How Apple's Tim Cook has proven he's no less than Steve Jobs

The last time Steve Jobs hosted an Apple keynote, it was at WWDC 2011 when he announced iCloud. Only months later, he stepped down as CEO and elevated Tim Cook, his trusted deputy of 13 years, to the top position. A month later, the ailing Jobs died suffering from a rare form of pancreatic cancer. Since that fateful October morning, questions about Apple, the company and its future, have never ceased. More importantly, these questions have been about Tim Cook's Apple. Though he was never the visionary founder that Steve Jobs was, Cook was the guy that kept the Apple juggernaut running from the back end as its operations guru. Yet, under Cook, Apple's fortunes have increased almost infinitely.

Tim Cook has not stayed in the shadow of Steve Jobs. He has been his own man, who has taken tough decisions to propel Apple to new heights. Tim Cook's Apple is a different animal. It is not a dark, secretive organisation. Instead, Tim Cook's Apple is a more compassionate, open developer friendly company. Brick by brick, Cook is bringing down the walls of opacity that Steve Jobs had created and the WWDC keynote was perhaps the most telling example of his company's new avatar. Here's how.

1. Leading by example

When you are trying to reinvent the culture of a company the leader often has to set an example. In a Bloomberg Business op-ed, Tim Cook came out and said he was gay. For the CEO of one of the world's richest company, this was a brave decision. But he did not stop there. He batted for gay rights.

He said, "Part of social progress is understanding that a person is not defined only by one's sexuality, race, or gender."

2. Gender equality

In the lead up to the WWDC conference, Cook spoke about gender equality and diversity. Cook has also posted a message on diversity on Apple's website alongside a diversity report. A day before the WWDC keynote, in an exclusive interview with Mashable, Cook said that the keynote will have a woman announcing a product and he indeed came through.

Jennifer Bailey, vice president of the company's subsidiary, Apple Pay, announced new partnerships and improvements to the service and Susan Prescott announced a news app, which would be a part of iOS 9.

3. Privacy and data sovereignty

Cook has been a big advocate of privacy in tech. This path puts him at loggerheads with companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft, who indulge in data mining for targeted advertising and improving their own services.

At the event "Epic Champions of Freedom" Cook said, "They're gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetise it. We think that's wrong. And it's not the kind of company that Apple wants to be."

This was an obvious remark on Google's Photos app that had launched to great reviews, but this also left him open to criticism as Apple's own virtual assistant Siri would need to engage in data mining to improve, especially as Google has its own search engine outperforming Siri on iOS.

At WWDC, Apple came up with an interesting solution: a Proactive Assistant and an improved Siri, which basically fed off information on your device. As Apple puts it, the new intelligence of Siri and the core search functionality of iOS are local and not based on a cloud-based resource as it is the case with Google Now and Microsoft's Cortana.

Apple guarantees its customers total control over their data. Even with Apple Music, the company highlights that the Apple ID is not needed for the services ensuring no data mining is happening.

4. Cross platform

Hell has frozen over. Apple is making its first few Android apps. Yes, Apple's new Music service is coming to Android and that's not only acknowledged that Android is the biggest smartphone platform on the planet, but also that Tim Cook's company is willing to offer non Apple customers its services.

Of course, for years, Apple has offered its Safari browser and iTunes music player for Windows PCs. But this since a time when Apple was a rather small company.

Apple music will also come to Windows PCs in the form of an updated iTunes app. All this, though, will happen in the fall. But it is good news nonetheless.

While all this is great, perhaps the source of the biggest cheer at WWDC was when Federighi announced that Apple's Swift 2.0 programming language will be open sourced. Before this the only standard Apple had open-sourced was the WebKit web browsing engine, which was created years ago for the Safari web browser.

Apple is also releasing a new Android migration tool so that users coming from Android can easily migrate to an iPhone. Apple did not need to do this considering it sells millions of iPhones every quarter and no other singular smartphone can compete with it in terms of sales or profits. But still Apple cared. An Apple led by Steve Jobs would have perhaps not been so accommodating considering he viewed Android as the enemy.

5. A happy executive team

Tim's core executive team is a team of A players who can become CEOs of any Fortune 500 company on any given day. Phil Schiller, Johnny Ive, Craig Federighi, Eddy Cue, Angela Ahrendts, Dan Riccio and Kevin Lynch are all superstars. Ahrendts, in fact, was the CEO of fashion label Burberry before she joined Apple.

This team is not only good, but from the outside seems more relaxed than under the regime of Steve Jobs. Earlier in the year, New Yorker magazine published a massive profile of Apple's masterful design chief Sir Johnny Ive. Only a month ago, the Telegraph got exclusive access to Johnny and Tim as they visited the construction site of Apple's new campus. In the interaction, it was also revealed that Johnny was elevated to the newly created post of Chief Designer.

Such revelations to the press wouldn't happen under Steve Jobs. Even the team would be more confrontational as one can elaborate from the exits of executives like Jon Rubenstein and Tony Fadell.

The WWDC keynote was testament to a more relaxed Apple team. Craig Federighi poked fun at his own enhancements in OS X El Capitan. He sarcastically said, "Now that's innovation for you." Federighi's presentation of iOS and OS X El Capitan was littered with examples of a quirky Apple team, especially when he demoed the new photos app, which contained hilarious photos of Eddy Cue and Phil Schiller doing karaoke.

Eddy Cue was wearing a florescent pink shirt, which resembled the colour of the iPhone 5C. Cue, who made the announcement for Apple Music, danced to Latin music and even called out Phil Schiller in the middle of the keynote to wish him happy birthday. When has that ever happened in the history of Apple?

But all these are just new examples of what Cook has been doing. Before this he has taken a hard look at workers' rights in China and Apple is arguably doing more than any other tech company.

Apple's new campus too will be powered by a massive solar farm long with 53 of its retail stores. The company is investing $850 million dollars for the same.