Following the lengthy excerpt from Becoming Steve Jobs, Fast Company today published an extensive interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook, who talks about Apple’s future, the Apple Watch and how the company “lives outside the box.”
During the interview Tim Cook once again emphasised Jobs’ belief that you can change the world. “That was the huge arc of his life, the common thread. That’s what drove him to have big ideas,” Cook states. That attitude has remained at the core of Apple’s philosophy, and can be seen as the origin of the company’s “maniacal focus to make the best products in the world.”
When Apple looks at what categories to enter, we ask these kinds of questions: What are the primary technologies behind this? What do we bring? Can we make a significant contribution to society with this? If we can’t, and if we can’t own the key technologies, we don’t do it. That philosophy comes directly from him and it still very much permeates the place. I hope that it always will.
Tim Cook highlighted the Apple iPhone’s influence on the market. Although not the first smartphone manufacturer, the iPhone was, he claims, the first modern smartphone. An approach Apple is also taking with the Apple Watch: it “will be the first modern smartwatch — the first one that matters,” Cook elaborates.
There are lots of open questions relating to the new device, most commonly regarding its potential uses and practicality. Tim Cook addresses this issue shrewdly:
[…] but people didn’t realize they had to have an iPod, and they really didn’t realize they had to have the iPhone. And the iPad was totally panned. Critics asked, “Why do you need this?” Honestly, I don’t think anything revolutionary that we have done was predicted to be a hit when released. It was only in retrospect that people could see its value. Maybe this will be received the same way.
The interview is well worth your time, so to read it in full, follow this link.
