Tim Cook

Carlisle Group co founder David Ruben's time. They spoke on David Rubinstein's Bloomberg television program Peer to Peer Conversations. A reception to your God, pure, I thought it was for you, Now it's for you. You've now been the CEO of Apple since bent July of two thousand eleven. Of the earnings are up about so have you ever thought you can't do better than this? And maybe you should just say, well, I've done a great job and now I'm gonna do

something else with my life. We viewed the stock price and revenues and profits as a result of doing things right on the innovation side, on the creativity side, UH focusing on the right products, treating customers like their jewels, and and focusing on the user experience. I didn't even know the numbers that you just quoted. This is not something that I that's not even in my orbit, to

be honest with you. Well, so when you announce your quarterly earnings, analysts always say, well, they didn't sell as much much of this product is that we thought they would. And so what does that bother you? Uh? It did it one time, It doesn't anymore. Uh. The we run Apple for the long term, and and so it's always struck me as bizarre that there's a fixation on how many units are sold in a ninety day period, because we're making decisions that are multi year kind of kind

of decisions. And so we try to be very clear that we do not run the company for people that want to make a quick bock. We we run the company for the long term. One of the shareholders who recently surfaces having bought seventy five million additional shares is Warren Buffett. Um. Are you pleased to have him as your shareholder? I'm overjoyed and thrilled because Warren is focused on the long term and and so there is we're

we're in sync. It's the way we run the company, it's the way he invests and uh yeah, so I could not be happier. Well, have you thought about this? Warren still uses an old flip phone, he has no smartphone. Have you thought how much more your stock could go up if he actually used the product? I'm I'm I am working on him and I told him that I'll personally cut out on the hall to do tech support

for so UM. You're now in a building that was designed and inspired initially by Steve Jobs Apple Park, Apple Park, and um you've moved in recently. Steve had the vision that the workplace should facilitate people working together, having these common areas, that people could work together and run into each other without planning on doing it, and that the level of ideas and creativity and innovation that would come

out of that, uh would would be phenomenal. And we're seeing that, And you're convinced standing up working is better than sitting down. We have given all of our employees standing gaps. If you can stand for a while and then sit and and so on and stuff with, this is much better from people all lifestyle and were handling. We could stand up for a little while standing up, thank you. So, so let me ask you about how

you came to this position. So you grew up in Alabama, a very very small rule town between Pensacola and Mobile and the golfing. And you grew up where you star athlete, where your star scholar? Where you a tech nerd? What were you when I would say I was a star anything. I worked hard at school, I had some uh reasonably good grades. The benefit I got in my childhood was being in a family that was a loving family and

uh a public school system that was good. Uh and you know that's a huge benefit and honestly a benefit that uh many many kids don't have these days. You went to Auburn and how did you do there? I did? I did? Uh? I did pretty good. Uh you know, I did pretty good. I really got into engineering in a big way, and in uh industrial engineering. And so then you went to work for IBM. I did. Yes. I started as a like a production engineer out designing

manufacturing lines. And at that time, robotics were beginning to take off, and and so we were we were focused on automation. Uh. I wouldn't say we successfully focused on it, but I learned a lot, uh from going through that as well. So you were there for about twelve years and then you joined another company called Compact. Yes, so you're a Compact, which at the time I think was one of the biggest manufacturers of personal computers. They were,

they were the number one at the time. So you're there for about six months and you get a call from Steve Jobs or somebody working for him saying can you come and join Apple? Apple was modest compared to Compact. Why did you to take the interview and why did you join Apple? Yeah, it's it's a good question. Um. Steve had had come back to the company, uh and was essentially replacing the executive team that was there at

the time. But I thought, you know, this is an opportunity to talk to the guy that started to hold industry. And Steve met me on Saturday and it was like, just minutes into talking with him, I want to do it, which I was totally I've shocked myself, Uh, but I there was a there was a sparkle in his eye that I had never seen in a CEO before. Uh, and there was he he was sort of turning left when everyone else was turning ride. It was almost almost

on everything that he talked about. He was doing something extraordinarily different than conventional wisdom. Many people were abandoning the consumer market because they were just it was a blood bath. Steve was doing the exact opposite. He was doubling down on the consumer at the time everybody else the conventional wisdom said go put your money in storage and servers. And I thought it was brilliant and uh so with it talking with him, and and the type of questions

he asked, we're all so different. Uh, and you know I I did literally before the I left. I think I hope he offers me a job because I really want to do that. Did your friends tell you this was not a good idea? They thought it was nuts? Uh, they thought it was nuts. Again, conventional wisdom was, you're working for the top personal computer maker in the world. Uh,

