Steve Jobs has had a number of highly publicized biographies befitting the famous founder and CEO that he was. Tim Cook now gets his due in Leander Kahney’s new book, Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level. Kahney has written multiple books on Apple and its executives, including one about Jobs (Inside Steve’s Brain) and another about Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive (Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products).
In his biography of Cook, Kahney takes us back to the predictions of Apple’s decline immediately following Jobs passing in 2011. Jobs had come to rely on a man who was his opposite in temperament, and had chosen him to run the company during his leaves of absence during his battle with cancer. Remarkably, Apple has continued to thrive under Cook’s leadership.
Kahney covers Cook’s formative years as a gay man growing up in the south, his rise in business through IBM and Compaq, his initial meetings with Jobs, the key role he played in optimizing Apple’s operations, as well as the changes of course that Cook has made since becoming the company’s full-time CEO. We cover all of the above and much more in this interview.
