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Steve Jobs steps down as Apple's CEO. His resignation is a surprise and a shock. His battle with cancer is well-known, but many hoped he would remain at Apple's helm for many more years. After all, the iPhone and iPad seemed to be just getting started.
Tim Cook is named as Jobs' successor. Cook is the former Chief Operating Officer and a 13-year veteran of the company. As COO, he was the de-facto CEO, responsible for Apple's day-to-day operations. He also previously acted as temporary CEO during Jobs' medical leaves of absemce.
All over the world, the media is asking the same question: Will Apple be OK?
Tim Cook starts responding to customer emails just like Steve Jobs did. Jobs was known for frequently emailing back and forth with Apple fans and customers from his public sjobs@apple.com address. It looks like Tim Cook is picking up the mantle and doing the same.
Another iPhone prototype is lost in a San Francisco bar. This time, it's a test prototype of the iPhone 5. In 2010, an Apple employee lost an early iPhone 4 prototype then sold it to Gizmodo. The latest lost iPhone 5 was lost at a tequila lounge called Cava 22 in San Francisco’s Mission District.
One of the first things Cook implements as CEO is Apple’s new charitable donations program. The company will match employee donations to non-profits of up to $10,000 per year. Steve Jobs never publicly gave money away or promoted charity.
Tim Cook unveils the iPhone 4S at Apple's "Let's Talk iPhone" event on October 4, 2011, on the Apple Campus in Cupertino, CA. The keynote is the first led by Cook following Jobs' death.
Steve Jobs dies at his home in Palo Alto, CA, after a long battle with a rare form of pancreatic cancer that publicly surfaced for the first time in 2004. He died with his wife, children and sister at his side. In April of 2009, Jobs underwent a dangerous liver transplant after taking his first leave of medical absence earlier that year. He continued to battle cancer while intermittently serving at Apple until his formal resignation in August 2011. His last words were reportedly: ""Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow." Tim Cook sends out an email to Apple employees and flies the flags on campus at half-mast. Prominent Silicon Valley businessmen, President Obama, and countless others offer their condolences about Jobs.
iCloud becames available to use via an iTunes update. iCloud has 20 million users in less than a week after launch.
A private memorial is held for Steve Jobs memorial at Stanford Memorial Church. It attracts a huge number of luminaries, who came to pay their respects to Apple’s former CEO and co-founder. Among them were a long list of celebrities, musicians, CEOs, and the former president Bill Clinton.
Fan tributes to Steve Jobs grow at Apple's retail stores worldwide. Windows are covered in Post-It notes with heartfelt tributes. Flowers and candles litter sidewalks outside. The memorials are unprecedented for a corporate leader.
The iPhone 4S is greeted with smaller crowds than previous models when it goes on sale on Friday morning. The smaller crowds are due to higher-than-normal pre-orders. AT&T said that the demand for the iPhone 4S was "extraordinary". Over 200,000 pre-orders were placed within 12 hours of release through AT&T.
California Governor Jerry Brown announces that October 16th will be known as “Steve Jobs Day” statewide.
Apple posts yet another record quarter to conclude its fiscal year 2011, led by continued growth of the iPhone, iPad and Mac. Quarterly revenue of $28.27 billion and profit of $6.62 billion make it the best September quarter in the company's history.
Apple holds a celebration to honor Jobs at its headquarters in Cupertino. The event is attended by thousands of employees and tens of thousands of retail employees who watch by video. Artists Nora Jones and Coldplay play at the event. Tim Cook addressed the crowd and head designer Jony Ive gave a funny but moving eulogy.
Apple’s Senior Vice President of Retail Operations, Ron Johnson, leaves Apple to become CEO of JC Penney. Johnson joined Apple from Target in 2000 and was responsible for the concept of Apple’s stores, with their low-key community vibe, solution stations and Genius Bars. He helped build the chain of more than 300 stores into the most successful in retail, including some amazing flagship properties.
Enter story info hereOne of Tim Cook’s first changes as Apple’s new CEO was the introduction of a corporate matching program for charitable donations to nonprofits. Apple pledged to match donations of up to $10,000 per US employee per year. In less than two months, Apple and it’s employees have already raised $2.6 million for nonprofits.
