Apple CEO Tim Cook now confirmed he's gay and considers it "among the greatest gifts" he received from God. This did not entirely shake the corporate world and the global techie community who already knew about this open secret since the time he was silently working his way up as Steve Job's next-in-line as Apple CEO. Tim Cook, as the first highest-ranking company executive to make a public announcement of his sexual orientation is now beginning to reap varied reactions, patting him on the back for coming out or making a move to ban him from entering a country. The most significant reaction, it seems, that needs careful observation is, would it affect the sales and dominion of Apple products in the mobile phone kingdom?
The decision to admit an 'open secret' in the Silicon Valley community seemed inevitable for the Apple CEO. Tim Cook, in an interview with Bloomberg Magazine said, "I've come to realize that my desire for personal privacy has been holding me back from doing something more important," he wrote.
This risky move earned the praises of his fellow CEOs such as John Browne who gave up his post in British Petroleum when the same issue hounded him in 2007. This coming out decision of Apple CEO Tim Cook has made him a role model and "will speed up changes in the corporate world," said Browne, whose book The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out is Good Business may not have a second wind among book readers.
Former top executive of Google Megan Smith, a lesbian, also lauded Tim Cook's honesty to the public. She considers the historic admission as a moment where ""people will look back at this time not only for the extraordinary technological innovations that keep coming, but also for great shifts in civil rights and inclusion of talent across our world. Tim is a big part of both of these important movements."
Other well-wishers mostly coming from the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) have just started to pour in their felicitations as they have felt more empowered with the Tim Cook announcement. However, hard liners of anti-LGBT like Russian politician Vitaly Milonov aren't silent about it. He suggested of banning the Apple CEO from entering Russia, saying, "what could he [Cook] bring us? The Ebola virus, Aids, gonorrhea? They all have unseemly ties over there. Ban him for life," in the FlashNord website.
Surely, the Apple CEO's bomb news will now be a study case for the business industry. Whether Tim Cone being a gay who runs a Fortune 500 top ranked company will be set a precedent or will it negatively affect Apple's standing in the tech community. Or if consumers won't give a damn as long as they're happy about the Apple products.
Maybe it's more of the latter. Samsung surely wishes it not to be so.
