Fast Company has an extensive interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook, focusing on what has changed and what has stayed the same since he took over from Steve Jobs. The interview comes a day after FastCo published a sizeable excerpt from the book Becoming Steve Jobs, in which Cook criticized the portrayal of Jobs in Isaacson’s biography.
Cook said that while much has changed, the culture–the fundamental goal of the company–remained the same.
Steve felt that if Apple could do that—make great products and great tools for people—they in turn would do great things. He felt strongly that this would be his contribution to the world at large. We still very much believe that. That’s still the core of this company.
The company has never tried to be first to market, he said, but rather to “have the patience to get it right” …
Apple took the same approach to the Apple Watch as it took to the iPod, iPhone and iPad, he said.
We weren’t first on the MP3 player; we weren’t first on the tablet; we weren’t first on the smartphone. But we were arguably the first modern smartphone, and we will be the first modern smartwatch—the first one that matters.
Cook said he wasn’t concerned that, so far, many people find it hard to see the value of the Apple Watch.
Yes, 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.
He admitted that it is harder for Apple to remain nimble, to resist bureaucracy, as the company has grown.
It’s harder, and you are fighting gravity. […] We’ve turned up the volume on collaboration because it’s so clear that in order for us to be incredibly successful we have to be the best collaborators in the world. The magic of Apple, from a product point of view, happens at this intersection of hardware, software, and services. It’s that intersection. Without collaboration, you get a Windows product […] That’s what’s now happening in Android land.
Part of the secret, Cook said, was a willingness to move on, to walk away from approaches that are no longer appropriate. Apple has repeatedly done this with legacy technologies.
Apple has always had the discipline to make the bold decision to walk away. We walked away from the floppy disk when that was popular with many users. Instead of doing things in the more traditional way of diversifying and minimizing risk, we took out the optical drive, which some people loved. We changed our connector, even though many people loved the 30-pin connector. Some of these things were not popular for quite a while. But you have to be willing to lose sight of the shore and go. We still do that.
Asked if there were areas in which the company had moved on from Steve’s way of doing things, he said that constant change was Steve’s way of doing things.
We change every day. We changed every day when he was here, and we’ve been changing every day since he’s not been here. But the core, the values in the core remain the same as they were in ’98, as they were in ’05, as they were in ’10. I don’t think the values should change. But everything else can change [and] Steve was the best flipper in the world.
Cook sees the new spaceship campus as essential to Apple’s future.
It’s critical that Apple do everything it can to stay informal. And one of the ways that you stay informal is to be together. One of the ways that you ensure collaboration is to make sure people run into each other—not just at the meetings that are scheduled on your calendar, but all the serendipitous stuff that happens every day in the cafeteria and walking around.
Steve’s office in the current campus building is famously still there, just as he left it. Will there be a Steve Jobs office in the new campus, he was asked?
What we’ll do over time, I don’t know. I didn’t want to move in there. I think he’s an irreplaceable person and so it didn’t feel right . . . for anything to go on in that office. So his computer is still in there as it was, his desk is still in there as it was, he’s got a bunch of books in there. Laurene took some things to the house.
I don’t know. His name should still be on the door. That’s just the way it should be.
While the interview does cover some familiar territory, the whole thing is well worth reading.
Photo: Pete Marovich, Getty Images
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
” It was only in retrospect that people could see its value. Maybe this will be received the same way.”
Translation: Heck if I know why anyone needs it….hopefully developers find a way to sell it for us.
No. He found an utility for him, but don’t know if other people will. He doesn’t talk for you, and I prefer that.
Um, his job is to sell products to the masses. He clearly can not sell the watch. He isn’t Joe Smith being interviewed by local news asking his opinion on the Apple Watch he is the CEO that brought it to market.
Where there’s one “translation”, there can be others. I would guess that this has been market researched to the sky, and that Apple is expecting modest early sales. I don’t think they are foolish enough to imagine the Watch line (on into the future) as a post-iPhone device, and so it is just a product category addition — an ecosystem stretching device. Tim’s comment is based in this (my translation), but expresses the hope that it will be have an unforeseeable iPad-like popularity bump.
Those few comments about Steve’s office still hit me in the heartstrings. I can only imagine his empty office, papers on his desk, his Mac at the login prompt, dust settling, and everything just frozen in time, waiting for a person who will never return to it.
