Esquire Europe interviewed Apple CEO and Tim Cook made some very interesting headlines. In this interview both his personal history such as your history within Apple, as well as some current issues such as pandemic or privacy. Tim has defended his position on these issues, a direction that is the same as Apple has taken.
“We have some amazing health apps going on”
The first questions in Esquire Europe’s exclusive interview are about Tim Cook from several years ago, a Tim Cook who entered the computer world thanks to video games, despite having grown up in a very rural environment. This boy was a math lover who studied industrial engineering because “it was the best framework to free my two great vocations: numbers and human contact”.
Fully embracing the challenge of a lifetime, as Apple CEO, Tim tells how it was that day, almost 10 years ago, when he took office of what is arguably the most important tech company in the world.
“I engraved it in my memory. It was a day of very mixed feelings: taking on this exciting responsibility knowing he was doing it because Steve didn’t have the energy to continue leading. I always thought that as long as I was at Apple he would stay with the company, maybe as president. But that was not going to be possible. It was a chiaroscuro day“.
Additionally, Tim Cook revealed the advice Steve Jobs gave him before accepting his CEO role, an important tip for the future of Apple.
“When he called me to offer to take over from him, he told me a Disney story. He told me that after Walt died, for a long time, the executives of the company sat down to make decisions, thinking “what would Walt Disney do in this case?” Steve told me: “Tim, I don’t want this for Apple. I don’t want you to wonder what I would have done in each case “. With this simple advice, he took a great weight off my shoulders. I haven’t stopped thinking about these words for ten years“.
Then Tim continued to analyze Apple today, a company that has just turned 45 but hopes to reach 2050 with at least the same energy. “You just have to look at the history of the company and our obsession with innovation. We keep the spirit of the 70s today and we will keep it in 2050 ″. He also reveals that it is a real privilege to go to work every day with his team and to learn.
Going into the topic of the pandemic, Tim revealed that He and Apple were hit hard and they decided to help.
“We needed PPE, protective screens … And we had designers. We get a lot of our resources to make PPE and we export them all over the world. In Europe too“.
As for Apple Watch and its health measurement sensors, Tim pulls his chest with current technologies, and gives us long teeth when talking about the future of the Apple Watch.
“We’re developing some really amazing things in the lab in this direction [la salud] . I can’t tell you anything, but I assure you we have some amazing health apps going on.“.
Finally, the confidentiality is the focus of the conversation. Apple has taken this issue very seriously by implementing significant improvements in iOS that allow users to know and decide what to do with their data. First there was the privacy labels on the App Store, so you know what data each app is accessing, and then the tracking tracking, so the user can decide if they want apps to track their. data or not.
Tim believes that privacy must be recognized as a “human right” and appreciates the work that has been done in Europe with the GDPR regulation. Tim says that is so and that countries should agree on an international system to protect people’s data.
“Privacy should be a fundamental human right. In a world where you feel like you are constantly being watched, where you feel like someone is looking over their shoulder to see what you are looking for on the internet, if you move from site to site, they track your history. navigation, recording what you shop, what you like and what you don’t like… In a world like this, people start to do less, to think less, to express themselves less. And it’s not a world I like to live in. At Apple, we believe that your data is yours alone. You and you alone have to decide what to do with them“.
All the data you manage with your iPhone is encrypted. Apple cannot decipher them.
“Today your phone contains more personal information than your home: it knows what you are looking for at all times, it knows your state of health, your bank codes, your conversations, your contacts … We are not at all interested in knowing that about you“.
The interview ends by talking about social equality and the initiatives Apple recently promoted to tackle racism and inequality. He also revealed that the app he uses the most on his iPhone is Apple Mail, that he likes strength exercises in the gym and that he would choose Europe as his place of escape. You can read the interview on the Esquire Europe website and in the June 2021 issue of the magazine.
