Tim Cook: The new man at Apple's helm

Apple's new CEO Tim Cook has big shoes to fill as he attempts walk in the footsteps of the retired Steve Jobs - hailed by many as a visionary and genius. But Cook is already known for his cool leadership and unflappable style - will he continue Apple's meteoric rise?

Twenty-three years ago, when Tim Cook was studying for his MBA, he produced a 25-year plan of his anticipated career trajectory, says The Independent on Sunday. It said nothing about becoming chief executive of the world's largest technology company. "I didn't understand it then, but life has a habit of throwing you curve balls," says Cook. It was perhaps his first lesson as understudy to the mercurial Steve Jobs. Now he faces one of the toughest challenges in corporate history: maintaining the latter's extraordinary legacy.

Unlike Jobs, who led a gilded Californian life before dropping out of college to meditate in India before starting Apple out of a garage, he's the sort of man "who makes the trains run on time". The son of an Alabama shipyard worker, Cook studied engineering before sorting out the supply chains of such solid corporate worthies as IBM and Compaq. When he joined Silicon Valley's most disruptive firm in 1998, it was against the advice of his peers. Apple then was so down and out that few reckoned even Jobs could revive it, says the San Jose Mercury News. But Cook took an uncharacteristic decision. "No more than five minutes into my interview with Steve, I wanted to throw caution and logic to the wind."

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