Yeah, I suppose there was a point he had to sign off on the decision so there is that. Hard to say if his role amounted to anything more than that (maybe it did).

> judged by outcomes

In a general it depends? Of course in Apple's case its not that ambiguous. But then you have companies like Intel where it seems kind of hard to pinpoint the specific individuals responsible for its demise. e.g. Gelsinger presided over what was probably the company's darkest period (remains to be seen of course) and the situation was reasonably stable when he took over. Is he the one to blame for all of it?

Brian Krzanich was the primary architect of Intel's demise. A huge amount of Intel's problems stem from opting to go with DUV rather than EUV light source for lithography, and this decision was made during Krzanich's tenure. This may have stemmed from Krzanich's lack of technical expertise. Gelsinger was brought in to fix things, but the board of directors got uncomfortable with the amount of money required to fix the problem.

It's not really ambiguous at all. Tim Cook for all his faults did not torpedo the cash cow that is called Apple. For almost half a decade the market cap of AirPods alone exceeded Tesla.