Apple CEO Tim Cook Opens Up About AI Plans, Vision Pro Future, and More in New Interview

[obviouslogic]

Interviewer: As for the Magic Mouse, what are your thoughts on where its charging port is located?

Tim Cant Cook: No comment

Being "Steve Job's cousin", you outta know the Magic Mouse was designed under Steve Jobs tenure.

 

[citysnaps]

Tim was personally selected by Steve Jobs himself to run Apple. And it's not just Wall Street making bank on Apple. I bought 100 shares when Jobs returned from his exile. Since then, I've made a pile of money by holding Apple and reinvesting the (meager) dividends. I now have 1,681 shares thanks to two splits and those dividends. If I met Tim, I'd thank him for his stewardship. So would anyone working for Apple. He's a consummate businessman, and Apple is a business. And without profit, there's no Apple. You no doubt don't remember 1995 & 1996 when Sun Microsystems was in talks to buy Apple, after the financial collapse that occurred under John Sculley's and Michael Spindler's leadership. Then slid even deeper into the abyss under Gil Amelio, who was fired after 500 days.

When Cook took the reins from Jobs in August 2011, Apple's market cap was $357 billion. Today it's worth over $3.5 trillion. That's execution, my friend. And concept means nothing without execution. Apple isn't perfect, but find a better run company over that time period. Only Microsoft & Nvidia compare.

Spot-on!

"He's a consummate businessman, and Apple is a business. And without profit, there's no Apple."

And without Apple's 1 billion active customers who purchase Apple products year after year, there would be no Apple. Happy, and most importantly repeat, customers are the final arbiters of a company's success.

Apple (under Cook's leadership) is clearly giving its customers what they want. And that's outstanding products.

 

[obviouslogic]

More living Excel sheet than human, Cook continues to just throw around word husks that his PR advisors told him are inspiring, counting the seconds until the interview is over and he can count his billions.

Man, I miss Steve 😔

Tim Cook's current net worth is 2.3 billion, and that's only because the stock price has gone up so fast the passed decade.

Steve Jobs had $10 billion when he died, who's the real greedy bastard?

 

[obviouslogic]

Spot-on!

"He's a consummate businessman, and Apple is a business. And without profit, there's no Apple."

And without Apple's 1 billion active customers who purchase Apple products year after year, there would be no Apple. Happy, and most importantly repeat, customers are the final arbiters of a company's success.

Apple (under Cook's leadership) is clearly giving its customers what they want. And that's outstanding products.

It's the 2% of unsatisfied customers, with the biggest mouths that like to hear themselves whine.

 

[obviouslogic]

Cook is a bean counter. Cook is not a visionary or an innovator.

While I agree, Tim Cook may not be a "visionary", I certainly wouldn't call him a bean counter.

And why exactly does he need to be a visionary to make Apple successful? I'd wager Apple is doing better today than it ever has.

 

[gleepskip]

While I agree, Tim Cook may not be a "visionary", I certainly wouldn't call him a bean counter.

And why exactly does he need to be a visionary to make Apple successful? I'd wager Apple is doing better today than it ever has.

Bean counters love a bean counter. Shocking.

 

[obviouslogic]

Bean counters love a bean counter. Shocking.

Have no idea what this even means?

 

[NT1440]

I want to know when they're going to invest in their own AI, with actual Apple standards, to make a real smart Siri, instead of paying a shady company, funded by a competitor, because they've totally missed the AI train and spent a decade on cars, TVs, VR and other way less important things.

So…you don’t understand anything about what Apple is releasing, cool.

 

[Haiku_Oezu]

Man, Tim Cook has to be the most boring milquetoast CEO in tech right now

Every single answer he gave sounds like it went thru four passes of Apple PR
Make sure you mention the Screen Time feature when you give your non-committal answer about smartphone dependency!

luckily the rest of Apple leadership, the one making the actual products, seem to have inspiration and drive but cook feels like he’s there to keep the machine working and the supply chains running smoothly

I hope a new CEO is due soon, not because Tim is doing a bad job or anything, but I miss the time where the head of Apple was opinionated, ambitious and with a healthy disdain for shareholders

 

[cicalinarrot]

So…you don’t understand anything about what Apple is releasing, cool.

Siri has to redirect you to GPT for smart features right now and we heard nothing about Apple's own AI.
Please, get some manners.

 

[victorvictoria]

I agree, Tim's done amazing work raising Apple's market cap, bringing Swift, and Apple Silicon, etc., but I do miss the showmanship of Steve Jobs. And to be fair, Steve probably did a more miraculous turnaround of Apple. As you said, Apple was in talks about another company buying it to being one of the most popular companies out there. Yes, Swift and Apple Silicon are great and all, but Steve had the iMac, iPod, iPhone, etc. A lot of "Wow!" products. Nowadays, I don't see that. And Steve's keynotes were actually fun to watch.

I miss Jobs as much as anyone. I worked for Apple from 2004-2014 in their B2B purchasing division. There's no greater visionary you can name who transformed 20th century life as much as Jobs (not Henry Ford, not the Wright Brothers. Not everyone has a car, not everyone flies. Everyone has a smart phone). But it's not luck or conicidence that Apple grew to 10 times the size it was when Jobs left it to Cook. It was Alexander Graham Bell in the 19th century, and Jobs in the 20th. Some would say Musk in the 21st, but I think the jury is still out on him.

