Although he may not realise it, Tim Cook might never have joined Apple if it was not for a Corkman. Equally, if it wasn’t for Tim Cook, the world’s biggest company by market capitalisation might not still be in Cork.

This is not the definitive story of how Apple came to Ireland. Nor is it a blow-by-blow account. But it is an inside first-hand view of how Apple lasted 40 years in Ireland, an anniversary that brought its chief executive to the country this week.

Over four decades Apple has grown from an initial 60 people to 6,000, making it one of Ireland’s biggest employers.

“It is no exaggeration that Cork gave Apple the sure foundation that made us the company that we are today,” Cook told an audience that included Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, IDA chairman Frank Ryan, and IDA chief executive Martin Shanahan.

It could also be said that Apple provided a similar service to Cork, as it supported thousands of careers and families – during good times and bad.

Last Monday’s presentation by the IDA of a special award to Cook was a moment of reflection on a long journey.

The journey has been controversial, as evidenced by the disputed €13 billion tax deal with the Irish state, an arrangement that caught the ire of the European Commission.

Click here for more from Thomas Hubert on the current corporate structure of the company in this country.

But, throughout it all, Apple has remained loyal, making a significant contribution to Ireland.

What Apple did, and what it became part of in Ireland, is not just about money.

It is about people and a time, both in its corporate history and our history, too.

*****

“Once Steve had made up his mind and having spoken with Tim there was no veto option”

Joe O’Sullivan, the Apple executive from Cork who interviewed Tim Cook

In December 1997, Joe O’Sullivan, the son of an officer based in Collins Barracks on the Old Youghal Road, on the northside of Cork, was happily ensconced in Singapore.

He was working there as a vice-president with Apple, then a boutique computer company. Just six months before, its co-founder Steve Jobs had recently returned as interim chief executive. Jobs had just ousted his predecessor Gil Amelio after a boardroom coup. The subsequent management shake-up led to O’Sullivan being recalled urgently to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino to help run its operations. He was needed after James McCluney, senior vice-president of worldwide operations in Apple, had quit the business.

Jobs needed a replacement fast, and O’Sullivan, who went to school in Christian Brothers College Cork, had the skills to step up to the plate while his boss scrambled to replace McCluney.

Jobs asked O’Sullivan to take a look at the job specification being used to headhunt for a role which was crucial to Apple’s survival. The title of the job was ‘senior vice-president, operations’, with a spec focused on manufacturing experience.

“I spoke to Jobs and told him that he needed to change it,” O’Sullivan said.

He told Jobs that the role needed to be refocused on procurement and fulfillment, as he could see that having that kind of expertise was crucial for Apple.

It is on small changes that lives turn.

O’Sullivan, by changing the job spec, had unknowingly put an industrial engineer from Alabama in the picture.

That engineer was Tim Cook, then only in his 30s. He had spent 12 years with IBM after graduating in 1982 with a degree in industrial engineering from Auburn University in his home state.

He had been promoted rapidly by IBM to director of North American fulfillment,  before being lured to Compaq as vice president for corporate materials.

He was only six months in the job when Apple suddenly came calling. Cook’s experience was a perfect match for Apple’s revised job specification.

He was reticent about the role but he agreed to do an interview anyway, as Jobs was someone he wanted to meet.

The interview took place on a Saturday morning in Palo Alto. Cook arrived dressed casually, as he tends to.

O’Sullivan was one of only four people lined up to interview him that day.

Prior to the interview, Jobs had given O’Sullivan a veto, to let him block anyone he considered entirely inappropriate.

Each interview lasted only twenty minutes. Cook was impressive. He was – and is – brilliant technically and utterly clinical.

O’Sullivan had already exercised this veto once, ruling out a previous candidate. Now it was Cook’s turn to be interviewed. He was put in a small room, where he faced four sequential interviews; by Jobs, chief financial officer Fred Anderson, head of hardware Jon Rubinstein, and finally O’Sullivan. 

Each interview lasted only twenty minutes. Cook was impressive. He was – and is – brilliant technically and utterly clinical.

He is the type of person who even a perfectionist like Jobs felt he could trust to build something as complex as his vision.

Cook had just got a big job, however.

He was in some ways interviewing Apple, a much more modest business back then than it is today. The meetings were going well.

Finally, it was O’Sullivan’s turn to interview Cook. As he headed to the interview room, Jobs called him over. “Be very careful with your veto with this one!”

The two men laughed. “Once Steve had made up his mind and having spoken with Tim there was no veto option,” O’Sullivan recalled.

