* Apple Silicon, the most far-reaching technical transformation in the company's history (probably a bigger deal than macOS itself)
* Apple Pay
* The Watch and Airpods product categories, both of which Apple now dominates.
All while holding on to its position in phones and improving (drastically) its computers.
It feels like a pretty successful term.
I'm just pointing out product velocity slowed. I'm far from the first person to say it, it's just a fact. In the five years before Cook we got first generation Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. Your list spans 14 years.
The reality is everyone just wants another hit product like the iPhone, but its success was based on it being a personal convergence device. You can't really create a second carryable/wearable convergence device and expect it to be wildly successful at the level of the iPhone without it killing off the iPhone.
So far that revolutionary approach by third parties has not succeeded against the iPhone, and the evolutionary approach apple takes with the iPhone means there is no clear inflection point anywhere in the future where the phone form factor goes away.
Tim oversaw the launch of the Apple Watch, Airpods, Airtags, Apple Pay, the Beats acquisition (which lead to Apple Music) and the launch of the M series chips.
He's had quite a few product launches under his belt, many of them company-defining products.
Cook absolutely deserves credit for the successful desktop ARM transition, but building ARM processors in-house was in no way something he directed as CEO.
Jobs was likely very burned out on IBM failing to deliver a 3Ghz PowerPC G5 and one with a low enough TDP for a PowerBook.
So he switches to Intel because he needs chips, but the vulnerability still exists, and it's what happened again after the Skylake launch and the ensuing 4 years of terrible Macs designed for silicon that didn't exist.
Steve saw the danger, and probably acquired PA Semi because of it as well as the fact that PA Semi actually did deliver a power efficient PowerPC G5, even if it was a bit late.
Steve had the vision. Cook executed it very well. They both deserve credit.
https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2025/06/17/g-s1-72...
With Apple it's the scale of what was done.
But he is not an aestheticist as much as Jobs was. See how Cook has been destroying the faces of iPhones and Macs, which had a huge dent or what is ironically called a "dynamic" island on the top of the screen. Back of iPhones is desparetely ugly.
Also he has not been presenting what makes us exicted. Apple's Siri is forgotten so that he has to rely on Google's Gemini instead of developing their own. While Samsung's Galaxy has been deploying its 7th foldable phone, Apple has done none. Leaks are usual so we can tell what he will show at its annual conference well before he acutually does and it gives us no surprise at all.
In a short term, "what Cook's Apple has innovated?" -- I guess zero. Rather, deteriorated.
As a long-standing user who started computer life with Performa 5220, keep using Macs as main machines and now run M3 MAX Macbook Pro to develop web apps, current Apple is never what I think it should be.
Making the company bigger is great. But what about their products and services? These are also where Cook has been leading to. He seems to forget Job's aphorism, "Stay hungry, stay foolish."
So I hope the new CEO changes the course.
We’ll see how the new CEO sees it.
I don't think this is true. Apple Watch is basically in a market of its own. iPad might have existed before Cook but he turned it into something people actually use for stuff. Vision Pro may not be a financial success but the tech is impressive and it's clear that work will pay off in the near term in other wearables. Apple Silicon is a phenomenal success. Apple TV is no longer a hobby and he's been at the helm while they've developed their entire services business. AirPods rule the headphone market. Not mention the numerous Mac variants he presided over.