Comment by bigyabai

> While he has done an incredible job with leading the business and operational side of Apple

Can we say that yet? A lot of value was made in the short term, but it kinda feels like that would happen to any CEO that has an iPhone moment on their hands. Cook's real challenge was to flip the scenario into something sustainable; can Apple take the excitement and turn it into a product line?

They certainly tried. Cook led the charge on the Apple Watch, which fell short of a tentpole offering but still found an audience. Airpods took off, presumably after Cook learned from the failure (and acquisition) of Beats by Dre. And Vision Pro... the less said the better. Maybe there's something still in the holster, but I expect this to be a dead-end product line moreso than Airpower.

Are disposable headphones enough to build a legacy off of? The Apple Watch certainly isn't, and don't even get me started on Vision Pro. We could point to the big one that everyone likes to credit him as; "the supply chain guy", but even that seems to foster political contention in America. Apple's software faces antitrust scrutiny, privacy concerns[0], and an overall degradation in app quality as their attention splits into different markets. The legacy is the important question, and if Tim Cook were to resign tomorrow I think he would be remembered as the CEO that screwed Apple over for good.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...