Tim Cook Replaces Steve Jobs on Time’s 100 Most Influential List

Since Apple has become a hallmark in the new technology category, it’s no wonder that whenever the company has a new leader, that person almost always makes it to the top. And the easiest way to know you’re on top of the world (albeit the road to get there surely isn’t easy) is by being in the year’s Time 100.

Time magazine’s Time 100 is the annual issue that celebrates and lists the people who have created big waves in various industries. In 2010, Time named Steve Jobs, Apple’s late CEO, one of the most influential ‘thinkers’ of his generation. Now, barely a year after selling an iPhone 4S to the world, Jobs’ successor, Tim Cook also made it to the most influential list. And yes, 2011 was the single year in between during which no person from Apple made it to Time 100. Still, this proves that Apple is worth more than just big bucks; it’s worth a year of influence and technology-making.

Since Jobs is not around to make a statement for Cook and the people at Apple are far too busy to create poems for their President, former Vice President of the United States and Apple board member created a prose to go with the listing saying, “It is difficult to imagine a harder challenge than following the legendary Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple. Yet Tim Cook, a soft-spoken, genuinely humble and quietly intense son of an Alabama shipyard worker and a homemaker, hasn’t missed a single beat.” Aside from being a competent successor, Al Gore also praised Cook for leading the tech company smoothly and implementing major policy changes for one of the most valued giants in the industry.

Unlike what hipsters think, Tim Cook did not simply take the stage and introduce and ultimately start selling an iPhone 4S to Apple fans and become the president. He has long been running the company from the background as a VP for Worldwide Sales and Operations and was also COO. He was also the one who thought about halting manufacturing operations for Apple by simply closing down factories and warehouses which had miraculously reduced the company’s inventories and earned them more bucks than ever. Cook also took Jobs’ place twice before, during Jobs’ ailing months away from the company as he went through pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant. After Jobs’ passing, Cook carefully mounted the throne as Apple’s President and sailed the company’s big Ark of new technology, also selling an iPhone and a new iPad along the way.

Aside from Tim Cook, another notable who etched the way for Apple is Walter Isaacson, who is a well known biographer and who had encapsulated Jobs’ life by creating the only authorized biography about the late Apple co-founder. He was also a former editor of Time magazine, former CEO and Chairman of CNN, and was lauded for his influence as a writer, editor and historian. He is famous for putting onto paper the minds and lives of geniuses like Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Henry Kissinger. His book, Steve Jobs was a best-seller after it was released only days after the death of the man who started selling an iPhone to the world.