Tim Cook, thank you for making me fall in love with my phone

• Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple CEO after 15 years.
• Although Cook didn't create the iPhone or iPad, under his reign, it was perfected into something I love.
• Even during peak "tech backlash," Cook and Apple maintained consumer trust.

Tim Cook, I want to thank you for something. Thank you for that thing when you get a five-digit login code texted to your phone, and it autofills with just a single tap. This feature is so beloved that I see odes to it pop up as sort of copypasta on meme accounts on Instagram and elsewhere.

"Security Code AutoFill" was a feature added to iOS 12 back in 2018, and I love it because, to me, it feels like such a perfect example of the kind of technology I love: a simple solution to a problem you didn't even realize could have one. It makes your life better, easier, less frustrating — and it simply just works. For this feature alone, which has saved me countless seconds and a lot of annoyance, I give my undying thanks to Tim Cook.

When Cook took over as Apple's CEO in 2011, I owned an iPhone and a MacBook, but I didn't have a particular love for Apple. I found both products expensive, intimidating, and frustrating. That's partly because it was 2011 and partly because of my own bad attitude. Over the next 15 years, I grew to love these devices — right now, I'd marry my phone like the woman and the Eiffel Tower if I could.

Of course, I know that Cook didn't personally engineer the security code autofill, portrait mode on the cameras, or any of the other tiny life-changing improvements. I'm also aware that one of the criticisms about Cook's tenure is that the truly paradigm-shifting, visionary hardware breakthroughs like the iPhone and iPad came from Steve Jobs, and Cook merely steadied the course.

But to me, those consistent incremental improvements to phones and laptops were what made me fall in love with Apple products. I grew excited for each Apple event in September and for WWDC in the spring, when new features would be announced. At times, I felt skeptical about how useful some of these would be, or even annoyed that the features seemed to be always targeted at someone richer, older, and more male than I am. But slowly and surely, Tim Cook turned me into something disgusting — something I never thought I'd be: an Apple fanboy.

I realized I was down bad a few years ago during the announcement of the Apple Watch Series 7, a fairly minor update. The most interesting thing was a dark green watch added to the lineup. (It's my favorite color.) I found myself drooling, "I want that!" Even though I already had an Apple Watch Series 3 that worked perfectly fine on my wrist. (Don't worry. I didn't actually buy the new one. I'm an enthusiast, not a spendthrift.)

Apple avoided most of the Big Tech backlash

The context of the times is important here: This was during the peak of the "techlash" of the 2010s, when tech journalists like me scrutinized the industry and were more interested in stories about corporate accountability than gee-whiz-aint't-this-cool. Many of the Big Tech companies at the time were indeed doing some pretty questionable things, and many tech CEOs seemed morally compromised, willing to do terrible things in pursuit of endless riches and power.

Apple (while by no means a perfect company!), with its strong user privacy policies, stood in contrast to other Big Tech peers like Facebook and Google at the time, and that made it feel more trustworthy. Cook himself, compared to a Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, or Travis Kalanick, seemed more like the responsible, measured adult in the room.

Cook did more than just keep the ship steady after Steve Jobs — he did so during a time of typhoons and hurricanes — and that steady consistency is what won me over as a consumer (not necessarily as a tech journalist; on that level I would've welcomed some more spicy scandals).

The incoming CEO, John Ternus, previously the head of hardware, will take over at a tough moment for Apple, which has fallen behind in AI. I'm not sure what this means for the near future, but I do wonder if, considering surveys that keep showing how much normal people don't trust or like AI, perhaps this was a blessing in disguise: not adding a bunch of imperfect AI features into our beloved iPhones has helped keep its consumer-trust ratings high.

Last week, I desperately needed to charge my phone while passing by an Apple store, so I popped in to charge while pretending to look at phones. I happily chatted with a friendly sales clerk about the new Neo laptops, which chips they use, and other specs — something that in 2011 I absolutely would not have cared about or understood, even though I was an adult who bought laptops then, too. But 15 years later, I'm a changed woman. Tim Cook, thank you for making me into a certified gadget freak.