*****

Two years ago, reflecting on that meeting in those first interviews on CNBC, Cook said that Jobs in his one-on-one told him about “what later would be called the iMac.”

“I looked at the problems Apple had, and I thought you know, I can make a contribution here… And so all of a sudden I thought, I’m doing it. I’m going for it…”

“Compaq was a logical move from IBM,” O’Sullivan reflected. “But Job’s message and the challenge to bring Apple back to greatness was hard even for Tim to ignore.”

“Jobs brought Tim, and all of us, to a different stratosphere.”

*****

“It was suggested we join their team for a frisbee party and BBQ in the park”

Steve Jobs visits Apple’s new facility in Cork, October 1980.

Declan Collins, then the IDA’s man in Silicon Valley, first made contact with Apple in the late 1970s. The company was not that well known at the time outside early aficionado’s who raved about Apple 1, its innovative first computer created by Jobs and co-founder Steve Wozniak. Collins was based in an apartment in Menlo Park, with orders to get to know the wave of companies being backed by a relatively new way of funding: venture capital.

The first introduction for Collins to Apple was made by Regis McKenna, who did communications for the computer company and double-jobbed as a scout for the IDA. Brendan Rossiter, who retired from the IDA in 2009, and Barney Usher, another IDA veteran, were also among the small team the agency had focused on Silicon Valley.

Dan Byrne was working for AnCo, a forerunner of Fas, when, in March 1980, he was told to go out to California, to help convince Apple to come to Ireland. Byrne’s role was to explain to Apple the range of training grants and other supports it could receive if it picked Cork. Byrne told The Currency he had never heard of the company, and at first presumed it was something to do with The Beatles’ famous music studio. “I remember thinking this was a bit of a weird company,” he said. “We had spent the morning negotiating with Apple one Friday, when it was suggested we join their team for a frisbee party and BBQ in the park.”

“At our first meeting he put his feet on the desk with no shoes or socks. I thought ‘wow – this guy is different’.”

“I thought this is never going to work in Cork. Everyone would just go straight to the pub!” he said.

“I was wrong. Apple did bring that culture to Cork.”

Byrne recalls meeting Jobs while in California.

“At our first meeting he put his feet on the desk with no shoes or socks. I thought ‘wow – this guy is different’.”

“When you spoke to Steve Jobs it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to realise very early on he was a genius,” Byrne said.

“He could be extremely temperamental. He didn’t suffer fools gladly. He would let you know if you were wrong. But he was also a genius.”

Byrne worked closely with Alex Wrafter, an Irishman, who was Apple’s first managing director in Cork. Byrne said the IDA’s decision to build an advanced factory which could be reconfigured for Apple, and the state’s investment in education were key to this decision. “Think about it. I met Apple first in March 1980, and by October 1980 it was in production in Cork. It moved fast.”

From early on Wrafter asked Byrne to join Apple, but he declined for fear it would be seen as a conflict of interest with his state job, which involved giving grants to Apple. Eventually, in March 1981, he joined the company. It was a decision he never regretted.

*****

“After three weeks Tim knew more than I did. He had perfect recall.”

Steve Jobs visits Apple’s new facility in Cork, October 1980.

Tim Cook joined Apple in April 1998. Steve Jobs asked Joe O’Sullivan to overlap with Tim Cook for three months to allow him bed into his new role. “After three weeks Tim knew more than I did,” he said. “He had perfect recall.” Operations meetings that O’Sullivan had capped at two hours now went on for up to eight hours, as Cook drilled into every aspect of production.

After just weeks, in May 1998 O’Sullivan felt confident enough to return to his old job in Singapore. His production team in Singapore was best in class, but he knew that Cook was sure to raise the bar even higher.

At the time Apple was operating at 25 turns, meaning it turned over its entire inventory about once every two weeks. O’Sullivan told his team it needed to start working on a plan to do things four times faster, known as 100 turns, as he suspected this was what Cook would demand. When Cook came to Singapore within a few months, he met O’Sullivan and his team. O’Sullivan took him through how the business was doing. “Tim goes yeah, yeah, yeah, I get this. What would it take to do 100 turns? I said: ‘I knew you were going to ask this… We can do 100.”

Cook absorbed this. Then he said: “What about 1,000?” “I said: ‘Are you serious?'” O’Sullivan recalled. “He looked at me very serious and said: ‘Yes.’”  

Cook absorbed this. Then he said: “What about a 1,000?” “I said: ‘Are you serious?’” O’Sullivan recalled. “He looked at me very serious and said: ‘Yes.’”

