Tim Cook says Apple at 50 is ‘in a party of one’ that can’t be replicated

David Pogue, author of the new book Apple: The First 50 Years, interviewed Apple CEO Tim Cook for CBS’s “Sunday Morning” program ahead of the company’s upcoming 50th anniversary.

Tim Cook hopes Steve Jobs’ principles will be the DNA of Apple in 200 years

Apple, which was founded in 1976, will turn 50 on April 1.

Cook says Apple as a company is having to “build a new muscle” to acknowledge the half-century milestone.

Apple instead focuses on “the next thing and improving something that exists today,” Cook says. “And you know, trying to see around the corner and giving people something that they didn’t know that they wanted, and so it’s been different.”

A key part of that exercise is reflecting on Steve Jobs, who died in 2011.

Cook says “the principles that [Jobs] laid out for the company” are “still living today,” like focusing on enriching lives and doing it all over again.

Cook also says “it was such a gift for me” for Jobs to leave him with the advice to not bog the company down in wondering what Steve would do after he was gone, avoiding the Disney problem (after Walt was no longer around to run the company he founded).

Still, Cook says, Steve’s “principles are the DNA of this company 50 years after its inception and I hope 100 years and 200 years into the future because they’re so incredible.”

As for Apple in 2026, Tim Cook says the company is in a party of one:

“I think Apple is such a unique place. It’s not possible to replicate it. That’s how I feel. I know a lot of different companies and I think Apple is just, you know, just in a party of one.”