I think the difference is the iPod had a clear purpose that resonated with almost everyone across any generation. You’d be pretty hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t like music. At the time multi disc cd changers were the big thing in everything from in home audio to cars. The iPod was the ultimate multi disc player and fit in your pocket.
While the iPhone and the iPod were less focused in their purpose, they had very compelling arguments for them. Internet on the go. Better messaging than anything out at the time. The iPad on the other hand did almost everything an average consumer needed from a laptop. Reviewers didn’t get that at the time. They were to busy looking at its form factor rather than its capabilities.
The watch’s only focus I can find is fitness. Don’t get me wrong some people like fitness but I can’t imagine it’s anywhere near the same amount of people liked music or liked surfing the web on an iPad. Other than that it just don’t see how it’s more beneficial than doing those activities on your phone.
In the short term (18 months) the Apple Watch main use cases is notifications, health & fitness, and communication features. Over the longer term, the watch will be to the physical world what the iPhone is to our digital world. In the next 2-3 years I expect the watch to be an indispensable part of our every day lives.
The watch will open your car, unlock your doors, let you pay for things with Apple Pay, check into hotels, check into flights, check in at movie theaters, request an uber car, and much more all without taking the phone out of your pocket. All of these are a reality now, but there will be much, much, much, more functionality in the the future. Especially once the full Watch SDK is out and not just WatchKit, and even more so once the Watch isn’t tethered by an iPhone.
IMO, the growing number of small conveniences that Apple Watch will enable, is a case where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
As you rightly say, you can do all of those things at the minute. The thing is though you don’t need an Apple product to do them.
The watch which let’s you do all of that and isn’t dependent upon any one OS will be the watch which becomes indispensable.
Finally, someone with a little vision! But the fools keep “seeing” the future by extrapolating the past: asinine.
Buy a 1000 dollar watch and a 200 bluetooth door lock just two not pull your Free key out of you pocket? Yeah that’ll take off real fast.
@chris if you’re going to use the $1000 starting price point to make an illogical point, just go with the $17,000 price point instead please. At least it will be funnier.
@smooth the point isnt illogical. If you’re selling me a device because it can “unlock doors” for me because ya know, pulling out my keys really ruins my day. And then tell me after the cost of the new door lock and new device and charger and band I am over 1000 in the hole JUST TO UNLOCK MY DOOR you are once again stuck in techie nerd land. I love how people now also act like taking 0.5 seconds to pull out a cell phone is the most laborious thing in their lives. “Just think no longer will it take you 0.5 seconds to grab your phone now you can spend twice that long tinkering around on the digital crown!
Thank you for a good post. It’s no surprise to me that some (most?) people lack vision. If we all had it, it wouldn’t be considered remarkable.
The use-case for the watch is as you say — it’s the device which connects your body to everything else. You can still have it on you even when you’re naked.
It’s the bridge between technology that’s “portable” and a future which will no doubt include some kind of body augmentation or implants.
Wearables *must* happen. It’s not a case of seeing a use for them or not, it’s a case of them *inevitably* becoming mainstream, it just will happen slowly like every other major tech shift… and some crusty blowhards will be dragged into the future kicking and screaming.
@chris biometrics are the #1 reason for wearables to exist. They aren’t here yet, but they will be in the near future, so all of these other things are just like how your iPhone can do numerous things. You could argue that the number #1 reason for wearables isn’t here yet, despite wearables being here, but they can do plenty of things, obviously.
In the future these things that you call techie. Won’t be. They’ll be everywhere and everyone will take them for granted just as common everyday tech is taken for granted today. It’ll come, they’ll become cheaper, etc etc.
Seems pretty cool to walk up to your car and you raise your wrist at the trunk and it pops open, because the watch is on your wrist, authenticated, and the simple gesture opens it. This will be the integration with car mainly but it’s all coming.
Notifications work fine and dandy on the already existing phone. I get that it maybe easier to look down at your wrist by a second or two but not worth a $350 accessory. Personally, I dislike using voice to text features on the phone unless I’m driving as it usually gets a couple of parts wrong and I have to go back and edit it. That takes almost as long as it would to just type it. I also find it less acceptable in social situations both as the user and while in the company of others. But yet again, that’s just me personally, I’m not claiming that to be everyone. I also find jabbering on the phone in a group of people rude as well.
