Tim Cook, Sir Jony Ive KBE, and Laurene Powell Jobs | Full Interview | Code 2022

thanks for flying i heard you were busy today it was a fun day yeah it's exciting yeah okay well you'll explain the dynamic island to me later i don't understand it's a great name it feels like it should be a reality show anyway i want to focus on steve uh now same uh obviously these people need no introduction these are laureen um and johnny all well known for being such an important part of this journey so let's start by watching some clips of steve

jobs

here In the

code

and everything else the personal computer has been something Pretty amazing because it's morphed into these different things over the years, first it was a hobbyist tool and then the productivity era started and that's what really drove a lot of the growth.

But then the Internet came along, suddenly the next great era of personal computers began. We firmly believe at Apple that a third great era of personal computers is coming, it is where the personal computer becomes a kind of digital center, it is becoming the center for your photography, your movies, your music, obviously, it is part integral to our digital lifestyle. There are no plans at this time to make a tablet. I think the digital hub has been a resurgence of relevance for the PC. Our retail stores went from zero to billion faster. that no one has done it before faster you are really losing money with those stories no we are making money the third business we are about to get into is about to have a phone not have a phone I have no idea what I will send You Thank you, the best iPod we have ever made.

By the way, the best phone we have ever made. Yes, that's great. We have truly revolutionized the way you use a cell phone. If it were nothing more than a cell phone, it would be a huge success. Internet in your pocket for the first time. Generally, we were both the youngest in the room and now I'm the oldest in the room most of the time and that's why I love it here and Eve is so known for her restraint. I have one of the best

jobs

in the world. I'm very lucky to be with some of the most wonderful, brilliant, committed people I've ever met in my life and together we get to play and test in the best sandbox I've ever seen. creating great products for people that's what keeps me going and that's what kept me going five years ago that's what kept me going 10 years ago when the doors were almost closed and that's what will keep me going inside of five years no matter what, you know that there is Nothing makes my day more than receiving an email from some random person in the universe who has just bought an iPad in the UK and tells me the story that it is the most cool that they've never brought home, you know, in their lives, that's what keeps me going, that's cool, I think that was his last

interview

, I think it was right before he died, so let's talk about the current moment .

I would love for each of you to reflect on how you can't guess who she was. you're going to think or anything else except what would Steve think of the current moment in your estimation again, we don't know, obviously Tim, why don't we start with you the current moment at Apple or the current moment in the world. at Apple, well, I think at Apple, I think and I hope he's proud of a day like this where we come up with a lot of innovations that are based largely on the principles that he established and articulated so well, I think In the world in general, I would be concerned about a lot of things that he sees, the kind of partisanship and division in the world and, uh, but I think he would be happy that we live up to the values ​​that he talked about.

Both privacy and environmental protection were fundamental to him as we continued to innovate and, uh, tried to get people something that allows them to do something that they wouldn't be able to do otherwise, give them tools to discover themselves. and change the world his way, uh, but I think you know, so I think it would be mixed, uh, I mean, and I hate to project well what he would think today, I don't really like to do. that uh but I think you know that there are many challenges in the world today marie um it's true that this is this is an impossible hypothetical but because we knew him very well for a long time um in many ways he inhabits each of us and for me, uh , often, the way that I make sense of the world, I have, you know, the resonance of his voice in my head, often, um, I would be very disappointed with the political climate, I would say, um, not just the polarization, not just the fact that people are really coming to blows within families and communities and in our country, but also that he loved our country so much, he loved California so much, but he loved our country, he loved the idea of ​​America, he loved what it allowed for the individual and the communities he would become, he loved the freedom of it, he loved the personal freedoms and liberties, but also the connection and the mutual responsibility, it was very important to him to be able give something back to the human experience and I think he would be he wouldn't stay silent about it maybe on Twitter he would be on Twitter now he wasn't a big fan of social media mainly because of the business model um but he wouldn't be on Twitter no he would talk easily um and often Yes, his emails and letters were like tweets, although they were short and kind of sweet.

I remember when you introduced ping ping, which was a social network. Yes, he left, well, he left the room. You know, he comes out after giving a speech in the room where people are looking at things and he came and he leaves, what do you think I said? I think he sucks and he leaves. I believe him immediately and he leaves. I hate social media, which was interesting and it wasn't because he wasn't social, nothing like that, I just couldn't understand it, johnny, what do you think? Not about that particularly about the ping because he stopped, but keep going.

