Tim Cook Answers Your Emails Like Steve Jobs Did

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Steve Jobs stepped down from the CEO spot last week at Apple, leaving his right-hand man and former COO Tim Cook in the big chair at Apple. A lot of folks have been speculating on how Cook will do running Apple, but he’s already doing one thing as well as Jobs did – replying to customer emails! A few Apple fans have already emailed Cook’s email address at Apple.com and have received responses from the new CEO.

Here’s a few replies that Tim Cook has already sent to fans that we’ve found posted around the internet:

Congrats on being the new CEO of Apple

Zech

Cook’s reply:

Thanks Zech.

Tim

Sent from my iPad

Like Jobs’ replies, they’re pretty concise, but also a bit warmer that Jobs’ stoic replies. Here’s one from an Auburn University alumni (where Cook also went to school):

Tim, just wanted to wish you the best of luck, and to let you know that there are a lot of us that are excited to see where Apple is going. Oh, one more thing- WAR DAMN EAGLE!

Justin R.

Sent from my iPhone

Cook replied:

Thanks Justin. War Eagle forever!

Tim

“War Eagle” and “War Damn Eagle” are war cries of fans of the Auburn Tigers football team. According to another commenter posting on iDownloadBlog, he explained that he was a soldier and while deployed to Iraq, Apple products helped him stay in touch with his family. In his reply, Cook is said to have thanked the commentator for his military service to the country. Pretty personable.

Hard to tell if these are really being written by Cook or not. Many companies (AT&T most noticeably) have executive response teams where teams of young recent MBA graduates respond to customer complaints, pretending to be the CEO. But it’s widely believed that these Jobs/Cook emails are really the men themselves responding to fans. It’s also possible that there is an executive response team that forwards emails to the CEO, and then they write the real response.

Anyway, MacRumors reports that Apple kept track of how many emails were sent to Steve Jobs’ email account, and they’re probably doing the same to his successor. Considering that people liked to go to Jobs with every complaint under the sun about Apple products (like “Why are you canceling Xserver?”), seemed to be a good indication about what things the Apple fanbase was unhappy with.

In the interest of openness, Tim Cook’s email address is tcook@apple.com. Anybody managed to get a reply from the mild-mannered new CEO of Apple?