Fitness I agree is its selling point. Communication, well I made my point up above.
@Jlatham you know you can send a message by way of dictation or voice right? You don’t have to rely on dictation.
Smart-watches have more benefits than fitness. You need to own one and use it for a while to understand their benefits. Lots of things you can do with it.
Smartwatches are nice to have but no must haves like Smartphones. YMMV
In my opinion Apple got it wrong from the the get-go because of the targeted 1 day battery life.
Seems like a great product tainted with a fatal flaw.
And is because of that single but important factor that I won’t be buying one.
If the sales are not good I won’t be surprised if Apple release an Apple Watch LE with a battery lasting 1 week.
The watch would be a dumb watch if it lasted a week. If you want it to last 72hrs approx. you can use it for just telling time. There’s a 100% chance the watch will have roughly the same battery life until a new battery technology is introduced.
The point of “you need to own one” to understand the benefits is part of the problem. The other devices I mentioned showed their benefits when they were unveiled.
“The other devices I mentioned showed their benefits when they were unveiled.”
Sure, there are some benefits that are easy to understand, but there a many little subtle things that need to be experienced, especially when applied to your particular needs.
Well, iPhone can do everything iPad can. What iPad do is to provide better experience on some task. So I don’t see any problem if it can give better experience on some task.
No it can’t. You can use an iPad on it’s own. You can’t use an Apple watch on it’s own. The Apple Watch is basically a terminal on your wrist.
@AuntyTroll
I assumed you mean Apple Watch will definitely not giving better experience on any task.
How do you know it? and how can’t being on it’s own relevant the experience on each task?
I never said that. An iPad is a stand alone computer. The Watch isn’t. To get apps on it It NEEDS to be connected to your iPhone. My comment was aimed at the fact you said that the iPhone can do everything the iPad can, not if it gives a better experience or not :)
@AuntyTroll
Oops, I got it’s wrong. Haha.
For me, iPhone is also a standalone computer as well as iPad. They have same processor and architecture, even OS and apps are also pretty much the same.
Some apps such as Pages, Sketchbook provide better experience when use on iPad, but you still can use it on iPhone if you want. You can also connect to bluetooth keyboard but not mouse on both device.
Yeah, some apps didn’t launch iPhone version (for example, most of the apps under Apple-IBM program). But it’s still not because iPhone can’t handle it. They just think putting resource on this will not worth it.
So, I still think iPhone can do everything iPad can, it’s just provide different experience.
Absolutely agree. My iPhone is probably the most used device in household just because it’s always there. Then my MacBook Pro or the iPad are pretty much tied. The MacBook for Creative Cloud and Sketch and the iPad for Movies. But both only see use maybe once a week.
The Apple Watch is going to be the first product of the Post Steve Apple for which the new Apple can be fairly judged.
Lets see how it goes…. but according to some other things they have done lately I’m not impressed.
They just keep ripping the benefits of being Vertically integrated and finally releasing a larger phone.
They only news that has got me excited is the iOS 9 focus on stability/performance rather than stuffing yet gazillions of features.
And talking about constant change and ability to move on I think Apple is no longer the small underdog playing defensive against Microsoft by being closed. That strategy needs some adjustments.
For instance they could open the iOS Watch Kit so people can choose other Watches than just the A Watch or perhaps having one or two Apps on Android iWork comes to mind.
Another challenge is going to be the invasion of super cheap Chinese phones, this is perhaps the reason why they will go after Cars next.
The cell phone market is rapidly saturating and maturing to the point that the essential smartphone functionality and apps that people need can be found in phones approaching the $100 mark.
Good luck but I am not hopeful.
Large corporation = Mediocrity / Inefficiency / Complacency.
Opening watchkit to others is an abysmally awful idea. Good thing you aren’t making decisions at Apple. Apple is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition for a multitude of reasons, but number one is the seamless combination of their hardware, software, and services. They must be, MUST be designed together, or they are all much much poorer products. That’s what Apple understands that others can’t grasp. That’s why they wouldn’t dream of building parts to a car. You have to build the entire car, and incorporate and design everything together, or it’s just a mess.
