[#20] Tale of Chaos: Steve Jobs was GONE. iPhone struggling to compete with Android & newly-launched Windows phone. With 30+ Lawsuits, Apple was on brink of COLLAPSE. Then “Apple” let Tim, Cook...
Morning iKyu-Riskers! We are nearing the end of 2024. Gregorian calendar will make you realise, 2015 was 10 yrs ago, feel old yet? *Gulping*, this is going to be our last post for 2024. And plus I am experimenting with new content IPs to make business content fun again; today is one such pilot edition. This year can’t be explained in few sentences, that would be unfair to all the knife-edge experiences I had this year. Surviving another year filled with canon events feels like a rhapsody. But we do have a surprise for my inKredible subsKribers today: “Read along and you shall find”. Who doesn’t like talking about people. People who are no better than you, build this world; we are just going to present a brutal discourse (talk) on them. In Stories. The Catch? In our iKonic brutal breakdown ‘documentary-style’ writing finesse. Ready?
🚨QUICK ANNOUNCEMENT: 2025. In the upcoming Year of the OLDs, we will be revving our iKyu’s X 🧵Threads a lot more with “tailored dark & smokin’ hot Business Stories every week”. So ONLY if you want to miss out on the exotic🥵 stuff, you won’t be following us there. *Your choice hehe*.
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A fancy noun? A label from Hinduism? A mark of enlightenment?
Beauty. That’s Dharma. The will to pursue life with accepting only ‘Death’ is permanent. That’s Dharma. To live is to die. That’s Dharma. A path carved by our fore-bearers, leading the path when they perish. That’s Dharma.
American work culture embraces the concept of Dharma romantically. There’s a vulnerability in the caricature of Dharma. Americans unknowingly practice the principles of Dharma as their will to build.
That’s formidable to replicate in India. India has a sense of colonial-envy with “Corporate culture”. With modernity being the new cool, it weakens the argument of being stable.
The label of being frugal, doesn’t sediment to being successful. This idea of ‘working for yourself’ is delusional. Modernity makes you fall for this trap.
Don’t. Until you want to kiss death (metaphorically). Alright, let’s not be too dark with this edition.
Practitioners of Dharma, often follow their torchbearers. Steve Jobs was the torchbearer to the technological generation. He made us experience the history as the middle child. Computers could ‘will’ their way to existence in our life. It became a natural extension to humanity. All because Steve Jobs practiced his vision.
Apple was his baton.
On October 5th, 2011 — After he left this world. He passed this baton to someone who was a follower of a regime, lesser known to the public; who have tasted the good, the bad and the ugly blood beyond the surface that hoarded the charm of Jobs.
All he had was the courage to be disliked by all. For the world lost their eyes. How will they operate?
…This is a new series that we are lifting off today. And we are calling it iKons by iKyu.
iKons by iKyu
A NEW envelope from iKyu to make business content fun again.
A series of iKonic, brutal and stellar life stories (under our same flagship newsletter), where we talk about iKons (pronounced ‘icons’ / ‘eye-cons’) of today — The Pinnacle that persevered as PEOPLE of modern history, those who pretended to the universe.
“iKons by iKyu” is about People…their thoughts, their principles, their critique, their dent and their will to build the world around us. Freshly baked in our iKonic breakdown ‘documentary-style’ writing, chiming intimately in your inbox.
Almost everyone talks about Steve Jobs. We ask — what after him?
Maybe we are asking the wrong question all along…
Who after him?
Who After Steve…
iKons by iKyu is a reader-supported publication. To receive freshly baked breakdowns and support our “subscription-driven publication”, consider becoming iKyu’s inKredible paid(or free) subscriber.
One
THE SILENT CONDUCTOR
When the world lost Steve Jobs on October 5th, 2011, a collective breath seemed to pause history. The baton, Apple itself, was passed to a figure so unassuming that many inside and outside Cupertino wondered if he could even keep it afloat.
Tim Cook.
