In this far-reaching Q&A, Tim Cook discusses Apple's vision for a more
sustainable world.
Six years ago, the Apple CEO met Popular Mechanics veteran Ryan D'Agostino
and connected over their appreciation for tinkering and for the magazine
itself.
Now, the two sit back down to talk about protecting your right to privacy,
the life-changing power of wearable health tech, and how to be responsible
and relentless at innovation.
Popular Mechanics: When we first met, you mentioned you had been a fan of
Popular Mechanics growing up. What drew you to it?
Tim Cook: It answered the question "How?" a lot. And it explored things that
I was terribly interested in, from cars to space travel. It got me
interested in the 50-in-1 Tandy Science Fair Radio Shack kit. And I think
it's so awesome that it has survived over 100 years, that the magazine could
evolve and still be for hobbyists and tinkerers-the computer business got
started in the same way. The people who were originally interested in
computers were hobbyists and tinkerers.
PM: So much of innovation comes from messing around. Tinkering. Apple is
known as a place where ideas can come from anyone, anywhere. How do you
create that culture-and sustain it?
TC: They don't take any singular route, they can come from everywhere in the
company. We believe in putting groups of people together focused on solving
some problem for a user. You pick diverse teams that look at the problem
through different lenses.
We debate about things that we do and do not do, because we know we can only
do a few things well. You have to debate and say no to a lot of great ideas
so that you can spend your time on the ones that are truly unbelievable.
PM: Can you think of an example of some functionality of one of Apple's
products that when you first heard about it, you said, "That's cool!"
TC: Oh, they happen all the time. I feel like that every day-like a kid in a
candy store. We were just talking in the hallway about M2 and M1-the history
there goes back well over a decade. It goes back to the genesis of the M
chips, or the A chips, from iPhone and really getting in and figuring out,
how do you put a powerful chip in something that small and not get it to
heat up and burn up?
We found ourselves with a similar issue for laptops: How do you put
something in there that is the most powerful computer chip in the world? Out
of that was born M1, and now we've taken it further with M2. And Mac is now
a totally different product than it was before.
PM: What do you say when an engineer or somebody is going, "I don't know if
we can do it?"
TC: Well, usually the way that you get people around here to do something is
to tell them you're not sure it's doable. That's the red flag in front of
the bull, because a lot of people here don't take "impossible" as being
true. If we convince ourselves it's in the best interest of the user, that's
a compelling force for us to power through the problem.
PM: The user. That brings us to personal privacy. How do you view that
responsibility that comes with delivering the device that delivers the app?
TC: We strongly believe that privacy is a basic, fundamental human right.
And our philosophy is to put the decision to share information with the
user.
To be in the app store you have to have a privacy "nutrition label" that
says what data you're collecting and what you're doing with it. You have to
have a pop-up dialog box that asks the user if they want to be tracked
across other apps. That's called application tracking transparency. We
wanted to put the user back in control of that.
I think privacy is one of the most consequential issues of this century.
It's that big. I'm not keen on a lot of regulation because I worry about
what it does to innovation, but this issue is so big that I think regulation
is required. I'm hoping the U.S. passes a federal privacy law because people
should own their data. They should decide who gets to see the data, to hold
the data, to sell the data. It should be their decision, not a company's.
block quote
"OUR LONG-RUN GOAL IS TO NOT HAVE TO TAKE ANYTHING FROM THE EARTH TO MAKE A
PRODUCT."
block quote end
PM: That gets to Apple's role as a global citizen. How do you lead in a
world where not every place the company operates has the same values?
TC: It's important to have values because they act as a North Star. For us,
privacy is really important. That same encrypted iPhone ships everywhere in
the world, and I can't open it anywhere in the world. It's not different by
geography.
Accessibility is very important to us, and we want our products to be used
by everyone. For our customers who are blind or deaf, for example, we want
our products to be able to adapt to the ways they want to use them. So we
try very hard to design that from the beginning.
