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."

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."

Patrick Moorhead, the CEO of Texas-based analytics firm Moor Insights & Strategy, said in an interview with CNBC that Ternus is a "continuity candidate" and not a "risk-taking visionary."

"What I'm expecting and what the streets should expect is tight operational execution, margin management, and incremental product iteration," Moorhead said.

He added, "I think that's what the institutional side of the house really wants, as opposed to swinging around the room AI features, which up to this point, the company hasn't needed at all."

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."

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.