When Tim Cook became the full-time CEO of Apple, it was one of those good news, bad news situations for him.
The good news is that he gets to run the most important tech company in the world. It's a company that coins money.
The bad news is that he's taking over for arguably the greatest businessman of all time in Steve Jobs. There's not much Cook can do to improve Apple, but there's a lot he can do to screw it up.
Luckily, so far he's been pretty great. There have been some mistakes, which we plan to address tomorrow, but overall he's done a good job. In this slideshow, we're running through ten things we think he's done well since taking over.
Promoting Jony Ive
When Steve Jobs died, there didn't seem to be that guy at Apple. The guy who would make the final call on products. The guy who had the vision for consumer electronics. Cook isn't a product guy. He's an operations guy. He had two high ranking products guys: Jony Ive and Scott Forstall. They didn't like each other. So Cook decided to remove Forstall and elevate Ive. Considering Ive's track record in design and his closeness with Steve Jobs, we think this was the right call.
The iPad Mini
Steve Jobs trashed small tablets when they were first hitting the market. Cook could have just followed what Jobs said initially and not released the iPad Mini. Luckily, he didn't. And now the iPad Mini is the best selling tablet on the market, according to most analysts.
Apologizing for Apple Maps
Apple's Maps were a real debacle. Cook's decision to apologize seemed very un-Apple like, but it was smart. He acknowledged the company's error and promised to improve the maps. It's still a big blot on his record, but he handled it well.
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