An Alabama native raised in a family that believed in hard work over hype, was suddenly at the helm of what was arguably the most influential tech company in modern history. Steve Jobs was the soul of Apple; Tim Cook was the silent orchestrator who’d quietly kept the machine humming behind the scenes. Now, he had to compose an entirely new symphony—and no one knew if the audience would applaud.
He wasn’t a typical Silicon Valley luminary. Born in 1960, Tim Cook grew up in Robertsdale, Alabama, a small town near the Gulf of Mexico. His father was a shipyard worker, his mother a homemaker. Cook’s upbringing was modest, leaning into a framework that emphasized discipline over showmanship. That discipline manifested early in his life: he excelled in academics, earning a Bachelor’s in Industrial Engineering from Auburn University, then later an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Even as he advanced in his career—rising through the ranks at IBM, then briefly at Compaq—Cook’s personality was calm, methodical. He wasn’t the type to dazzle crowds with grandiose ideas or mesmerizing keynote addresses. Yet, in 1998, Steve Jobs saw in him the precise skill set Apple desperately needed.
Apple in the late 1990s was a company gasping for air. Its supply chain was in disarray, profits barely existed, and the world had all but written its obituary. Tim Cook stepped in as Senior Vice President for Worldwide Operations, effectively taking a scalpel to Apple’s bloated manufacturing processes. He shuttered factories, cut inventory, negotiated deals with suppliers that slashed production costs, and redesigned the entire supply chain so efficiently that Apple dramatically improved its margins. In just a couple of years, Apple went from near death to healthy profitability. Cook’s excellence in operations was so crucial that while Jobs earned the headlines for the iMac, iPod, and eventually the iPhone, it was Cook’s behind-the-scenes orchestration that made mass production, quick distribution, and cost management possible.
Under Cook’s leadership, Apple’s supply chain transformed into a legendary force. Manufacturing moved from multiple scattered facilities to a close-knit network of contractors in Asia—primarily in China—enabling Apple to ramp up or scale down production at breakneck speeds.
This shift would become one of the most imitated models in consumer electronics, often referred to in business schools and corporate boardrooms as an example of how to build lean, yet robust, operations. One professor at MIT famously called it “a new gold standard in supply chain management.”
As the 2000s wore on, Cook’s portfolio expanded. He took on broader responsibilities, becoming the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and essentially the second-most powerful figure at Apple. In public events, though, he stayed mostly in the background. Steve Jobs was the face, the voice, the visionary who could distill a product’s essence into one line—“An iPod, a phone, an Internet communicator… Are you getting it?”—but Cook was the quiet architect ensuring that product arrived on millions of doorsteps. Apple’s success in the first decade of the 2000s was not just the result of Jobs’s genius ideas; it was also built on the operational bedrock that Tim Cook had created. That’s precisely why, when the time came to choose a successor, Jobs didn’t hesitate.
The real test began the day Jobs passed.
The iPhone 4S, introduced shortly before Jobs’s death, was battling fierce competition: Android was surging, Windows Phone was mounting a hopeful challenge, and Apple faced more than thirty lawsuits over everything from patent disputes to antitrust inquiries. Critics painted a grim forecast: “Without Jobs’s showmanship, Apple’s product pipeline will stall.” “Apple will be led by an ‘ops guy’—and an ops guy can’t innovate.” “This is the end of the Jobs era, and likely the beginning of Apple’s downfall.” Headlines skewered Tim Cook as just another caretaker, a placeholder until Apple’s decline would become irrevocable. Cook remained stoic. He rarely responded to these barbs, confiding only in close friends that the noise was “just that—noise.”
THE CHAOS WITHIN…
The chaos behind the scenes was tangible. Apple’s board scrambled to reassure investors. Jony Ive, Apple’s longtime design chief, was revered but not a corporate leader. Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, Eddy Cue—each was integral to Apple’s success, but none was groomed to take the CEO role.
Tim Cook’s ascension was the only logical choice. He was known for his meticulous approach: 4 a.m. emails to teams, supply chain visits unannounced, a deep adherence to data and analytics. If the “Dharma” of Apple was creativity anchored in great execution, Tim Cook seemed the anchor. Over the next months and years, he would prove that execution, anchored in a calm and consistent approach, could be the greatest superpower of all—especially in the tumultuous seas of tech.
