Tim Cook made a rare appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Tuesday night to talk about Apple’s brand new iPhone 6s, the new Steve Jobs movie, and more. Cook even touched upon the possibility of an Apple Car — but only very briefly.
Colbert, who was clutching a Rose Gold iPhone 6s throughout the near-ten-minute interview, poked fun at Apple and Cook with a number of jokes that Cook found very funny. Colbert even threatened to stab Cook “in the neck with a fondue fork” if he changed the iPhone’s charging port again.
Colbert then demonstrated some of the new features that come with iPhone 6s, including Live Photos and 3D Touch, asking, “If I hang up on someone hard enough, will it actually hit them on the other side?” Cook responded that Apple isn’t quite there with iPhone yet.
Colbert went on to ask Cook about the comments made by Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who claimed during an interview on “The Late Show” last week that Apple is working on a driverless car. As you might expect, Cook was very secretive about the Cupertino company’s plans.
While Colbert recorded Cook on the iPhone 6s, the Apple CEO said, “We look at a number of things along the way, and we decide to really put our energies in a few of those.”
Colbert then moved the interview onto the upcoming Steve Jobs movie, which will hit theaters in the U.S. next month, and other movies about Apple’s co-founder and former CEO which “aren’t that flattering” about the way Jobs was as a person.
Cook said that while he hasn’t seen the movies yet, the Steve he knew “was an amazing human being.”
He’s someone that you wanted to do your best work [for]. He invented things that I think other people could not. He saw things other people could not. He had this uncanny ability to see around the corner, and to describe a future — not an evolutionary future, but a revolutionary future. He was a joy to work with, and I love him dearly. I miss him every day. I think a lot of people are trying to be opportunistic and I hate this — it’s not a great part of our world.
Colbert also asked Cook about his decision to tell the world he was gay in a public letter published last year, and whether the decision behind that was an effort to help others “in hardship around the world.” Cook responded:
Every day I come to work, right in front of my desk I have a photo of Robert Kennedy and a photo of Dr. King. And every day I sort of ask myself… it was Dr. King’s quote that said “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is ‘What are you doing for others?'”
And it became so clear to me that kids were getting bullied in school. Kids were getting basically discriminated against. Kids were even being disclaimed by their own parents, and that I needed to do something. And where I valued my privacy significantly, I felt that I was valuing it too far above what I could do for other people. And so I wanted to tell everyone my truth.
Many people already knew, and so for many people it was no revelation. It’s like discovering something your iPhone has always done, but you didn’t quite know it, right? And so it wasn’t a revelation to a lot of people that I worked with, but it was maybe to the broader world. And I felt a tremendous responsibility to do it.
The final portion of the interview with Cook focused on Apple’s increased sense of social responsibility — particularly with the way in which the company’s products are created.
Cook was keen to point out how Apple teaches everybody in its supply chain what their rights are, and that Apple “has a really high bar” when it comes to human rights. Cook also noted that Apple brings college classes to its manufacturing plants, enabling supply chain workers to grow.
Just like our products are meant to give tools to everyone to do better things — to empower them to do things they couldn’t do otherwise — we want to leave the world better than we found it. And for us that means focusing on education, it means focusing on the environment, it means focusing on human rights. And so we put a lot of ourselves into these things.
Colbert ended the interview by asking Siri “what should I ask Tim Cook?” Siri responded, “Do me a favor — ask him when I’m going to get a raise.” You can watch the full interview below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTF4AxV6Kyg
[via MacRumors]