Tim Cook shares at least one thing in common with the late Steve Jobs, the man he replaced last year as Apple’s CEO: a strong belief in keeping product development to close to the vest. At the D10 conference, where Cook took the stage for his first in-depth public interview since taking the helm, he announced that Apple would “double-down” on (product) secrecy.
Indeed, Cook stayed true to his word during the interview conducted by All Things D’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher– he wouldn’t spill the beans on any of the products Apple might introduce in a couple of weeks at its World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC).
But Cook did weigh in on a number of topics, from what he learned from his predecessor to his thoughts on Apple TV.
And in the very definition of understatement, Cook said of Apple, “we’ve had a few decent quarters.” (Apple reported record quarterly profits in March. Net profit for the quarter rose 94% year over year.)
Here are edited highlights from Cook’s appearance:
On being CEO. “It’s an absolute incredible time to be at Apple. I’m loving every minute of it…Never have I seen the things I can’t talk about today — the juices are flowing and we have some incredible things coming out.” Working at Apple, Cook said, is “my oxygen.”
On the iPad and tablets. “I’ve never seen a product in technology that consumers loved pretty instantly and business loved and education loved and people of all ages loved. I think we’re in the first inning on the iPad. It’s only been two years.
I really believe that the tablet market will eventually surpass the PC market. Everybody at the beginning kind of laughed that off and said no way. Today I think there’s a lot more believers. I would guess there’s a lot of people in this audience that use their iPads a lot more than they use their computers. And I know I do that. And I love the Mac. We didn’t invent the tablet market. We invented the modern tablet. In my view the tablet and the PC are different. Products are about tradeoffs. The more you look at a tablet as a PC the more the baggage of the past affects the product (negatively).
Source: USA Today | Edward C. Baig
