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The Understudy Takes the Stage at AppleBy MIGUEL HELFT

Published: January 23, 2011

On an 18-hour flight from California to Singapore a few years ago, Timothy D. Cook, Appleschief operating officer, had little time for small talk with a colleague. Glued to his business classseat, Mr. Cook had his nose in spreadsheets, preparing for a thorough review of Apples Asianoperations.

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Timothy D. Cook, who leads Apple in Steven P. Jobs absence, is widely seen as the most likelyto replace him permanently.

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y A Deep Bench of Leadership at Apple (January 18, 2011)y Times Topic: Timothy Cook

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Apple has benefited from the complementary skills of Timothy D. Cook, left, the chief operatingofficer, and Steven P. Jobs.

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The two landed at 6 a.m., took time to shower and headed into a meeting with Apples localexecutives. Twelve hours later, and well past dinnertime, the local executives were ready to callit quits.

They were absolutely exhausted, said Michael Janes, the Apple executive who accompanied

Mr. Cook. Tim was not. He was ready to jump to the next slide and the next slide after that. Heis absolutely relentless.

That relentlessness could be indispensable in the months ahead, because Mr. Cook may be testedas never before. He has been charged with running Apples day-to-day operations while his boss,Steven P. Jobs, the companys visionary chief executive, is on medical leave.

Mr. Cook has done that twice before, briefly and successfully. Yet if Mr. Jobss health does notimprove, Mr. Cook could be on the job for a long time. And while Apples succession plans areclosely guarded, Mr. Cook is widely believed to be the most likely candidate to permanentlyreplace Mr. Jobs.

In Silicon Valley, Mr. Jobs is also known for relentlessness. Yet on many levels, he and Mr.Cook are opposites. While Mr. Jobs is mercurial and prone to outbursts, Mr. Cook, who wasraised in a small town in Alabama, is polite and soft-spoken. He is often described as aSouthern gentleman. While Mr. Jobs obsesses over every last detail of Apples products, Mr.Cook obsesses over the less glamorous minutiae of Apples operations.

Their complementary skills have helped Apple pull off the most remarkable turnaround inAmerican business, and made it the worlds most valuable technology company. When Mr. Cookis on his own, he will have to compensate for the absence of Mr. Jobs and his inventiveness,charisma and uncanny ability to predict the future of technology and anticipate the wishes of

consumers.

He is going to have to look to others to provide the creative vacuum left by Steve, said A. M.Sacconaghi Jr., an analyst with Sanford Bernstein & Company.

Mr. Cook and Apple declined to comment for this article. From his first days at Apple in 1998,Mr. Cook, who is known as intensely private, worked in the shadow of Mr. Jobs and otherprominent leaders. Although his job making sure Apple could produce, assemble and ship itsbreakthrough products around the world, and do so profitably was not considered sexy, hequickly removed inefficiencies from Apples supply chain.

My favorite scenes were meeting suppliers, said a former Apple executive who had traveledwith Mr. Cook frequently and asked to remain anonymous because he did not want to upset theirrelationship. He is Mr. Spreadsheet. If things werent right, he would torture the suppliers anddemand improvement. At the same time, he had good relationships with them.

Apple was smaller then and largely focused on making PCs. Its operations were a mess.

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Apple was still running its own factories in California, Ireland and Singapore. While moreprofitable and efficient companies like Dell had moved to a just-in-time manufacturing model,Apple still held 90 days of inventory.

Mr. Cook closed Apples factories and outsourced all manufacturing to a far-flung network of

suppliers in Asia. Inventories decreased to 60 days, then to 30 days, then to the just-in-timemodel. Mr. Cook virtually lived in airplanes, traveling the world to meet with suppliers andbrowbeat them into meeting his demands.

Analysts and investors say Mr. Cooks efforts on the production end made the difference inturning Apples fortunes around. And they still are critical to the companys success.

Take the iPad. It took Mr. Jobss imagination and the expertise of his engineers and designers tocreate it. But Mr. Cooks operational abilities allowed Apple to parlay a cool product into abusiness that has already brought in $9.6 billion, as the company built and shipped worldwidenearly 15 million iPads in just nine months to meet customers seemingly insatiable appetite.

The ability to ramp up something like that is incredible, and thats largely Tims doing, Mr.Sacconaghi said. As Mr. Cook delivered results, he earned more respect from Mr. Jobs. Moreimportant, because he was focused on areas that Mr. Jobs knew little about, he rarely buttedheads with him, former Apple executives said.

Mr. Cook eventually took on oversight of Apples sales and of its Macintosh division. In 2007,he became chief operating officer, and two years later, he stepped in to run Apple when Mr. Jobswent on medical leave for nearly six months. During that time, he improved the companysfinancial performance in the middle of an economic downturn.

He also took over for Mr. Jobs briefly in 2004, when the chief executive had surgery forpancreatic cancer.

Mr. Cook received a degree in industrial engineering from Auburn University in 1982. There,too, he had a reputation for his focus. He was a very quiet, unassuming individual and very,very intense, said SaeedMaghsoodloo, an emeritus professor of industrial and systemsengineering at Auburn. I hardly ever saw him asking questions. He sat quietly and studied.

In 1999, Mr. Cook told Auburns alumni magazine that he ended up in the computer industry byaccident. At a campus event during his senior year, Mr. Cook was nominated to be theoutstanding engineering graduate. After the meeting, a recruiter from I.B.M. who was present

persuaded him to join the computer giant.

At I.B.M., Mr. Cook was soon placed on the high-potential list, for promising youngmanagers, said Ray Mays, a former boss. In a dozen years at I.B.M., Mr. Cook quickly rosethrough the ranks.

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Tim was the first to work, the last to leave and the smartest guy around the conference table,said Mr. Mays, who was a senior manufacturing manager. While at I.B.M., Mr. Cook completeda masters in business administration at Duke.

Mr. Cook left I.B.M. for Intelligent Electronics, an electronics distributor, and in 1997 took a job

at Compaq, the computer maker. Six months later, an executive recruiter suggested that he meetMr. Jobs. Mr. Cook agreed, even though his friends told him he would be crazy to leave Compaqfor Apple, which was considered a basket case.

But Mr. Jobss charisma and salesmanship proved irresistible.

Not more than five minutes into my initial interview with Steve, I wanted to throw caution tothe wind and join Apple, Mr. Cook said last year during a commencement speech at Auburn.

At 50, Mr. Cook is single and is known for his serious demeanor. Several former Applecolleagues said he rarely socialized with them. His major passion outside of Apple is Auburn

football. Former colleagues also described him as a fitness enthusiast who seems to live onenergy bars. He is a hiker and a cyclist, who frequently gets up at 5 a.m. to exercise and tobegin e-mailing his underlings.

Tim, like Steve, is like a metronome who sets the pace for the rest of Apple, said Mr. Janes,who worked for Mr. Cook for five years and now is chief executive of FanSnap, a ticketcomparison shopping Web site. At Apple, Mr. Cook has earned $156.2 million, including salary,bonuses and gains from stock awards, according to Equilar, a company that analyzes executivecompensation. In addition, he holds Apple stock valued at about $140 million, Equilar said.

Without Steve, Apple will be a different company, a former Apple executive said. But Tim

knows what he knows and what he doesnt know, and will trust other guys to do a good job.

The executive added, He will not be the visionary, but thats O.K. because there are othertalented people around him.

Steve Lohr contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 24, 2011, on page B1 of the New York edition.