Two
THE SILENT EMPIRE
Critics often forget that Apple’s share price and market cap soared almost immediately in Cook’s early tenure. Yes, there were bumps—the Apple Maps debacle of 2012, the dismissal of Scott Forstall, labor controversies in Chinese factories—but Apple posted record revenues quarter after quarter. The world was waiting for Apple to slip, but Cook’s leadership style engineered resilience within the company. He delegated effectively, encouraging different teams to push product categories forward while he managed what he knew best: the broader operational and strategic mission.
Consider the iPhone 5 in 2012: two million pre-orders in the first 24 hours. Or the iPhone 6 in 2014, which introduced larger screens, capturing markets that demanded phablet-style devices. Each new launch seemed to break the last launch’s record.
By 2018, Apple’s revenue had climbed north of $265 billion, and it became the first U.S. company to surpass a $1 trillion valuation. Then it cruised further to $2 trillion in 2020 and $3 trillion by early 2022—numbers that once felt mythic. Under Cook, Apple’s stock soared over 1,400% from the day he took over as CEO.
Part of that monstrous growth came from Cook’s pivot to services. Though Apple had dabbled in services such as the iTunes Store under Jobs, Cook saw a bigger play. He recognized that hardware cycles would inevitably slow, that the smartphone market would saturate, and that revenue needed new streams. Enter Apple Music (launched in 2015), iCloud expansions, the App Store’s dominance, Apple TV+ (launched in 2019), Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+, and more. By 2021, services revenue reached $68 billion. In 2022, it soared to $78 billion. The “i” prefix that once signified hardware was turning into a multi-pronged ecosystem of subscription services that locked users into Apple’s walled garden—willingly, because the experience was seamless. Cook leveraged the brand loyalty that Jobs had built, but he monetized it in recurring monthly fees. That shift was so massive that it basically turned Apple into a two-headed dragon: a hardware giant that also minted money from an ever-expanding set of digital offerings.
Then came Apple Watch, launched in 2015. It was perhaps the biggest product category launched entirely under Cook’s watch. The watch’s success was not immediate—initial reviews were mixed, and critics said Apple was losing steam. But by 2020, Apple Watch controlled more than 36% of the global smartwatch market, surpassing long-established watchmakers in total units shipped. Cook aimed to make the Watch a health and fitness device, forging partnerships with medical institutions and focusing on health features like ECG. This created a loyal base of users who not only wore an Apple device on their wrist, but also generated data that integrated with the iPhone, tying them deeper into Apple’s ecosystem.
AirPods, launched in 2016, were similarly ridiculed at first for their design. Yet by 2021, AirPods and other wearable sales hit $12.9 billion, and Apple commanded over half of the global market for true wireless earbuds. Meanwhile, Cook quietly nurtured the Mac line, culminating in a seismic shift in 2020 with Apple Silicon—custom-designed M1 chips for Macs that replaced Intel. The performance was staggering, with benchmarks often surpassing competitor chips in power efficiency. By 2022, Apple introduced the M2, reinforcing the idea that it would no longer be beholden to external chip suppliers. That vertical integration—once championed by Jobs—was realized on a grand scale under Cook’s leadership, effectively rewriting the Mac’s future.
These product expansions didn’t just happen in a vacuum. They were orchestrated with the same discipline Cook had shown in supply chain management. Factories in China, expansions into India, negotiations with carriers worldwide—Cook balanced all those relationships like a grandmaster. Even as global trade tensions rose between the U.S. and China, Apple’s supply chain rarely faltered. There were indeed controversies over labor practices at Foxconn, but Cook’s top priority remained stable operations, ensuring that new iPhones, iPads, and Macs met insatiable global demand.
One of the more surprising facets of Cook’s era was Apple’s increased emphasis on corporate ethics. Cook, who publicly came out as gay in 2014, took a vocal stand on privacy and data security, repeatedly clashing with social media giants and governments over issues like user data encryption. Apple’s marketing campaigns began to focus on privacy as a product differentiator—“What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.” This stance resonated in an era overshadowed by data leaks and privacy scandals, especially from competitors in the Android ecosystem. So, while the world kept waiting for Apple’s next “revolutionary” product, Cook was quietly fortifying the company’s brand equity by aligning it with user trust and a quasi-ethical stance on data.