Certainly disappointed, actually he would. I don't know if he could. Imagine him being kind of crazy, furious, but also combined with, you know, that kind of compassion and love for ideals that Laureen described. I think they're both fabulous fuels for being effective and I think I would have bought into his curiosity and lack of fear of having ideas um but I think he certainly would have felt like you know there's an imperative here um but you know when he used to talk about that it's important you know. that you find what you love I used to think it was because you know it's nice to film, to feel warm in your belly, he actually described it as if you were going to do something really difficult, you need that kind of fuel, fury and love, I think they are fuels wonderful. and I would expect them to be a mix of both, so talk a little bit about one of the things that you did that got a lot of attention from time to time, your quotes and you were at a

code

, it was a code conference or an all about conference. privacy, that was something you talked about very clearly in English and everything else, where do you think this is something you've done a lot at Apple?

It has been a great fundamental value for the company. It has been good. To make people in the market feel more secure, it's good for sales to talk a little bit about the issues around privacy now, how you're looking at it, yeah, you know, Steve really ingrained in the company in the early days the importance of privacy and it's only grown with each year that's passed since then you saw in I think it was uh in d.a who talked about privacy here in 2010 I think it was uh and he put it in such eloquent and simple terms that it means asking people for permission. , ask them repeatedly and it has been at the center of how we view privacy and therefore we believe that privacy is a fundamental human right and we see a world where privacy takes a backseat and there is this type of surveillance mode in everywhere where this is a world where people start to do less and think less, they start to alter their behavior because they know that they are being watched and this is not a world that any of us would want to live in.

I think he saw that and he saw it well and I You know, you have every reason to believe that he would have made good arguments and good fights in the way that you've been trying to do for many years, whether it's around publicity or anything else. Well, what we have felt. is that people should own their data and they should make their own decisions, so what we believed is that people should have the power to make that decision in a really direct and simple way, not buried in 95 pages in a privacy policy somewhere and This is how we've seen it and continue as each year goes by to try to give our users the ability to empower them to make those decisions for themselves and you see the features that we've implemented throughout of the time that it does. that we are not trying to make the decision for them, well, you have become the de facto because of this core value of this company started by Steve, you have become the de facto regulator in that sense because the regulators have not intervened. per se, we're not, we're not just trying to be a face regulator, all we're trying to do is give people the ability to make the decision for themselves if they want to be tracked it's something they're taking. freely the decision to do it and so we present to them the ability to make that decision and we keep trying to do it more and more as time goes on so Johnny we were talking before k when I spoke earlier this week about care and design and that's another thing because many of the things that have been implemented that have been violations of privacy have been implemented without care, I think without consequences, without intentionality or simply lack of concern for the consequences talk a little about the idea of ​​care and design, I think that, I mean, care is a difficult word to understand in some ways, I think it's easier to understand carelessness, which is, I see, you know, which is a disregard for people, um .

To me, neglect is simply seeing people as a potential source of income, not a reason to work moderately hard to truly express your love and appreciation for the rest of the species, so for us in our design practice, I think care is very important. It's often felt and not necessarily seen and I think and I know that it's something that I think all three of us feel strongly about that kind of care that is, I mean, Steve talks about you know, the carpenter, the cabinet maker that would finish the behind from the drawer and it bothers you regardless of whether something is really seen publicly, you don't do it because there is an I don't know economic interest, you do it because it is the correct moral decision um and and I think it is, I think particularly as a designer, I think that It's very common for very small, quiet things, like worrying about how to pack a cable or a rowing ball, you clearly worry about that a lot, yeah, I worry about that a lot and Steve worried about that a lot. too and I think it's that kind of worry that you know when you're sitting there on a Sunday afternoon worrying about the power cord that's bundled in a zigzag shape and you're going to remove that little wire. when you're sitting there on a Sunday afternoon worrying about this it's not really very good the only reason I think you're very aware that the reason you're there is because I think our species deserves better, deserves some reflection and it's a beautiful way to I don't know, I think you feel connected, right?

I remember one time Walt came back from visiting when they did uh when Microsoft did their what was zoom zoom? Well it was a Microsoft version of the ipod actually and apparently Walt he Steve hadn't seen it and Walt handed it to him and this is what he did well he handed it to him and he left like that very dramatic very steve says I can't touch this is disgusting essentially um you I know he's doing it for Walt's benefit, but he was disgusted by the design that was proposed for what it was, whether it worked or not, I don't care, let me talk about this, this idea of ​​taking care of creation because you You are doing. a lot of different things now, um, but the idea of ​​it seemed to be something that mattered and some people thought they were insignificant details, bummer, whatever, what does that look like? um, I think Steve early in his life developed a very well-rounded aesthetic sense, certainly, before I did and he noticed the details of everything, the way the floor meets the walls and the ceilings, the way that the lights are recessed or non-recessed, whether the design of the fixture allows it or not. of enlightenment that is intended for all things like that, he was very aware of both the physical and the natural environment, he was also animated by the natural environment and I think, as I mentioned, he loved California, he really loved California, he loved the natural beauty and the light of it and the sense of openness and possibility and I think that allowed him to have a much broader sense of what his life could be as well.