By the time Apple left direct manufacturing in Singapore, about 2002, it had reached infinite turns. This meant it had no dead stock sitting in a warehouse waiting to be turned into a product. Apple was the first to use so-called vendor managed inventory in manufacturing on a large scale.

“We figured out how we could get a product made in 16 minutes,” O’Sullivan recalled. “We only took on inventory just before we needed it. It took us two years to get there. If you look at Apple in 1998 or 1999, we weren’t making a lot of money, even though we were generating a lot of cash.”

Apple, he said, had a concept known as “crossing the canyon,” which would let it make the jump to greater profitability. Cook, as chief operations officer, was key to Apple moving from not just one of the world’s most innovative companies, but also to one of its most profitable.

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How Apple shaped a new generation of Irish business leaders

The arrival of Apple in Cork and other firms like it in the 1970s brought a new management style to Ireland. Analog Devices, a semiconductor firm in Limerick, which arrived in 1977, and Digital Equipment Corporation in Galway, which set up in 1971, were part of the same vintage. Up until then companies tended to be more top-down in management style, mimicking the British model.

The new US investors encouraged their workers to add new skills, offered share options, and treated their customers differently.  This management mindset was embraced by many Irish people who began more and more to lead these firms in Ireland.

Leaders like Louise Phelan, ex-General Electric who went on to become chief executive of Paypal in Ireland until 2019, and Eamon Sinnott, the veteran general manager of Intel Ireland, all embraced this thinking.

It allowed these managers be prepared to change and adapt to new economic and technical environments.

“The legacy of Apple and firms like it is about much more than jobs or taxes, it is about a change of mindset in the thinking of Irish managers who were exposed to them,” an IDA source said.

The IDA worked closely with Irish managers to try and win more investment from overseas. There was a professional camaraderie between them, and a shared belief in Ireland.

In the case of Apple specifically, the training its Irish management received ensured they later were prepared to fight for Cork in the 1990s, by being prepared to adapt to the changing needs of the business.

The other advantage that Apple had in Cork was its colleges and universities. Larry Poland, then the head of the school of electrical and electronic engineering in the Cork Institute of Technology (then Cork RTC), supplied the technicians required to work in places like Apple.

The arrival of Apple, and other similar companies, brought in training in new areas like global procurement or supply chain management. This allowed multinationals’ Irish management work out where they fitted within companies that could surge or fall in value.

They often, not always, knew how to evolve so that Ireland remained relevant to global businesses.

At the same time construction, engineering and architectural firms were transformed by multinationals. They learned the complex building techniques, safety procedures, and new materials required by overseas companies. Firms like Mercury Engineering, the Sisk Group, John Paul Construction, and many others learned how to do things to an Apple, a Pfizer, a Microsoft or an Intel standard.

This stood to them when they expanded overseas.

It also allowed these type of firms come through the financial crash.

Firms who were too close to Irish boom time house builders went under, while those who did business with multinationals got paid, and survived.  

*****

Tim Cook is not an emotional man in business, nor is he an egotist. It surprised some people in Apple he was prepared last week to accept an award at all. “Maybe he is mellowing with time,” a source said. “He doesn’t usually believe in collecting rewards, the reward is doing quality work.” This is reflected in Apple’s approach to the media in Ireland.

Despite being one of the most successful women in Ireland, Cathy Kearney, Apple’s top lieutenant in Ireland, maintains a very low profile. Last week, at the award ceremony, I sat beside an employee of Apple who had worked for more than three decades with the company. He had got up at 5am to hop on one of three buses put on by Apple, to bring some of its team to Dublin for the award. “We’re not allowed to talk to the press!” he laughed. “But it is hard to imagine or explain how much Apple has done for Cork.”

On Thursday of last week, a columnist in the Irish Times had argued that: “‘Doffing the cap to Apple is a bad look for Ireland Inc,” in light of its tax affairs.

It was a view not shared in the National Concert Hall, as Cook described Cork as Apple’s “second home.”

“I believe deeply that our most important work together is still ahead of us,” he said. As Cook raised his hand in farewell, the Apple veteran beside me was one of the first on his feet, in what became a standing ovation.

Tax is part of the Apple story in Ireland, but far from all of it.

*****

“Tim went against the accepted strategy of the industry at the time, and he said Apple was staying in Cork.”

The Apple facility in Cork

Apple came at one point within a whisker of closing in Ireland. In 1999 it cut 400 of the 1,400 people it employed here, but around that time it nearly pulled out.