why why would you ever leave? You have got a great career head and there was It wasn't a decision that you could kind of sit down and do the engineering kind of analysis saying here the pluses and here the minuses, because that analysis would always say stay put. It was this uh sort of voice in your head that was saying, go west, young man, go west. Despite the fact that there was no state income tax in Texas and there raised in California, you still said you're

gonna go west. So, UM, in hindsight, this was the best professional decision of your life, I assume, uh, maybe the best decision of my life. I'm not sure you need to put professional in. So you go there and what your job in Apple running worldwide operations, and the company at that time was struggling, UH in many different

areas and operations was no different. Our economies of scale, UH didn't lend itself uh to us doing manufacturing in different places like we like existed in the company at that time, and so we found partners that were expert manufacturing, and we maintain the sort of the intellectual knowledge of how the process and obviously all of the design of problems. When you got there and you're working for UM, UH for Steve wasn't better than you thought, worse than you thought,

more challenging than you thought. I found it to be liberating, is the way I would describe it, because it's, uh, you could you could kind of talk to Steve about something very big and UH, if it resonated with him. He would just say okay, and you could do it.

And so it was like a you know, like a total revelation for me that a company could run like this because I was used to these layers and bureaucracy and studies and you know, studying things sort of the paralysis that companies can get into, and uh, Apple was totally different than that. And I realized that if I couldn't get something done, I could just go to the nearest mirror and look at it. And that was the reason Steve health was such that he couldn't continue to

be the CEO. He told the board that, And you were announced as the CEO, I think around July of two thousand eleven something around there when you became the CEO. UM, did you feel you had that Steve would say, here's what I was interested in doing, and you fulfill my goals or did you feel you had your own view on what you should do? And how did you balance the two your succeeding a Gendery figure, it's not so

sequential as that. Uh. We have a really open company and so most of us could finish the other person's sentences, even when we might disagree with them. And so it wasn't a matter of Steve having this secret file or something. He was always sharing his ideas all the time and so so uh, very different than that. And I thought, honestly, my my thought at that time, and I know people have told me you're you're, you're just not very smart.

But my view at that time was he was going to be chairman and he would do that forever, and that we would figure out the uh, you know, the sort of the relationship change there. And that's what I thought, and it and you know, unfortunately it did or not that one. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone. You have a product that is the most successful consumer product in the history of mankind, which is the iPhone. There was a sense that it was a profound product.

It was a game changer. If you go back and watch the keynote that Steve announced it, uh, you can feel his passion in it and the way the way he described I still remember it like it was yesterday. So how many iPhones have now been sold? Uh, well over a billion. So there are seven a half billion people in the face of the earth, so one out of every seven people has one more or less. Well, some people probably about more than one along the live you know, well, well, you do have new ones coming

out every so often. So is that if I buy a new iPhone, should I expect another one in two years? Or um? You should expect that Apple is going to keep innovating and uh and you should jump on the train now though, okay, because because life is so short? All right, okay, well, I kind of I have it here, and uh, I have my iPhone here actually, and I

do use it and I love it. And one time when you and I were in China, I couldn't quite work something, and I asked you to help me, and you said, look, I normally don't do texta people, but we're nice and it did work. You came out with the Apple Watch not too long ago. Why was it called the Apple Watch and not the I Watch? Because you have iPhone, iPod, iPad, why not I watch? Did you ever think of that? Or you know, I'm sure you must have thought of it. I'm sure it's not

a novel idea, but I'm just curious. It was something that we thought of it, so it wasn't a crazy question. So no, it wasn't a crazy question at all. And how come Apple Watch one out. Well, I kind of like the Apple Watch. What do you think, Well, you're the CEO, so something. Okay, so how are they doing? They're doing fantastic. Cellular is now on the watch. You don't have to travel with your iPhone. You can just

use your watch. One of the my best moments of a day is to go through my emails that are from users, and I get so many each week from people that found out they have a heart problem from their watch. It's alerting you if you've been sitting in your heart has climbed to a level that doesn't make sense relative to the activity that you've been doing. Suppose you don't want to know if you have a heart problem, Well, we think most people do, because you can then go

seek help. And seriously, David, so many people have written and said, uh, the watch alerted me to a problem. I took an action and went to the cardiologist. He told me that if I had not gone there, I wouldn't be a lot five. So when you say you go through your emails and nobody emails you directly, I can't assume you can't. Oh, sure they do. Well, how

