[litetime]

> If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job; he tripled Microsoft’s sales to $78 billion and doubled profits from $9 billion to $22 billion

> Apple under Cook has doubled its revenue to $200 billion while doubling profit and tripling the amount of cash it has in the bank (now a quarter of a trillion dollars)

I think the picture could be even less rosy than that. It could be argued that Ballmer was just there while the enormous untapped value and momentum that had been accumulating in Microsoft over the years started to get released. It's possible any other CEO could have done the same or better by being in that position at that time. Could be true of Cook as well. He inherited Apple with an extreme amount of untapped potential.