Steve Jobs built consumer products that he wanted for himself, his family and friends. He would push for out of the box ideas while scrutinizing every detail of the product, optimized and repeated.
Tim Cook builds the supply chain that he wants for himself, his shareholders and coworkers. He pushes for out of the box ideas while scrutinizing every detail of the supply chain, optimizes and repeats.
Tim Cook builds supply chain the way Jobs built for consumers. Jobs needed customer insight, creativity and societal foresight. Instead to make product decisions Cook has a giant user base to "A/B test" (between different phone models/features every quarter), he can afford to wait/purchase/curate good ideas rather than use foresight, and purchase creativity and ingenuity.
Apple no longer needs another Steve Jobs at the throne, they have access to hire two generations of the global population "raised by" and trying to emulate Steve Jobs while having the skills and 90% the talent of Woz. Apple today needs a master of execution that has a willingness to find the right new talent and give them a supply chain platform like never before seen. e.g. If you're talented in CPU and GPU development, where do you want to work in 2021/2022? Cook's supply chain optimization for A1 and M1 has made Apple one of the top three players in the industry. If as a developer, you want to re-think the need for a motherboard, or how to best integrate a Modem with the CPU (maybe a GPU/Neural Net enhanced storage/network card?), there is only one company you can go to right now to build that creative dream. Cook can leverage that creativity and ingenuity to delight customers while pushing like crazy on the supply chain.
Recent quote from Elon Musk: "Every company will soon have EVs. Every company will also have Autonomous driving. But no other company will be able to out compete Tesla at manufacturing." Similarly, Amazon Retails' newest CEO Dave Clark used to head the supply chain logistics. Clearly Apple's board, Amazon's board and Tesla's board all focused on the same thing, supply chain and logistics, imply there is some clear long term customer and shareholder value about it.