I think you know people who made fun of us for years. because in our house we couldn't agree on a sofa or chairs, so for many years we didn't have either, but mainly because we really know that there were so many details that we had to agree on, yes, and finally we did We did, yes, but I think it tookabout eight years old, oh wow, it wasn't just something that I don't like sofas because there are a lot of pictures of him without sofas, a lot of yes, well that's why it was a real thing, so one of the things was the idea of ​​how to exercise Timy's power under his leadership since he took over Apple, this has become enormous.

It was a much smaller company when St-Eme ran it. How do you see that idea? Because you know one of the things that Apple is going through now, all the technology people. es and move on to scrutiny around the power that these companies have over people. I would love for you to reflect on the idea of ​​what the concepts were at the beginning because one of the things that Steve did was fight the power in that famous ad, obviously. um and he talked a lot about that, the idea that he didn't seem to like power, but now this is probably the most powerful tech company or one of them, you know, we don't think in those terms, okay, that's not how we think. .

We think about our values ​​and we think about using any platform that we can have to expand those values, so we only talk about privacy, but the environment is another, you know, we touch a lot of companies around the world because we make things and we know that we have the responsibility of convincing those companies to use renewable energy and recycle and do things that are sustainable, so that's the lens that we look at it, not through the lens of power and its exercise, I mean in many ways, the company is still run the way Steve set it up, how would you describe it as still a functional company?

You know, we don't have as many pls and that where people fight about costs. assigned to what pl and that type of thing we have one for the company and we have someone who owns software and someone who owns hardware and someone who owns technology and someone who owns design and it's a great partnership and collaboration uh and Something that demanded of the people was this idea of ​​collaboration and the idea that small teams could do amazing things together and, you know, he organized a meeting every Monday, Johnny will remember this well at nine o'clock and it doesn't matter where you are.

If you were in that meeting at nine o'clock on Monday, he would bring together the most important people in the company and we would go over everything that was key in the company. We still held that same meeting that same day. at the same time and a lot of the things that he brought that aren't talked about much, live in terms of the principles and stuff that he used, you know, we don't sit down and say, What would Steve do? He told us not to do that well, but the reality is that he was the best teacher I have ever had by far and those teachings are still alive and not only in me because it is in a group of people who are there, give me some of those teachings from your perspective, well, he was always, he was always that Apple should make the best products, not the best, yeah, and so looking at things from that lens changes everything well and truly. and sometimes those two line up and you're the best, but a lot of times they don't and a lot of times they won't because products become commoditized over time in certain fields, like the personal computer business, which actually happened and and we have never set a goal of making the most personal computers, we made the Mac and we love it, we love what the Mac does and it's the best, so we can be proud that it's the best.

He had a vision that really instilled in me that Apple should own its core technologies and that thought led us to get into the Mac processor business, you know, first on the iPhone, which means not buying Intel chips. He did mean that, because it's very technology core, you know, he believed that you should own the entire customer experience and that the way a customer felt drove you significantly, he wanted to delight the people that he heard in the video and this happened thousands of times where he would get notes from someone he didn't know and they would talk about using our product and they would find out that it worked x and y that they didn't even know it did and maybe it was years after they had purchased the product initially. and uh, so these are still uh, you know, deeply embedded in the company, but we talked about most of you, one of you talked about nana, was it the nano or the heat that went big?

We were chatting about this, but over lunch, I don't remember what generation of the nano it was, but I was so surprised to be directly touching people, I mean, I was so surprised that I had always indirectly assumed, their job, Apple's job. would be hugely influential, but this was suddenly the volumes of this product, the fact that it was literally touching people directly, excited him, not because you know exactly how Tim described it, not because that was a high volume target. , but to be so relevant with something we had put so much care into, so the idea, but he still liked it, was not only shocking but also a good deal, presumably we never talked about the business, although we never and not really what did you talk I told you that you like hanging wires, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I was um, I don't know, we talked about a lot of things that were really about how we saw the world, you know, I thought the way it was actually interesting to see that clip from You Know Bill and Steve, when Bill said he was, he was jealous of Steve's taste and I don't think that meant Bill was jealous of the way Steve chose his sneakers, no, I think that's what There was something beautiful about it. the way steve thought and about the way he perceived things from the way he saw the world um and i think there was, you know, lorena and i were chatting about this, there was such intention in steve's thinking, no it was there you know there was such rigor um and you know I've never met someone so curious and so inquisitive you know his curiosity wasn't casual or passive it was fierce um he was restless but it was intentional and talk about it you were just naughty oh it was Thinking about, actually, when Steve came back to Apple and Tim would probably know how many product lines there were actually, how many products there were in the '30s or '40s and too many, in other words, too many product lines, too many, so many. and of course they were running out of money and he clarified that he went around and talked to everyone and then he clarified and justified that the product line was a two by two matrix and he narrowed it down to four things now that meant he had who used incredibly disciplined decision making and approach, but he was also very motivated to keep the company running, so at the time he was very concerned about the business and used that as a criterion and I think a little more than Steve De What was often talked about was the power of saying no, no no to bad ideas, but no to great ideas, no to ideas that you desperately want to pursue but don't really fit, that Evan was just talking about some of your ideas.

