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nofeetheatertickets.com/default.aspx.html Prior to his death on Oct. 5, xxxx, Steve Jobs made sure that the elevation of Tim Cook--his longtime head of operations and trusted deputy--to Apple chief executive officer would be drama-free. "He goes, 'I never want you to ask what I would have done,'" recalls Cook. "'Just do what's right.' He was very clear." In Cook's first 16 months on the job, Apple has released next-generation iPhones and iPads and seen its stock price rise 43 percent. Though it hasn't yet expanded into new product categories (still no Apple TV set), the company has changed in significant ways, largely because of Cook's calm and steady influence. In his most wide-ranging interview as CEO, Cook explains how Apple works now, talks about the perception that he's "robotic," and announces the return of Apple manufacturing to the U.S. Bloomberg Businessweek: How has Apple changed since Oct. 5, xxxx? The first thing to realize is that all the things that have made Apple (AAPL) so special are the same as they have always been. That doesn't mean that Apple is the same. Apple has changed every day since I have been here. But the DNA of the company, the thing that makes our heart beat, is a maniacal focus on making the best products in the world. Not good products, or a lot of products, but the absolute best products in the world. In creating these great products we focus on enriching people's lives--a higher cause for the product. These are the macro things that drive the company. They haven't changed. They're not changing. I will not witness or permit those changes because that's what makes the company so special. There are lots of little things that change, and there will be lots of little things that change over the next year and the years thereafter. We decided being more transparent about some things is great--not that we were not transparent at all before, but we've stepped it up in places where we think we can make a bigger difference, where we want people to copy us. So there are things that are different, but the most important thing by far is, the fiber of the place is the same. The decisions that you're alluding to--more transparency into the supply chain, doing corporate matches for employees' charitable donations--were those things that you'd thought, "You know, I want to bring that to the culture. I can't wait to introduce them." How did those inflection points come up? My own personal philosophy on giving is best stated in a [John F.] Kennedy quote, "To whom much is given, much is expected." I have always believed this. Always. I think that Apple and Apple's employees have done enormous good and can do even more. One of the things that we have done is match our employees' charitable contributions, where they select who they want to give to. So it's not some corporate committee deciding, but it's our 80,000 employees deciding what they want to do, and then we match it. You know, it's clearly something I wanted to do, yes. But others wanted to do it, too. Our transparency in supplier responsibility is an example of recognizing that the more transparent we are, the bigger difference we would make. We want to be as innovative with supply responsibility as we are with our products. That's a high bar. The more transparent we are, the more it's in the public space. The more it's in the public space, the more other companies will decide to do something similar. And the more everybody does it, the better everything gets. It's a recognition that we need to be supersecretive in one part about our products and our road maps. But there are other areas where we will be completely transparent so we can make the biggest difference. That's kind of the way we look at it. You were CEO on an interim basis twice before. How is the experience of being permanent CEO different from those two stints? There were actually three times. There was Steve's first surgery back in '04. Then a medical leave for half a year and then '11. Not that there wasn't public focus on those, but that public focus tended to be quick, and then it sort of flipped back to Steve. This has been different. This, you know. (Pause.) This has been different. So I have had to adjust to that. I'm a private person, so that's been a bit of a surprise for me, not something I would have predicted. Maybe I should have. Rex Tillerson is the CEO of Exxon (XOM), which is at any given moment the second-most valuable company in the world. I'm guessing 10 percent of our readers know who he is. I'm guessing less than 1 percent could spot him on sight. By virtue of Steve Jobs and his legacy and by virtue of Apple living in everyone's pocket, you're famous. I mean, really, globally famous. I don't feel famous. You know, I lead a simple life. My life is incredibly simple. But what's changed is that, yeah, people recognize me. They may think, "I have seen him before. You know, the CEO of Apple" or whatever. And so it has been a bit of adjustment for me, because for years I had the privilege of being anonymous. There is a great privilege in that if you're a private person. So it's a bit different. I love Apple deeply, and I'm having the time of my life. Obviously, if I could rewind the clock, Steve would still be here. He was a dear friend--much more than a boss. But I love being CEO of Apple. I love it. It's just something I have to, and continue to, adjust to. If you have some ideas there of how I can do it better, I would love to