I don't think anyone other than Tim could have done just as well. If you look at competing tech corps - HP, IBM, Sun, MIPS, SGI, DEC, Nokia, even MS - their run isn't as long, they fail to adapt after a strong start, and the wheels often come off in spectacular ways.

And that's with competent management. (Let's not talk about the multiple management idiocies that happened at HP.)

Apple is now one of the longest lived tech corps. IBM is older but a shadow of its old self. MS is a year or so older, but the rest of FAANG are relatively new.

Cook has kept the plates spinning and turned Apple into a giant revenue machine with a strong R&D back-up. I don't think that's a small achievement, and even if he's helped by the board and senior execs - which of course he is - it's still easy to underestimate the skill that goes into that.

Having said that - he's also turned Apple into a somewhat boring company. The products are nice-looking and usually functional but not particularly thrilling. They feel overpriced. And I suspect some opportunities in home automation, user content creation, and health have been missed.

Cook's Apple is an all-American bureaucratic behemoth - a kind of modern General Electric which keeps churning out high levels of competence, but not much inspiration or excitement, and not a little frustration and irritation over nickel-and-diming of users and developers.

Someone else might not have made Apple as profitable, but personally I wouldn't have minded a friendlier and more inventive and adventurous company.