Tim Cook talks the need for privacy and exciting AI, AR
After being named one of the "titans" in Time's list of the 100 most influential people of 2021, Apple CEO Tim Cook talked to the publication about the environment, privacy, and his excitement of AR and AI.
On Wednesday, Tim Cook was named alongside 99 other businesspeople, artists, athletes, musicians, and government officials in the unranked Time list. In a follow-up discussion published on Sunday, Cook talks about a number of subjects close to his heart, and Apple itself.
On his decade-long tenure as Apple CEO, Cook claims the biggest thing he learned is that he has even more to learn.
"I learned very quickly to remember that I had two years and only one mouth, and to listen very carefully to people that I'm surrounding myself with, because I have some of the best and brightest people around me," Cook confided. "And they're smarter than I am."
"We're in a period of time where some of the biggest problems of the world, like climate change as just one example, this is not going to get solved solely by government," proposes Cook. "This needs other constituencies and other stakeholders to move in the same direction and have public/private partnerships. Diversity and inclusion, racial equity and injustice, these are all things that we need the whole of society moving forward on."
When asked why it's important for Apple to be involved in the public conversation around equity and the environment, Cook insists "It's nothing to do with image and so forth."
"It's about, we're a collection of people in Apple that want to change the world for the better," he offers. "We want to leave the world better than we found it. And to do that, you have to be a part of the conversation in areas where the policies of government intersect with your values."
Turning to privacy and Apple's push to enshrine it, Cook starts off with the typical statement of Apple believing privacy is a basic human right.
"It starts with that," the CEO begins. "And we believe that privacy is one of the most consequential issues of our time. I mean, it's right up there, near the top of the list of things. And we see every day, people's privacy being taken for granted, and them losing control."
He offers that it helps in everything from facial recognition and image grouping to the more obvious Siri. "I mean, AI is everywhere. And I see that we're at the very early stages of what it can do for people and how it can make people's lives easier."
Cook also mentions AR and its potential to be an "overlay of the virtual world with the real world" that does so without "distracting from the physical world and your physical relationships."
Expressing a belief that tech can "do so much good in the world" depending on its creator, Cook is optimistic "about all the things that can happen in our lives that free up time for more leisure activities and other things that we want to do in life.
Read on AppleInsider
On Wednesday, Tim Cook was named alongside 99 other businesspeople, artists, athletes, musicians, and government officials in the unranked Time list. In a follow-up discussion published on Sunday, Cook talks about a number of subjects close to his heart, and Apple itself.
On his decade-long tenure as Apple CEO, Cook claims the biggest thing he learned is that he has even more to learn.
"I learned very quickly to remember that I had two years and only one mouth, and to listen very carefully to people that I'm surrounding myself with, because I have some of the best and brightest people around me," Cook confided. "And they're smarter than I am."
Environment, Privacy, and Apple
Moving into the concept of stakeholder capitalism and Apple's supporting of environmental and other projects, Cook points out that, while goals have changed over the years and "gotten much bolder," Apple has "always cared deeply about the environment. We've always cared deeply about workers.""We're in a period of time where some of the biggest problems of the world, like climate change as just one example, this is not going to get solved solely by government," proposes Cook. "This needs other constituencies and other stakeholders to move in the same direction and have public/private partnerships. Diversity and inclusion, racial equity and injustice, these are all things that we need the whole of society moving forward on."
When asked why it's important for Apple to be involved in the public conversation around equity and the environment, Cook insists "It's nothing to do with image and so forth."
"It's about, we're a collection of people in Apple that want to change the world for the better," he offers. "We want to leave the world better than we found it. And to do that, you have to be a part of the conversation in areas where the policies of government intersect with your values."
Turning to privacy and Apple's push to enshrine it, Cook starts off with the typical statement of Apple believing privacy is a basic human right.
"It starts with that," the CEO begins. "And we believe that privacy is one of the most consequential issues of our time. I mean, it's right up there, near the top of the list of things. And we see every day, people's privacy being taken for granted, and them losing control."