could you respond to all those emails? I can't. But but it doesn't mean that I can't read a fair number of those myself, because I think it's important, UH to sort of keep your hands on the pulse of the user. Today, let's talk about some of the values that you've been espousing. One is a privacy. We see privacy as a fundamental human right and and so to us, it's right up there with some of the other civil liberties that make Americans what what they are. You know,

it defines us as Americans. And we we see that this UH is becoming a larger and larger issue for people, and so our tacked on this is we we UH take a minimum amount of data from customers only that which we need to to provide a great service, and then we worked really hard to protect it with encryption and and so forth. Okay, you've also talked about the

importance of equality. Why is that important to you as I look at the world, Um, many of the problems of the world come down to the lack of equality. It's the it's the fact that it's the kid that's born in one zip code who doesn't have a good education because they happen to be born in a zip code. It's Uh, someone that is maybe an LGBT community, Uh that is fired because of that. Uh it's someone that has a different religion than the majority, and therefore they're

ostracized in some way and some very simply. I think if one day you could wave a wand and everybody in the world would treat each other with dignity and respect, there were many many problems that would would go away with that. So you exposed your own personal life a bit, you know, the privacy that you've said other people should have. You kind of gave up some of your privacy. Why

did you do that? Well, I did it for a greater purpose is that Uh it became clear to me that there were lots of kids out there that were uh not being treated well, including in their own families and uh, and that kids need someone to say, oh, they did okay in life and they're gay, so it must not be a life sentence in some kind of way. And when I we're getting these notes, it would tug

on my heart even more. And it it got to the point where I thought, I'm making the wrong call by trying to do something that is comfortable for me, which is to stay private. Uh. That I needed to do something for the greater good and so that that's why no never regrets, never good. So now you're obviously in the public eye recently you had a meeting with President Trump. What was the meeting with President Trump? Like, you know, I wouldn't want to say what he said.

What I talked about was I talked about trade and the importance of trade and how I felt, uh that two countries trading together make the pie larger and that, um, it's true, I think, undoubtedly true that not everyone has been advantaged from that in in either country. Uh, and we've got to work on that. But I felt that terroriffs were not the right approach there, and I showed him some uh more analytical kinds of things to to demonstrate why. We also talked about immigration and uh, the

importance of fixing the Dreamer issue. Uh. Now you know, we're only one court ruling away from a catastrophic case there. So do you think you made progress on these issues? I hope so. And uh, I hope SO has roughly two hundred and sixty billion dollars of cash more or less. Uh, what do you tend to do with that cash? We're going to create a new site a new campus within the United States. We're gonna hire twenty people, uh and and so, and we're gonna spend thirty billion in cap

acts over the next several years. And so we're one number one. We're investing and investing a ton in this country. We're also going to buy some of our stock because we view our stock is a is a is a good value. So your did your parents live to see your success? My my mother uh passed away three years ago and my father is still a love. So your mother lives. Your mother lived to see you be the CEO. She did, and that she said, well, you're great. I

always knew you'l be successful. And can you help me with my iPhone? Can you help this? Or well, I I did uh get both of them on iPad, and I finally convinced my father uh to uh start using iPhones and so. But uh, they honestly, they've treat me like they did twenty years ago and forty years ago, sixty years ago. And he calls you with tips about what to do or tell you how to do things or not if he if I do something he doesn't think it's good, he tells me about it. Right, So, yeah,

I saw you on that show. You aren't very good, so I'm hoping you edit this. Well. You're obviously a great public figure. You were not before. Have you ever thought that maybe you could run for president of the United States? Because um, you do? Um you know you've

seen the president of close. I'm not political, right. I I love focusing on the policy stuff, but in the dysfunction kind of in in uh in Washington, between the legislative branch and and so forth, I think that I can make a bigger difference in the world doing what I'm doing. And I appreciate the comment, but I think, yeah, you know, the president is something that you'd love to to be president, but not ever run, and and that should never happen in our country. And said that kind

of eliminates me. Of all the CEOs that I know that have run major companies, you are the lowest ego, kind of most self effacing person that I've seen in this kind of position. So um uh have you ever noticed that you're different than the other people are CEOs? And and how do you maintain this self effacing, kind of modest demeanor when you're running the biggest company in the world, but when you when you work at Apple, uh uh, there's a high expectation on everyone to perform

and to contribute. And because of that high bar, and you never quite get there, including the CEO, including every job in there. And so I'd never feel that way very long if I ever felt that way. Well, thank you for taking the time today, and I'm thank you for having me. You're the first person I've interviewed without a tie on, and I was in your honor and um, because uh, I bet you sleep in a tie empty, particularly in the camp. How do you wo