I can't do them for various reasons to find the discipline in them, um, continue with that idea, the idea that you just don't do them, no, no, so that's what speaks to the clarity of your thinking and the sharpness. of his thinking, as well as his desire to make those four things the best on the planet, because he often spoke of leaving behind a body of work in the same way that an artist does and would do so when he wanted to have a body of work. plays. you want it to be great, so he talks about that idea of ​​creativity.

One of the things he talked a lot about when we talked was about mixing art, commerce and technology, which I think has been lost quite significantly. I'd love to. From your perspective Tim, when you think about what you're doing now, do you think about how hard it is to marry those things without the person who talked about them all the time? I think you know that Steve's vision for Apple was always to stay standing. at the intersection of the liberal arts and technology is to always be there and we have always tried to stay in that place and always think about the humanity of the person behind the product, the person who is using the product and has the technology happens to in the background and time and time again he demonstrated that he was doing that and that he would make bold decisions in approach, as he attested, I think he even shared one of these stages that he was initially going to work through. a tablet when he saw multi-touch technology and decided no, this could be a phone and the phone was more important than the tablet, so he picked it up and then made it, possibly, a great idea, yeah, and put it aside for years, this wasn't a you know.

Let's delay it a couple of weeks or a year or something, this was several years, uh, and the iPad, as you know, has people love the product, so by delaying it on the phone, it lied to us about the phone on the stage absolutely directly and then laughed. it was the next year and we left, did you turn us on?, he says, I think initially, Steve was very concerned that Apple couldn't control the product, yeah, the hole in a way that would make it the best product, he was concerned. that the carriers had driven the design of the product and he was very concerned that it would end up being a product that yeah, you know, that Apple shouldn't make, and it wasn't until he saw a way to change that that he became a big proponent of Apple in the phone business, he did on stage all the things he said, I don't like crawling through orifices, which we were lovely, yeah, I was just worried a little bit differently, yeah right, that's what he was talking about of the telephone. companies and that's why you saw that photo of Walt and I going through the hole, but one of the interesting things was getting control of that, you know, getting control of if Bob Iger talked about getting control of the content, getting the control of things that had been in powerful positions that prevented you from doing things at that time, as I remember, when you think about that Johnny, one of the things was design, design freedom, how do you see current design at this time of things compared to what you were doing, I know you're working on a variety of things, you can't talk about everything you're doing, but how do you see what happened with the design?

That's funny, I mean, I think we're kind of worried about what we're struggling with um that's pretty absorbing um I think the problems and the challenges are still the same um I think there are, I mean, there are fabulous possibilities with interfaces like for example multi-touch, but we're still physical beings and I think there are opportunities and sometimes I think potentially the pendulum can swing a little bit to have interfaces and products that are more tactile and more physically engaging, obviously there are huge, I mean the winds. It's substantial to have the ability to have an interface that is application specific, but I think there are examples where the interface is being handled inappropriately by something like multitouch, like cars for example, yeah, what would be a car?

What do you design? You seem to know that I can't tell you that I could ask the same thing, what would a car be? Yes, that's a good question for me. I'm not a car person, really, yeah, so I love them, I love old, beautiful ones. They are no longer safe to drive, so I find most electric cars are soulless. I find them exclusively, yes, I haven't bought one yet. I would say I know you, I know you guys don't love Tesla's design, but I appreciate that it's the degree of It's safety, it's really nice, but I was saying I'd like to go back to your previous question, if you'll allow me, Kara, because I think something that Steve always took pride in was being around artists and poets and musicians, um, and that. it's about design so you design who you're with and you find that you find diversity of thought and um and it brings out something different in you and it's what Tim was talking about, you know, which really lies in that intersection of liberal arts or humanities. and technology and I think that, you know, Silicon Valley has always been a place where people came with big ideas and they wanted to come and do big things and I hope they still remember that we really need some poetry and romance.

Don't think about what comes out of it and no, I think it's a lot less than what used to be his. I think his understanding and reverence for the creative process was extraordinary. I mean, I think Tim and I learned a lot. I'm just going through the process with Steve, but I think the way the process tended to work was by thinking, so being intentional in your thinking is very self-aware, but from your thinking ideas come and I think the only . What I mean Tim and I talk a lot is the nature of ideas, ideas are fragile, they don't get resolved, if they were resolved they wouldn't be ideas, there would be products and one of the things that happen and I think one of the big challenges, particularly among large groups, is that when you talk about an idea, often the easiest thing to talk about, what's measurable, what's tangible, are the problems and he was masterful at helping people, not of course, not ignoring the problems, but staying focused on the promise, the vision of the real idea and there was a wonderful reverence that I think he had for the creative process and I think most artists and designers,even if it is for self-preservation, that is, if they wait for you. to produce an idea and you know that ideas are not binding, you know that you can't predict when you're going to have a good idea, I think you tend to need to focus on the process and the discipline of trying to increase the probability.

