Every time I When I visit the Apple Park campus, my mind flashes back to a tour I took months before construction was completed, when there was dust on the terrazzo and mud floors where lush greenery now flourishes. My guide was Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. With pride of ownership, he walked me through the $5 billion circular behemoth and explained that committing to the new campus was a “100-year decision.”
Today I return to the Ring, pulsating with energy seven years after its opening, to see Cook again. The world of technology is at an inflection point. The most powerful companies will stumble or secure their dominance for decades. We’re here to discuss Cook’s big move into this high-stakes environment: the impending launch of Apple Intelligence, the company’s first major offering in the hot field of generative AI. Some consider it late. All year, Apple’s competitors have been gaining popularity, dazzling investors and dominating the news cycle with their chatbots, while the world’s most valuable company (as I write) showed off an expensive and bulky augmented reality headset. Apple has to get AI right. After all, corporations are less likely to stand proud for a century than buildings.
Cook did not panic. Like his predecessor Steve Jobs, he doesn’t believe first is best. The “classic Apple,” as he puts it, enters a cacophonous field of pioneers and, with a strong understanding of novelty versus utility, introduces products that make the latest technologies identifiable and even attractive. Think about how the iPod rethought digital music. It wasn’t the first MP3 player, but its compact size, ease of use, and integration with an online store excited people with a new way to consume their songs.
Photography: Joe Pugliese
Cook also maintains that Apple has been preparing for the AI revolution all along. Back in 2018, he poached Google’s top AI director, John Giannandrea, for a rare expansion of the company’s senior vice president ranks. It then pulled the plug on a long-running smart car program (an open secret that Apple has never publicly acknowledged) and rallied the company’s machine learning talent to incorporate AI into its software products.
In June, Apple announced the results: an AI layer for its entire product line. Cook had also negotiated a deal with the gold standard in chatbots, OpenAI, so that its users could have access to ChatGPT. I got a few demos of what they planned to reveal, including a tool for creating custom emoji with verbal cues and an easy-to-use AI image generator called Image Playground. (I hadn’t yet tried revitalizing Siri, Apple’s lackluster AI agent.)
Perhaps what most sets Apple’s AI apart (at least according to Apple) is its focus on privacy, a hallmark of the Cook regime. The AI tools, which are being rolled out via software updates on the latest iPhones and relatively recent Macs, will largely run on the device itself – it won’t send your data to the cloud. Cook says that computing for more complicated AI tasks is done in secure regions of Apple’s data centers.
Another thing I remember upon my return to the Ring is how adept Cook is at touting the results of his big decisions, from the Apple Watch to his bet on custom silicon chips, which unleashed innovations that power Apple phones and laptops. (And not to mention decisions that didn’t work out, like that multibillion-dollar smart car project.) When he walks into the conference room where we meet, I know Cook will be meticulously cordial and display manners honed during his Alabama. childhood, while calmly hyperbolizing the virtues of Apple products and avoiding criticism of his powerful company. (And when asked for comment on the election results, which emerged after our talk, he chose to keep his views to himself.) Steve Jobs approached a journalist like rain in Buenaventura, aggressively launching his message; Cook envelops his interlocutors in a soft fog and confides in them amazed assessments of his company’s efforts.
The final ratings, of course, will come from the users. But if 40 years covering Apple has taught me anything, it’s this: If this first iteration of AI isn’t enough, an unrepentant Cook will appear at a future prerecorded keynote praising a new version as “the best Apple intelligence we’ve ever had.” . built.” Despite all the pressure, Tim Cook never lets you see him sweat.