Apple’s Tim Cook on mistakes, what the future holds
His time at the top has been broadly successful, helping to grow the company, introduce new product lines and even take on the might of the USA government over requests to unlock an iPhone. Apple report quarterly figures because they have to, he said. Elevation Partners’ co-founder Roger McNamee appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Alley” on Monday to discuss the interview and why he feels Cook is the “perfect CEO for Apple”.
Asked about the growing focus on artificial intelligence among many tech firms, Cook told the Post that the growing capabilities of Siri demonstrated the company was far from being “behind”. We thought…that depends on whether we could contain it or not.
A lot has changed in the last five years, Cook told the Post. Every year isn’t an up, you know. He didn’t fit here culturally is a good way to describe it. Cook has just recently finished his tour of India, as Apple CEO and made some major announcements during the course of his visit, which included an App Development Centre in Bangalore and a dedicated Apple Maps office in Hyderabad. The second thing I would point out is we have money internationally because we have two-thirds of our business there.
Cook believes in not being a traditional CEO.
“Your question seems to imply that we’re behind [in developing AI]”. Apple expanded its product lineup after Jobs’s death, and some of those devices were conceived of and developed entirely without Jobs’s input. “So we’re investing, and the number one thing is to make sure our products work well with other developers products like Pokémon”. In due time, some of those things will be visible. “There’s a new technology called differential privacy which essentially looks at large data sets to predict user behaviors and requests without going to the precise individual, which might violate privacy”, he said.
In October 2014, Cook publicly announced his homosexuality in Bloomberg saying, “I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me”.
Apple’s iPhones contributed to 2/3rds of the company’s revenues past year, which makes a lot of people anxious that if the iPhone falls, the company will fall too.
But 71 per cent in Q4 became an 11 per cent fall in sales in China in Apple’s first quarter of 2016. The level of technological performance according to Cook will easily skyrocket in coming months and years. “There are, sort of, speed bumps now with the economy”. Because I think, if not, you quickly become insular.
Cook faced his very first congressional testimony in 2013 when he was called to testify about Apple’s tax practices.
He does not mention the 7.9-inch mini but Slivka notes that many analysts believe it is a goner, rendered extraneous by the 5.5-inch iPhone Plus. The covered topics from taking over for the late Steve Jobs to the company’s recent sparring with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Cook maintains that the company acted in the best interests of its customers. “The risk of what happens if it got out, we felt, could be incredibly bad for public safety”, he said.
On the fight against the FBIThe San Bernandino murder case really did put Apple in a fix when the Federal Bureau of Investigation was asking Apple to unlock the accused’s iPhone. “That was just downright shocking to me, honestly”.
“I think there’s wide agreement to that in both parties, by the way”, he said.