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Cook is currently 50 years old.
Cook has a B.S. in industrial engineering from Auburn and an MBA from Duke.
He has a strong background in channels and supply chain, working for over a decade as the director of North American fulfillment for IBM's personal computer division and also serving as COO of the reseller division of Intelligent Electronics.
Just before Apple, Cook worked as vice president of corporate materials for Compaq.
In 1998, Jobs recruited Cook to come oversee hardware manufacturing operations in a role that had been left vacant until Jobs could find the perfect person for the job.
By 2000, Cook was promoted to senior vice president of worldwide operations, sales, service and support for Apple.
In 2002, that title was changed to executive vice president of worldwide sales and operations and in 2004 Cook was also asked to take over Mac hardware engineering oversight.
In 2004, Cook also had his first taste as CEO, serving as interim leader for two months to cover for Jobs' recuperation from cancer surgery.
Cook is largely known as the driving force behind the redesign of Apple's hardware supply chain.
"After Tim came on board, we basically reinvented the logistics of the PC business." --Steve Jobs
Part of that reinvention came from outsourcing more manufacturing and reducing the time inventory spent in Apple warehouses.
All of this served to drastically improve margin for Apple. Today the company has a profit margin of 25.58 percent.
One Apple store general manager once told Wired, "Steve is the face of the company and very involved with product development, but Tim is the guy who takes all those designs and turns it into a big pile of cash for the company."
In 2007, Cook was promoted to COO of Apple.
Cook covered for Jobs when he went for liver transplant surgery in 2009 and again at the beginning of this year when Jobs took another medical leave in January.
In addition to his leadership role at Apple, Cook also serves on the board of Nike.
Cook was recently honored as number one in the Top 50 most powerful LGBT people list by Out Magazine.
In 2010, Cook made over $59 million in total compensation including salary, bonus, incentive pay and stock awards. That's pretty good for a guy whose official salary is a little over $800k.
In an interview with CNN, one former Cook subordinate said that he can tend to 'shred' his employees and is pretty 'brutal' in meetings.
At the same time, that same article named Cook as 'The Genius Behind Steve.'
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