Tim Cook

Timothy Donald Cook (born 1960-11-01) is an American business executive best known for his current role as CEO of Apple Inc. Before joining Apple in 1998, Cook also served as an executive at IBM and Compaq.

Cook in 2023

Quotes

• You can converge a toaster and refrigerator, but these things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.
  • During the Q & A session after an earnings call (2012-04-24)
  • Cook was asked about converging touch- and mouse-based operating systems into one product, like Microsoft's Windows 8.

• Our base philosophy is to never fear cannibalization. If we do, somebody else will just cannibalize it. We never fear it.
  • At Apple's 2013 Q1 earnings call (2013-01-23)
  • iPad sales had been increasing at the expense of Mac sales.

• When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI.
  • At an Apple shareholder meeting in March 2014
  • In response to a conservative interest group's request that Apple disclose the financial costs of its environmental initiatives, and to only take them on if they were profitable

• If there was a lot of emotion in my voice today, it's because we've all been waiting for this day for a long time. It felt so great, … the people at this company are doing the best work of their lives, the best work that Apple has ever done.
  • usatoday.com

• I don’t consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I’ve benefited from the sacrifice of others, … So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.
  • WSJ.com

• If there were any doubts, I think that they should be put to bed.
  • Talking about the Apple Watch,
  • bloomberg.com

• The things we should be doing at Apple are things that others can’t.
  • bloomberg.com

• Steve was a genius and a visionary, and I've never viewed that my role was to replace him," said Cook. "Steve was an original. I've never really felt the weight of trying to be Steve. It's not my goal in life. I am who I am. I am focused on that. On being a great CEO of Apple.
  • cnet.com

• There are very few content owners that believe that the existing model will last forever, I think the most forward-thinking ones are looking and saying, 'I'd rather have the first-mover advantage'.
  • Investing.com

• If you want me to only do things for ROI reasons then you should get out of this stock.
  • thestreet.com

• I don't think that you're born with gut [instinct], a gut matures and gets better and better over time, the struggle that most people have is learning to listen to it. Figuring out how to access it in some way. What I found is that even thought I'm an engineer and an analytical person at heart the most important decisions I've made had nothing to do with any of that. They were always based on intuition. The Apple one [choosing to leave Compaq to take the job at Apple in 1998] is a prime example of that. I remember forming my list of pluses and minuses and I could not get the chart to work out the way I wanted it to. Because I wanted something to say this says I should go to Apple. But it would not. Nothing financially would do that, I talked to people I trusted, that knew me, and they said: 'This is not what you should do'. It wasn't so easy. People said, you're just crazy, you're working for the top PC company in the world, how could you even think of doing it, you've lost your mind. And yet that voice said, 'Go West young man, Go West'. And some times you just have to go for it.
  • macworld.co.uk
• The countries that embrace openness do exceptional and the countries that don’t, don’t. It’s not a matter of carving things up between sides. I’m going to encourage that calm heads prevail.
  • Bloomberg: Apple's Cook to Meet With Trump Amid China Trade Tensions (25 April 2018)
• We reject the excuse that getting the most out of technology means trading away your right to privacy. So we choose a different path, collecting as little of your data as possible, being thoughtful and respectful when it's in our care because we know it belongs to you.
  • CNN: "Apple's Tim Cook urges Duke graduates to think hard about data privacy" (13 May 2018)
• Don’t just accept the world you inherit today. Don’t just accept the status quo. No big challenge has ever been solved, and no lasting improvement has ever been achieved, unless people dare to try something different. Dare to think different.
  • Entrepreneur: "From Oprah Winfrey to Tim Cook, Leaders Offer Gems of Wisdom to the Class of 2018" (24 May 2018)
• The privacy thing has gotten totally out of control. I think most people are not aware of who is tracking them, how much they're being tracked and sort of the large amounts of detailed data that are out there about them.
  • CNN Tech: "Tim Cook reveals his tech habits: I use my phone too much" (4 June 2018)
• All of these things are great conveniences of life. They change your daily life in a great way. But if you're getting bombarded by notifications all day long, that's probably a use of the system that might not be so good anymore."
  • NPR: "Apple Requested 'Zero' Personal Data In Deals With Facebook, CEO Tim Cook Says" (4 June 2018)
• I don’t think business should only deal in commercial things. Business, to me, is nothing more than a collection of people. If people have values, then companies should.
  • CNBC: "Apple's Tim Cook shares a rule that leaders should live by" (26 June 2018)
• We [at Apple] worry about the humanity being drained out of music, about it becoming a bits-and-bytes kind of world instead of the art and craft.
  • TechSpot: "Tim Cook thinks Spotify is 'draining the humanity out of music'" (8 August 2018)
• It was like a total revelation for me that a company could run like this, because I was used to these layers and bureaucracies and studies—the sort of paralysis that companies could get into—and Apple was totally different.
  • Fortune: "Apple CEO Tim Cook Says Working for Steve Jobs Was 'Liberating'" (23 August 2018)

Quotes about Cook

• Tim Cook’s strategy has a built-in cliff-drop just after the peak of success. As the new iPhones gather plaudits and dollars, they continue the inevitable march towards that cliff.
  • Ewan Spence in Forbes: "New iPhone XS Reveals Tim Cook's Failure To Innovate" (17 September 2018)