Tim Cook's legacy: Services, chips and wearables that reshaped Apple

Tim Cook, Apple’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), announced to step down at 65 years, marking an end to more than a decade of reign. While his tenure as CEO ends on September 1 of this year, he leaves behind a lasting legacy at Apple that will be remembered for transforming the company into a services and silicon powerhouse.

Tim Cook scaled Apple into one of the world’s most valuable companies, expanding the company by introducing services like Apple Music and iCloud, building custom silicon with M-series chips, announcing wearables devices, and building a secure ecosystem across services.

Here is a detailed breakdown of Tim Cook's major achievements, innovations, and breakthroughs as Apple CEO:

From App Store to iCloud: Cook built Apple’s service ecosystem

Tim Cook took over as CEO in 2011 following Steve Jobs’ death. He went on to scale Apple’s business by expanding its services ecosystem, such as apps and subscriptions. During his tenure, the App Store ecosystem became significantly popular, and now it handles over $1.3 trillion in transactions.

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Rise of Apple Pay, Apple Music, iCloud, and Apple TV+. These services generated about $106 billion in revenue in 2025. The high-profit ecosystem of apps, payments, and subscriptions now drives a big part of Apple’s earnings.

Apple Silicon that redefines its ecosystem

During his tenure, Apple also moved away from Intel processors and announced its silicon for Macs with the M-series chips. This shift started with the M1 chip in 2020 for MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini, and has continued through the latest M5 series chips. 

With the custom chips, Mac reportedly becomes faster and more power-efficient, providing long battery life, while outperforming chips from rivals like Intel and AMD at the time.

The start of smart wearable products

After dominating the devices, ecosystem, and service space, Apple entered the wearable market with the introduction of the Apple Watch in 2015. While it received mixed reviews, Cook scaled the product from being a fashionable accessory to a health and fitness companion. Features like ECG monitoring, blood oxygen tracking, and fall detection helped redefine its purpose.

In 2016, Apple disrupted the personal audio market with AirPods, the first "true wireless" earbud format by the company. Now, Apple dominates the wearable market with advanced features and offerings. 

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Spatial Computing with Apple Vision Pro

At WWDC 2023, Apple showcased its Apple Vision Pro, which marked the start of the spatial computing era under Cook. Priced at a whopping $3499 in the US, the product failed to reach mass consumers, but served as an early step in Apple’s broader push into spatial computing and next-generation interfaces.

Later, Apple's manufacturing partner, Luxshare, reportedly halted production of the original device at the start of 2025, after shipping roughly 390,000 units globally

Apple’s AI era kicked off, but not as planned

In 2024, Apple kicked off its AI era with the introduction of Apple Intelligence. While Apple is yet to make a breakthrough, 2026 is expected to be the year when it comes to innovating in the space of AI. Cook described Apple Intelligence as a “personal intelligence system” that combines generative AI with a user’s personal context.

In January 2026, Apple announced a multi-year partnership with Google. Therefore, Apple’s next-gen foundation models will now incorporate Google Gemini for complex cloud tasks while keeping sensitive data on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute (PCC).

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Apple’s $4 trillion milestones

Under Cook, Apple became a serial record-breaker in market value. In 2018, Apple became the first company to reach a market capitalisation of $1 trillion. Apple then became the first company to hit $3 trillion in January 2022, and in 2025, it became the third company to break through the $4 trillion market value milestone.

Now, Apple’s future will be in the hands of John Ternus, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, who has now been appointed as Apple CEO.