Apple CEO Tim Cook Profiled by TIME as Runner-Up for “Person of the Year”

Tim Cook didn’t win TIME magazine’s prestigious “Person of the Year” award (which went to President Obama), but he did make “Runner-Up” this year, which is more than enough for a lengthy profile and an interview.

Scoring a rare interview in the process of profiling him for Runner-Up, TIME tells Cook’s story from every standpoint that matters – from where he grew up and how he ended up at Apple, to how Steve Jobs groomed him for the CEO role, and his strategy as a fully-instated chief executive officer of the world’s most valuable company.

The profile mentions as many differences between Cook and Jobs as it notes common traits, like the fact that Cook is a workaholic who wakes up before sunrise every morning to tend to emails and go to the gym.

Cook tells the mag, “The thing about it is, when you love what you do, you don’t really think of it as work. It’s what you do. And that’s the good fortune of where I find myself.”