Tim Cook Thinks Different

As Apple CEO, he has defied his skeptics and refashioned the world's most creative company on his own exacting terms. Now, in a frank conversation, he offers new insight into his leadership explaining why he sees himself as an outsider, how he asserts Apple's values, and what he does to keep from staring at his iPhone all day.

- By Zach Baron. By Mark Mahaney

I. By now, nearing 9 a.m. at Apple Park, he’s long since gotten up and absorbed himself in the morning rituals of the modern CEO: email and exercise. Tim Cook takes pride in not hiding his email address, which is readily available on the search engine of your choice. In fact, Cook says, he finds the avalanche of unsolicited emails helpful. He rises at around 5 a.m. and reads through all of them. Customers tell him what they think and feel about Apple products, sometimes they tell him stories about their own lives, and this information becomes a source of inspiration. If you work for Cook, you will inevitably wake up one day, wherever you are, to find one of these emails forwarded to you.

And then, often before the sun has even risen, someone arrives to make him do what Cook describes as "things I would prefer not to do, that I could probably convince myself not to do." (Weight training, mostly.) And then he heads here, to the corporate headquarters of the company Cook has led since 2011.