In the late 1990s, Joe O’Sullivan recalls bringing a proposal to Apple to close Cork. As a Corkman, he obviously didn’t want the facility to close, but O’Sullivan understood that the powerful forces driving manufacturing to Asia were breaking many companies who resisted.

In an Irish context, glassmaker Waterford Wedgwood and the fall of Ireland’s once richest man Tony O’Reilly are the most striking examples of what happens to businesses who won’t change. 

O’Sullivan led the outsourcing group in Apple so he knew he could not ignore economic reality.

“If you didn’t outsource you couldn’t compete at that time,” he said. “Manufacturing is like the mafia. You don’t injure. You have to kill to survive.”

O’Sullivan remembers, however, two of Apple’s Irish team, Joe Gantly (who then led Apple in Cork and died in 2009) and Cathy Kearney (now Apple’s European vice president) arriving at the meeting to discuss closing Cork.

Tim Cook led the meeting, where the two Irish executives knew this was their last chance to make the case to keep Cork open.

Gantly, who was born in Dublin, was over six-foot tall.

He had a winning disposition and easy charm. Behind him was Kearney with all the data and statistics to hand.

O’Sullivan went into the meeting expecting that Cook, ever the rationalist, would simply close Cork.

“Joe was so personable, he opened the door for Cork, and then Cathy came in behind him with all the facts in Cork’s favour.”

Joe O’Sullivan

The two Irish executives, however, blew him out of the water.

“Cook said after listening to Joe and Cathy, ‘You know, there might be something in this.’ Tim went against the accepted strategy of the industry at the time, and he said Apple was staying in Cork.”

It would be naive to think that Cook took the decision to stay in Cork because of Irish blarney.

It was the business case put forward by Gantly and Kearney that convinced him Apple had a future in Ireland.

“Joe was so personable, he opened the door for Cork, and then Cathy came in behind him with all the facts in Cork’s favour. Between them they brought Cork to the next level,” O’Sullivan recalled. The IDA and the Irish state did everything it could to support Apple’s Irish executives with their pitch.

*****

“I believe the tax deal was the right thing for the country. It served the country well.”

Part of the deal secured for Apple included an ultra-low tax rate. At the time it was not a decisive factor for Apple in staying here.

It was back then a relatively small company. Revenues were $1.5 billion a quarter (versus over $6o billion a quarter today).

“I believe the tax deal was the right thing for the country,” O’Sullivan said. “It served the country well.”

Byrne has a similar viewpoint. “I was there when Apple was making the decision to locate in Cork. Never once was there any discussion of tax,” he said. “Apple needed speed (to be able to begin manufacturing quickly) and it needed quality people. They got both in Ireland.”

“Back then nobody knew how big Apple would get,” a retired civil service source said.

“A lot of people expected Apple would never make real money. Tax was part of the package in the 1990s, but it was not the decisive factor: that was the people, and the plan.”

“Should Apple’s low tax rate have been renewed later on when the company was doing better? From Ireland’s point of view: maybe, maybe not.”

“From Apple’s point of view, the fact is it was. As Tim said last week it does not believe: ‘The law should be retrofitted.’ Ireland, by backing Apple in its legal case, is clearly saying it thinks the same way.”

*****

The Cork Apple mafia is everywhere in Ireland, as well as further afield on the West Coast of the United States and in Asia.

When I first met O’Sullivan at Cork BIC’s Entrepreneur Experience last year, he shared some of his experiences and learnings with early stage entrepreneurs. He was one of four veteran entrepreneurs at the event who all had Apple DNA.

Apple has created significant wealth among its senior and middle management between salaries and stock over many decades.

It has made some people in Cork millionaires, and given many people a comfortable life.

To others it has given valuable training or seed capital to set up their own businesses or an opportunity to travel.

Cork is not a big place: having an employer supporting 6,000 jobs is huge for it.

It is impossible to measure the full impact of Apple creating so many jobs for so long in one place in one small city.

“I joined Apple in a very lowly role,” Byrne said. “But the opportunities it gave me, and so many others, were unbelievable. We should not forget that.”

“Look at me,” O’Sullivan said. “I started life at a low level in Apple, but ended up running my own consultancy (Ophir) based in Singapore. People who have worked with Apple can go anywhere in the world, and know that their time there will stand to them when going for any job.”

Byrne, too, rose through the Apple ranks. From Cork, he moved with it to Paris, and eventually, he became a vice-president of Apple, based in Cupertino, until 1994.