hear it. (Laughs.) Would you describe yourself as a shy person? If so, what would you tell a shy person about how to go about not just being a public face, but also being a source of inspiration for 80,000 employees? Would I describe myself as being shy? (Pause.) No, I wouldn't say I'm shy. I don't think a shy person would stand on a stage and give a presentation or do communications meetings with numerous people and this sort of thing. But I'm not a person that puts value in being recognized. This doesn't drive me. I am driven by great work and seeing people do incredible things and having a part in that. So it's more of a feeling inside that drives me, not a public recognition that drives me. Maybe that makes me a bit different. You mentioned the Exxon CEO. It's interesting to me--and I think this is a privilege for Apple--just like we're sitting down at this table today, I get e-mails all day long, hundreds, thousands per day from customers who are talking like you and I are talking, almost like I've gone over to their home and I am having dinner with them. They care so deeply about Apple they want to suggest this or that or say, "Hey, I didn't like this," or, "I really love this," or tell me that FaceTime has changed their lives. I received an e-mail just today where a customer was able to talk to their mother who lives thousands of miles away and is suffering from cancer, and they couldn't see her any other way. But the point is they care so much they take the time to say something. It's not a letter like you might think is written to a CEO. It's not this formal kind of stuff. It's like you and I are having a discussion, and we've known each other for 20 years, and I want to tell you what I really think. I love it. I don't know if there's another company on earth this happens with. It's just not people from the U.S. These are people from all over the world. I look at it, and I go, "This is a privilege." Is there another company in the world where their customers care so much they do this? I don't think there is. Other companies I've worked at, you might get a letter every six months, and it was, you know, "I want my money back," or something sort of terse. There was no emotion in it. So I think this is really something incredible. It's one of the things that I knew about Apple even back 15 years ago when I was in the interview process with Steve. Apple was this company going through all of these hard times. Customers got angry with Apple and would yell and scream--but they would keep buying. If they got mad at Compaq they would just buy from Dell (DELL). There was no emotion there. It was a transaction. Headline from April 6, xxxx, when Apple dropped the NewtonHeadline from April 6, xxxx, when Apple dropped the Newton With Apple, my first day at work I crossed a picket line to get in the building! There was a picket line of customers who were protesting, because Steve had decided to kill the Newton device. And it was because they cared so deeply about it. And I thought, "This is amazing." I still remember it like it was yesterday. I was walking to the lift that day and thinking, "Oh my God, my life is different." It was so great. It was so great. You know, I have been involved in hundreds of new product announcements, hundreds of product withdrawals. At one of the companies I worked at, not to mention any names, we'd put [new products] in the lobby. We'd get on the employee intercom system and say, "Come look at them," and nobody came. They didn't even care. So I think you're right. I don't know the gentleman from Exxon. But I think the likelihood that's going on there is zero. I've talked to many other CEOs who look at me like I have three heads when I talk about getting hundreds or thousands of customer e-mails in a day. It's a privilege. It's like you're sitting at the kitchen table. You're a part of the family. And we have to continue to honor that. You seem to be an enormously responsible person. Is that accurate? I love the company. A significant part of my life is Apple. Maybe some people would say it's all of my life. I would say it's a significant part. And you know, I feel both a love for it [and] I feel a responsibility. I think this company is a jewel. I think it's the most incredible company in the world, and so I want to throw all of myself into doing everything I can do to make sure that it achieves its highest, highest potential. Cook in xxxx, his freshman year at Auburn UniversityAuburn University Special Collections and Archives Dept.Cook in xxxx, his freshman year at Auburn University Nothing hardens faster than the details of a CEO's bio. Every story about you mentions the following: You're a Southern gentleman. An Auburn football fan. Always early to work, always the last one to leave. None of it is negative, but do you recognize yourself in those descriptions or do you find yourself a little bit distorted? If so, would you like to correct a few things? I think when you start reading about yourself, it's almost--it's like a caricature. It begins to sound like someone else. That's probably a better question to ask people that really know me vs. me. I hate talking about me. You know, it's not something I do well or do a lot. I generally avoid it. But I would say that the person you read about is robotic. There are some good things about that, perhaps. (Laughs.) Discipline comes to mind. But it sounds like there is just no emotion. People that know me, I don't think they would say that. I certainly am not a