Tim Cook and Walter Isaacson Named to TIME's List of 100 Most Influential People

time 2012 influential coverTIME magazine today released its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and two of the selections have close ties to Apple: CEO Tim Cook and Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson.

Each selection is accompanied by an essay by another prominent personality or close associate outlining why the person qualifies for inclusion in the list. The essay on Cook is written by former vice president Al Gore, who has served on Apple's board of directors since 2003.

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.

Fiercely protective of Jobs' legacy and deeply immersed in Apple's culture, Cook, 51, has already led the world's most valuable and innovative company to new heights while implementing major policy changes smoothly and brilliantly.

He has indelibly imprinted his leadership on all areas of Apple — from managing its complex inner workings to identifying and shepherding new "insanely great" technology and design breakthroughs into the product pipeline.

Isaacson, a former editor of TIME, is profiled by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, who points to his trio of biographies covering Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs for their impact on understanding key figures in history.

This is influence of the best species, educating us while demonstrating the continued fascination of the seriously examined life, rendered by Isaacson with the objectivity of a true historian and the flair of a born storyteller. But what most separates Isaacson, 59, from would-be peers is his wisdom in choosing subjects whose individual talents have affected all our lives.

TIME's 2012 list of the world's most influential people is the magazine's cover story for next week's issue and highlights representatives in five different categories: breakouts, pioneers, moguls, leaders, and icons.

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching in Three Months With These 12 New Features

Saturday June 14, 2025 5:45 pm PDT by
The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are three months away, and there are plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of June 2025:Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone X through iPhone 14 Pro have a...
iPadOS 26 App Windowing

Apple Explains Why iPads Don't Just Run macOS

Friday June 13, 2025 7:46 am PDT by
iPadOS 26 allows iPads to function much more like Macs, with a new app windowing system, a swipe-down menu bar at the top of the screen, and more. However, Apple has stopped short of allowing iPads to run macOS, and it has now explained why. In an interview this week with Swiss tech journalist Rafael Zeier, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said that iPadOS 26's new Mac-like ...
Logitech Logo Feature

Logitech Announces Two New Accessories for WWDC

Friday June 13, 2025 7:22 am PDT by
Alongside WWDC this week, Logitech announced notable new accessories for the iPad and Apple Vision Pro. The Logitech Muse is a spatially-tracked stylus developed for use with the Apple Vision Pro. Introduced during the WWDC 2025 keynote address, Muse is intended to support the next generation of spatial computing workflows enabled by visionOS 26. The device incorporates six degrees of...
iphone 16 pro models 1

17 Reasons to Wait for the iPhone 17

Thursday June 12, 2025 8:58 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models simultaneously, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 17 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect from Apple's 2025 smartphone lineup. If you skipped the iPhone...
iOS 26 Feature

Apple Seeds Revised iOS 26 Developer Beta to Fix Battery Issue

Friday June 13, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Apple today provided developers with a revised version of the first iOS 26 beta for testing purposes. The update is only available for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models, so if you're running iOS 26 on an iPhone 14 or earlier, you won't see the revised beta. Registered developers can download the new beta software through the Settings app on each device. The revised beta addresses an...
Mac Studio Feature

Apple Begins Selling Refurbished Mac Studio With M4 Max and M3 Ultra Chips at a Discount

Thursday June 12, 2025 10:14 am PDT by
Apple today added Mac Studio models with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips to its online certified refurbished store in the United States, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and many European countries, for the first time since they were released in March. As usual for refurbished Macs, prices are discounted by approximately 15% compared to the equivalent new models on Apple's online store. Note that Apple's ...
m4 macbook air pink

Apple Now Selling Refurbished M4 MacBook Air Models

Friday June 13, 2025 3:34 pm PDT by
Apple today added M4 MacBook Air models to its refurbished store in the United States, making the latest MacBook Air devices available at a discounted price for the first time since they launched earlier this year. Both 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models are available, with Apple offering multiple capacities and configurations. The refurbished devices are discounted by approximately 15...

Top Rated Comments

gri Avatar
172 months ago
Cook - ok; but Isaacson? Nothing against him but where does he influence the world by writing bios? These are on important people, granted, but still. Zuckerberg would be more important as Facebook clearly changed things, also Twitter (and I have no account with either).
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Dreyrugr Avatar
172 months ago
Time's lists are the result of uncontrolled, unscientific online polling of a self selecting population.

They are entirely meaningless.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
imageWIS Avatar
172 months ago
Cook - ok; but Isaacson? Nothing against him but where does he influence the world by writing bios? These are on important people, granted, but still. Zuckerman would be more important as Facebook clearly changed things, also Twitter (and I have no account with either)

It's Zuckerberg.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rdowns Avatar
172 months ago
Pardon me but I don't want to live in a world where Rihanna makes a 100 Most Influential People list.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
imageWIS Avatar
172 months ago
Walter Isaacson? Really??
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Trauma1 Avatar
172 months ago
I just don't see how Tim Cook has been that influential. I know he has stepped in as CEO previously, but he's still new to the role.
But he was COO for many, many years.

His specialty is supply chain management. It was Cook that said "inventory is fundamentally evil". It was Cook that slashed inventory levels down to six days, instead of months.

A lot of the successful operational strategies the company has been using fell under Cook's domain, not Jobs.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)