"Khan, who remains one of Cook's top lieutenants to this day, immediately stood up, drove to San Francisco International Airport, and, without a change of clothes, booked a flight to China with no return date, according to people familiar with the episode. The story is vintage Cook: demanding and unemotional."

Mac blogger John Gruber, at Daring Fireball, with Cook's analysis of the Macintosh market, and of Apple's ongoing strengths during last October's announcement of new Mac products.

Gruber wrote: "Cook then showed two pie charts. One showing the Mac's unit share in the U.S. retail market at 18 percent, up from 'a single digit number, just a few years ago'. Cook then drops the kicker, the single key point you need to grasp to understand Apple's Macintosh business: 'And what's more impressive than this is if you look at revenue share. Because we focus on fully-featured systems, and we don't compromise on quality, our revenue share is over 31 percent. That means that one out of every three dollars that's spent on computers in U.S. retail is spent on the Macintosh. What a difference a few years makes.'"