Financially, Apple minted money. In 2024, Apple's financial performance continues to demonstrate its robust growth and diversified revenue streams. For the fiscal 2024 first quarter, Apple posted quarterly revenue of $119.6 billion, with earnings per diluted share of $2.18. In the second quarter, revenue was $90.8 billion, with a record-breaking Services revenue of $23.87 billion, representing a 14% year-over-year growth.
Key Financial Highlights: Apple recently announced an unprecedented $110 billion stock buyback program, which is the largest in the company's history. The company's market value has approached $2.86 trillion, making it the second-most valuable company after Microsoft. The company continues to demonstrate financial strength through strategic investments, product innovation, and a diversified revenue model that extends beyond iPhone sales.
All the while, Cook maintained a low-key style. He rarely overshadowed product events in the way Jobs had done. His keynotes were measured, sometimes called “boring” by Apple’s biggest fans. But that’s precisely what gave Apple a newfound stability that many believed impossible after Jobs’s death. If Dharma is a path laid out by one’s forebearers, Cook’s path was simply fulfilling the operational prophecy Jobs had always envisioned for Apple: a self-sustaining machine of innovation that wouldn’t crumble without its founder. By the late 2010s, Apple had eclipsed $2 trillion in market cap, surpassing oil giants and pushing the boundaries of what a tech company could achieve in global finance. When it soared to $3 trillion—albeit briefly—in early 2022, it was a symbolic apex that even Jobs might not have foreseen.
Three
THE CONTINUUM OF DHARMA
That Tim Cook carried Apple to unimaginable heights is undeniable.
But is he a creator on par with Steve Jobs?
Does Apple under Tim Cook still have the “soul” that made people line up for days to buy the next iPhone?
Those are questions the tech world debates ceaselessly. Yet, Cook’s achievements are measurable, and as many analysts point out, tangible in terms of products, revenue, market share, and the intangible brand loyalty that keeps Apple’s ecosystem thriving.
Critics argue that Apple hasn’t introduced anything as revolutionary as the iPhone since Jobs passed. There’s no question the iPhone was an epoch-defining innovation. But Cook’s approach to product evolution may have prevented the brand from stagnating as technology cycles matured. Apple has steadily improved its devices and branched into new categories like wearables, streaming media, and financial services (Apple Card, launched in 2019).
All the while, it invests heavily in future technologies—augmented reality, AI, and rumored expansions into electric vehicles. The secrecy around these projects remains reminiscent of the Jobs era, but Cook has infused them with a corporate discipline that ensures Apple can actually commercialize them at scale, should the time come.
One anecdote that underscores Cook’s style involves a meeting with an underperforming supplier. Legend has it that Cook flew unannounced to the factory, personally walked the floors, identified inefficiencies, and demanded immediate improvements. The supplier’s executives were flabbergasted: CEOs don’t typically do surprise inspections, especially not for a single component line. But that’s Cook: a relentless focus on detail, a man who sees “dharma” in ensuring that every link in the chain is unbreakable.
Jobs once called Cook “not a product guy,” but it was a misdirection. While Cook may not have conjured up the spark for the iPhone or iPad, he has curated a culture where product design and engineering are protected, where top talents like Jony Ive (until 2019) and his successors in industrial design have the freedom to refine and push boundaries. The Apple Watch, for instance, had multiple design prototypes before it reached final production, some so radical that they never saw daylight. Cook, with his operational discipline, gave the design teams the runway and resources to experiment. That balancing act—a combination of creativity and operational muscle—became Apple’s winning formula for the last decade.
