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EXCERPT:
Fifteen years ago, Apple’s last leadership transition was more somber. For years, off and on, Tim Cook had been stepping in to take on more of Apple’s day-to-day operations as the ailing then-CEO Steve Jobs went on successive medical leaves before finally stepping down on Aug. 24, 2011. Two months later, Jobs died, and Cook began a new, uncertain era in Apple’s history.
Jobs had been the public face of Apple when he stepped down — the co-founder who was pushed out in the ’80s and triumphantly returned in the ’90s, renewing the company’s reputation with the iMac in 1998 and redefining the mobile industry with the iPhone in 2007.
Jobs’ brash behavior was notorious, but so was his success in shaping Apple into a pugnacious underdog competitor to conventional consumer tech in style and user-friendly software. He earned headlines with his combative quotes to the press as well as his slick presentations and Stevenotes at WWDC and Macworld Expo. His “reality distortion field” led him to push for abrupt and severe changes that would seem impossible if they came from another executive.
