"It's hard to imagine life without Apple because my life has been wrapped up in this company...since 1998." WIRED Editor at Large Steven Levy sits down with Apple CEO Tim Cook for The Big Interview, revisiting his early years with the company, discussing where Apple is presently and where he hopes to take it from here.
Director: Efrat Kashai
Director of Photography: Matthew Caton
Editor: Katie Wolford
Host: Steven Levy
Guest: Tim Cook
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Camera Operator: Joe Barnett
Assistant Camera: Travis Switzer
Sound Mixer: Ian Van Keuren
Production Assistant: Nathan Paul Sandoval
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
Director: Efrat Kashai
Director of Photography: Matthew Caton
Editor: Katie Wolford
Host: Steven Levy
Guest: Tim Cook
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Camera Operator: Joe Barnett
Assistant Camera: Travis Switzer
Sound Mixer: Ian Van Keuren
Production Assistant: Nathan Paul Sandoval
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00It's hard to imagine life without Apple because my life has been wrapped up in this company,
00:08as you've mentioned, since 1998.
00:10This is a long time.
00:12It's the overwhelming majority of my adult life, and so I love it.
00:17I'm Stephen Levy.
00:18Today, we sat down with Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss the company's past, present, and
00:23future.
00:24This is The Big Interview.
00:32Thank you for doing The Big Interview, Tim.
00:34Thank you for being here, Stephen.
00:35It's always great to talk to you.
00:37Yeah, well, it's great to be at Apple Park.
00:39I'm looking at this backdrop.
00:41I remember you gave me a tour of this place before people moved in.
00:45And what about this place, working in here, having your people in here, is either unexpected
00:53or striking?
00:54It's promoted collaboration even more than I thought.
00:57And that was a key component of the design, as you know.
01:02But there's so many places in here that you unexpectedly run into people.
01:06You do it at the cafeteria, you do it at the coffee bar, you do it outside when you're
01:11going across the pathway.
01:13And I think that promotes this unplanned collaboration.
01:19And I think it's fantastic.
01:21Also, there's a connection here to Steve.
01:26You know, of course, we have the theater named after him and think about him all the time.
01:30But I can feel him in other spaces in here.
01:34He had a perspective that the venue that you worked in was so important to the work.
01:42And I think that he's been proven right.
01:45You mentioned the theater.
01:46Well, you do product launches now.
01:48You do pre-tapes.
01:49Are we ever going to see live launches in the Steve Jobs Theater again like we used
01:53to?
01:54Maybe.
01:55The thing that we learned during COVID was, you know, the audience is primarily an online
02:01audience.
02:02Very few people can fit in the theater.
02:04And we wanted to have more people engaged in the announcements itself.
02:09And you can do that a lot more productively on tape than you can in live because of the
02:15transitions on the stage and so forth.
02:17But you don't miss the vibe?
02:19I do miss it.
02:20I do miss it.
02:21I get it when the WWDC is here and we announce the film and feel the love from the developers
02:27is fantastic.
02:30I heard something interesting recently that Stevie Wonder had a demo of the Vision Pro
02:38and loved it.
02:39How does that work?
02:41He's a friend of Apple.
02:42It's great to get feedback from Stevie.
02:44And of course, his artistry is just unparalleled.
02:50So fantastic.
02:51But accessibility was always important for us from designing all of our products.
02:56As you know, that's one of the common threads through Apple over time is that we don't bolt
03:04on accessibility at the end of the design process.
03:07It's embedded in the design process.
03:10And so getting that feedback was key.
03:13So I want to look back a little bit through your time here.
03:16You've been here a long time.
03:18You got here in 1998.
03:19That's right.
03:20There had already been eras of Apple.
03:22There'd been the Apple II era, the Mac, the Diaspora era where Steve was going.
03:27You were a compact.
03:28Did you think there's any point watching what was going on that Apple was just not going
03:33to make it?
03:34You know, I probably thought that before talking to Steve.
03:37At that time, if you remember, Michael Dell had said if he was the CEO, he would shut
03:41Apple down and just return whatever assets were left to the shareholders.
03:47And Michael just said what most everyone else thought.
03:51But I have to say, when I came out to talk to Steve about working at Apple, it felt so
03:58alive and so different.
04:01He was somebody that was the most unusual CEO I'd ever met.
04:07He was passionate about the product, passionate about Apple, passionate about its reason for
04:12being, its purpose.
04:15And I thought, I've got to do this.
04:18I want to do this.
04:20And from that point, I never thought that Apple would be going out of business.
04:26And other people did.
04:28Other people advised me, why are you doing this?
04:30You're leaving the world's largest personal computer company and going to one that may
04:35not survive.
04:36But I didn't feel that way at that point after talking to Steve.
