There’s this thing in technology, almost a disease, where the definition of success is making the most. How many clicks did you get, how many active users do you have, how many units did you sell? Everybody in technology seems to want big numbers. Steve never got carried away with that. He focused on making the best.

That took a change in my own thinking when I came to the company [Cook left Compaq to join Apple in 1998]. I had been in the Windows world before that, and that world was all about making the most. It still is.

When Apple looks at what categories to enter, we ask these kinds of questions: What are the primary technologies behind this? What do we bring? Can we make a significant contribution to society with this? If we can’t, and if we can’t own the key technologies, we don’t do it. That philosophy comes directly from him and it still very much permeates the place. I hope that it always will.

~ Tim Cook