Tim Cook

Timothy Donald Cook was born on November 1, 1960, in the city of Mobile, Alabama. He was baptized in a Baptist church and grew up in the nearby city Robertsdale. His father, Donald Cook, was a shipyard worker. His mother, Geraldine Cook, worked at a pharmacy. Cook graduated salutatorian from the public Robertsdale High School in Alabama in 1978.

Cook received a Bachelor of Science with a major in industrial engineering from Auburn University in 1982 and a Master of Business Administration from Duke University in 1988.

Pre-Apple era

After graduating from Auburn University, Cook spent twelve years in IBM's personal computer business, ultimately as director of North American fulfillment. During this time, Cook also earned his MBA from Duke University, becoming a Fuqua Scholar in 1988. Later, he was the chief operating officer of the computer reseller division of Intelligent Electronics. In 1997, he became the vice president for corporate materials at Compaq, but took up his position at Apple six months later.

Apple era

Early career

In 1998, Steve Jobs asked Cook to join Apple. In a 2010 commencement speech at Auburn University, Cook said he decided to join Apple after meeting Jobs:

Any purely rational consideration of cost and benefits lined up in Compaq's favor, and the people who knew me best advised me to stay at Compaq... On that day in early 1998, I listened to my intuition, not the left side of my brain or for that matter even the people who knew me best... no more than five minutes into my initial interview with Steve, I wanted to throw caution and logic to the wind and join Apple. My intuition already knew that joining Apple was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work for the creative genius and to be on the executive team that could resurrect a great American company.

His first position was senior vice president for worldwide operations. Cook closed factories and warehouses, and replaced them with contract manufacturers; this resulted in a reduction of the company's inventory from months to days. Predicting its importance, his group had invested in long-term deals such as advance investment in flash memory since 2005. This guaranteed a stable supply of what became the iPod Nano, then iPhone and iPad. Competitors at Hewlett-Packard described their cancelled HP TouchPad tablet computer and later said that it was made from "cast-off, reject iPad parts". Cook's actions were recognized for keeping costs under control, and combined with the rest of the company, generated huge profits.

In January 2007, Cook was promoted to lead operations and was chief executive in 2009, while Jobs, in failing health, was away on a leave of absence. In January 2011, Apple's board of directors approved a third medical leave of absence requested by Jobs. During that time, Cook was responsible for most of Apple's day-to-day operations, while Jobs made most major decisions.

Relationship with China

In May 2016, Cook traveled to China to meet with government officials there after the Chinese government closed Apple's online iTunes Store and Apple Books store. In December 2017, Cook was a speaker at the World Internet Conference in China. Cook was appointed chairman of the advisory board for Tsinghua University's economics school in October 2019 for a three-year term.

Several lawmakers criticized Cook in 2019 over Apple's decision to remove an app used by pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong from its App Store. They accused Apple of censorship, and co-signed a letter to Cook that read, "Apple's decisions last week to accommodate the Chinese government by taking down HKMaps is deeply concerning. We urge you in the strongest terms to reverse course, to demonstrate that Apple puts values above market access, and to stand with the brave men and women fighting for basic rights and dignity in Hong Kong." Cook explained in an internal letter why the company removed the Hong Kong mapping app used by protesters to coordinate movements.

In 2016, Cook signed a $275 billion deal with Chinese officials. The deal – personally negotiated by Cook – paved the way for increased censorship by Apple in China, for example the removal of Muslim content, preventing users from entering numbers that refer to the date of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, censoring Chinese words like "human rights" or "democracy", and manipulating Apple Maps to support China in the Senkaku Islands dispute by making Chinese-claimed islands appear larger than they actually were.

During the 2008 election cycle, Cook donated to Barack Obama's first White House election.

On February 28, 2014, Cook made headlines when he challenged shareholders to "get out of the stock" if they did not share the company's views on sustainability and climate change.

In 2015, Cook said he donated to Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Patrick Leahy for their stances on ebook pricing and surveillance reform, respectively. During the same election cycle, he hosted a fundraiser for Republican senator Rob Portman. In early March 2016, Cook disclosed that he donated to the election campaign of Democratic representative Zoe Lofgren of California. In early June, Cook hosted a private fundraiser along with then speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Paul Ryan. The event was described by Politico as "a joint fundraising committee aimed at helping to elect other House Republicans."

In the 2016 election, Cook raised funds for the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. At one point, Clinton's campaign considered Cook as a candidate for Vice President. In September 2017 at Bloomberg's Global Business Forum, Cook defended the DACA immigration program. He expressed his dissatisfaction with the direction of Donald Trump's administration, stating: "This is unacceptable. This is not who we are as a country. I am personally shocked that there is even a discussion of this."

In 2018, at a privacy conference in Brussels, Cook expressed his opinions on the stockpiling of personal data by tech firms, suggesting that it amounted to surveillance and should make the public "very uncomfortable."