Oh really?! LOL
Newsflash! Apple has HomeKit, Carplay and the much older Bluetooth API stack open to other manufacturers already and guess what… the sky didn’t fall. Opening Watch Kit wouldn’t be any different and Apple could still offer their vision/style of A Watch for those that prefer that one.
While I don’t agree that Watchkit needs to be opened to various other companies, I do believe that Apple needs to start making apps for android. I take it as “a glass of water to a person in hell” stand point. Open up the stores on Android. iTunes and iBooks along with videos need to be on Android selling content to build up an ecosystem inside of Android. Also FaceTime and iMessage would be nice additions. Show Android users how well it works, give them even more reason to switch.
It won’t work well on Andriod for the reasons I said. See people just don’t get it.
Yes, stuff like that iTunes and iBooks is a good start. The purpose is to sell more content no matter the platform. Apparently Beats Music Service will work in other OS, so they might start being less Paranoid Protective and Closed.
Hard to believe they I overlooked you for CEO.
Have to imagine Apple is considering naming the Spaceship “The Steven P. Jobs Center.”
The Jobs Centre??
I think the Apple Watch’s utility will take time to become useful, it it ever does. It will probably take a couple of revisions that increase battery life, usable, Apple Phone unique applications, and price reductions before the true success can be judged. Not unlke the iPod, or the iPhone. The original iPhone (the so called 2G) was not a huge success, but was successful enough to encourage Apple to continue to develop it. Apple usually iterates the hell out of products until they get them right. I don’t expect the Apple Watch to be any different. I can see price coming down, perhaps a new shape (I will say up front that I think the square/rectangular shape makes more sense to me than a round shape for a smartwatch0, and a ton of detail improvements, from screens to force touch to better use of the two buttons, and battery improvements. How I take Tim Cook’s comments on the Apple watch is more like the Apple watch’s true utility will only be known after people use it for a while, and after applications are developed for it. Without widespread usage, it is hard determine how it it going to be used or by which people/market segment.
I don’t see that the one day battery life is a big issue. You get the same out of your smartphone, and nobody has an issue with that. Why would it be a big deal if you connected your smartwatch to a charger at the same time that you connected your smartphone to its charger?
As for Apple being the underdog, in some ways I can understand why people would not see Apple as the underdog, considering its financial strength. However, it must be kept in mind that Apple only has about 23% of the smartphone market share vs. over 70% for Android; in the PC world, Macs still are less than 10% of new PC sales (even though market share is increasing for the Mac). So, depending on how you look at things, Apple can be an underdog, or the dominant player.
Kostas
People do realize that market share means nothing when considering those two operating systems right? Right? iOS: expensive devices and only a select handful. Andriod: expensive to obscenely inexpensive devices, and on any devices imaginable, so many devices it’s actually ridiculous. How and why would Apple ever have the higher market share with respect to that? It’s not about having the higher market share. It’s about making the better devices, and the seamless integration.
The Smartwatch has been in the market for several years and People that has been used them already know what they can do with them. At this point there is little room for surprises. Perhaps you haven’t used one yet.
Once you have an iPad, Phone and Smart-watch you will understand why battery range is important.
It has something to d with Gadget Fatigue.
People at some point want to just disconnect and simplify.
Carrying yet another high maintenance gadget that demands daily charging is not fun.
Been there done that……
I can’t believe the way that he repeatedly dismisses Android Wear as if it never existed. I will buy an Apple Watch but I still feel that the Moto 360 is the best smart watch on the market.
The Moto 360 is hideous, and horrible design. Andriod wear is awful on it mainly because of the round display, it cuts off text, it’s just a prime example of a poorly designed and thought out product.
Apple thought of everything. Set aside the font they created for it and Taptic engine, Force Touch is a great example of how well thought out it was. The fact that they understood that having a new input method to bring up context was so much easier and faster than swiping over or tapping another on screen button and then having to go back and forth to change those things. Brilliant.
“It’s harder, and you are fighting gravity. […] We’ve turned up the volume on collaboration because it’s so clear that in order for us to be incredibly successful we have to be the best collaborators in the world. The magic of Apple, from a product point of view, happens at this intersection of hardware, software, and services. It’s that intersection. Without collaboration, you get a Windows product […] That’s what’s now happening in Android land.”
Weird how this is just too funny, yet at the same time so sad.