He then went on to join Digital Equipment Corporation, before co-founding Lincor Solutions, a patient engagement software company. He is also chairman of Nualtra, a medical nutrition company, which is backed by Datalex chief executive Sean Corkery, another Apple graduate.

“I joined Apple in a very lowly role,” Byrne said. “But the opportunities it gave me, and so many others, were unbelievable. We should not forget that.”

*****

Postscript

My family has its own Steve Jobs story. In the late 1980s, the IDA got wind that Steve Jobs was planning to set up a major manufacturing facility in Europe. At the time, Jobs was in exile from Apple running NeXt, a computer and software business he had founded in 1985. The IDA had heard that the French government had rolled out the red carpet to convince the entrepreneur to set up a manufacturing facility in France. Frank Ryan, now the chairman of the IDA but then a senior executive there, rang my father Lorcan. My father had set up his own architectural firm in 1982 after working for Robinson, Keefe and Devane Architects (RKD). He had been happy with RKD, but like two of his other brothers, he itched to work for himself. 

Ryan told my father that Jobs was open to coming to Ireland instead of France, but more work was needed to convince him. Ryan had a mission in mind. He wanted my father to fly to San Francisco to meet Jobs and convince him Ireland had the design and construction talent to deliver.

Ireland was at the tail-end of a long recession so the IDA did not have the budget to fund what was a speculative trip. My father was doing well working for Don Panoz’s Elan Pharmaceuticals at the time so he could afford to pay for the trip himself. He flew to San Francisco and booked into a hotel for five days. An exact time to meet Jobs had not been agreed. It was a pre-mobile phone era which forced my Dad to hang around the hotel to wait to receive a call from NeXt. On the third day of waiting, he got the call. He met Jobs in NeXt’s office overlooking a marina in Redwood City. Prior to meeting Jobs he was given a tour of it’s impressive facility. A striking feature of the building was a staircase designed by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei in conjunction with Jobs. Pei is best known for the expansion and modernisation of the Louvre in Paris.

But he also had a special relationship with Jobs that began with that staircase in NeXt, which had steps that appeared to float.

Jobs was obsessed with staircases. Among the 313 patents held in his name, one of them is for a type of staircase.

The NeXt staircase today is a source of inspiration for the many others seen in Apple stores worldwide.

After gazing upon the staircase and other features it was time for my father to meet Jobs. Outside Jobs’ office was an array of exotic fruits laid out so ornately my father passed on eating any.

Jobs welcomed my father dressed in his classic black polo neck even on a warm day.

My father replied: “I haven’t designed a staircase like that. But a fellow I used to work for did: not just once but twice.”

Jobs peppered my father with questions about Ireland. He wanted to know about things like construction talent and how long it took to get planning permissions. Naturally, my father said Ireland could do it all, and more.

After a while Jobs said: “What do you think of my staircase? Have you ever designed anything like that in Ireland?”

My father replied: “I haven’t designed a staircase like that. But a fellow I used to work for did: not just once but twice.”

He told Jobs about Fred Browne who led RKD, which was then, and still is, one of Ireland’s leading architectural practices.

Browne was best known for his project management ability to deliver large architectural projects like Hewlett Packard in Leixlip.

He was described in his obituary in The Irish Times after he died in 2017 at the age of 90 as “the go-to person for industrial architecture in Ireland.” He was an architect who had the ability to combine talent with an understanding of budgets. He brought taste and style to the new breed of American businesses setting up in Ireland.

Browne, as it happened, had designed two striking staircases for Gene Amdahl, a legendary computer architect and high tech entrepreneur.

One staircase was in Amdahl, which made computers in Swords, North Dublin, which was a company Gene Amdahl had founded in 1970.

The second was in Blanchardstown in Trilogy Systems, a chip maker, which Gene Amdahl founded with others in 1979.  

Jobs was impressed that Amdahl, who he respected, had trusted an Irish architect to design his signature staircases.

He jumped up suddenly. “Come on, let’s go and look at the staircase!” he said.

Jobs and my father went outside his office to admire the staircase.

They both marvelled at how a tiny bolt held the entire structure in place giving it the illusion of floating.

NeXt never went to France. Nor did it come to Ireland.

Instead in 1997, Apple bought NeXt for $429 million, bringing Jobs home as part of the deal.

They say never meet your heroes, but that is not always true.

My Dad met Steve Jobs, who was not his hero at that time.

Steve Jobs did, however, introduce him to I.M. Pei.

But that is a story for another day.