Today, Apple stands astride a tech landscape cluttered with the remnants of once-mighty competitors. BlackBerry is gone, Nokia sold its phone division, Microsoft’s smartphone ambitions collapsed, and even Google’s hardware endeavors remain modest compared to Apple’s (And no Pixel 9 series is NOT that great). Meanwhile, Apple’s user base edges ever closer to two billion active devices. Tim Cook’s Apple is a behemoth that rakes in more quarterly profit than some entire industries. Some worry about overreliance on China’s manufacturing base, the looming threat of antitrust legislation, or the possibility of a major shift in consumer tastes. Still, Cook navigates these waters with the steady hand of an operator who once rescued Apple from logistical chaos.
Yet at the heart of this story is the notion that “Steve Jobs’s greatest creation might not have been the iPhone or the Mac—it might have been Tim Cook himself”, the ultimate expression of handing off an organization to someone capable of learning from the past but not shackled by it.
Cook’s leadership style has been critiqued as too cautious or too focused on incremental improvements over paradigm shifts. But the numbers, the market share, and Apple’s unrelenting grip on the cultural zeitgeist tell a different story. In a sense, Cook is the continuum of Dharma—carrying forward the baton, acknowledging that death (the departure of a founder) is inevitable, but forging ahead by upholding and evolving the principles set before him.
Apple’s next decade may well test Cook’s leadership anew. Technologies like augmented reality, rumored Apple Cars, or advanced AI could require leaps of faith reminiscent of Jobs’s biggest bets.
Investors may pressure Apple to disrupt again, consumers may clamor for the “next big thing,” and new regulatory landscapes could challenge the ecosystem Apple has carefully built.
But if there’s one consistent truth of the last twelve years, it’s that betting against Tim Cook is a perilous game. He’s proven again and again that quiet discipline can be as powerful as loud innovation, and that a stable empire can often outlast a swashbuckling kingdom.
The (K)inK.
“Internet piK of the week”
BOXED — 1000 thousands in your pocket…
AFTER STEVE…
I often have a contrarian (K)ink take on the ascension of Tim Cook.
Peeling back the layers of Apple’s ascent under Tim Cook, we find a subtle kink in the story—an uncomfortable truth that defies conventional hype: perhaps world-changing ideas do not always require an iconic, charismatic visionary at the helm.
Maybe the real spark lies in the less glamorous, methodical art of perfecting processes, orchestrating supply chains, and quietly nurturing an ecosystem so seamless that people become devotees without even realizing it. This might be the ultimate inversion of the “genius founder” myth. In Cook’s kingdom, the orchestra, not the soloist, drives the performance.
Jobs bestowed upon Cook an inheritance that was both a blessing and a burden: a brand so steeped in cult-like reverence that any deviation would provoke uproar. Cook, with his quiet confidence, did more than preserve the inheritance—he multiplied it. The kink lies in the realization that Apple’s transformation from a near-trillion-dollar company to a $3 trillion juggernaut was not the result of a single eureka moment. It was a disciplined accrual of many small wins, expansions, and refinements. This challenges the prevailing myth that the only route to meteoric success is radical disruption. Under Cook, Apple proves that thoughtful iteration, consistent execution, and strategic expansion can be just as explosive for growth—if not more so—than one earth-shattering product launch.
When faced with the question “Who After Steve?” the industry expected a pale imitation or a misguided steward. Instead, it got Tim Cook: an improbable masterpiece handcrafted by Jobs, but carefully groomed by Cook’s own decades of experience. If Dharma teaches us that each generation continues the path laid out by its predecessor, then Cook took Jobs’s path, widened it, paved it, and built a global highway of digital innovation on top of it. That’s the kink, the hidden twist: Apple without Steve Jobs didn’t just survive—it thrived beyond anyone’s wildest predictions. And in doing so, Tim Cook redefined leadership for an entire generation of global executives.
This brutal truth stands uncountered. Apple remains a colossus, forging ahead in uncharted territories like custom silicon and subscription-based ecosystems that rival entire industries. The founder departed, yet the vision—refined through operational excellence—still expands.
That is the legacy of Tim Cook: The Masterpiece that Steve Jobs unknowingly perfected, the quiet conductor who turned Apple’s innovation ship from a lost vessel into a steady juggernaut that continues to reshape how we interact with technology—and maybe, in the grand scheme of history, how we interpret Dharma in the innovation world.
