The more I read about Cook the more I think he was the right choice for the role. Trying to replace Jobs with another Jobs-lite CEO wouldn't have worked, because they wouldn't have been Steve.
It's clear Cook cares about the company and wants to drive it forward, and it's clear that things aren't as focused on letting the engineers rule the roost, but we'll judge him over the next 5 years rather than when he's barely had chance to settle into the seat.
Were the engineers ruling the roost in Steve Jobs' years? The story has seemed to be that the designers/visionaries steered/put the engineers in their place.
The whole point is that the engineers did not rule. Jobs and the other "humanities" types ruled. A Zen meditator ruled and the engineers and supply chain nerds had to sing to the tune of the "artists".
Lots of engineers run companies and most of them have terrible taste and product ugly, non-innovative stuff that is anti-human. Then they hire some designers to spray perfume on their steaming turd. This is what every non-Apple computer company did and most of them are still doing it, just now they have updated Apple products to rip-off.
It's clear Cook cares about the company and wants to drive it forward, and it's clear that things aren't as focused on letting the engineers rule the roost, but we'll judge him over the next 5 years rather than when he's barely had chance to settle into the seat.