fist-pounder. That isn't my style. But that and emotion are two different things. One is just a way of expressing it, basically. So, anyway. How many products does Apple have now? Well, we have few. You could almost place every product that we [make] on this table. I mean, if you really look at it, we have four iPods. We have two main iPhones. We have two iPads, and we have a few Macs. That's it. And we argue and debate like crazy about what we're going to do, because we know that we can only do a few things great. That means not doing a bunch of things that would be really good and really fun. That's a part of our base principle, that we will only do a few things. And we'll only do things where we can make a significant contribution. I don't mean financially. I mean some significant contribution to the society at large. You know, we want to really enrich people's lives at the end of the day, not just make money. Making money might be a byproduct, but it's not our North Star. How does that calculus work when you're considering product refinements vs. new product lines? The way we look at things is we will argue and debate about what to do with both existing products and new product lines. And when we get an idea that's great enough, we put all of our energy into executing that. We're fortunate. We find ourselves in two markets right now that are extremely fast-growing and extremely large--that's the phone space and the tablet space. The PC space is also large, but the market itself isn't growing. However, our share of it is relatively low, so there's a lot of headroom for us. The MP3 market has shrunk. It's shrinking because people are listening to music on their phones, but it's still big. We sold 35 million iPods last year, and we love music. I still use a dedicated music player in the gym every day, and I think many people do. Clearly they do with what we're selling. So each of those product lines has a great future by themselves, but obviously we also talk about what else we can do. We always have. And we'll argue, debate, and collaborate. And I mean argue and debate in the greatest sense of the words because they--you know, I never wanted to remove that. It's a great culture. And it's clear that we can do more. At the right time, we'll keep disrupting and keep discovering new things that people didn't know they wanted. I'm not going to ask you about an Apple TV, because I know you're not going to say if it exists or when it's coming. But what I do want to know is--there must be enormous pressure, both on you and on your teams, to continue to create breakthroughs. How does that affect you? There's more pressure that comes from within than from the outside. Our customers have an incredibly high bar for us. We have an even higher bar for ourselves. So we want to do great work, and yeah, people are always talking about what we may do next and when it might happen, but honestly we're driven much more internally by great people who want to do great work. As I look around the table at the executive team, arguably, at least in my opinion, we have the best designer in the world, the top silicon expert in the world, the best operational executive in the world, and the best leaders in marketing, software, hardware, and services. These are people that have very high standards that are driven to do things beyond what other people have thought. And I think it's that ambition and that desire and that thrust for excellence that make creating new things even more likely. Let me drill down on this one more time. Please. Go ahead. Even superheroes brood, right? Even people with superpowers who are used to doing miraculous stuff--I'm putting myself in their shoes and imagining that the masses are out there giving Apple love because you've created behavior-altering technology. I would imagine that would get to people at Apple once in a while, and that it's partly your job to figure out a way to say to them, "Trust the process. Trust us." Two things. One, I wouldn't call it a process. Creativity is not a process, right? It's people who care enough to keep thinking about something until they find the simplest way to do it. They keep thinking about something until they find the best way to do it. It's caring enough to call the person who works over in this other area, because you think the two of you can do something fantastic that hasn't been thought of before. It's providing an environment where that feeds off each other and grows. So just to be clear, I wouldn't call that a process. Creativity and innovation are something you can't flowchart out. Some things you can, and we do, and we're very disciplined in those areas. But creativity isn't one of those. A lot of companies have innovation departments, and this is always a sign that something is wrong when you have a VP of innovation or something. You know, put a for-sale sign on the door. (Laughs.) Everybody in our company is responsible to be innovative, whether they're doing operational work or product work or customer service work. So in terms of the pressure, all of us put a great deal of pressure on ourselves. And yes, part of my job is to be a cheerleader, and getting people to stop for a moment and think about everything that's been done. I mean, just take this year. You know, take the last 60 days: iPhone 5, whole new iPods, including a new iPod touch and iPod nano, a fourth-generation iPad, the new iPad mini, a to-die-for MacBook Pro that's the best Mac we've ever done. And so you look