For millions of Apple fans, Steve Jobs is irreplaceable. But if there’s one man Jobs himself trusts to stand in his shoes, it is his second in command, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook.
With Jobs on medical leave until June, Cook will be leading the team at Apple. And it is likely that when Jobs leaves Apple, it will be Cook he will anoint as the new CEO of the company.
"Tim runs Apple," says Michael Janes, the first general manager of Apple’s online store and now co-founder of ticketing search engine FanSnap, "and he has been running Apple for a long time now."
"Steve is the face of the company and very involved with product development but Tim is the guy who takes all those designs and turns it into a big pile of cash for the company," he says.
In some ways, Cook and Jobs are poles apart. Cook is the yin to Jobs’ yang. A quiet, soft-spoken, low-key executive, he couldn’t be more different from Jobs’ sarcastic, fearsome, larger-than-life personality. But that’s exactly what makes him perfect for the job, say people who have worked with Cook.
"He has an analyst’s mind and is very organized and action oriented," says Janes. "A few years ago Larry Bossidy came out with a book called ‘Execution’," says Janes. "That book could have been Tim Cook’s Bible, it could have been his biography."
What Cook and Jobs have in common is a passion for making Apple products the best, the ability to set high standards and an incredible level of attention to details.
Wall Street analysts, former executives and Apple resellers are unanimous that Cook is an operational whiz. His attention to the nuts and bolts of the business has helped make Apple incredibly profitable. Last quarter Apple posted profits of $1.14 billion on revenue of $7.9 billion.
Apple’s highest-paid executive, Cook joined the company in 1998 as senior vice president of operations and was promoted to worldwide sales lead in 2002. Before joining Apple, he was responsible for procuring and managing Compaq’s entire product inventory.
Kevin Langdon, CEO of Crywolf, an Apple Specialist reseller firm, first saw Cook giving a sales presentation to Apple resellers.
"It was his first introduction to the channel and he seemed like very low-key, affable but scary-smart," says Langdon. In a way, Cook was the very opposite of his predecessor, Mitch Mandich, who was more loud and outgoing, the "prototypical" sales executive.
Over the next few years, Langdon and other resellers watched Cook change how Apple ran its business. Inventory on hand, a crucial measure for a company that indicates how fine-tuned its supply is to market demand, went from weeks to sometimes 16 hours, says Langdon, indicating a far more responsive company.
It’s one reason why Apple has been so successful. In the consumer electronics business, new products are announced frequently and their introduction has to be managed carefully. One premature leak, and consumers may stop buying current models in anticipating of the newer ones still to come — potentially causing millions in losses due to built-up and unsold inventory.
Cook helped perfect inventory management to the point that Apple, which
regularly launches big new products, has few of the older ones left at the end of each cycle. It helps the the company avoid the trap of having to significantly
discount older products.
"Tim made Apple’s operations the best in the industry in a short
period of time," says Langdon. "He tightened up procedures to be more
efficient and made the process predictable."
Cook’s genius didn’t go unnoticed at Apple, where he was soon asked
to lead the company’s Macintosh division and in 2005 became the chief
operating officer at the company.
Extremely organized, Cook’s job at Apple is his life. He is known to
have meetings running late into the night. Janes says he has been
on calls with Cook at midnight and 5 a.m., especially when working with
partners in Asia and Europe.
"Though Tim seems laid-back, he is relentless in terms of energy,"
says Janes. "He is known for his multi-hour staff meetings going
through all the details."
And like his boss, Cook is a health nut, chowing down on energy bars and bicycling and weightlifting to keep himself in shape.
"When he is not working, he’s working out," says Janes.
Details about his personal life are scarce and even executives who have
known him for years say they rarely saw him outside work.
One of the biggest question marks around Cook has been whether
he has Jobs’ uncanny instinct for melding design and functionality into
a dream consumer electronics device.
Overlooked in the stories about his prowess with numbers and
details–probably stemming from his M.B.A. from Duke University–is
his understanding of design. Cook has an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering from Auburn University.
But people familiar with the company say Cook has had a very strong
voice on the design and development table because of his responsibility
for manufacturing the products. "Steve didn’t make up the iPod, iPhone or iTunes all
by himself," says Janes. "To get the manufacturing right you have to
get the design details right and Tim has been there through the whole
development process."
For nervous Apple investors, that should help soothe their worries about the transition.
See also:
Steve Jobs Probably Won’t Come Back to Apple
Photo: Monica M. Davey/Corbis
A memo from Steve Jobs confirms previous 