It's a good idea, you know? I was thinking about this one of the things I've felt over many years is that, you know, Steve was not an easy subject, he had a lot of advantages, but it was more about passion and being difficult for a good reason in the beginning. You know, sometimes I want to say that he looks so calm compared to today's tycoons that he just parked his car in some strange place and that was the biggest controversy of the time. You know he didn't like tweeting dick jokes at the president or something. Um, so what he was driving his car and I don't care right now, it seems very benign all the kind of things he was doing, but one of the things I was thinking about is the idea that you're talking about. so you're making something beautiful for ideas, it's been replaced by a rapacity, it just has it, there's just no beauty in it, it has no soul and it feels, um, it doesn't feel elevated, how do you think at that moment? in terms of keeping that there because there's pressure for profits, there's a pressure of things and you and I talked about that in one of our

interview

s when you and I want to talk about specific people that we're talking about, Mark Zuckerberg on that moment. time and I said what would you have done and you said I wouldn't be in this place in the first place broader than that, how did we get to this place in the first place?

Because I think the death of Steve Jobs changed it in some ways. something in the atmosphere and the people who rose up, you know, for all their flaws, they weren't at their speed, no, maybe you don't agree with me on that, I think Silicon Valley is not monolithic, no, for which is not monolithic and so I think it's difficult to paint everything with a single roller, although people worshiped it more than anyone like oh, I worship it as you know, yeah, and uh, and so, I think it's a rod of measure that when you compare it, most people are always going to fall short and that's great, he was the once in a century type of person that I think of in almost every way and he was also demanding and passionate about his point and He believed that you got a better answer by debating and So, a lot of what people may not understand about him is that he would debate just to start the topic, sometimes he would take a position that he didn't even believe in and just to start the discussion because he was very convinced if you look at this from the outside and in a deep way, in a very thoughtful way, you would come to a better decision and I think yes, I think that is something that not only the founders but everyone can learn from and I think learning from it .

Moving forward is something that is very important because I think he was one of a million things and certainly, from my point of view, he changed the trajectory of my life and I can't imagine learning from anyone else, the amount I learned from he, you know it was just and it was a daily thing, you know, he demanded innovation everywhere, obviously he demanded products, but he demanded that marketing be innovative, he demanded that operations be innovative, he wanted. everything in the company to be the best and he had the ability to examine with his thinking to delve into almost everything in the company.

It was a very unusual skill set than he had, so I think we can all learn from it. that in our own lives, both in personal life and in business, well, the debate is interesting because I think one of the things is that someone asks me what the problem is and I'm like they're surrounded by people who they pay. they own it and they don't have anyone who disagrees with them there is no disagreement there is no debate uh they are all in violent agreement together and then they feel victimized as a group where there was always debate with him there was always debate uh I know there was a folklore that he says you didn't debate him, that's not true, in fact if you didn't debate him he would take you down and he just didn't work well with those types of people who wouldn't feel comfortable debating and rejecting and and uh and it was a very different environment for me because I came out of an environment that was more hierarchical in nature and in a way, every person agreed with the higher level person before they walked into a room and there was no debate or discussion. and what was his biggest debate with them about probably the way the initial iPhone was sold.

What was his side? I was in favor of putting it on the subsidy model and he was in favor of participation in revolutions and his way was more creative and more. differently, my path would have escalated faster at least I felt strongly about it and that's why we were in a big discussion about this for a while because it was a discussion of several years what about you, Lorraine, what was yours, what was the debate? would you have as partners what was the status that I would have yes besides the couch no we were not together for 22 years so choose your month and so I want to end by talking a little bit about some things that you are going to do do you want to talk about the file or not or oh yeah, go ahead, yeah um?

So what kara is referring to is a group of us, the three of us and others who worked with steve um over the years we met as advisors and We have a senior historian and archivist in a small group that has established the archive of Steve Jobs, and while we have some artifacts and actual material, the archive is much more about ideas like what Johnny was describing and really rooted in Steve's long history. Held notion that once you understand that outside of the natural world, everything in the built environment and all the systems that govern our life on the planet were built and designed by other humans and once you have that idea, you understand that you as a human can change it, can push it, maybe can interrogate it and stretch it, and in that way human progress happens, so I would refer to the fact that everything that is born in the design of everything that surrounds it, clothing that everyone uses. these decisions were made by someone else and the actual artifacts were made by someone else, so as humans we have a responsibility to put things back into that set of human existence in a way that benefits everyone and moves things forward. in that sense. but therefore we have human progress, so what is in the bow?

