the apple ceo might be more powerful than the president

there is a very real argument to be made that the apple ceo role might actually be more impactful on humanity than the us presidency. obviously this differs in many ways but generally speaking the tenure is longer, it's compounding, & has an intimacy of contact much larger than the president.

i.e. presidents serve 4 or 8 years & operate mostly at the macro layer through policy, posture, & signal. absolutely consequential but diffuse & often reversible by the next administration. but apple ceo preside over 15+ year runs where every product builds directly on the last. e.g. the app store didn't end w/ jobs & the iphone didn't reset w/ cook.. all of it deepened. the decisions stack rather than swap out every election cycle.

also ~2b people touch an apple product for hours every day.. it mediates how they communicate, navigate, transact, remember, & increasingly perceive. no president commands that kind of sustained, pre cognitive presence in daily life. presidential impact is mostly felt in aggregate abstractions whereas apple's impact is felt in the shape of your afternoon.

different roles obv. but if you're measuring by compounded effect on how billions of humans actually live moment to moment, the apple ceo maybe much more relevant figure than the office we default to calling the most powerful in the world.