MEGAN MURPHY: You’ve talked about Steve Jobs and how you revere him. How much time do you spend thinking about what people will say about your legacy at Apple?
 
TIM COOK: None. To be totally honest with you, I don’t think in those terms. I think more about doing stuff. I hope people remember me as a good and decent man. And if they do, then that’s success.

Steve’s DNA will always be the base for Apple. It’s the case now. I want it to be the case in 50 years, whoever’s the CEO. I want it to be the case in 100 years, whoever’s CEO. Because that is what this company is about. His ethos should drive that—the attention to detail, the care, the ­simplicity, the focus on the user and the user experience, the focus on building the best, the focus that good isn’t good enough, that it has to be great, or in his words, “insanely great,” that we should own the proprietary technology that we work with because that’s the only way you can control your future and control your quality and user experience. And you should have the courage to walk away and be honest with yourself when you do something wrong, that you shouldn’t be so married to your position and your pride that you can’t say, “I’m changing directions.” These kind of things, these guardrails, should be the basis for Apple a century from now. It’s like the Constitution, which is the guide for the United States. It should not change. We should revere it.

In essence, these principles that Steve learned over many years are the basis for Apple. It doesn’t mean the company hasn’t changed. The company’s going to change. It’s going to go into different product areas. It’s going to learn and adjust. Many things have changed in the company, even in the last six to seven years. But our “Constitution” shouldn’t change. It should remain the same. I think of it as a North Star. It’s always important to have that in mind as you make decisions. It ­actually makes decision-making much simpler.

I was a little surprised the HomePod was pitched primarily as a music device when the competitive talk is of Amazon Echo’s Alexa and the immersive experience in the home. How will the HomePod better integrate Apple inside people’s lives?

We’re actually already in the home through the iPhone you take with you everywhere. It’s in your pocket or laying on a stand. Today, pre-HomePod, I can control my home using Siri through the iPhone. When I get up in the morning, my iPhone is my alarm clock. I say, “Good morning,” and all of a sudden my lights come on. The temperature adjusts and a series of things occur. We’re also in the home through Apple TV. Many people use iPad as their computing device. The desktop Mac enjoys a place in the home. The thing that has arguably not gotten a great level of focus is music in the home. So we decided we would combine great sound and an intelligent speaker.

So it’s going to be a holistic process joining up all those touch points so people can exercise control over their lives, whether through Siri or iPad?

To put it in perspective, Siri is getting requests from 375 million devices right now. My guess is it’s the largest by far of any kind of assistant. Some of those requests are done in the home. Some of those are done on the go. That’s the platform that we build off. It’s very different from our starting point. We’re also in so many languages around the world: Siri isn’t just in English. We’re well-positioned around the world. So, again, what is the thing that’s missing in this equation? The combination of quality audio and instinct.

David Fuller's view

Apple is the market capitalisation leader of a dozen or so mega-tech shares which are almost independent of the pathetic political storms so often brewing in Washington D.C.  The main long-term challenge for these tech giants remains governance and competition. While obviously his own man, Tim Cook shares his mentor’s passion for excellence in this competitive field, including functionality, design and reliability.  Hopefully, Apple’s record cash balance will continue to be used wisely in terms of the share’s long-term development.

The best buying opportunities in Apple and other tech runaways occur during corrections within the overall uptrend.  On the two previous occasions when Apple experienced significant overextensions relative to its 200-day moving average over the last four-and-a-half years, it also saw extensive medium-term corrections. That pattern could now be repeated.