sdxfc

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple: "Steve Jobs asked me never to ask myself what he would have done"

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple: "Steve Jobs asked me never to ask myself what he would have done"

    Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, will be exactly within 121 hours and 40 minutes the focus of the eyes of millions of people around the planet. In 121 hours and 40 minutes he will start his next keynote, the most anticipated meeting for the followers of the apple company and for half the world. We don't know yet, because it's the best kept secret, but he does: in 121 hours and 40 minutes he will present a new iPad Pro with the long-awaited M1 chip, the cute AirTag, an update to Apple TV 4K, a renewed iMac, a provocatively purple costume for the iPhone12...

    Related contentDoes Apple plan to destroy Google?Tim Cook's tribute to Tom Cruise, explainedApple launches its new AirTag

    Within 121 hours and 40 minutes the words of this incredibly affable man who looks you in the eye with curiosity intact from a primary school student will revolutionize the checking accounts of millions of compulsive buyers from Shanghai to Salt Lake City, from Ulaanbaatar to the San Telmo neighborhood in Buenos Aires. But now he is there in front of you, waiting for you to throw the first question at him. Impeccably cared for ash hair on a background of minimalist decoration: that lit lamp, that orange container for a candle (without a candle), three selected books, a small bonsai that acts as a vanishing point... It is the painting that a court painter would have chosen to portray a 21st century emperor.

    JUANKR

    In journalism schools they teach you to start interviews at the beginning, but it's not easy to choose a beginning for Tim Cook. Childhood in rural Alabama in the 1960s, perhaps? His childhood obsession with math? Industrial engineering major at Auburn? His first day as CEO of Apple, successor to Steve Jobs, just ten years ago now? The moment when the office had to deal with the horror of the pandemic?... Let's pick a random beginning.

    Related contentThis was the presentation of the first iPhone in 2007Apple launches its new AirPods 3Apple launches its new AirTag

    What does Tim Cook keep in his memory of his first contact with technology? My first memory with technology is, like every child's, a game. I remember the day those video games that imitated a game of ping-pong were released and I also keep an old Commodore in my memory. It really struck me. It was already in college when I saw a personal computer for the first time. Those two events [the primitive video game and the first university computer] have clearly marked my life.

    Did you grow up in a very technological environment? Not at all. I grew up in a rural area and studied in a public school. The closest thing to technology was a typewriter. I had no idea then how important knowing how to use a keyboard was going to be in my life.

    And in this environment, how does a future engineer emerge? Since I was little, mathematics intrigued me. He was one of those few kids who enjoyed math class. And I loved hanging out with people. So in the long run I discovered that industrial engineering was the best scenario to unleash my two great vocations: numbers and human contact.

    Ten years have passed since another important beginning in your life: assuming the leadership of Apple. How was that first day in the new office of one of the most observed CEOs on the planet? I have it engraved in my memory. It was a day of very mixed feelings: taking on this exciting responsibility knowing that he was doing it because Steve didn't have the energy to continue leading. I always thought that for as long as I was at Apple he would stay with the company, perhaps as president. But that was not going to be possible. It was a day of chiaroscuro.

    Related ContentSteve Jobs hated the movie that saved MarvelSteve Jobs predicted the Facebook scandalSteve Jobs teaches you how to respond to criticism

    Did he give you any advice to help you cope with that first day?When he called me to offer to succeed him, he told me a disney story He told me that after Walt's death, for a long time, company executives sat down to make decisions thinking "what would Walt Disney do in this case." Steve told me, “Tim, I don't want that for Apple. I don't want you to wonder what I would have done in each case." With that simple advice, he lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. I haven't stopped thinking about those words in these ten years.

    At age 50, a human being tends to become more conservative, less idealistic. Does the same thing happen to companies? Apple just turned 45. I think that at that age many companies run the risk of getting older, it's true. But here that will not happen. Just look at the company's journey and our obsession with innovation. We keep the spirit of the 70s today and we'll keep it in 2050. We only hire people who share that passion to change the world with every product. That is our secret.

