GoKawiilIn the coming days, a lot will be said about Tim Cook's legacy at Apple. He expanded the company's products into new categories like wearables and headphones, debuted a suite of services, developed a strong customer base in China and led the company to a $4 trillion valuation.
From the moment Cook officially took the CEO position in 2011, he was in the shadow of his predecessor and Apple founder Steve Jobs, whose legacy extended far beyond a lineup of successful products. Jobs' legacy was being the face of Apple, aggressively pushing for user-oriented design simplicity in the background while singing their praises in the public spotlight. His successor had big shoes to fill and grew the company from a more private vantage, but his legacy is more than just how much Apple is worth. Cook's lasting impact can also be measured in another way: how much Apple's products have become status symbols.
I remember my parents buying the 1998 iMac in Bondi Blue, the first major product Steve Jobs released after returning to lead Apple. "There's no step 3!" came Jeff Goldblum's voice in a classic commercial summarizing the prodigal CEO's vision of the company's products: easy-to-use and chic alternatives to boring beige boxes. This culminated in the white-plastic era of lamp iMacs, MacBooks, iPods and iPhones spearheaded by designer Jony Ive.
Apple products were cool and big sellers when Cook took over as CEO. But he focused on the iPhone as a new center of the company, using it as a beachhead for its new unified device ecosystem. Once the iPhone was in people's pockets, iOS's easy-to-use interface and synergy with MacOS (sharing iMessage from 2012 onward) and WatchOS (with the first Apple Watch in 2015) led them to stick with Apple's smartphone line. Then their friends did, too, and discovered that their text conversations fell into two camps: blue with other iPhone owners, or green with Android owners.
At Code 2022, Recode's Kara Swisher led a roundtable memorial for Steve Jobs featuring Jony Ive, Laurene Powell Jobs and Tim Cook. David Lumb / CNET
In 2017, the iPhone X rang in a new era of home-buttonless, all-screen-front handset design and, subsequently, higher prices -- the first time it neared four figures (though cleverly priced at $999). Soon, more iMessage features expanded the divide between those paying more money for iPhones and those often paying less for Android devices. This has led to social stigma for those sending "green bubble" chats. Apple was in no rush to bridge this gap, and at Code 2022, I watched as Cook himself told a fan to "buy your mom an iPhone."
Apple has somewhat bowed to pressure on this issue, adding some extra messaging functionality between iPhones and Android devices when it incorporated the data-based RCS messaging standard into its handsets back in 2024. But the stigma persists, and iPhones have continued to enjoy social superiority in many markets. That's undoubtedly contributed to iPhone sales over the years, ensuring Apple's phones remain the company's highest-selling devices by a long shot.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Cook's era has seen many products come out that openly resemble Apple products to coast on their credibility. From the Huawei Matebook X of 2017 to the HP Dragonfly Pro of 2023, plenty of laptop makers ape Apple's sleek silver MacBook aesthetics. And considering all the phones I saw at MWC looking like dead ringers for the iPhone 17 Pro down to its signature orange hue, iPhone envy is alive and well.
CEO Tim Cook and Bono of the band U2. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Tim Cook rings in the celebrity era of Apple
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