How Tim Cook Turned Apple Into A Media Powerhouse

BusinessMediaHow Tim Cook Turned Apple Into A Media PowerhouseByAndy Meek,Senior Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I report on media as well as its intersection with news and culture.Follow AuthorApr 20, 2026, 06:20pm EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Apple CEO Tim Cook holds an iPhone 17 during an Apple special event at Apple headquarters on September 09, 2025, in Cupertino, California.Getty ImagesFor most of its history under late co-founder Steve Jobs, Apple was very much defined by expensive consumer gadgets like Macs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads. Indeed, starting from the company’s founding through Jobs’ death in 2011, the center of gravity inside Apple never really wavered: It was all about beautifully designed hardware that customers lined up on release day to buy.The Tim Cook era at Apple, meanwhile, didn’t so much turn that playbook on its head as extend it.Over time, Jobs’ now-outgoing successor (Cook will become Apple’s executive chairman in September, passing the torch to hardware engineering senior VP John Ternus as CEO) layered something else on top of Apple’s gadget-heavy strategy: A media ecosystem encompassing music, TV, movies, and journalism that would go on to profoundly reshaped the iPhone maker.So much so, that Apple is now arguably one of the most important media companies in the world thanks to services like Apple Music and Apple TV (formerly branded as Apple TV+).As word of Apple’s just-announced CEO transition continues to spread and Cook’s legacy begins to be assessed, this is likely to be one of the more obvious yet easy to overlook aspects of his leadership. That’s partly because Cook, who wrote in a letter announcing his transition that he feels “a gratitude that I cannot put into words,” also positioned Apple as a privacy-focused alternative to ad-driven rivals while navigating two increasingly volatile...