Steve Jobs’ vs Tim Cook’s Apple And What’s Next For The Trillion Dollar Company

On the 20th of April, the whole world learned that Tim Cook was stepping down as Apple’s CEO after 15 years on the job, and that John Ternus was going to replace him. This Tuesday 1st of September the world’s largest company changed its leadership, and many are expecting to know if this means it will change its approach, too.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs’ characteristic detachedness and lack of empathy wasn’t coincidental: he was adopted, and in spite of living in Mountain View and growing up in the Silicon Valley boom with very supportive parents, he always felt abandoned.

Contrary to popular beliefs, Jobs was constantly acting out in class out of boredom, and thus was not portrayed as the exemplar student.

He is neurodivergent as he was diagnosed with dyslexia. About 40 percent of self-made millionaires are dyslexic.

Jobs was responsible for the purchase of Lucasfilm for 10 million dollars in 1986, which would later become Pixar. 

Because of his frequent arrogant behaviour, he was pushed out of Apple in 1985 and founded his own company, Next. Nevertheless, he later returned to the company when they bought Next in 1996.

Tim Cook

While Steve Jobs was the innovator in the tech industry, Tim Cook was often known for being the logical and mathematical one. Instead of focusing on the development of the products Apple had to offer, he turned a 350 billion dollar company into a 4 trillion company—same as the American GDP—by optimizing their supply chain thanks to his industrial engineering degree at Auburn University. 

Unlike what you might expect, he is actually much like a normal person: drinks Starbucks, drives a BMW, has a weekly call with his mom…If you listen to any interviews, you’ll get the impression he has his feet on the ground—well, at least as much as you can have with a 74.3 million dollar salary.

Although he has been widely criticized for not being ‘the creative one’, with genius ideas like the iPod under Steve Jobs or candy-coloured computers, many successful products have been released under his leadership, including ApplePay, AirPods, Apple Watch, Apple Music, AppleTV+, AirTags…and many improved versions of existing products like the iMac or iPhone. 

He effectively took Jobs’ ideas and made them profitable.

His mother worked at a pharmacy in Alabama, his father at a dry dock shipyard. Because he came from such a humble background, he was—and still is—keen on supporting programmes that encourage equality among genders, race, religion,...He’s also a part of the LGTBQ+ community. In an interview with Dua Lipa, he said he believed ‘education is the great equalizer of people’, as he was the first person to attend college in his family.

John Ternus

So far, so good. John Ternus, Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering up until a few days ago, has a reputation for following his instinct. For instance, when Apple had a project to build cars, he predicted it would cost them too much money and would shift the focus from their main products. Well, he turned out to be right, as the project was cancelled. He also warned that Vision Pro, with a short battery life and a high cost of 3500 dollars, would flop. He turned out to be right, too.

One reality Apple leaders need to acknowledge is that while the products are designed in California, they depend on China for manufacturing. That’s why a tough act to follow is going to be Cook’s diplomacy, and how he managed to keep disputes between the two countries in control and convince China they benefitted from the partnership, too. 

Another elephant in the room is the AI problem—Apple is behind on AI, and Ternus can play it two different ways: to their disadvantage, and invest millions in the industry with small chances of beating other giants like OpenAI or Anthropic; or to their advantage, and maximize their profits while investing a small part of their revenue not on being the best, but introducing AI in their software to help with basic tasks without consumers realising it’s there.

While Jobs was the innovator and Cook the operator, many predict he will use his hardware knowledge and skills to be the builder.

Creative, innovative and original, Steve Jobs was the visionary Apple needed to beat its competition like Microsoft when they had only 3 percent of market share. He embodied their slogan: ‘Think Different’. When Tim Cook stepped up in 2011 after his death, many felt hopeless and looked down to the new CEO. However, looking at it in hindsight, I ask, would Apple have been so successful if Steve Jobs had stayed in power? 

As to Ternus, is he going to be just what Apple needs? We’ll have to wait to find out.