Tim Cook Honors Steve Jobs, and Faces the Future

If there’s such a thing as a master class for new CEOs, I think Tim Cook held it last night. In a warm, funny, smart and highly controlled interview with All Thing D‘s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the 10th annual D Conference, the still-newish Apple CEO expertly handled dozens of questions on everything from Apple’s relationship with Facebook, which he says is good, to its steady migration into the TV business, to “pain in the ass” patent wars. It was a performance that would have made his friend and mentor, the late Steve Jobs, proud.
Throughout the interview (a transcript of our live coverage is here) Cook never lost his cool or good humor, and stayed on message.
While never offering any tangible product update information (though some believe he more or less buried the Ping social network), Cook did paint a clearer picture of who he really is as a CEO, the devotion he has to the company and to carrying forward Job’s vision without the need to “be” the legendary company founder. “Steve was a genius and visionary. I never viewed my role was to replace him. Steve was an original. I don’t think another one of those is being made… I never felt the weight of being Steve.”

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True Believer

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Cook, who has been with Apple for 14 years is a true believer and explained that he knew he wanted to join Jobs at the company within five minutes of meeting him at their first interview in 1998. He told me that he was attracted to Jobs’ apparent lack of interest in money and desire to move heavily into the consumer space, at a time when the rest of the industry was heading in the opposite direction. Cook was so entranced, he resigned his job at Compaq the next day and essentially never looked back.
Despite his obvious admiration for Jobs, Cook was well aware of the late CEO’s quirks. He recounted how Jobs could passionately argue one position and then, a day later, just as passionately support the opposite position. “Jobs would flip on something so fast, that you would forget that he was the person taking a 180 position.” Mossberg said they had video evidence of this characteristic and Cook retorted, “You’ve got proof. I saw it daily.” He also refuted the widely held belief that Steve Jobs was the product sole curator. Cook said that now with Jobs gone the “curator role moves around as it always had.” If Steve Jobs were there, continued Cook, “he’d say, ‘no one person does it all.’ ”
Cook has, it’s clear, fully embraced the role of CEO. He called the Job “his oxygen” and relished the new responsibilities and the unique customer engagement Apple enjoys. He described Apple customers as “a different breed” and spoke of the privilege of getting thousands of e-mails a day from customers.

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Patents, Their Way

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Cook, though, didn’t just effortlessly handle the softball questions. He managed some interesting Jobsian logic on the difficult question of patents. Yes, he acknowledged that Apple is engaged in patent disputes, but Apple never, he said, goes after “standards essential” patents. In other words, a patent that, say, might define how you connect to a 3G network. Owners of those kinds of patents “have a responsibility,” said Cook, to “license them on a fair and reasonable” basis.
When Apple goes after others for patent disputes, though, it’s invariably for something Apple has built. Complained Cook, The whole thing is “a pain in the ass. Is it a problem for innovation? From our point of view, it’s important that Apple is not the developer for the world. We can’t take all the care and finish all the painting and have someone else put their name on it.”
Still, when Kara Swisher tried to draw Cook into some negative commentary on Google, Cook demurred, saying he did not want to talk about other companies. Though the exchange left us with little solid information about the state of Apple’s patent battles, we were still oddly satisfied. Cook may not be Jobs, but he clearly possesses some of his persuasive gifts.
Repeatedly, Cook buffeted back questions on future product developments and business activities, though he did promise great things from Siri, continued engagement in the Apple TV space and possible blockbuster acquisitions. He said all this without offering any real news, telling the audience only, “We’re going to introduce some great stuff.”

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Rise of the Tablet

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Cook spent a lot of time talking about the rise of the tablet market, which he still thinks is in the “early innings,” and, like Jobs, was able to slip in the occasional veiled dig at the competition. “We didn’t invent tablet market. It was there. We invented the modern tablet market,” he told Mossberg.
Perhaps the most interesting exchange came when Cook explained that Apple would “double-down on product secrecy.” Apple is famous for how it manages its limited product lineup roll-out, with levels of secrecy that, reportedly, extend inside the company so only those groups working directly on a future product know exactly what it is. Again Cook offered no specific example but did add that the company would now balance that secrecy by “being the most transparent” in other areas, more specifically, how it manages its supply chain.
Cook said Apple is working hard to improve conditions at the Foxconn manufacturing plant where many of its most popular products are assembled. Still the change is not coming easy. As Apple tries to reduce the long hours some Foxconn employees work, Cook said it’s finding resistance from employees who want to work a lot of hours, quickly earn overtime hours and bring the money back to their more impoverished hometowns in China.
When Jobs died last October, it was, Cook recalled, “absolutely one of the saddest days of my life.” Cook mourned, but then “last year someone kind of shook me and said, ‘It’s time to get on.’ ”
Getting on means Cook “will change things” at Apple. But one thing he won’t change is its culture of excellence: “Not accepting good or very good. That’s embedded in Apple.” He made it clear that, going forward, this would be his Apple: “I love museums, but I don’t want to live in one. Steve taught us to not focus on the past. Be future focused.”