Tim Cook on his years at Apple: one big mistake and one moment that stopped him in his tracks

Cook, who took over from Steve Jobs in 2011, has overseen Apple’s expansion into services, wearables, and health-focused technology, while also navigating intense competition in smartphones and computing.

The mistake he still remembers

Cook pointed to the 2012 launch of Apple Maps as his first major error in the role. When the app replaced Google Maps as the default on iPhones, it wasn’t ready. Directions were wrong, landmarks were mislabelled, and the backlash was immediate and public. Cook’s explanation was that the team had tested it too locally and misjudged how it would hold up at scale.

What followed was unusual for a company of Apple’s standing. Cook publicly apologised and told users to go use other apps, including Google Maps and competitors, while Apple fixed its own. He described it as “humble pie” but said it was the right call because it kept the user’s interest first.

“We apologised for it, and we said, ‘Go use these other apps. They’re better than ours.’ And that was some humble pie. But it was the right thing for our users. And so it’s an example of keeping the user at the centre of the decisions that we made.”
— Tim Cook on Apple Maps

It’s a useful lens for understanding how Apple tends to operate. The company rarely admits fault openly, which made Cook’s response at the time notable. Apple Maps has since been rebuilt significantly and is now considered competitive with Google Maps in most markets, though Google Maps still holds an edge in depth of data and public transit information in many parts of the world.

Also read: Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple CEO: 5 products that defined his legacy

The moment that meant the most

On the other side of the ledger, Cook pointed to the Apple Watch and its health features as the thing he is most proud of. Not the device itself at launch — the first Apple Watch in 2014 was marketed primarily as a fashion product with relatively basic functionality — but what it became over time.

Cook recalled the first time a user wrote to tell him the Watch had saved their life. He said it “stopped him in his tracks”. Since that first launch, Apple has steadily shifted the Watch’s identity toward health monitoring, adding ECG detection, fall detection, blood oxygen sensing, and irregular heart rhythm alerts over successive generations. It is now arguably the most widely used health-oriented wearable on the market, ahead of competitors like Fitbit and Garmin in terms of mainstream reach, though those brands remain strong in dedicated fitness tracking.

Cook will officially step down on September 1st, handing over to John Ternus, currently Apple’s head of hardware engineering. At the same town hall, Ternus told employees that Apple has a product roadmap that will “change the world” again, though he offered no specifics.

Apple’s annual hardware event typically falls in September, and this year it is expected to include the iPhone 18 Pro and the company’s first foldable iPhone. Ternus will likely be steering his first major launch cycle almost immediately after taking the top role. How he handles that, and how Apple communicates under new leadership, will be an early signal of whether the company’s culture shifts at all or stays exactly as Cook left it.