What smart people are saying about Tim Cook's legacy at Apple

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, wrote his farewell to Cook in a Monday post on X.

"Tim Cook is a legend," Altman said. "I am very thankful for everything he has done and I am very thankful for Apple."

"Apple would not be the Apple of today without Tim Cook," Warren Buffett told CNBC. "What he has done with Apple could not be done by anybody I've known."

"Covering the world and getting along with countries with all kinds of histories and doing right by the customer, people who worked for him, certainly the shareholders, which we were lucky enough to be one of... he's one of a kind," he added.

Apple is Berkshire Hathaway's largest shareholding.

Ben Bajarin, CEO at consumer tech research firm Creative Strategies, said Cook will get a lot of credit for helping Apple scale, but that "an equally important part of his legacy is cultural."

"His job was not only to grow Apple after Steve Jobs," he wrote on X. "It was to preserve as much of Apple's core identity, values, and operating culture as possible while leading it through a vastly different era."

"These will be big shoes to fill and the timing of Cook exiting stage left as CEO could make sense but also creates questions," the tech analyst said in an X post.

"Apple is making a major transition on its AI strategy and longtime CEO and legendary Cook leaving now is a surprise," he added. "We agree with Ternus as the pick."

In a separate interview on CNBC, Ives called Cook "one of the best CEOs in modern-day history."

Andrés Avila Páez, cofounder of Arturito AI, said in a post on X, translated from Spanish, that Cook's legacy was one of "pure operational engineering."

"Steve Jobs had the idea and created the iPhone. Tim Cook imagined and designed something even more difficult: the machine that manufactures it 200 million times a year without failing," he said.

Robert Reich, professor at UC Berkeley and former US Secretary of Labor, took a more critical view of the resignation, urging people to remember Cook's $1 million contribution to Trump's inauguration.

"He fawned over Trump and gifted him a 24-karat gold plaque (as Apple lobbied for tariff exemptions)," Reich wrote on X of Cook.

Joseph Carlson, founder of Qualtrim and host of "The Joseph Carlson Show" on YouTube, defended Cook against critics who proclaim "Tim Cook didn't innovate!"

In a post on X, he listed products created at Apple while Cook was CEO, including the Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Pay, Face ID, and more.

"Don't come at me with this idiotic take that Tim Cook's Apple didn't innovate," he wrote.

Tech entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano spotlighted how Apple's stock has grown during Cook's 15-year tenure.

In an X post on Monday, the founder and CEO of Professional Capital Management said, "He oversaw more than 2,000% increase in the stock while he was in charge."

Michael Antonelli, a market strategist at Baird, praised Cook for the value of Apple's stock surging 2,300% under his tenure.

"That's INSANE. Incredible stewardship," he wrote on X, adding, "Tim Cook probably turned more normal people into millionaires than 99% of CEOs."

"I applaud Tim for all that he has done," Munster said in a video posted on X.

He suggested Cook would be best remembered for his work on services — such as iCloud, Apple Pay, and AppleCare — which now account for about 25% of the company's revenue.

"Because Ternus has been with Apple for 25 years, undoubtedly that attention to detail won't be compromised," he added. "They will continue to pursue that as their No. 1 goal as they start to really flex and bring on new people and new talent to really go after what will be an AI-first world."

Sawyer Merritt, a tech and EV enthusiast on X, said that he hoped Apple would take more risks under Ternus' tenure as CEO.

"No-one can deny that Tim was an incredible operations guy," Merritt said in a Monday X post. "Apple stock went up ~2,000% during his 15 years as CEO, but John being an actual engineer I think is what Apple needs at this stage."

He said Apple has a lot of "catching up to do on the AI front," and he hoped Ternus would bring that to the company.