An 'instinctively conservative' Tim Cook was willing to try something new — then take responsibility when it failed. Bono says it's probably one reason Steve Jobs tapped him to be CEO.

• Bono wrote about the time he convinced Apple CEO Tim Cook to put U2's album on iPhones for free.
• After the "experiment" went wrong, the U2 frontman said Cook "was ready to take responsibility."

Apple CEO Tim Cook's willingness to "try something different" and readiness to take responsibility when it goes wrong is likely one of the reasons Steve Jobs chose him as his successor to lead Apple, according to Bono.

The U2 frontman convinced Cook in 2014 to put the band's album, "Songs of Innocence," on iPhones for free. But instead of being welcomed as a gift, the plan received backlash on social media and "bumped into a serious discussion about the access of big tech to our lives," Bono wrote in his upcoming memoir, a portion of which The Guardian published over the weekend.

Cook, Bono wrote, "never blinked," during the backlash, and said Bono talked the company "into an experiment."

"We ran with it," Cook told Bono, according to the musician. "It may not have worked, but we have to experiment, because the music business in its present form is not working for everyone."

Bono said Cook's reaction to the problem was a "clue" to why former Apple CEO and cofounder Steven Jobs chose him as his successor to lead Apple.

"Probably instinctively conservative, he was ready to try something different to solve a problem," Bono wrote. "When it went wrong, he was ready to take responsibility."

When Jobs announced his resignation as CEO, Apple chairman Art Levinson said, "the Board has complete confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO. Tim's 13 years of service to Apple have been marked by outstanding performance, and he has demonstrated remarkable talent and sound judgement in everything he does."

Jobs, who passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2011, was sometimes critical of Cook, according to author Walter Isaacson who wrote the "Steve Jobs" biography.

"In my book, Steve says how Tim Cook can do everything, and then he looked at me and said, 'Tim's not a product person,'" Isaacson told CNBC.

Isaacson further told CNBC that sometimes, when Jobs was in pain and angry, "he would say more things than [Cook] was not a product person."

Cook, whose supply-chain expertise helped the iPhone company achieve the high gross margins it's now famous for, said that Jobs only yelled at him "four or five times during the 13 years I knew him," according to the book "Becoming Steve Jobs: The Revolution of a Reckless Upstart Into A Visionary Leader," by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli.

One of those times was when Cook offered Jobs part of his liver after he found out they both had a rare blood type.

"He cut me off at the legs, almost before the words were out of my mouth," Cook said, adding that Jobs said "I'll never let you do that. I'll never do that."

Jobs's critique of Cook as "not a product person" was reportedly shared by Apple's former design leader, Jony Ive, who left the company in 2019. Ive grew "disillusioned" as Cook focused Apple more on operations than on design improvements, The New York Times reported.

Ives was close with Jobs, who he worked with to design the iMac which became the fastest-selling desktop computer in history. Ive told Cook he wanted to leave Apple in 2015, after he "was exhausted from building the consensus required to produce the Apple Watch," the NYT reported. Cook let him work part-time until he left the company.

Since Cook's takeover of Apple in 2011, the company's shares have increased by over 1,000%, and added over $2 trillion in market value.

The Apple CEO is reportedly planning at least two bold new product lines: a long-rumored electric car, and an VR/AR headset.