Cook
One day back then, he convened a meeting with his team, and the discussion turned to a particular problem in Asia.
“This is really bad,” Cook told the group. “Someone should be in China driving this.” Thirty minutes into that meeting Cook looked at Sabih Khan, a key operations executive, and abruptly asked, without a trace of emotion, “Why are you still here?”
Khan, who remains one of Cook’s top lieutenants to this day, immediately stood up, drove to San Francisco International Airport, and, without a change of clothes, booked a flight to China with no return date.
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Though he’s capable of mirth, Cook’s default facial expression is a frown, and his humor is of the dry variety. In meetings he’s known for long, uncomfortable pauses, when all you hear is the sound of his tearing the wrapper of the energy bars he constantly eats.
Mike Janes, who worked with Cook for five years, ultimately as head of Apple’s online store, recalls a Macworld conference in New York when Cook convened a meeting in the afternoon after one of Jobs’ mesmerizing morning keynotes. “A number of us had tickets to see the Mets that night,” says Janes, now CEO of an event ticket site called FanSnap. “After hours, he was still drilling us with question after question, while we were watching the clock like kids in school. I still have this vision of Tim saying, ‘Okay, next page,’ as he opened yet another energy bar.”