    Ten years later, do you still go to the office with the same energy as the first day? The team gives it to me. It is a privilege to come every day to work with them and learn. Well... for the last year more like connecting digitally with his two-dimensional version on the other side of the screen.

    Pick a couple of successes and a couple of failures in these ten years as CEO. I am very proud of how the company has adapted to everything that has happened in this decade. Think of the amount of innovation we've developed, the incredible variety of iPhone, the ever more advanced features. Have you noticed what Face ID means, for example? Today you put your face in front of the device so that it recognizes you and you don't give it the slightest importance, but it's something almost miraculous. Or the Apple Watch: who would have dreamed that you could monitor your heart health from your watch?

    And what about failures? I make mistakes every day. The list would be endless.

    Tim Cook, Apple CEO:

    And don't you want to cite one? We wouldn't have time... Fortunately we have the ability to correct course. I do it daily.

    JUANKR

    The third beginning of the story. The new world to which the pandemic has led us. How has it affected you personally? Those of us who are here must be aware that we are privileged. We are still healthy, working... It has affected me a lot to witness all the suffering, the loss of life, the pain... to verify that there are disadvantaged communities to which all this has caused much more damage than to others. My heart truly goes out to all of them.

    How did Apple change with the pandemic? From the beginning we began to think about what a company like this could do to help. Now it's hard for us to remember, but the needs at that time were really basic: PPE was needed, protective screens were needed... And we had designers. We derive a good part of our resources to manufacture PPE and we export them all over the world. To Spain too. Later on, we worked together with Google to create contagion tracking and monitoring applications and to improve diagnostic tests.

    Related content All iPhones ordered from worst to best Why is it interesting to go from Android to iPhone 12?

    When all this happens, will we miss anything from the pre-pandemic world? We have learned to live in a different way thanks to technology. The machines have helped us to be more connected from a distance, the children have adapted to teaching through a screen. But technology will never replace human contact. When we are close to the end and we can hug each other again it will be a great day.

    What has Tim Cook learned from the worst pandemic in recent history? We have all learned that this type of crisis does not affect everyone equally, that the most disadvantaged are always the most affected. We have to build a more egalitarian and empathetic society. There are some founding values ​​of our society that should not be lost. Look, we've spent decades doing something as simple as buying a product online and waiting at home for someone to bring it to you. I don't know if it happens to you, but since all this has happened I appreciate the work of these people even more.

    You're a supporter of the face-to-face world... We're chatting very amicably across the screen, but this conversation would be much more enjoyable if we were sitting face to face.

    Yet you make gadgets to live in a world of telepresence. The Apple Watch, for example. Now you can get an electrocardiogram without going to the doctor. Before, the doctor touched you, palpated you or measured the temperature of your forehead with his hand. Isn't that more humane? What we are doing with this device is a revolution that was previously unthinkable. Heart disease is one of the most common causes of death in the world. Now you can monitor your heart health with a watch that you always carry with you. Having an EKG is uncommon for most people. Few people get to get one throughout their lives. Now you can have it done whenever you want, but not to replace contact with the doctor, but rather to the contrary: to empower yourself as a patient and to give the doctor more tools. We are developing really incredible things in the laboratory in that direction. I can't tell you anything, but I assure you that we have amazing health applications in the works.

    One of your obsessions since you became CEO of Apple is privacy. You have come to say that respect for the private data of each user should be recognized as a “human right”. Yes. Privacy should be among the fundamental human rights. In a world in which you feel constantly being watched, in which you sense that someone is looking over your shoulder to see what you are looking for on the Internet, if you move from one site to another, that they are tracing your browsing history, recording what you you buy, what you like and what you don't... In a world like this, people begin to do less things, to think less, to express themselves less. And that's not a world I like to live in. At Apple we believe that your data is only yours. You and only you must decide what to do with them.

