Neil Cybart 4/6/23 Neil Cybart 4/6/23

Why Publish a Tim Cook Profile Now?, The Evolution in Cook’s AR/VR Comments (Daily Update)

Today’s discussion will continue our look at GQ’s Tim Cook profile. We begin with examining why such a profile was published in April 2023. What does it tell us about Apple? The update then looks at how Cook’s comments about AR/VR have evolved over the years and what his most recent comments suggest about upcoming products.

Why Publish a Tim Cook Profile Now?

Following Monday's update, there were a few incoming questions from members regarding why Apple would agree to such a large Tim Cook profile in April 2023.

Was the profile a result of Cook reaching an unsaid milestone as CEO?
Is there some connection to upcoming succession planning?
Is Apple preparing the PR runway for a big product-related announcement at WWDC?

There is some background related to the profile worth discussing.

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Neil Cybart 4/3/23 Neil Cybart 4/3/23

The Tim Cook Profile in GQ, Cook and China, Cook Provides More Mixed Reality Headset Clues (Daily Update)

Hello everyone. Welcome to Monday. Today’s discussion will be dedicated to discussing GQ's Tim Cook profile. Let’s jump right in.

(Go UConn as they play for their fifth national basketball championship tonight.)

The Tim Cook Profile in GQ

As we head deeper into spring, and soon developer conference season, this is a good time for companies to draw attention to topics that either have been under attack in the press or which can be leveraged to support upcoming product unveilings.

With that in mind, GQ is out with quite the Tim Cook profile. Not only did Zach Baron sit down (and walk around) with Cook at Apple Park, but there were also interviews with Eddy Cue (SVP services) and Lisa Jackson (VP environment, policy, and social initiatives).

With "Tim Cook on Shaping the Future of Apple," here’s Baron:

“In his tenure as CEO, Cook has rarely missed an opportunity to decry, usually with a fair amount of heat in his voice, what he describes as the 'data-industrial complex'—a complex built of companies (and Apple competitors) who profit from the use and sale of their consumer’s personal information and data. This practice, Cook said in another public moment, 'degrades our fundamental right to privacy first, and our social fabric by consequence,' and helps build an ecosystem full of 'rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms.'

If you ask Cook, a notoriously private person himself, why this subject is so important to him, he will pivot the conversation back to Apple. 'It’s personal for Apple in that we’ve been focused on it from the start of the company,' he told me the first time we met, for an interview in 2021. In Cook’s tenure, Apple has adopted a set of public values and practices that are particularly rigorous around privacy. 'We feel privacy is a basic human right,' Cook says. 'And so we try to design our products to where we collect the minimum kind of data, and as important, that we put the user in the control chair, where it’s the user’s data and they’re deciding what they want to do with it.'"

GQ’s 6,600-word profile was among one of the better ones that have been published about Cook. Instead of picking the profile apart and including large sections of it in this update, it is best to find some time and read the profile in its entirety.

It’s not easy to summarize a 6,600-word profile. GQ covered a long list of topics, although a few subjects weren’t discussed (which we will talk about in greater detail shortly).