The days are counting down, and a 15-year era is drawing to a close. On September 1, Tim Cook will step back from his current role as Apple CEO, settling for a somewhat quieter job as executive chairman, and it will be time to evaluate his place in corporate history. There’s every reason to think historians will be relatively kind.
I say relatively, because the bar for decency in Cook’s field is low. If we look at his peers and rivals, we find a mixed bag, to put it politely: few sane commentators would have Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or Sam Altman on their list of 10 Nicest Dudes Who Should Definitely Have Access To Political Power. Much as tech in the 60s and 70s attracted hippies and idealists, tech in the 2010s and 2020s seems to have become the province of, well, the sort of people who think it’s a gotcha to point out that humans consume food.
To a degree, such a mindset—the disposition, we might say, to build and stock an underground shelter rather than work to prevent the catastrophe it’s designed for—is an inevitable result of being extremely rich and running an extremely large business in an extremely competitive market. Tim Cook is a billionaire, and it would be absurd to expect billionaires to be soft-hearted or prone to wild attacks of no-strings generosity. You don’t become a billionaire unless you’re at least above average in the ruthlessness department.
But is Cook a good and decent man? If that sounds like an odd question to ask, please note that I’m not the one asking. In a micro-interview last week, Cook fielded two questions from CBS News’ Jo Ling Kent, and while he technically didn’t answer either of them, he did put forward an interesting metric by which his legacy could be evaluated.
Kent: As you look back on your time as CEO, in a word, what have you stood for?
Cook: In my view, your legacy is described by others, not by yourself. I hope that people say I was a good and decent man. And if they say that at the end of the day, I [will] feel like I have achieved something.
That’s not one word, Tim. But I get where you’re coming from.
Will we say he was a good and decent man? I’m not sure. Cook’s inner decency is almost as elusive as his interview responses. He has the vibe of decency. He comes across as a nice guy, the sort of boss who remembers people’s names and contributes handsomely to going-away gifts. But that’s enormously subjective. Those who’ve actually worked with him (I will note here for clarity that he and I have never even been in the same room) will be able to judge better than the rest of us. But what can we learn from his actions?
The truth is that Cook’s actions have not always been those of an unfailingly good and decent man. On his watch, for example, Apple’s treatment of retail and support employees has come in for severe criticism. At one meeting, Cook himself declined to answer questions submitted by the AppleToo activist group, whose leaders understandably said they did not feel heard.
The company has reportedly blocked pay surveys, likely breaking the law; it has discouraged unionization and, coincidentally or not, closed the first U.S. Apple Store to achieve this. Conditions in Apple’s Asian supply chain, of course, are a serious issue.
On the other hand, all the things above were true when Cook took the top job, and while he hasn’t solved them, he has tried. Apple published a list of suppliers for the first time in 2012, months after he became CEO; in 2020, he put a major supplier on probation for breaking the company’s code of conduct. Apple’s environmental record, while still far from perfect, vastly improved under the tenure of Lisa P. Jackson, whom Cook hired in 2013 until she retired earlier this year. We even got to enjoy/endure the CEO bantering with Mother Nature at the iPhone 15 launch event.
To be clear, many of the reforms we’ve seen in the Cook era have been forced on him by regulators or bad PR, but there remains a sense that while Steve Jobs, for one, would have refused to give in, Cook is more conciliatory. It also appears that Cook has far more of an urge to do the right thing than his famous predecessor. In 2014, the Mac Observer reported that he responded angrily to a shareholder question about whether focusing on sustainability was good for the company’s bottom line. “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI,” he said. “If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.” It takes a lot of courage for a CEO to go after the shareholders.
Cook, or Cook’s Apple, has also taken stances on immigration, abortion, and transgender rights, which will have alienated a proportion of its potential customers and allies and seem motivated by principle rather than pragmatism. Some of these stances, perhaps, have been undermined by recent political complications, but my sense is that he’s doing what he always has: the best he can under the circumstances.
What I mean is that for Tim Cook, morality is one factor within a complex algorithm affecting each decision he makes. It would be an exaggeration, clearly, to claim he always does the right thing in a moral or ethical sense, regardless of its effects on his career. Apple comes first, and some of the time that means actions and policies which are difficult to defend. But if he can do the right thing, he will. And by the standard of his cohort, or of his predecessors in the hot seat at Cupertino, the fact that morality enters into the calculation at all is almost miraculous.
Foundry
Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.
Trending: Top stories
Apple’s iPhone event will be packed with intrigue.
Apple TV has lost the plot, reckons Mahmoud Itani.
iOS 27 may be free, admits the Macalope, but the AI bill won’t be.
Apple’s revolving door continues to spin, with more big-name exec changes.
Podcast of the week
In the latest episode of the Macworld Podcast, Michael Simon, Jason Cross, and guest producer Adam Patrick Murray break down the folding phone landscape and how Apple’s upcoming iPhone Ultra will change it.
You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.
The rumor mill
iOS 27 beta confirms Apple’s full iPhone 18 roadmap with 6 new models.
iPhone Ultra leak confirms our report of a dark blue model. And that name is looking pretty good, too.
A sweeping Apple Watch ‘rethink’ could bring new designs and ‘premium models.’
Reports of the 20th anniversary iPhone’s death seem to be greatly exaggerated.
Software updates, bugs, and problems
Apple releases rare ‘point’ betas for iOS 26.6 and macOS 26.6.
And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters, including our new email from The Macalope–an irreverent, humorous take on the latest news and rumors from a half-man, half-mythical Mac beast. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, or X for discussion of breaking Apple news stories. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.