    One of the biggest tech companies on the planet doesn't care about my data? We care about you owning it. We are permanently developing functionalities to prove it. Like the Privacy Nutrition Labels ['privacy sheets' released with the release of iOS 14.3]. It is a function that allows you to know, every time you buy something in the App Store, what type of data each application is going to request from you and what it wants it for. You decide if you want to go ahead or not. With the new operating systems we have also developed the App Tracking Transparency feature, which forces developers to ask your permission before tracking your activity on third-party apps and sites for advertising purposes. Each device, each app offered in our App Store has to meet this requirement of giving the user the power to decide what is done with their private data.

    Some say that for security reasons it's good that some of our data is traceable. Privacy and security go hand in hand. Without one there is no other. All the data you manage with your iPhone is encrypted. Apple cannot decrypt them. We have deliberately removed ourselves from the equation. Today your phone contains more personal information than your own home: it knows what you are looking for at all times, it knows your state of health, your bank details, your conversations, your contacts... We are not at all interested in knowing that about you.

    But privacy is a kind of contract. I teach my doctor things about my body that nobody else knows... You can make the decision to share with your doctor what you want. But you don't want to do it with everyone. And less with a company you don't know...

    And don't you think that, these days, people no longer care so much about their data, about their privacy? We have enough problems to worry about right now. Certainly, privacy is a concept in crisis. And we cannot allow the serious problems that affect us now to mislead us of the importance of defending it. The cost of not ensuring this fundamental right can be terrible. It would lead us to a society in which we would not like to live at all.

    And the biggest threat comes from governments, from companies, from advertisers, from our neighbors... Privacy attacks come from everywhere. Sometimes from other companies. Digital advertising is a great tool, for example, but digital advertising based on your personal profile that you don't want to share is not a good idea. Some practices need to be reformed in this regard.

    Is an international regulation in defense of privacy necessary? Without a doubt. Europe did a great job with the GDPR [European data protection regulation]. I hope that everyone takes note and a global regulation for the correct use of personal data is implemented.

    Related contentiPhone 13: When are you interested in changing?50 tricks you didn't know your iPhone didiPhone 12 Pro: Why is it worth it?

    Another of your obsessions at the head of Apple is that the company be an example of defending equal opportunities. Why now? I think we are at the dawn of a new era regarding differences. And it is something that personally worries me in a special way. When I think about my childhood and my references, I remember that then there were two great events that would mark our lives and that, logically, I was not yet old enough to understand. In the middle of the 60s, a whole social revolution took place. One of those events was the March on Washington led by Congressmen John Lewis and Martin Luther King in 1963. The other was to be especially defining for my personal life: the Stonewall riots in New York [in 1969], the milestone that changed the course of the fight for LGBT rights. I was seven years old. And I sincerely believe that we are now in a similar moment. The murder of George Floyd created a new environment to take to the streets to protest and allowed the world to stop for a moment and think to what extent systemic racism has been installed in our society. The fuse that arose in the US has now lit throughout the world and has warned of a problem that is too present in many places. Changes happen when you least expect them. They require a long time to mature and suddenly the definitive burst appears. Now we are at that moment. And I am convinced that the result of all this will be that we live in a more equal society, in which we all feel more proud and that inspires us more.

    And can technology be the engine of that change? Of course. There is something that happens now that did not happen in the 60s. Today we all carry a camera in our pocket. Many things that could not be recorded before today occur in full view of millions of witnesses. There is nothing better than a video sequence to make you reflect or to prevent anyone from pretending that injustices are not happening. The interconnected world is a faster world, what happens in one country immediately resonates on the other side of the planet. Technology is one of the keys to this change.

