Today marks six years since Steve Jobs passed away at the age of 56. To mark the occasion, current CEO Tim Cook tweeted out a photo of Jobs and the words, “Make something wonderful, and put it out there.”
A great partnership
Remembering Steve today. Still with us, still inspiring us. “Make something wonderful, and put it out there.” pic.twitter.com/7aOCPkwU0U
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) October 5, 2017
The full line Cook is quoting was said by Jobs: “One of the ways people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there. So we need to be true to who we are and remember what’s really important to us. That’s what’s going to keep Apple ‘Apple,’ is if we can keep us ‘us.'”
The quote was used as the opening lines of the recent iPhone X media event, which emanated from the Steve Jobs Theater at the new Apple Campus.
Jobs and Tim Cook worked incredibly closely for years. Cook joined shortly after Steve Jobs had returned to Apple following his wilderness years at NeXT. Apple was just barely profitable after a few disastrous years, and Cook saw an opportunity to work with a Silicon Valley legend like Jobs in turning Apple around.
“Any purely rational consideration of cost and benefits lined up in Compaq’s favor, and the people who knew me best advised me to stay at Compaq,” Cook recalled in his commencement speech at Auburn University. “On that day in early 1998 I listened to my intuition, not the left side of my brain or for that matter even the people who knew me best… no more than five minutes into my initial interview with Steve, I wanted to throw caution and logic to the wind and join Apple. My intuition already knew that joining Apple was a once in a lifetime opportunity to work for the creative genius, and to be on the executive team that could resurrect a great American company.”
Cook eventually stepped in to work as Apple’s CEO during Steve Jobs’ cancer-related medical leaves, before assuming the job full-time in August 2011 — where he has continued to work since then. As intensely private as Cook is, he has often spoken about Jobs’ incredible legacy at Apple.
Now being 56 years old himself — the same age Jobs was when he died — today will doubtless be an additionally poignant moment of reflection for Cook about the enormous debt Apple owes to Steve Jobs.
We’ll update this post if other Apple executives tweet their memories of Steve.
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
3 responses to “Tim Cook pays tribute to Steve Jobs on the day he died”
Move on… seriously Tim
Really? I never worked for Jobs, but Cook did and was mentored by him. By all accounts, Jobs was a singular individual that doesn’t appear very often and who transformed our lives in many ways. It doesn’t strike me as odd or silly that Cook would want to remember the man that made such a difference to so many.
Why should Cook not remember Jobs on the anniversary of his death? Is there no one in your life that you owe a great deal to who has passed and you wish to remember on the anniversary of their passing?
No and I have lost a lot of family including parents that passed away..I don’t sit around and celebrate the date of their death that’s silly they had a good life when here
Tim should fix Apple not worry about celebrating jobs death seems like hes milking it like he’s milking iphone