But Mr Cook and his colleagues now need to show that some of the magic of the man who took Apple from the brink of disaster to world domination has rubbed off on them.
Look around. We have the same workforce and physical capital as in 2007, but there is massive underemployment of labour and substantial underutilisation of capital.
If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and the confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won't magically materialize in high school.
Organisations such as these may have hundreds of properties, tens of thousands of pages of leases and a labyrinth of obligations to landlords, janitors and the taxman.
So are owners of overseas holiday homes, who often deposit the rent in offshore bank accounts offshore without telling the taxman-definitely illegal, but often hard to track down.