Tim Cook’s Three Biggest Successes As Apple CEO

Today, Tim Cook officially hands the reins at Apple over to John Ternus. During Cook’s 15-year tenure as Apple’s chief executive officer, Apple went from a $347 billion company to a $4.6 trillion one, a nearly 13.3 times increase.

When Cook took over for a rapidly ailing Steve Jobs in August 2011, just two months before Jobs passed away due to complications from pancreatic cancer, Apple was already in an upswing. The release of the first iPhone in 2007 and the original iPad in 2010 had set Apple on a path toward significant growth and success. These two product lines have remained extremely successful nearly the entire time, and Apple is just a week away from its next iPhone launch event.

With Cook in charge, Apple became the first company to be worth $1 trillion. It subsequently hit $2 trillion, $3 trillion, and $4 trillion milestones. For a very short time in July, Apple was even worth $5 trillion.

While some of Cook’s job, especially in the early years, was keeping the company on the track Jobs put it on during his second stint at the top of the Cupertino-based tech giant, it would do Cook and the rest of Apple a great disservice to characterize the company over the past 15 years as simply staying the course.

Under Cook’s leadership, Apple launched many new product lines, but these three stand out as particularly impressive success stories: AirPods, Apple Watch, and, of course, Apple Silicon.

AirPods Are a Smash Hit

Starting with AirPods, this headphone lineup completely changed Apple’s audio portfolio. While Apple long shipped wired earbuds with its iPod models, which admittedly gained some support among some iPod owners, it wasn’t until Apple announced the original AirPods in 2016 alongside the iPhone 7 that the company really made its mark in the space.

The lineup grew to include AirPods Pro in 2019 and over-the-ear AirPods Max in 2020, and has become one of Apple’s best-selling products. Although Apple doesn’t disclose specific sales numbers, World of Statistics claims Apple sold approximately 118 million AirPods last year alone for $26 billion in annual revenue. That’s more revenue than all of Adobe made last year. AirPods are everywhere, and I am confident that nearly everyone reading this right now knows someone close to them who owns AirPods.

Apple Watch Effectively Built the Smart Watch Market

Another space where Apple went from mostly irrelevant to a market leader under Cook’s leadership is wearables. When Apple unveiled the first Apple Watch in 2015, skepticism was high. Much like when Apple launched the iPad while Jobs was alive, critics bemoaned the Watch’s sluggish interface and lack of apps, speculating it might be a flop.

But the Apple Watch didn’t flop, far from it.

Although companies like Garmin and Fitbit had technology-infused watches before the Apple Watch arrived, their devices were primarily designed for fitness tasks only, built for runners and hikers. Apple Watch brought the concept of a smartwatch to the masses and has only grown in popularity in the decade-plus since the first one arrived.

More people bought an Apple Watch for the very first time in the September quarter last year than in any other quarter in the product’s history.

Apple Silicon Revolutionized the Mac

Arguably the best thing Apple did under Cook’s watch was release Apple Silicon. While Apple had been making its own A-series chips for iPhone and iPad back in the Jobs era, the entire Mac lineup ran on Intel when Cook took over.

At WWDC 2020, Apple announced that it was transitioning its Mac lineup to Apple-made chips, starting with the original Apple M1 chipset. This proved to be an exceptional success, and helped usher in a new era of Mac as a serious, performant platform for creative work. It is hard to overstate how transformative Apple’s own silicon proved to be for the Mac ecosystem.

Apple’s M chips deliver extreme power, even in portable packages. The latest Macs are the most powerful computer PetaPixel has tested by a long shot, and offer photographers and video editors more performance than they could ever need.

What Ternus Is Taking Over

Other highlights from Tim Cook’s time as Apple CEO, at least from a revenue or technology perspective, include a significant expansion of Apple’s services sector. Under Cook, Apple launched Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple TV, Apple News, and more. Just this year, Apple launched the Creator Studio software suite, which includes its own video editor, Final Cut Pro, plus the photo editor it acquired last year, Pixelmator.

As John Ternus takes over from Tim Cook today, Apple is in an interesting position. The company has had an outstanding 2026 so far, at least from a stock market perspective, but Apple’s stance on artificial intelligence remains something of an open question. The global memory shortage is rearing its ugly head, and even a company as big as Apple is not immune. The geopolitical situation, particularly at home, is complex.

Ternus has been at Apple since 2001 and worked on many of the company’s hardware projects, including AirPods, Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Ternus is well respected for his hardware and engineering expertise. But running a company like Apple requires a diverse skill set, complex logistics, and political maneuvering. There’s never an easy time to run a company like Apple, but Ternus does seem to be taking over during a particularly challenging and unpredictable one.

Ternus’ first real test arrives next week, when he will presumably take the stage at Apple Park to unveil new iPhone models.

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Image creditsApple. Portrait of Tim Cook licensed via Depositphotos.com.