    In line with that idea... I recently read somewhere that the assault on the Capitol was the most documented crime in history. There are 15,000 hours of recorded video images, there were more than 1,500 mobile phones transmitting live... Do you think that this really makes us a more informed, more transparent and fair society? That's a good question. One of the things the media can do for us is clear the way to the facts. If you look at the attack on the Capitol, there's so many hours of video, so much documentation that it's pretty easy to piece together what happened and when. I believe that in cases like these, the risk of suffering from an excess of information does not exist. We all have the option to see what happened, we all can and should get a clear idea of ​​the events of that day. It was one of the worst days in American history. I think the media did a really good job of making sure that we would see things as they happened. Yes, sometimes it can feel like you are suffering from an information overdose on certain topics, but in the long run the media continue to play their rightful role in a democracy: to be the guardians of what citizens, institutions and governments do. . I am a great admirer of the media and the role it plays in our society.

    JUANKRJUANKR

    Under your direction, Apple has launched some very well-known initiatives in defense of social rights. I am very proud of the work we are doing in favor of equal opportunities and justice. We have developed a $100 million program after the death of George Floyd to promote racial equality. We were reflecting on what would be the best way to promote a definitive change in that direction, and we decided that the best thing to do was to act on education. Education is the great engine of equality. If there is no quality education for all, you force people to start their lives from very different positions, with too many advantages for only a few. So we started developing programs like investing in historically black universities with funds for education in areas like entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, machine learning and many other key technologies for the future. We have launched a developer school to promote training as developers for people who belong to underrepresented groups. We also have support programs for female entrepreneurship.

    All this for US citizens? No... we work in other parts of the world. We have a developer academy in Italy, for example. We want to show the world that education is the main engine of equality. We work very intensively in a series of networks for equal access to women, black or Hispanic people or members of groups such as the LGTB... We try to find out which organizations are doing a good job and we support them.

    You've mentioned Europe several times. Do you visit us often? Obviously not in the last year I'm afraid, but before the pandemic I used to travel there three or four times a year.

    How do you see the old Europe, with its current problems (Brexit, extremism, crisis...) from the US? Europe is so interesting... The idea that each country preserves its own culture, its language, its great diversity. There is something deep in Europe that the rest of the world should learn from: how a collection of countries with such different traditions, cultures, customs and political ideas can come to maintain a coherent unity. There's a lot to learn from that.

    And does Europe also have something to teach in the race for technology? Know? When I visit Europe there are times when I see initiatives in the app industry environment that move me. Apple maintains about 1.8 million jobs on the continent. Most of them are dedicated to the applications industry, and every day I come across some European example of ideas that are really transforming the business.

    Anyone in particular? May I mention a German project called Endel that aims to bring the mindfulness experience to devices like the Apple Watch. They have generated unique soundscapes based on neurological insights to help you meditate. Really, I come across this type of unique proposals in many countries in Europe and I am really excited to see the success of those entrepreneurs there.

    We have little time left. We have promised to let you get back to the hard task of preparing the presentation in just 120 hours and you have to find space for a hard photo session for Esquire Spain. Let me ask you a round of quick answer questions. Go ahead.

    Which application do you use the most? Probably e-mail, Apple Mail. In the company we communicate a lot through e-mail and I receive hundreds of messages from consumers. I use email more than anything else on my phone or iPad.

    The last music you listened to...The last...? Just when I was coming to this interview I was listening to Ludovico Einaudi. He is an Italian pianist whom I adore.

    A book you are reading... The Hardest Job in the World, a book about the work of president of the USA.

    Your favorite exercise at the gym. Strength training. I practice it four days a week.

    A place in the world that you would choose to escape to. Spain.

    Wow, thanks! Someone you'll like to hug when the pandemic passes. To my nephew!

    Last time you criedLast time I cried? Probably when I realized that this pandemic was going to be much worse than we all initially thought. At first I thought this was going to last for weeks, but one day we realized that unfortunately it was not going to be as fast as we would have liked.

    *This article appears in the June 2021 issue of Esquire magazine

    Tags: