What we’ve learned about Apple's private CEO Tim Cook

By Tim Higgins
As Tim Cook becomes more comfortable on centre stage as Apple's CEO, the public is starting to learn more about how past events shaped the intensely private man. Cook, who told George Washington University’s graduating class over the weekend to fight injustice, drew on his experience growing up in 1970s Alabama of Governor George Wallace, where he saw firsthand segregation and the trampling of human rights.


“Your challenge is to find work that pays the rent, that puts food on the table and lets you do what is right and good and just,” Cook, 54, told the crowd of 25,000 assembled on Sunday. “Find your North Star, let it guide you in life and work and in your life’s work.”

“I had to figure out what was right and true,” Cook said. “It was a search, it was a process, it drew on the moral sense that I learned from my parents, and in church and in my own heart and led me on my own journey of discovery. I found books in the public library that they probably didn’t know they had. They all pointed to the fact that Wallace was wrong — that injustices like segregation have no place in our world, that equality is a right.”

Cook shared how his first trip to the US capital left a lasting impression on him. It came after winning an essay contest at age 16 and shaking hands with Wallace, a vocal advocate for segregation, at an awards ceremony.

“I shook his hand, as we were expected to, but shaking his hand felt like a betrayal of own beliefs, it felt wrong, like I was selling a piece of my soul,” Cook said.

The remarks add more colour to an otherwise sparse picture of Cook, who was Steve Jobs’s behind-the-scenes deputy for years. While Cook took on a more public role when he became CEO in 2011, he has recently become more vocal and assertive about revealing details about himself. Here are some things we’ve learned about Cook during the past year:

HE WANTS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Cook has increasingly used his public profile to advocate for causes he believes in, including gay rights. In October, Cook criticised his home state for not protecting people based on their sexual orientation. A few days later, in an essay in Bloomberg Businessweek, he said he was gay. “I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me,” he wrote.

In March, Cook joined other Silicon Valley leaders in criticising Indiana for enacting a law that they said targeted the gay community. The statute, which gave businesses the right not to serve gays and lesbians on religious grounds, was later changed.

HE’LL GIVE MOST OF HIS MONEY AWAY

A Fortune magazine article in March revealed that Cook plans to donate most of his fortune, estimated to be worth about $780 million, to charity — after paying for his 10-year-old nephew’s college tuition.

HE HAS WEIRD SLEEPING HABITS

Cook wakes up every day at 3:45am The first thing he does is put on his Apple Watch, Cook told the Telegraph earlier this year. He slept in until 4:30am on the morning he hosted an event for the media in San Francisco to give more details about the smartwatch, tweeting that he “got some extra rest for today’s event.” Cook is usually in bed by 9:30pm, or maybe 10.

HE NEEDS SOME FRIENDS

On stage at the March 9 Watch event, Cook demonstrated how the watch lets users send special heartbeat messages to each other. “This is an incredibly intimate way to tell someone you’re thinking about them,” he said. “I hope someone sends me one of those.”

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs used to pester Cook to have more of a social life and even called Cook’s mother in Alabama to check up on him, according to the new book, Becoming Steve Jobs by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli.

HE REALLY MISSES JOBS

Cook’s affection for his old friend was so strong that he offered Jobs a piece of his liver when the Apple co-founder needed a transplant, as per the book. Cook hasn’t deleted Jobs’ phone number from his iPhone and keeps his old boss’s office the way it was.