just hard to capture, in so few words, the kind of person Tim Cook is.
Maybe the smartest thing Jobs ever did, was to make Cook his successor!
I respect him, really I do. He’s done and will continue to do great things both inside and outside of Apple. I love Apple. The alternatives are bleak.
However, Tim’s also been in charge in the period when my opinion of Apple as the #ItJustWorks company has become the #ItOnlyJustWorks company. I am daily frustrated by the lack of focus on the small things, the things that Apple used to be so good at*, such as:
* low software quality – of course, there’ll always be bugs, but some so longstanding, and in apparently beta products (I’ve a dropbox full of videos of apple bugs); blithe descriptions of what’s been fixed in new releases.
* arbitrary, invisible interface elements – download a pdf from a webpage, anyone?
* the possibilities that never materialise – TouchID from my phone to my mac?
* Apple support – a recent web-session dropped a number of times and each time I had to start explaining my issue again, even if I could give the session id;
* a particular bugbear – the impending drop of Aperture – my 80,000 photos with no home. My workflows doomed.
It is the expectations that Apple sets (and Cook allows to be set) and that can never be met that frustrate me.
Turn your energies inwards too, Tim please, to make things right both inside and outside of Apple.
Seems like this is more of a who’s popular list than anything else. And so Tim Cook as CEO of Apple will always be on the list. Notice the CEO of Google and Mark Zuckerberg were on the list too.
yeah it has nothing to do w/ the fact that as apple CEO, tim cook is actually out there doing things NO other CEO was willing to do — like stand up to the US government over privacy and encryption. uh huh.
sure dude. i think you’re still sour about his gay civil rights causes, which you’ve noted many times on Apple Insider.