Popular Mechanics‘ Ryan D’Agostino sat down with Apple CEO Tim Cook and discussed the Mac in the era of Apple Silicon, your right to privacy, the life-changing power of wearable health tech, and more.
PM: Can you think of an example of some functionality of one of Apple’s products that when you first heard about it, you said, “That’s cool!”
TC: Oh, they happen all the time. I feel like that every day—like a kid in a candy store. We were just talking in the hallway about M2 and M1—the history there goes back well over a decade. It goes back to the genesis of the M chips, or the A chips, from iPhone and really getting in and figuring out, how do you put a powerful chip in something that small and not get it to heat up and burn up?
We found ourselves with a similar issue for laptops: How do you put something in there that is the most powerful computer chip in the world? Out of that was born M1, and now we’ve taken it further with M2. And Mac is now a totally different product than it was before.
PM: How do you view that responsibility that comes with delivering the device that delivers the app?
TC: We strongly believe that privacy is a basic, fundamental human right. And our philosophy is to put the decision to share information with the user.
To be in the app store you have to have a privacy “nutrition label” that says what data you’re collecting and what you’re doing with it. You have to have a pop-up dialog box that asks the user if they want to be tracked across other apps. That’s called application tracking transparency. We wanted to put the user back in control of that.
I think privacy is one of the most consequential issues of this century. It’s that big. I’m not keen on a lot of regulation because I worry about what it does to innovation, but this issue is so big that I think regulation is required. I’m hoping the U.S. passes a federal privacy law because people should own their data. They should decide who gets to see the data, to hold the data, to sell the data. It should be their decision, not a company’s.
PM: You’re talking about legacy. How often do you think about Steve Jobs when you’re looking at what Apple is doing?
TC: I think about him a lot. I miss him dearly. He would always stop by my office on his way out. And there’s never been a replacement for that. We would exchange tidbits on the day and talk about the future. And we try to carry on the mission that he set in place, to build the best products in the world that enrich people’s lives. And that hasn’t changed. Lots of things change with time. But the reason for our being is the same.
MacDailyNews Take: A bit more on privacy, straight from the horse’s mouth:
Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain English and repeatedly. I believe people are smart and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you’re going to do with their data. — Steve Jobs
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