“In an interview on Feb. 12 at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., CEO Tim Cook spoke expansively about the state of Apple,” Adam Lashinsky reports for Fortune. “He talked about how Apple behaves in a down cycle, how the company’s once-sacrosanct only-in-Cupertino mind-set is evolving, and the importance of services to Apple’s product mix.”
Some snippets:
Fortune: Critics slammed Apple for its flat fiscal-first-quarter performance, despite selling 74 million iPhones and making $18 billion in profit. What is your reaction?
Tim Cook: I’m good at blocking out the noise. I come back to, Are we doing the right things? Are we remembering our North Star? Are we focused on making the best products that really help people enrich their lives in some way? And we’re doing all those things. People really love our products. Customers are happy. And that’s what drives us. Over time I’m sure that everything else will catch up.
Fortune: Can you afford to spend relatively large amounts of money on things you don’t end up commercializing?
Tim Cook: Well, could we? Yes. But would we? We don’t have to spend large amounts to explore. So I can’t talk about this certain area that you’re talking about. But when we start spending large amounts of money, we’re committed at that point. But we explore things with teams of people. And that’s a part of being curious… But once we start spending gobs of money — like when we start spending on tooling and things like that — we’re committed.
Fortune: Do you foresee a day when a manufacturer would make an automobile on a contract basis for someone else?
Tim Cook: …Sure. I don’t think that there’s a fundamental reason why that couldn’t be done.
Much more, including the possibility of honoring Steve Jobs as Apple’s new headquarters opens, in the full interview here.
MacDailyNews Take: If the “Apple Car” ever arrives, it will offer unique aspects that set it apart from the rest of the market in such a way as to command a premium.
With Chinese slave labor?
So what?
Americans are too fat stupid lazy and willfully ignorant and uneducated to work industriously anymore – bottom line
It was a joke.
you’re Mom failed
Apparently also your teachers.
If Tesla can assemble its car in Fremont, California. So does Apple. Apple can afford it. For our safety, We won’t trust cars assemble in China.
Hmm. Tesla’s backlog is huge. I wouldn’t necessarily say that was because of the labor that was available but more the lack of good organization that Apple does so well in combination with its Chinese partners.
How about a car from Ghana? They are built to withstand the roads in Ghana.
Oh, ignorance!! Do you have any idea how many brands of cars are made in China? Educate yourself before speaking.
complete BS.
Cars, Planes and Trains are manufactured by Americans every day in this country.
American’s can’t compete in many industries since we sold out the country and made the lot of them compete with poverty wages in the global market.
Angry, anonymous, little coward.
Keep in mind that Apple is a global company with the majority of their sales outside the U.S.
Now if Apple were to sell their car only to U.S. customers, you might have a point.
Yeah well you would know all about that
You read my mind.
MDN ads are pretty pathetic, degrading and downright disgusting.
Get an AD blocker, OS9 supports AD Blocking…
Or simply train youself to not look at ads.
But I agree ads up the CPU power to load them.
I’m not sure what ads you are seeing; all I see is musical instruments, consumer electronics and technology.
You do know that everyone gets to see ads that are personalised based on their surfing habits? So, if all you’re seeing penile enlargements, erectile dysfunction, miracle diets and similar, well…
I don’t lose anything. Why am I getting tile ads? LOL
Predrag[queen]? Come out of the closet. People accept your kind nowadays.
Sorry to disappoint you, but a very happily married man (with two kids)…
So, not gay; not that there’s anything wrong with it.
Many people are convinced that an Apple car would be assembled by third party car manufacturing company, but that would only make sense if the bodywork is made of bent metal.
If Apple used a different material, the manufacturing technique might have to be fundamentally different and existing car specialists would have rather less to offer Apple.
Not necessarily… panels can be made of any exotic composits …by specialists in the field…
And shipped to the final assembly specialists.
Iphones are assembled in one or two place into a final product… But each subcomponent is manufactured by different subcontractor and specialist… ..the phone casing is one big example….camera… Chips.. Screens…etc.. Hence the huge supply chain.
I think Apple would be smart to do the ‘final assembly’ themselves.
I don’t see any other way Apple could get into this business, or want to get into this business really. Contract manufacturing is what they are really good at, and it’s essential that some of the financial risk of such a bet be offloaded wherever possible and controllable.
In other words, what this means is that it will not be user repairable, upgradable, or customizable.
Which will make an Apple car a big bust with automotive aficionados.
You’ll be able to charge the battery and change the tyres. Haven’t you ever bought a recent car?
I can’t see the engine in my Audi, never mind work on it – you need special tools and knowledge just open up the engine compartment and all I can do is top up the screen wash, coolant and engine oil. Electric cars have way less user modification possibilities.
Automotive afacionados will continue to look for and buy 1975 Camaro, or TransAm, or Mustang… so that they can disassemble the engine block, polish the exhaust pipes, sand the block head, hack the carburetor…
The rest of the normal world will gladly buy a car where they never need to pop the hood open, except for the windscreen washer fluid.
God made automobile mechanics so I don’t have to do it. Thank you God!
Funny. Everybody reacting as though Tim Cook actually said Apple ‘would’ do that.
Given his masterful deflection of the “slammed by critics question” – I would say it was just a statement of the obvious…”Sure. I don’t think that there’s a fundamental reason why that couldn’t be done.”
You guys need to learn some parsing skills.
When I hear “product” I think Cook is really focusing on hardware, which is doing fine, it’s the software that is shaky. At least two of my core Apple Watch apps (camera viewfinder and Remote) simply don’t work anymore (they were inconsistent and would usually crash before), my Calendar app gives me duplicate, back-to-back alerts every time.
This is no big deal. There have been companies doing contract manufacturing of cars for years. Magna Steyr in Austria is building 200,000 cars/year for companies like BMW and Mercedes. There are several others such as Karmann and Valemet.
In short the German Hansa League, where the labor unions are strong and German’s don’t sell out.
Once you remove the combustion engine and all the associated parts that go along with that, assembling an electric car is rather simple. Except for the manufacturing of the battery, but that can (and should be) be done elsewhere.
How Apple manufactures cars, if they do, will depend entirely on volume. At low volumes, off-shore contract manufacturing could make sense. At high volumes the cost to transport the finished goods becomes too great a factor and they would try to colocate manufacturing with the customer. Every major non-US auto maker has some manufacturing in the US because of this factor. Plus, as Henry Ford knew, well paid workers are the key to strong demand, because they become your strongest customers. I’m not aware of any turn-key contract auto manufacturers in the US, at least not yet. Time will tell.
If Apple could solve the battery issue great things would happen.