Apple CEO Tim Cook gets report card from Al Gore in TIME’s 100 Most Influential People list

Jordan Kahn

Time Magazine just released its list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2012, and Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook—following in the footsteps of Steve Jobs— made the list alongside Hilary Clinton, Tim Tebow, Rihanna, and Salman Khan. Also featured on the list this year, after stemming from the incredible success of his “Steve Jobs“ biography, is author Walter Isaacson.

Each entry on the list includes a description written by someone close to the influential person. In the case of Cook, former U.S. Vice President and Apple board member Al Gore did the honors. Gore said Cook has already “led the world’s most valuable and innovative company to new heights while implementing major policy changes smoothly and brilliantly.” Gore’s full entry on Cook is below:
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Al Gore: “Everyone on [Apple's] management team could be CEO of a world class corporation.”

Seth Weintraub

Al Gore had some words on the passing of Steve Jobs at the AllThingsD conference in Asia last night. He said that Jobs was “the kind of guy that comes along once every 250 years.”

On Apple after him, Jobs relayed to Gore that Disney, where Jobs’ served on the board after selling Pixar, fell on hard times after Walt Disney died. Often, the board at Disney would ask “What would Walt do?” and trying to figure that out would end up being the wrong answer. Jobs, according to Gore, didn’t want this to happen at Apple. He wanted Apple to make its own decisions moving forward based on the decisions of the current management team.

Gore wasn’t terribly revealing on specifics but he did say “There’s a lot of stuff in the pipeline and the team [Steve Jobs] left behind is really firing on all cylinders”.

Finally, when asked about Apple’s future, Gore said that the management team is the best in the world and that “Everyone on that management team could be CEO of a world class corporation”. Gore acknowledges this is both a blessing and a curse and, as with the case of Ron Johnson, other companies will be trying to pick them off.

Gore also talked about the AT&T&T-Mobile merger during the Q&A answering a question from TIMN’s Joanna Stern saying that the merger would be unlikely, and would be hard to overcome Justice Department’s challenge.

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Apple returns homepage to normal following ‘Celebrate Steve’ day on campus, buys RememberingSteveJobs.com

Seth Weintraub

Apple’s homepage returned to normal with the iPhone 4S headlining last night (US only atm). Apple had the Steve Jobs memorial picture up for two weeks following his passing.

There is still a Remembering Steve link at the bottom of the page which leads to the thousands of words of condolence taken from the millions of submissions following his death. In fact, it appears that Apple has purchased the RememberingSteveJobs.com domain.

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Aerial footage of Steve Jobs Celebration (Video)

Seth Weintraub

CBS copters, captured by CNET, caught some of the Celebrate Steve program today put on by Apple.  As we’d been tweeting live, Tim Cook, Bill Campbell and Al Gore spoke and Norah Jones and ColdPlay played music (ending with “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”).  Apple retail employees shut down Store operations from 12-3 ET to view a private screening of the event.

One of the touching moments was said to have been when they played Jobs’ rendition of “The Crazy Ones”, below:

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