Exciting tech
In the latter part of the interview, the attention shifts to what Cook is excited by in the technology field. Cook initially admits "I get really jazzed about AI," with it appearing in many products "that you don't really think about."He offers that it helps in everything from facial recognition and image grouping to the more obvious Siri. "I mean, AI is everywhere. And I see that we're at the very early stages of what it can do for people and how it can make people's lives easier."
Cook also mentions AR and its potential to be an "overlay of the virtual world with the real world" that does so without "distracting from the physical world and your physical relationships."
Expressing a belief that tech can "do so much good in the world" depending on its creator, Cook is optimistic "about all the things that can happen in our lives that free up time for more leisure activities and other things that we want to do in life.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
You fought your employees in court to try to avoid paying them while you made them wait in line for bag checks.
Same for Apple Car. Rumours work in favour of the product to build some anticipation only upto a certain extent. After that, people start losing interest in that product.
A lot of mockups imagine an AR UI outdoors in moving scenarios and they often squeeze the entire UI into the visible area like a tiny screen:
but prolonged use will likely still be in static positions, just more flexible scenarios than current devices allow and it allows the entire environment space to be used:
It can give you multiple 60" displays to put content on or have items floating everywhere. Emails, notifications can be out of view until they trigger and the user would turn to look at them or slide the entire environment over.
They'd have to have a desirable form factor for a lot of people to wear while still providing an immersive experience.
There are a lot of decisions to make to get a product that will work well and technology has to be sufficiently advanced to do this. All of the groundwork is being laid - Lidar, motion tracking, high density displays, efficient Apple Silicon, machine learning hardware, depth processing, spatial audio, computational imaging, realistic rendering pipeline.
There is AR hardware out there just now but examples like the Microsoft HoloLens show yet again how they think about product design:
They have the user with the Windows logo/Start Menu on their wrist. This is typical Microsoft where they can't envision anything that doesn't look like Windows. Their Windows phone UI had to look like a start menu. They also don't think about what is compelling for people to use these products for. Apple's products focus on empowering creatives - music, movies, art, photography. Apple's AR product will do the same and if they do it right, it will have as much of an impact as the iPhone.
There's very little concrete to go on from the talk about AR but that was true of the original iPhone where people were trying to imagine what a cellular iPod would do. AR can do things that will blow people's minds. It can bring people back from the dead in virtual form, it can store a face model of people when they were younger and remap it onto their older face in real-time (1:37):
or change people into Disney characters:
People can try on clothes virtually in a way that is practical, teachers can take classrooms back to different eras in time, movies can feel like being at a personal cinema or even inside the movie. There's so much more that can be done with AR than what has been seen so far. What people think about AR now will matter as much as what people thought about smartphones before 2007.
I still feel we're about 10 years away from general purpose AR product that you wear over your eyes and it becomes a must have product at a reasonable price. But we're not there yet (or if we are, it won't cost $500). The real magic happening right now are the ARKit-apps that anyone with a modern iPhone or iPad can experience today. It's getting better as the iPhone gains new capabilities (such as LiDAR-enhanced scene and object detection). But I totally get it if this stuff seems like it's still in the research phase, because it is.
Luckily, there are now a few distros with user environments that make it pretty easy to transition. That said, I plan on moving to Ubuntu or Asahi Linux once they're fully ported to the new M1 architecture. And despite what I wrote earlier, the adventure seems pretty exciting and I'm surprised how much fun it's been to learn the basics of using new operating systems that are also more technical in nature.
Yes, I know that releasing something before it’s truly ready is just as bad, but some of these rumors around unreleased Apple products, like Apple Car, are reaching the third and fourth generation of their speculative product lifecycle. Maybe the pundits and rumor mills should start pushing “refurbished,” “reconditioned,” and “gently worn” rumors into the media streams for efficiency sake. Half-off sale on last year’s Apple Glass rumors, while supplies last.
There are always options, despite your creepy and weirdly threatening ALL CAPS.