Education is very important. We believe it can be an equalizing force. Steve
wanted to put a Mac in every classroom. Later, we revised that for everyone
within the classroom to have their own Mac.
Making our products in an environmentally sound way is very important to us.
Both the materials that we use and the recyclability of the materials. We
want to leave the earth better than we found it, and that means solving some
really difficult issues. We're carbon neutral as a company today, but by
2030 we want to be carbon neutral for everything inclusive of our supply
chain
and the product usage at our customers' houses and offices and so forth.
That's a man-on-the-moon objective. Our long-run goal is to not have to take
anything from the earth to make a product, and we're crazy enough to think
that we can do it.
PM: I'm interested in your efforts at American manufacturing.
TC: We do a lot in the US today. It's not focused on as much because it's
component parts. The glass from the iPhone comes out of Kentucky, a
relationship that we have with Corning. And we invested in capacity there to
help them. The Face ID module on the iPad and the iPhone comes out of Texas.
So if you go around the iPhone, there's a lot that comes from the United
States. And we've found over many years that this model of picking advanced
manufacturing for the U.S. is a very good model. We even put $5 billion
aside in a fund to help people invest in the United States, and to make
components that take advanced manufacturing.
PM: In 2021 Apple announced a self-repair service for what's been called the
right to repair.
Who is it intended for?
TC: There's actually something in there for everybody. We took a larger view
and said, "What do people want?" First of all, they want products that don't
break. So we try really hard to make products that last a long time, and
that's sort of job one.
But invariably, some people do have to go somewhere for a repair. And you
don't want to have to drive two hours to find a repair center. So we've
added thousands of independent repair shops.
In addition to that, for the hobbyist and the tinkerer, we said, "We'll sell
you certified parts"-parts that we use to repair. You can buy the part
itself instead of buying a repair. And if you need a manual that tells you
how to do something, you can have the manual. And if some special tools are
required or fixtures required, we can give you that, too. I don't know how
many people will take us up on it. It's for your reader, clearly.
PM: How and why has health become such a significant focus for a
personal-technology company? How did that start?
TC: We started with wellness. And then the three rings on the Apple Watch-we
wanted some simple way of encouraging people to stand and to move and to
exercise.
We added coaching to that to prompt people-you may get a notification that
you only need to walk another 12 minutes today to close your rings. I get a
lot of notes from people saying how motivating it is. They've closed their
rings for 365 days straight. This is amazing-I don't close mine 365 days
straight.
And then we put a heart rate monitor on there, and through time, we got more
advanced. We started getting notes almost immediately from people who found
out they were abnormally high or low and would've never worried about going
to the doctor. But the Watch is a moment of truth, and they would go get
checked out.
When we put A-fib determination on there, that went up to another level of
notifications. And then we put EKG on there. I think that when we look back
one day and ask, what's been Apple's greatest contribution, it will be in
health.
PM: It seems in line with the original vision of the company, personal
empowerment: "We're going to put a computer on your desk."
TC: Yeah. It's the democratization of technology. That's exactly right.
Think about the number of times in your whole life you've had an EKG before
the Watch. And for most people it's somewhere between zero and one or two.
Now you can do one every day and send it directly to your doctor.
PM: You're talking about legacy. How often do you think about Steve Jobs
when you're looking at what Apple is doing?
TC: I think about him a lot. I miss him dearly. He would always stop by my
office on his way out. And there's never been a replacement for that. We
would exchange tidbits on the day and talk about the future. And we try to
carry on the mission that he set in place, to build the best products in the
world that enrich people's lives. And that hasn't changed. Lots of things
change with time. But the reason for our being is the same.
PM: Do you think Steve would be happy with Apple today?
TC: I think he would find things that he loved and things that he would say,
"We can do better on that." I think he would do both. As we all do. We are
never really satisfied. We're always working on tomorrow.
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