While the iPhone 16 launch was all about Apple Intelligence, many accused the company of coming too late to the AI party. Indeed, a new article yesterday showed that many at the company share that view.
But Apple CEO Tim Cook says in a new interview that he doesn't think so, saying the company has been slow to embrace AI for the same reason it's been slow to embrace all innovations…
>”Not First, But Best”
Cook spoke to the WSJ's Ben Cohen.
There’s one idea that encapsulates the approach to innovation that makes all of this possible — and it’s perhaps the closest thing Apple has to a grand unified theory. It’s a philosophy of just four words that describe Apple’s past, its present, and, yes, its future. Four words that help explain why, this year, the company has delved into spatial computing and artificial intelligence. In one of those seminal years when it feels like everything is about to change again, I’ve heard them over and over in conversations with Apple executives and Cook himself: not the first, but the best.
Cook elaborated on those four words in a lengthy interview this summer at Caffè Macs on Apple's campus, where the level-headed and usually reserved CEO explained that his company's top priority is to deliver great products that enrich people's lives.
Cook says that sometimes you can be first and you can be the best, but whenever you have to choose between the two, there's only one answer.
If we can only do one, there's no doubt about it. If you talk to 100 people, 100 of them will tell you: It's about being the best.
Good AI has 'deep meaning'
Best comment from RDLink
I certainly think the iPhone and AirPods have been pretty quick successes. But I agree with his broader point. I believe the Vision Pro will be successful. But it will take some time.
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Cook famously makes a point of reading customer emails, and told Jimmy Fallon last month that he now uses Apple Intelligence to summarize them.
“It changed my life,” he says. “It really did.”
Asked how much of a difference it will make to Apple customers, he has no doubts.
“Deeply different,” he said. He places Apple Intelligence in the same pantheon of innovative breakthroughs as the iPod click wheel and the iPhone's touch interface. “I think we'll look back and see that it was one of those air pockets that put you on a different technology curve,” he says.
Apple Vision Will Be a Slow Burn Success
Cook believes the same can be said for Apple Vision products. While even the CEO primarily uses it as a very expensive way to watch movies, and he acknowledges that it’s currently a niche product, he says none of Apple’s successful product lines took off overnight.
“At $3,500, it’s not a mass-market product,” Cook says. “Right now, it’s an early adopter product. People who want tomorrow’s technology today — that’s who it’s for. Luckily, there are enough people in that camp who are excited.” […]
If you’re skeptical about the Vision Pro, you might be right. Or you might be as wrong as the skeptics who dismissed the iPod, iPhone, and AirPods. And Cook has learned another thing from the success of the company’s iconic products.
“These things don’t happen overnight,” he says. “None of them happened.”
Photo: Apple