In Hong Kong, violent fights break out between iPhone 4S customers and a group of South Asian “professional queuers” who attempted to push their way to the front of the line. They are labeled professional queuers because they are paid to stand in line and collect the sought-after iPhone for a third-party — usually a grey market reseller. Rather than joining the back of the queue when they arrived, the group push their way to the front, threatening customers who weren’t happy about moving. Police are called the break up the violence that ensued and manage to calm things down. When they leave, however, “all hell broke loose,” according to a GizChina report, and the police had to return a second time. This time they forced all customers to leave.
Apple announces that former Genentech CEO Arthur D. Levinson has filled the vacant Chairman of the Board position that Steve Jobs left empty after his death in October. Levinson has been on Apple’s board since 2005 as co-lead director and served on all three board committees over that period. In addition, Apple announces that Disney President and CEO Robert A. Iger will be joining Apple’s board and will serve on the audit committee.
Siri can help you find drugstores and bars, but the iPhone 4S digital assistant is clueless when it comes to the locations of abortion clinics, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Ask Siri where you can get an abortion and she’s not so happy to comply. In fact, she’ll do the exact opposite and look for anti-abortion pregnancy “crisis” centers. This makes her an “anti-choice extremist,” according to one petition, which is called for Apple to make changes to its new intelligent assistant.
Apple opens a unique store at New York's Grand Central Terminal. It is Apple's fifth NYC store and also one of its largest. The store sits along the main hall's east balcony. It has cavernous ceilings and is 23,000 square feet.
Mac App Store hits 100 million downloads after only being open for less than a year. The iOS App Store is announced to include 500,000 apps and recorded 18 billion downloads.
Tim Cook’s 2011 compensation totals an impressive $376,180,000, according to Apple's 2012 proxy statement for investors.
Tim Cook says he is "offended" and "outraged" by a lengthy New York Times report detailing the harsh reality behind the mistreatment of Chinese factory workers. Cook responds with a staff email that brands the report “patently false and offensive.” Cook reveals that he is “outraged” by the report, and reassured his team that “we’ve made a great deal of progress and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers.”
Apple's stock reaches an all-time high during mid-day trading on January 9, peaking at $427.75 per share. The last record was set in October of 2011 at $426.70 per share. Despite some slightly tumultuous times on Wall Street after Apple failed to meet analyst expectations with its fourth-quarter earnings report, Apple stock continued to climb to new heights year after year.
Consumer group SumOfUs launches a petition calling for Apple to “stop worker abuse,” with over 35,000 signatures collected in just 24 hours.
The iPhone 4S goes big overseas with 21 additional countries added to the places it is sold. Those additional countries include: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and Uganda.
Apple halts sales of the iPhone 4S in China in the wake of a near-riot by angry scalpers. “Unfortunately, we were unable to open our store at Sanlitun due to the large crowd, and to ensure the safety of our customers and employees, iPhone will not available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being,” Apple announces.
Apple sets a new record for quarterly revenue and profit in Q1 of 2012. The company nets a whopping $46.33 billion in total and a mind-boggling $13.06 billion in profit -- that's nearly twice what Apple announced for the same time last year -- and that was also a record for the time. The company is growing at an enormous rate.
The former CEO of British chain Dixons is named head of Apple's retail operation. John Browett, who has been CEO of Dixons Retail in the U.K. since 2007, is the new Senior Vice President of Retail. Replacing retail genius Ron Johnson wasn’t an easy task for Apple, which began seeking a replacement in June, when Johnson announced he was leaving to become CEO of JC Penney.
Retailers in Shijiazhuang, China, halt sales of Apple’s iPad after it was claimed that the Cupertino company does not have the rights to the iPad trademark in China. Proview Technology, which claims to own the iPad name, is seeking $38 million in compensation from Apple and seems to have secured a ban in at least one city as Chinese authorities begin confiscating the device.
Following claims that it isn’t doing enough to end worker mistreatment in Chinese factories, Apple hires the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to “conduct special voluntary audits of Apple’s final assembly suppliers, including Foxconn factories in Shenzhen and Chengdu, China.” The move is seen as a big step in cleaning up the supply chain. Apple is the first tech company to work with the FLA, which built a reputation reforming the supply chain of the food and sneaker industries.
Tim Cook bluntly addresses charges of worker abuse in Apple’s supply chain at a Goldman Sachs conference. In his keynote speech, Cook says Apple will not rest until every worker is guaranteed a fair, safe working environment without discrimination and at a competitive salary. Any suppliers who don’t take care of their workers will be fired. “First thing everyone should know is that Apple takes working conditions very seriously, and we have for a very long time,” said Cook. “Whether they are in Europe, Asia or the United States, we care about every worker. I’ve spent a lot of times in factories personally, not just as an executive. I worked in papermill in Alabama and an aluminum factory in Pennsylvania; I care, and we have hundreds of employees who work in our factories full time. They care too. We are very connected to worker conditions on a granular level.”
