As we detailed in a roundup earlier this morning, today marks Apple’s 45th anniversary. To commemorate the anniversary, Apple CEO Tim Cook not only took to Twitter, but also sent a memo to Apple employees encouraging them to leave a story “worth telling.” The memo was first obtained by MacGeneration.
The Apple CEO begins the message to employees by saying that they should mark this occasion by rededicating themselves to Apple’s mission:
On April 1, 1976, a company was formed in Cupertino to create transformative products that redefine what technology can achieve and make people’s lives better in the process. Forty-five years later, we mark this occasion by rededicating ourselves to that mission — and to keeping it alive for a long time to come — rather than to remember it fondly as something past.
Cook writes that while things have changed over the years, Apple’s focus on “setting the pace that others try to match” has not. “What I can tell you with gut certainty is that there has never been a moment of such great potential as this one, nor have we ever had so talented and dedicated a team,” he says. “That shouldn’t make us rest easy. Great potential obligates great people to meet it.”
Cook also addresses the challenges of the past year while noting that even brighter days are ahead:
I know this past year has tested each of us in ways that we never imagined. It’s asked all of us to adapt, it’s added complexity to our work and it has demanded additional resolve and commitment in areas of our lives that extend well beyond our work. But I also know that what we have each achieved during this time should make us enormously proud. Through a once-in-a-generation challenge, the things we make, and the ways in which we make them, have revealed profound and durable new sources of value to the people who love and count on them. And, on many fronts, we know even brighter days are ahead.
Finally, Cook concludes with a quote from Steve Jobs. Cook says that in an email commemorating an earlier anniversary, Jobs said, “it’s been an amazing journey so far, yet we have barely begun.” The same is still true today, Cook writes:
In an email like this one, to mark a much earlier anniversary shortly after I joined Apple, Steve said, “it’s been an amazing journey so far, yet we have barely begun.” Still true. Remember that none of us will be here for the end of the story, but it’s on all of us to make sure it’s one worth telling.
You can find the full memo over at MacGeneration.
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