The End of an Era at Apple, Fifteen Years in the Making

Keypoints:

• • Monday, August 31, marks Tim Cook's last day as Apple CEO
  • Hardware chief John Ternus takes over on September 1
  • Cook becomes executive chairman, staying involved in policy work
  • Apple's value grew from about $350 billion to more than $4 trillion under his leadership, briefly touching $5 trillion this summer
  • Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie calls his tenure "extraordinarily" successful

Fifteen years. One CEO. A market cap that grew more than tenfold. Today, 31st August, that chapter closes. Cook took the job back in 2011, right after Steve Jobs died. Nobody was sure he could fill that role.

He did more than fill it. Apple's value went from about $350 billion to over $4 trillion under his watch, briefly touching $5 trillion this July. Revenue climbed too, from roughly $108 billion in 2011 to nearly $400 billion today. Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie called the run "extraordinarily" successful, by any traditional measure.

Cook didn't inherit a product visionary's job and tried to copy it. He ran the company on operational discipline instead. He joined Apple back in 1998 to fix its supply chain, when the company was still near bankruptcy. That instinct never left him.

Starting tomorrow, John Ternus takes the CEO title. He's led Apple's hardware engineering team for years. Cook isn't disappearing either. He moves into a new role as executive chairman, staying close to global policy work.

That approach won't satisfy everyone. Critics still point to a slower pace of category-defining new products under his leadership. Fair criticism, worth naming. But the scoreboard is the scoreboard. A $350 billion company became a $4 trillion one. Same person, the whole way through.