Tim Cook’s Apple smart glasses answer is a subtle Steve Jobs callback

Zac Hall | Apr 2 2026 - 7:05 am PT

There’s a moment in yesterday’s WSJ video piece with Tim Cook that’s really delightful. Cook is asked about Apple’s plans for smart glasses, and his reply is a subtle callback to a classic Steve Jobs moment.

“Speaking of seeing what people will do, glasses?” WSJ columnist Ben Cohen asks Cook.

Tim Cook laughs.

“I can’t say,” he says in response. “You can’t have a ship that leaks from the top.”

If that phrase rings a bell, it’s because Jobs himself mentioned it before — about himself.

In 2007, during an interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, Jobs deflected questions about future Apple products by admitting that a younger version of himself had a little less restraint.

“Five years from now, what’s going to be on that pocket device,” Walt Mossberg asked Jobs.

His answer? “I don’t know.”

“And the reason I don’t know is because I wouldn’t have thought that there would have been maps on it five years ago. But something comes along, gets really popular, people love it, get used to it, you want it on there. So people are inventing things constantly. And I think the art of it is balancing what’s on there, and what’s not on there. It’s the editing function. And, clearly, most things you carry with you are communications devices. You want to do some entertainment with them as well, but they’re primarily communications devices and they’re going to — that’s what they’re going to be.

When pressed for more specifics by Swisher, Jobs admitted something.

“There used to be a saying at Apple, ‘Isn’t it funny, a ship that leaks from the top?'”

“That was what they used to say about me when I was in my twenties.”

Earlier in the same interview, Jobs referenced a ship with a different kind of leaky problem while discussing former Apple CEO Gil Amelio.

“Gil was a nice guy, but he had a saying, he said, ‘Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water. And my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction.'”