This idea that we have, well, the archive will have a Steve Jobs archive on a website and then there will be some programs that we will have, there will be other products that I will get. What I'm not talking about right now, there's a lot of things over the years, very care

full

y, a very brilliant documentary filmmaker has interviewed hundreds of people who have really beautiful memories, experiences, stories to tell about Steve and his I work with Steve, so we've collected those as well. There's also a beautiful set of things that are just Steve's that aren't anyone's interpretation and I think one of the things that we thought was so powerful was that you actually started to get a sense of how he saw the world and it's It's not someone trying to make sense of something they said or the way they behaved, you can see a little note they crossed out or the way they wrote down an email or a presentation, but when you see something directly you start to get a sense of it. of what he was thinking and why and you realize how much he has lost, right? when you try, you know when someone else is trying to make sense of someone's behavior, so what would he be doing now?

My last question, we have one, we have. a zoom question from someone, I know what we have some questions from the audience, um, what would he be doing now if he had lived? What do you imagine he would be working on? I guess, oh I wouldn't want to guess, I think Steve was constantly changing and that's why he wasn't ecstatic, he would adopt a firmly held belief and be presented with new facts, he would change like that, it was one of the great things I admired about him, he would be dogmatic about something presented, something more like this change and I think it's a great characteristic of people because people are held back by their old thoughts and whatever new thoughts and ideas come up and he never did, so, you know, he knew what that I was thinking about 2010 and 2011 and and before, but what would I be thinking about today, I wouldn't want to risk guessing that I would be evolving, I was also quite conscious of not having stayed in charge for too long and making room for others, um, I had a fantasy of eventually teaching wow and since we live near Stamford, you know that notion of biking to Stanford and teaching classes there, jobs, yeah, exactly, what did I want to teach?

Well, I mean, I think he could teach almost anything and people would really benefit from it. He doesn't drive well, actually, I couldn't agree more, yeah, I think part of curiosity, which I think defines a lot of Steve, is your appetite to learn and learning is more important than being right, I think that's what Tim thought. saying what it is, you know you can passionately present a perspective or a point of view, but you do it not to do it in an argument, you do it just to try to understand and I think there's something so pure in that appetite. just learning because it makes you question motivation and motivation, not winning arguments, motivation is to be able to do a better job and I always loved how clear that was, I mean, you know a lot of things can have consequences for doing better. work as if disruption was never one of our goals, was that okay?

It turned out to be a consequence of just trying to do something better, but not a goal or a company goal or motto, for example, things like that. Okay we have a zoom question first wow no hello guys I want you to know I passed for a journalist for a stranger I spent many hours talking to him we would have a half hour interview schedule that would end up being two and a half hours we will go far beyond that about what he wanted to show me or what I wanted to ask him and covering many of the feelings you're talking about, beyond what Apple was doing, but one thing he never mentioned in any of his conversations with me was stock.

The market was the market capitalization was the stock price now in the early days, as Laureen mentioned, he cared about, you know, the revenue and profits of the company because it was almost dead, but once the company reached some kind of financial equilibrium, my impression was that yes, he cared that the company did well, but he didn't care what the stock market thought, at least he couldn't discern that at all and, as you know, neither It didn't even appear on most earnings calls, so and to me, the entire tech industry is caught up in this thing of what Wall Street stocks think, so can you talk about that?

Am I wrong or am I missing something? Would he be so frantic about the stock price and its two and a half trillion dollar market cap, as other people are journalists and other people who write about it, analysts, I think it wouldn't be important to him. Walt, I would completely agree with you. He did not get carried away by the financial results. making the best products that really enriched people's lives and so his goal was to change the world and that's not really marketing, that's what drove him and he saw the success of the company as simply the result of doing the other thing. do things right and that's why he was never confused about focusing on the indirect consequences on the market and financial results.

He focused on inputs, getting the right products, making sure they were the best, making sure they were making a difference in people's lives. thanks walt it's ok i'll see you soon ok thanks by the way mossberg and i did it together so everyone give it up walt mossberg if it's all about the new iphone i'm going to keep you going because i want to talk about Steve Jobs if you don't mind if it's my lecture and there you go and um, but you can, but oh, for the love, so we'll ask some questions and then we'll go and I've got something.

I wanted the last thing I wanted to read so neela and all short please go yeah don't worry. I was there this morning. I have a question about the iPhone. They didn't let me get on your plane. Tim um, you guys talked a lot. about how steve would think the current political climate is really divisive uh that social media was bad at the end of the day those apps run on your phone those apps are the reason smartphones are popular how do you think that would have been What does Steve mean about that? the phone itself enables some of these apps and if he had wanted to take more control of that interaction, I think well, I don't want to predict what Steve would have thought in

2022

, but what we felt along the way is that some people used the phone too much. phone and we never turned off the phone so someone could scroll endlessly and mindlessly through a feed, so we created things like screen time to try to help people know what they were doing and thinking. that if people knew that people were really intelligent, they would alter their behavior and we have seen some ofthat, so I suspect that he when he started parental controls before anyone talked about parental controls and I suspect that he would be, uh, you.