at all this, and you go, "Oh my God. How could one company do all of this?" And it's not like we have that many people. As a matter of fact, that's a secret. You know, small teams do amazing things together. All of the people around the table have been there for a while, and they've lived through different cycles. So they have a maturity, but they still have their boldness. They're still ready to burn the bridge. And this is great. Because there is no other company like that anymore. I mean, no company would have done what we did this year. Think about it. We changed the vast majority of our iPhone in a day. We didn't kind of--you know, change a little bit here or there. IPad, we changed the entire lineup in a day. The most successful product in consumer electronics history, and we change it all in a day and go with an iPad mini and a fourth-generation iPad. Who else is doing this? Eighty percent of our revenues are from products that didn't exist 60 days ago. Is there any other company that would do that? But as a technology consumer and user, and a heavy one, I'm always interested in the new. So unlike, say, P&G (PG), where there's a dependability factor, a lot of your brand is "Here comes something new. We're going to change your behavior again." This is the reason we exist. This is the reason we keep working, and it's the reason people want to work at Apple. Forstall was senior vice president of iPhone software until Cook relieved him of his duties on Oct. 30David Paul Morris/BloombergForstall was senior vice president of iPhone software until Cook relieved him of his duties on Oct. 30 In the past few weeks you replaced two members of your senior executive team, mobile software head Scott Forstall and retail chief John Browett. How did those moves make Apple better, which is a polite way of saying, what was wrong? The key in the change that you're referencing is my deep belief that collaboration is essential for innovation--and I didn't just start believing that. I've always believed that. It's always been a core belief at Apple. Steve very deeply believed this. So the changes--it's not a matter of going from no collaboration to collaboration. We have an enormous level of collaboration in Apple, but it's a matter of taking it to another level. You look at what we are great at. There are many things. But the one thing we do, which I think no one else does, is integrate hardware, software, and services in such a way that most consumers begin to not differentiate anymore. They just care that the experience is fantastic. So how do we keep doing that and keep taking it to an even higher level? You have to be an A-plus at collaboration. And so the changes that we made get us to a whole new level of collaboration. We've got services all in one place, and the guy that's running that has incredible skills in services, has an incredible track record, and I'm confident will do fantastic things. Jony [Ive, senior vice president of industrial design], who I think has the best taste of anyone in the world and the best design skills, now has responsibility for the human interface. I mean, look at our products. (Cook reaches for his iPhone.) The face of this is the software, right? And the face of this iPad is the software. So it's saying, Jony has done a remarkable job leading our hardware design, so let's also have Jony responsible for the software and the look and feel of the software, not the underlying architecture and so forth, but the look and feel. I don't think there's anybody in the world that has a better taste than he does. So I think he's very special. He's an original. We also placed Bob [Mansfield, senior vice president of technologies] in a position where he leads all of silicon and takes over all of the wireless stuff in the company. We had grown fairly quickly, and we had different wireless groups. We've got some really cool ideas, some very ambitious plans in this area. And so it places him leading all of that. Arguably there's no finer engineering manager in the world. He is in a class by himself. And Craig [Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering] is unbelievable. We don't subscribe to the vision that the OS for iPhones and iPads should be the same as Mac. As you know, iOS and Mac OS are built on the same base. And Craig has always managed the common elements. And so this is a logical extension. Customers want iOS and Mac OS X to work together seamlessly, not to be the same, but to work together seamlessly. These moves take collaboration to a whole different level. We already were--to use an industry phrase that I don't like--best of breed. But it takes us to a whole new level. So that's what it's all about. I know there has been a lot written on that, but that's really what's behind it. What's your relationship like with Jony Ive? What bonds you to him? I love Jony. He's an incredible guy, and I have a massive amount of respect for him. What bonds us? We both love Apple. We both want Apple to do great things. We both subscribe to the same principles. We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe in collaboration. We both view Apple as here to make the best products in the world. So our values are the same. Scotiabank Saddledome (Formerly Pengrowth Saddledome) canada Calgary zac brown band Canada scotiabank saddledome (formerly pengrowth saddledome) Zac Brown Band calgary CALGARY SCOTIABANK SADDLEDOME (FORMERLY PENGROWTH SADDLEDOME) CANADA ZAC BROWN BAND onlineticketwindow.com/default.aspx.html