04:40While you're here in your collaboration with Steve, you know, Apple came out with, you
04:45know, these great design products, the iMac, then the iPod era, which was so exciting.
04:50There were so many different versions of iPods, then, of course, the iPhone.
04:55Yes.
04:56Looking back, what did you do that was smart that you really didn't think was going to
05:00be so impactful in making that product a success?
05:03Well, I think each product that you named sort of had its place in history.
05:09The iMac revived Apple.
05:12It kind of proved Apple could survive.
05:15The iPod, giving people a thousand songs in the pocket, something very unexpected and
05:21solving a pain point that all of us had that loved music.
05:24It began to introduce people to more people, particularly in the developed markets.
05:31The decision to port to Windows proved that Apple could come out with a product that was
05:38larger than the Mac community.
05:41And then iPhone built on everything that came before it.
05:47And with the great work from the technology team on multi-touch, it gave you a totally
05:53different way of interfacing with the product.
05:56And then what iPhone did, looking back, was introduce people to Apple in the emerging markets.
06:03Going out and forming all of these carrier relationships was very important to introducing
06:10Apple more broadly and sort of turning the industry on its side and owning the design.
06:18Because at that time, if you remember, the carrier was owning the design of the phone,
06:23was sort of directing it.
06:26And we said, no, no, what we bring is the product skill.
06:31And what they brought was the networking skill.
06:34And we didn't have the networking skill.
06:36And frankly, they didn't have the product skill.
06:38And so this combination was very powerful.
06:43And the rest is history.
06:45Well, we're beginning maybe a new era of history now with AI and Apple intelligence.
06:53I mean, do you think this is something that is going to wind up reinventing the company
06:58and reinventing the world?
07:00Are you on the cusp of that?
07:02I do.
07:03I think it's profound.
07:04I think just like multi-touch enabled iPhone and eventually iPad and the modern smartphone
07:12and the modern tablet, AI will reinvent and provide a new era and a new chapter for iPhone
07:20and iPad and the Mac and all of our products over time.
07:25Because I think it changes the way you interface with the products.
07:30I get so much out of Apple intelligence.
07:33And we're just at the beginning.
07:34So Siri is one thing that's being revitalized.
07:38I'm wondering, are we going to eventually have this relationship with Siri that'll be
07:43our constant companion and we'll do, for instance, everything we might want to do in search instead
07:50of going to Google?
07:52We'll just ask Siri.
07:54We'll see.
07:55But I think I use Siri a lot now.
07:56I'm a power user of Siri.
07:59And so I'm some of the billion five requests that Siri gets every day.
08:06So I already have a relationship with Siri, but I think more people will because Siri
08:11will become more personally relevant and be able to take tasks off your plate that you
08:20don't have to do in sort of a multi-step kind of approach that you saw some of the
08:26demos do.
08:27So I couldn't be more excited about the future of Siri.
08:30You're the CEO, you've been here for a while.
08:34How long do you see yourself continuing this role?
08:37Oh, I don't know.
08:38I get asked that question now more than I used to.
08:41Why is that?
08:42As I age, as my hair turns gray.
08:45I love this place, Steven.
08:47I love it.
08:48And I love the people I work with.
08:50It's a privilege of a lifetime to be here.
08:54And I'll do it until the voice in my head says, it's time.
09:00And then I'll go and focus on what the next chapter looks like.
09:04My life has been wrapped up in this company, as you mentioned, since 1998.
09:11This is a long time.
09:12It's the overwhelming majority of my adult life.
09:15And so it's tough to envision life without Apple.
09:20So one more question.
09:23When we were all talking about the tour and things like that, I was also doing a story
09:28about the infinite loop.
09:30One infinite loop.
09:31Yeah.
09:32Which used to be the Apple's headquarters.
09:33That's right.
09:34And you told me that you didn't move into Steve's office.
09:38I didn't.
09:39After he died.
09:40It was preserved.
09:41Yes.
09:42And that sometimes you would go in there.
09:43Yes.
09:44And you were inspired by being in the surroundings.
09:46Yes.
09:47Do you still do that?
09:48Is that office still preserved?
09:49I still do that.
09:50The office is still preserved.
09:51No one's ever moved in there.
09:54And that's been since 2011, as you know.
09:57Most of what we do is forward looking.
09:59But I like my connection back to Steve.
10:02And I like the company's connection back to Steve because from him emanates our values
10:08and our DNA.
10:09So I think that connection is important.
10:12So Tim, thank you so much for doing the big interview.
10:15It's so great to spend time with you.
10:17As always.
10:18I'll bump into you in Palo Alto again.
10:20All right.
10:21Yeah.
10:22In a few days.
10:23In a few days.
10:24Okay.
10:26All right.