Tim Cook introduces the new iPad at a special press event in San Francisco. Everyone expects it to be called the iPad 3, but Cook says it is just called it “The new iPad.” It features a new, high-resolution Retina Display and is well-received by critics.
Apple CEO Tim Cook cashes in $11.1 million worth of Apple stock. 20,178 of Cook’s shares are sold off through a series of 5 transactions at various individual stock prices ranging from $547-$551. Not a bad pay day.
Path CEO Dave Morin is summoned to Cupertino by Apple CEO Tim Cook to explain a privacy scandal his app caused. When it is discovered that popular app Path secretly uploaded an iPhone user’s entire address book to its servers, the media reacted very strongly and Apple is forced to get involved. Path was violating Apple’s terms of agreement, and it was discovered that many other apps in the App Store had been doing the same thing for quite some time.
Tim Cook says that Apple will use its vast hoard of cash to initiate a quarterly dividend payment to current shareholders, as well as buy back almost $10 billion in stock to help avoid dilution of employee equity.
Under pressure from Tim Cook, AT&T finally starts unlocking older iPhones that are no longer under contract. Carrier unlocking allows customers “in good standing” to switch out the AT&T SIM for a SIM on another network. This is also good for customers who want to travel with their AT&T iPhone internationally.
Chunli Fu of Qingdao, China, downloaded the 25 billionth app and wins a $10,000 iTunes gift card. This equates to approximately 63,087 Chinese yuan, or more than two and a half times what the average Chinese person earns per year. Apple flies her to the Beijing to accept her award. Chunli was escorted to Apple’s Chinese corporate headquarters and then taken to the Sanlitun Apple store to accept her gift card and talk to the press.
Tim Cook pays a visit to Foxconn’s new plant in Zhengzhou, where the company employs around 120,000 workers, some of whom are assembling Apple’s iPhone. Apple releases a photo of the visit which makes worldwide headlines and reinforces Cook's commitment to reforming Apple's labor practices.
Apple teams up with China’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs to audit its Chinese supply chain for pollution.
Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung meet and try and head off a patent dispute headed to court. The two sit for nine hours on Monday and seven hours on Tuesday, but after two days and 16 hours, they still can't come to any “clear agreement.” Apple accuses Samsung of copying its design and Samsung demands Apple pay royalties for using its wireless transmission technology.
Apple and Samsung have been trading body blows in their legal war-on-the-street for awhile now, suing and countersuing each other the Earth over for patent and IP violations. Now U.S. Judge Lucy Koh has ordered Apple CEO Tim Cook and Gee-Sung Choi to stop suing each other for a second and meet to try to talk it all out.
Tim Cook is featured in TIME Magazine’s list of The World’s 100 Most Influential People In The World. Cook’s appearance shows that he’s doing a great job of following in the footsteps of former Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs, who stepped down to make way for Cook back in August 2011.
Pitching an overseas tax break, Tim Cook meets with U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner at the U.S. Capitol. The details of the meeting remain unknown, but Cook was likely sweet talking Boehner to pass a tax holiday Apple wants so it can bring back billions in offshore cash at a low tax rate.
Apple nearly doubled its profits in Q2 2012 compared to Q2 2011, and practically quadrupled it compared to Q2 2010.
Apple continues its rollout of the new iPad in nine additional countries today, making the sought-after tablet available in 57 markets worldwide. This is now the fourth phase of rollouts since the device made its debut on March 16, but one of Apple’s key territories is still without it -- China.
Arise Sir Ive! Jony Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, is knighted at Buckingham Palace in London. The 45-year-old Brit, who is responsible for the iconic designs behind Apple’s computers and iOS devices, said he is “both humbled and sincerely grateful” for the “absolutely thrilling honor.”
Watch Tim Cook in action in this full D10 interview. He talks about secrecy at Apple, the supply chain in China and the legacy of Steve Jobs.
In his first big public interview, Tim Cook takes the stage at the Wall Street Journal's annual D: All Things Digital conference. Steve Jobs granted several interviews at D conferences over the years, including a famous meet-up with Microsoft’s Bill Gates in 2007. Cook comes across as quiet, competent and thoughtful -- if a little bit boring.
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