Tim Cook, in an interview with Washington Post, opened up on his first five years as Apple’s CEO and discussed the future of both AI and virtual reality.
For all his fame as one of the most important technology executives today, Tim Cook has remained surprisingly quiet since his appointment as CEO of Apple after its co-founder, Steve Jobs, formally stepped down shortly before his passing.
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In a new interview with the Washington Post, Cook opened up on how the fist five years of his tenure as Apple’s CEO have affected him, noting that
“You‘re both praised and criticized, and the extremes are wide “” very wide. And that can happen all in a day. You build up “” my skin got materially thicker after August 2011. And I don‘t mean in a bad way. I don‘t mean that I‘m callous and don‘t care. I think I‘m a bit better today about compartmentalizing things and not taking everything so personally.”
Cook further elaborated on Apple’s growth since he took on the role, citing that
“The obvious things are we have more employees. The company is four times larger (by revenue since 2010). We‘ve broadened the iPhone lineup. That was a really key decision and I think a very good one. We‘ve gone into the Apple Watch business, which has gotten us into wellness and in health. We keep pulling that string to see where that takes us. Lots of core technology work has been done.”
Cook further explored the topic of artificial intelligence in the interview, nothing that the breadth of Apple’s digital assistant, Siri, had only expanded after the company made the decision to invest heavily in the ability of third-party developers to make use of the platform:
“Look at the core technologies that make up the smartphone today and look at the ones that will be dominant in smartphones of the future “” like AI. AI will make this product even more essential to you. It will become even a better assistant than it is today. So where you probably aren‘t leaving home without it today “” you‘re really going to be connected to it in the future. That level of performance is going to skyrocket. Increasingly, Siri understands things without having to memorize certain ways to say things. The prediction of Siri is going way up. What we‘ve done with AI is focus on things that will help the customer. And we announced in June that we‘re opening Siri to third parties, so third-party developers can now use Siri. So a simple example with that, whatever kind of ride-sharing app you might use, Uber or Lyft in the United States, you could just “” using your voice “” order the car. So third-party developers are writing tons of those that will be available to the public in the fall. And that‘s how we‘re broadening Siri in a huge way.”
Cook concluded the interview by mentioning Apple’s interest in augmented reality after the success of Pokemon Go, citing that
I think AR is extremely interesting and sort of a core technology. So, yes, it‘s something we‘re doing a lot of things on behind that curtain that we talked about.
The full interview is available here.
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What are your thoughts on Tim Cook’s statements? How has the CEO progressed since he took on the role in 2011? Be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Follow Bryan Smith on Twitter: @bryansmithSA
Via: MacRumors