I know you're thinking about more of those things. Are you that worried? Are you as worried about ticking as everyone else at this conference? You know, I don't feel like a tick-tock expert, and so I would do it. You know, let other people talk about that, you don't seem like a tic tac expert, although I enjoy the content of your fryer, it's really fun to see when you think about the design in the same vein, do you care what it is like? It is used when you think about the intentionality of the design. Yeah, I mean, I think.

If you're innovating, there's always going to be unintended consequences, some of them wonderful and some of them not wonderful, and I think the problem is how do you know what your decision is in terms of what responsibility you should take, I think the more powerful, I mean this wonderful historical precedent of powerful tools, you know, that ability to be used both ways, but I think it's the consequences, at the end of the day, I think it comes down to how they view their responsibility, okay, I'm not afraid of axios, this is a question I've really wanted to ask several of you for a long time, we've talked, we've alluded to Steve's most challenging personality qualities.

I'm curious which of his tough edges do you think served him well and which ones sometimes got in his way ooh, Laureen, you get that one, there were a lot of qualities that served him well because he was an extraordinary leader and he had, as we said, confidence. on his own abilities to see and understand, but also something that Tim mentioned is that Steve actually called other people all the time, every day, he had a list of people that he called and he would just ask them what was going on, what you're watching. What are you thinking about?

What are you watching? But he would go through the industry and call people who, of course, would answer the phone and just, you know, he would pick people's brains constantly, which was really interesting, um and I think uh. One trait of his is not talked about much and I think that reminded him that he had to maintain a beginner's mind and reminded him that these ideas exist and are held by very, very intelligent people. I think you know there were times, though, when he To his detriment, perhaps he would feel so confident in a point of view that this is the corollary that he didn't actually necessarily interrogate it in the way he could have, but it also played to his advantage, I think there was one.

There is one thing that really stood out to me is that if you think about knowing the behavior or characteristics of someone who is so curious and inquisitive and then you try to think about the characteristics of a person who has the necessary determination and focus. turn an idea despite all the problems despite all the barriers turn that idea into something real and then on that path, when you run into the problem, you can't just tap your foot, you have to go back and exercise those muscles. out of curiosity again and I think one of the things that may not be obvious is that it doesn't just happen once or twice in a show, it happens once or twice every morning and I think sometimes if you don't have that sense of context it might seem antisocial behavior and we will get here thank you hello uh ziya yusuf thank you all for these amazing ideas.

I wanted to ask you about the role of spirituality in Steve's journey and focus and simplicity and curiosity and design. Aesthetics played a role and that also drove Johnny for you and the others in the design. Any thoughts on that and I'm not talking about religion, I'm just talking about spirituality. I think it's very difficult to have a conversation about beauty without being kind of very humble and aware that there's a lot more going on than we can easily articulate or see or take a picture of, so I think, again, those are those. wonder

full

y unusual juxtapositions of conversations that may be perceived as esoteric and ethereal. right next door, what does the thickness of the wall need to be here so we can call this properly and I think those are lovely conversations to have. um you know at the same time I would say it was spiritual, yeah, oh yeah, um, I think I know that when he was young, when he was 19 or 20, he dropped out of college and went to India and that was a spiritual exploration. which he had and then he came back and studied Zen Buddhism and for many years he had a teacher that he sat in zazen and studied with and that was in the early days, obviously, of Apple, but I think it absolutely shaped his sense of his place in the universe. as an individual being and also helped shape his sense of time. and I think he had a very sophisticated notion not only that our time, all of our time is quite short in the context of the rest of the natural world, but also of how to use our time in a very wise, um and deliberate way, okay good evening beautiful people my name is laquan so we talked about connectivity which is very vital to what steve saw and i think a big aspect of connectivity is communication communication is revolutionized with the message .

How do you think Steve would currently feel about the state of communication specifically between people who are not within the Apple community and are part of the message, but more so on the green side of things with Android? We've seen a huge divide there, so how do you think Steve would feel about adapting rcs risk communication systems that would standardize and streamline? Yes Tim, can you bring peace to the phone wars? He always told me not to ask me what he would have thought to just do. the right thing is that I don't hear our users asking us that we put a lot of energy into that right now and now I would love to continue.