 

[victorvictoria]

Tim Cook's current net worth is 2.3 billion, and that's only because the stock price has gone up so fast the passed decade.

Steve Jobs had $10 billion when he died, who's the real greedy bastard?

Neither. Both are fairly compensated by definition.

 

[obviouslogic]

Siri has to redirect you to GPT for smart features right now and we heard nothing about Apple's own AI.
Please, get some manners.

Please get some knowledge...

First of all, Siri does not have to redirect you to GPT for "smart features". Most of the "AI" and "smart features" are built into Apple's devices and run Apple's own models. If the device can't handle a request, it is sent to Apple's larger models on their servers. If a request falls outside of Apple's scope, then and only then is it redirected to OpenAI's ChatGPT's service. Currently and purposefully, Apple has limited its scope to mainly handle personal-oriented requests.

Second, there are a lot of "AI" features that are not apart of Apple Intelligence that are handled by other Apple AI models on device; handwriting recognition/reproduction, image recognition, sound recognition/reproduction, text auto-complete, etc. Apple Intelligence mainly refers to generative AI LLMs.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Yes Tim... things are just "flourishing" with AVP
(just saw this today ... it's been a constant theme on CL/FB around me)

 

[turbineseaplane]

But it's not luck or conicidence that Apple grew to 10 times the size it was when Jobs left it to Cook.

Well said
It's monopolistic behavior and overpricing everything for folks who are at least partially locked into the ecosystem

 

[contacos]

I know all their AI is still in beta butsofar it just isn't good and doesn't even seem that smart.

Image Playground basically just ignores prompts like you tell it to remove the hair or to go bald and it just keeps adding ridiculous hair do.

Notification summaries may tell you that your dad died and doesn't understand context at all.

 

[obviouslogic]

Neither. Both are fairly compensated by definition.

Yes, I know... It was response to a claim that Tim Cook only cares about "counting his billions", while at the same time idolizing Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs made most of that money selling Pixar to Disney. There's no doubt in my mind that Steve Jobs was a brilliant mind and had an uncanny sense of getting people to like want what he created. He even once said, "People don't know what they want, until you show it to them." of course that was in reference to why he didn't like including focus groups in product development.

But calling Tim Cook a "bean counter" is just asinine. This is the person who told an investor to go pound sand after suggesting that Apple was "wasting" money on its "green" initiative. As a publicly traded company, Tim cook has a responsibility to Apple's investors, more so than Steve Jobs ever did. And has to balance that with moving the company forward.

Steve Jobs was brilliant. He was the right person at the right time to return to Apple. He was a showman during a time when Apple needed people to pay attention to them. And he played that part flawlessly. But he also knew the direction Apple was headed and knew Tim Cook was the right person for the job; Apple's top priority is making sure 100's of millions of devices get into users hands. Second to that, is to continue to make those products desirable. Some people can't face that fact.

 

[obviouslogic]

Well said
It's monopolistic behavior and overpricing everything for folks who are at least partially locked into the ecosystem

Monopolistic behavior? Such as?

 

[2128506]

Tim is probably one of the most bland and uninspiring people leading a tech company.

Sure Wall Street likes him - he's essentially a glorified accountant, not a visionary.

 

[Harry Haller]

Cook is a bean counter. Cook is not a visionary or an innovator.

I think Steve knew exactly who Tim was and that's why he chose him to succeed him. He believed Apple needed an operations oriented executive to propel Apple to where it is today. I know that's not a popular opinion, but that's how I see it. Be interesting to see which leadership direction Apple goes when Tim retires in a couple of years.

 

[Timpetus]

If the only qualifications needed to be CEO of Apple are being named Tim and being tall, I'll happily step in as a much younger replacement when the voice says it's time 😆

 

[rforno]

The recorded presentations are okay to me (but I miss the live ones!) but they really could tone down the obviously-forced cheerfulness, glowering positivity, and cult-like 'aura' that these recorded events exude.

Or maybe I'm just getting grumpier in middle age..... *shrug*

 

[Rogifan]

Why does anyone interview Tim Cook? He never says anything meaningful.

 

[goonie4life9]

Cook is a bean counter. Cook is not a visionary or an innovator.

FALSE! The era of spatial computing is HERE! The Apple Vision Pro is LITERALLY tomorrow's technology, today! You can't say someone isn't a visionary when "VISION" is LITERALLY in the name of the product!

 

[NT1440]

Siri has to redirect you to GPT for smart features right now and we heard nothing about Apple's own AI.
Please, get some manners.

No, anything not handled by the PCC models, which is larger than the local stuff, can give you the option to go to chatGPT. It’s not “just ship it to chatGPT”.

That’s how it actually works, to suggest all Apple’s AI is merely a portal to chatGPT is disingenuous and false, but people STILL think that’s how it works despite plenty of explanation in two keynotes now.

If you don’t understand it or “haven’t heard” about Apple’s own AI both locally and in PCC that’s because you haven’t been paying attention.