I’ve met Apple CEO Tim Cook a dozen times, over the years. We’ve grabbed selfies and chatted a bit, but I must admit that I don’t really know him. It’s not like I expect us to be friends, but I think Cook’s enigmatic nature is a core part of his identity, and has made him, in some ways, the perfect CEO for Apple.
Celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary has, however, tested Cook’s cipher-like aspect, forcing him to give interview after interview in which he’s been peppered with questions not just about Apple’s long history but about its motivations, past and present.
50 years of Apple
We’re celebrating Apple’s 50th birthday with a week of content about the tech giant. It covers everything from personal recollections from our writers to the greatest — and worst — Apple gadgets as voted for by you, and you can read it all on our 50 years of Apple page.
Cook told me a few weeks ago that Apple doesn’t like looking back (though it’s clearly made a huge exception this week). The same could be said of Cook. In 2019, Leander Kahney released a lengthy and authorized Tim Cook biography. It was a good and interesting read, featuring interviews with many past and current Apple executives, including former Apple Vice President of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson and Apple’s current Global Head of Marketing Greg Joswiak. Notably absent from the time: an interview with Cook.
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While the long-time tech executive was happy to let others talk about everything from his stepping in as Apple CEO in 2011 to how other team members reacted to his leadership, Cook remained mum.
Cook finally opens up
So a recent Esquire interview conducted at Apple Park shortly after the MacBook Neo launch is notable for what Cook reveals.
Writing about Kahney’s book, I said “Cook is increasingly focused on Apple being a force for good.” Diversity, equality, ecological impact, accessibility, health — these are all things Cook and Apple take seriously, which is why Cook’s recent interactions with the Trump White House, an administration that seemingly stands in opposition to some of those things, have been so confounding for Apple fans.
Cook hasn’t just supported the administration’s America First manufacturing push, an effort that many support, though they also believe there are significant challenges involved in, say, ever bringing iPhone assembly to the US (it’s currently made in China, Vietnam, and India). Apple has committed billions to bringing portions of the process to the US, and as part of Apple’s engagement with the administration we’ve witnessed Cook appear at Trump’s second inauguration, show up at the White House with a golden gift for the president, and sit alongside Trump as the President calls him “Tim Apple.”
Witnessing this, some might have assumed that Cook and Apple tacitly support other Trump policies around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), immigration, education, and women’s rights. Cook has never said as much, and Apple’s DEI programs remain in place (other companies quietly folded them when Trump’s second term commenced).
Where Apple and Tim Cook stand
In the Esquire interview, though, Cook finally addresses the relationship — or at least how Apple’s values square with his working with the US President.
“I think you should interact and engage with everyone,” he said. “I’ve interacted with both political parties in the U.S. and the people in the middle. I’ve interacted with governments all around the world, some that I have very different views on. But I think until you engage, you never know — you never understand — where somebody else is coming from. And you have no influence at all.”
Apple, Cook explained, still believes in the environment, education, accessibility, “treating everybody with dignity and respect.”
Without mentioning Trump by name, Cook acknowledged that people might see him meeting with someone who has “a different view than him,” but Cook believes that’s a good thing to do. He added that when people don’t discuss their differences, their positions “just become hardened. And I don’t think that’s good.”
Not quite satisfied that Cook has addressed the question of whether his and Apple’s dealings with someone who may not share their views might suggest a degree of flexibility in those views, Esquire asked pointedly, “So, lest there be any confusion: Your values are the same as the day you got here?”
Cook replied, “Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. They’re the same.”
The mystery of Tim Cook
The answer is at once revealing and inscrutable. Cook doesn’t outright say, “I believe in climate change,” for instance. But you could infer as much. It’s wild to compare Cook and Apple’s founder and former CEO, the late Steve Jobs, who wore his heart on his sleeve and didn’t suffer fools.
I returned to that biography, where I tried to learn exactly who Tim Cook is and what we might understand about his values. In a way, you could say he shares Apple’s values listed above. But in the book, two key elements stood out that might help us understand just how deeply he holds these values.
One was the story he often recounts of seeing the Klu Klux Klan burn a cross on the lawn of an African American family’s home in Alabama. Cook once described it as an image that “was permanently imprinted in my brain, and it would change my life forever.”
The other was his sexual orientation. Kahney’s biography doesn’t offer any insight into what it was like to grow up gay in Alabama, but I think it’s fair to assume that Cook’s desire to see everyone treated with dignity and respect is rooted in some way in that personal experience.
The takeaway here is that perhaps Cook has not become someone else, but that his personality is so rooted in pragmatism that he sees no other way to navigate our rapidly changing and unpredictable world. Cook and Apple will talk and work with friends and, perhaps, foes, with the hope of reaching understanding — but first and foremost with the goal of delivering Apple’s products, and disseminating its values, around the world.
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