Steve Jobs, Apple Ceo | featured news

Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs when it comes to leading Apple Inc. As the debut of the new iPhone 5 just proved, that may not be a bad thing. The taller, thinner and lighter phone prompted a rush on Wall Street to raise price targets for Apple stock, but the optimism was not because of a big technological advance or design breakthrough; the "wow" factor that was the trademark of the late Apple co-founder Jobs was decidedly absent.

This is Apple’s second earnings miss under Tim Cook. After the second miss, the scrutiny of Tim Cook’s leadership inevitably comes into play. The big question is, “Are Steve Jobs’ shoes too big to fill?” Steve Jobs was a master at managing expectations. He mastered the art of under promising and over delivering. Steve Jobs perfected the art of managing expectations by not giving good guidance regarding earnings.

In Steve Jobs fashion, Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco with a handful of key stats about its app ecosystem, which Cook called “an economy in itself.”