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The world needs a great magician. He can come from anywhere, but in the high-tech landscape, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll come from the ranks of Apple. After all, the company holds the cards and the techniques that formed Steve Jobs’ magic tricks. Employees are taught those methods in a program called Apple University. Executives who worked with the inspirational founder teach recruits the values and mantras of Apple, which not coincidentally were those of Steve.

Tim Cook was Steve’s protege; the operations wizard studied the visionary sorcerer. Steve recruited Tim from Compaq, after Steve secretly ran operations at Apple by himself for nine months. They worked together for more than a decade. “I found someone I saw eye-to-eye with, and that was Tim Cook,” Steve told BusinessWeek in 2004. “After Tim came on board, we basically reinvented the logistics of the PC business.” Tim took Steve’s mantle during the periods when Steve took time off to fight his illness, and then indefinitely when Steve was on the verge of losing his ultimate battle with cancer. Tim, a soft-spoken Alabaman, does not have Steve’s charisma or his foresight or his eye for design. However, people who have worked with Tim say he is an astute leader, peacekeeper and shrewd negotiator.

In the first weeks since the official passing of the torch, Tim demonstrated that his is a different show, despite a promise in his e-mail announcing the change in leadership saying “that Apple is not going to change.” He promoted Eddy Cue to a senior vice president role, and he passed an initiative in which Apple would match employees’ charitable donations, which he also announced in an e-mail.

Steve was not much of a philanthropist. He incorporated the Steven P. Jobs Foundation in January 1987 after founding NeXT. The organization was concerned with health and food issues, (Steve was a pescatarian) but shifted its focus to “social entrepreneurship” upon the urging of Mark Vermilion, the man Steve recruited to run the foundation, according to Fortune. Steve hired famed graphic designer Paul Rand to design the organization’s logo but shuttered the foundation after less than 15 months. Within weeks of returning to Apple a decade after his short-lived philanthropic endeavor, Steve cut all of the company’s longstanding charitable programs citing the need to return to profitability.

A curious thing happened after Steve Jobs resigned and quieted his digital communications. E-mails from the new CEO, Tim Cook, began landing in the inboxes of enthusiastic Apple fans and on the same blogs that followed Steve’s every word.

Tim responded to several people who sent notes of congratulations. “Thanks Gary,” he told Gary Ng. “Thanks Zech,” he told Zech Yohannes. “Thanks Justin. War Eagle Forever!” he replied (with two spaces between sentences) to a graduate of his alma mater, Auburn University, whose sports teams he follows religiously. One person e-mailed Tim bemoaning the loss of file and preference synchronization in the transition from Internet services MobileMe to iCloud. The message was forwarded to executive relations, which called the sender and explained that Apple is open to bringing those features back if the company receives enough feedback requesting them.

Ben Gold offered Tim a line of unsolicited advice: “Don’t be Steve Jobs, be Tim Cook,” he wrote in an e-mail. Tim replied: “Don’t worry. It’s the only person I know how to be.” That’s precisely what Steve had preached. Don’t make things that are pretty good; make them “insanely great.” Don’t try to be Steve Jobs or anyone else; follow your own intuition. Don’t think like the people in charge; “think different.” That was the salient message Steve sent.

About the Author

Mark Milian covers consumer technology for CNN and was previously a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. This is his first book.

Notes

Preface

Interview with Brian X. Chen; Mario Bitensky, "WikiLeaks releases 140,000 emails from Steve Jobs," Scoopertino, December 12, 2010; Alex Riley, "Superbrands' success