For a man known to not be a product guy, it was Tim Cook who pushed hard for 10 years to perfect a foldable iPhone before he stepped down.
It was the biggest criticism Steve Jobs ever had of Tim Cook, that he didn't share the same passion for products that either Jobs or Jony Ive did. Cook certainly never got as involved with any Apple designs as they did, or so it seemed.
Now according to Bloomberg, while Apple engineers had been exploring foldable devices, it was Tim Cook's direct intervention that has made the iPhone Ultra happen now. This is Cook's true last product as CEO, even as it launches after he stepped down.
Reportedly, it began in 2020 when Cook was in Asia and saw growing numbers of users with foldable phones from Samsung, Huawei and more. He decided that Apple should be in this market, even though it was then a very small one.
Samsung brought out its first foldable in 2019, but Apple was apparently investing at least some research time into the field long before then. The company won an extensive patent for a foldable and flexible iPhone as early as 2015 that was applied for in 2011.
So at least 15 years ago, Apple engineers and designers had already been exploring foldable possibilities. A strong contender was the idea of making an iPad mini that folded out into a larger iPad.
That idea did not go away, as it wasn't until as recently as April 2026 that Apple is said to regard a folding iPad as an experiment rather than a shipping product. By that time, the idea was to fold out an iPad to a 20-inch display.
A road not taken - yet. Apple has considered a foldable iPad.
Over the years there have also been reports of Apple exploring the idea of a foldable MacBook. That concept seems to be dead now, though.
Cook championed the iPhone Ultra
However, Cook directed the teams to a phone. "Tim was the earliest and biggest champion of this," said an unspecified source with knowledge of the situation. "He saw [foldables] everywhere in Asia and said Apple needed to play in this space."
Cook did of course approve what projects Apple was working on. Around the same time he was pressing for a foldable iPhone, he got to try out what would become the Apple Vision Pro five years later.
Yet he had never before put so much insistence on a product, and this contributed to the company committing resources to the immensely complex foldable project. But then in a real passing of the CEO torch, it's claimed that it was John Ternus who used "his power to push it over the finish line."
So when Ternus unveils the iPhone Ultra on September 9, 2026, it will mark the start of his time as Apple CEO.
The folding iPhone won't be the last product that has Tim Cook's fingerprints. It took years for the last product that had input from Steve Jobs to ship, and it will likely take five or six years to hit that for Cook.