I would love to convert you to uh iphone. It's okay, it's just hard. uh I don't want to make it personal but I can't send my mom certain videos or she can't send me certain videos so let's go buy your mom an iPhone okay let's get to so many questions thanks come up here no , TRUE? here and then we'll go here, go ahead, yes, you said privacy is a human right, it's also monetizable, I've implemented a lot of features, app tracking transparency, probably the most important, improved privacy also limited some of your competitors, uh, they've expressed a lot about it.

I don't have to list who they are. You're also reportedly building your own app network, so it's obvious how that would help Apple. How does that help your users? consistent with steve's privacy view, well we started advertising in 2009 or 2010 with iad, yes, and then it morphed into search ads etc., but we follow the same rules or in fact more privacy rules stricter than the ones we put. others even and that is why digital advertising is not a bad thing, we have never said that digital advertising is a bad thing, what is not good is vacuuming up people's data when they are doing it when they are not doing it on an informed basis that is what it is bad and that's why we try to put the user in the driver's seat so that they own their data, okay, here, hello, how is everyone?

First things first, I'm actually glad to see you. person is like the people who pretty much rule my life okay so they're real they are oh sorry I didn't mean and I wrote this question because I've been thinking about this just in regards to my business and what do. To me, you are like Nike of technology and products. In the same way, for me I see Nike as the shoe and clothing apple, so for me I want to know how they get that monopolization over their market and how can you maintain that dominance over your market and never let it go?

Because I know it's a journey, I know it's a struggle, I know it's a fight, but you have competitors, but we don't see your competitors, we see you, so it's like, do we have that understanding of the market if we're looking for change? in our business? We actually have fierce competitors. We are in the most competitive industry. There is probably a smartphone market. You know, we're not the market leader in terms. of market share is samsung and if you watch football or anything else on the weekends you will see their ads everywhere and of course there are many other people in the smartphone business including google, huawei, oppo and vivo and xiaomi and all these people are spending tons of money all over the world.

What we do is we just try to tell the story of our product very simply, say what it is about and we try to make the message as simple as possible. because there's a limit to the messages you can convey in a 30-second ad or even a one-minute ad, so occasionally you'll see us highlight maybe the photography and the beauty of the photos you can take. maybe another time we could focus on video, so we can take a feature and really highlight it in a great way, maybe highlight privacy and maybe highlight the iPhone's ability to withstand drops, etc. certain cases and so making it very simple is our message, okay and you said you have fierce competitors, but if I asked everyone here who has an iPhone, an i or an Apple product, that's what I want to say, right?

Do you have a monopoly? No, the facts do not confirm it. Okay, thank you, yes, okay, thank you. We don't have time for more questions. I'm sorry, I apologize. Sorry, Steve. to talk to them a lot um and the same with you Lauren um so I'm going to please you. I would ask one more question. Final question and thank you all for being here. I really appreciate that it means a lot to me. A word for Steve Jobs. If you were to say I know there are so many words but one word and I have one and I'm going to end with that word curiosity, oh go ahead, I don't know, I'm still thinking, Johnny, that's an impossible question. "That's great.

I'd say that's a really nice thing. You could come up with something. Yeah. I'll just say amazing. I'm going to tell a Steve Jobs story that took place at Code. We were in the back and Walt was just coming out and I had met um I think Louie for the first time when he was maybe a bluey or Alex and he started asking me intense questions about how we really liked him and he never did that like always interested in Walt, I was like the girl standing next to him. from Walt most of the time to him because he and Walt had a very interesting relationship, but he was really interested, he has tons and tons of questions and it was because he himself had been adopted. and he asked me about adoption and this and that and I said well, I had the baby because I have a uterus and it's great, but we're doing this adoption and there were a lot of adoption issues at that time for gay people and he told me his whole story sitting there it was amazing it was reported it wasn't exactly what he informed himself but it was when he told the story of the doctor and his parents and this and that and one of the things he did was say um, you're not who you were born to be, you know, because I was like, oh, I consider it out of alex , I consider him my son, I consider that I did not have him, but I used my son, I adopted him and he said.

It's not about who you were born with and uh, he talked about his adoptive parents, how much he loved them, he was crying, he made me cry, I think when I think about it, I cried about it and he went on and talked. about it and he said, just remember, it doesn't matter where you come from, what's important is who you are and the people who love you and it was that he surprised me and that's what I would say about him, he was amazing as a person and I had I thought he was a very different guy, not like that and it was really a great moment and then of all things he hugged me which I don't like but he did it and I really couldn't believe it. "Okay, I'll hug Steve Jobs, but the reason I want to read the latest from him and this may make me cry, I read it every three months and that's why we do the things we remember, I think I won't be able to read Remembering that I will be dead soon is the most important tool I have found to help me make big decisions in life because almost everything, all the external expectations, all the pride, all the fear of shame or failure these things just disappear before me. death leaving only what is really important remembering that you are going to die is the best way to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose you are already naked there is no reason not to follow your heart I think we will end it thank you thank you all