Apple CEO Tim Cook talks about working with Steve Jobs, the values at Apple, including privacy and equality, and if he'd run for president. He speaks with David Rubenstein on "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations."

There was a sparkle in his eye that I'd never seen in a CEO before.

Did your friends tell you this was not a good idea?

Warren Buffett still uses an old flip phone.

I told him that I'll personally come out to Omaha to do tech support for him.

Why was it called the Apple Watch and not the iWatch?

Well, people wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixed, but okay.

♪ I don't consider myself a journalist.

Nobody else would consider myself a journalist.

I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though I have a day job running a private equity firm.

You've now been the CEO of Apple since about July of 2011.

So have you ever thought you can't do better than this and maybe you should just say, well, I've done a great job and now I'm going to do something else with my life.

We view the stock price and revenues and profits as a result of doing things right on the innovation side, on the

creativity side, focusing on the right products, treating customers like they're jewels, and focusing on the user experience.

I didn't even know the numbers that you just quoted.

This is not something that I, that's not even in my orbit, to be honest with you.

Well, so when you announce your quarterly earnings, analysts always say, well, they didn't sell as much of this product as we thought they would.

And so it's always struck me as bizarre that there's a fixation on how many units are sold in a 90-day period is we're making decisions that are multi-year kind of decisions.

And so we try to be very clear that we do not run the company for people that want to make a quick buck.

1 of the shareholders who recently surfaced as having bought 75 million additional shares is Warren Buffett.

Are you pleased to have him as your shareholder?

Because Warren is focused on the long term.

It's the way we run the company, it's the way he invests.

Have you thought how much more your stock could go up if he actually used the product?

And I told him that I'll personally come out to Omaha to do tech support for him.

So you're now in a building that was designed and inspired initially by Steve Jobs.

Steve had the vision that the workplace should facilitate people working together.

Having these common areas that people could work together and run into each other without planning on doing it, and that the level of ideas and creativity and innovation that would come out of that would be phenomenal.

You're convinced standing up working is better than sitting down?

We have given all of our employees 100% standing desks.

If you can stand for a while and then sit and so on and so forth, this is much better for my lifestyle.

So let me ask you about how you came to this position.

A very, very small, rural town between Pensacola and Mobile, on the Gulf Coast.

And you grew up, were you a star athlete?

What were you when you were in high school?

The benefit I got in my childhood was being in a family that was a loving family and a public school system that was good and you know that's a huge benefit and honestly a benefit that many many kids don't have these days.

You went to Auburn, and how did you do there?

I really got into engineering in a big way and

I started as a production engineer out designing manufacturing lines.

At that time, robotics were beginning to take off, and so we were focused on automation.

I wouldn't say we successfully focused on it, But I learned a lot from going through that as well.

So you were there for about 12 years, and then you joined another company called Compaq.

So you were at Compaq, which at the time, I think, was 1 of the biggest manufacturers of personal computers.

They were the number 1 at the time, yeah.

So you're there for about 6 months and you get a call from Steve Jobs or somebody working for him saying, can you come and join Apple?

Why did you take the interview and why did you join Apple?

Steve had come back to the company and was essentially replacing the executive team that was there at the time.

I thought, you know, this is an opportunity to talk to the guy that started the whole industry.

And it was like just minutes into talking with him, I want to do it, which I was totally, I was shocked myself.

there was a sparkle in his eye that I'd never seen in a CEO before.

He was sort of turning left when everyone else was turning right.

It was almost on everything that he talked about, he was doing something extraordinarily different than conventional wisdom.

Many people were abandoning the consumer market because they were just, it was a bloodbath.

He was doubling down on the consumer at the time everybody else, the conventional wisdom said, go put your money in storage and servers.

And so talking with him And the type of questions he asked were also different.

And I did, literally, before I left, I think, I hope he offers me a job because I really want to do this.

Again, conventional wisdom was you're working for the top personal computer maker in the world.

And it wasn't a decision that you could kind of sit down and do the engineering kind of analysis saying here are the pluses and here are the minuses, because that analysis would always say stay put.

It was this sort of voice in your head that was saying, go west, young man, go west.

Despite the fact that there was no state income tax in Texas and there is in California, you still said, you're going to go west.

So in hindsight, this was the best professional decision of your life, I assume.

I'm not sure you need to put professional in that.

Steve's health was such that he couldn't continue to be the CEO.

I thought, honestly, my thought at that time was he was going to be chairman and he would do that forever.

♪♪ ♪♪ So you go there, and what is your job at Apple?

And so we found partners that were expert at manufacturing and we maintained the intellectual knowledge of how the process and obviously all of the design of the product.

got there and you're working for Steve, was it better than you thought, worse than you thought, more challenging than you thought?

I found it to be liberating, is the way I would describe it, because you could kind of talk to Steve about something very big, and If it resonated with him, he would just say, okay, and you could do it.

It was like a total revelation for me that a company could run like this, because I was used to these layers and bureaucracy and studies and studying things, sort of the paralysis that companies can get into.

And I realized that if I couldn't get something done, I could just go to the nearest mirror and look at it, and that was the reason.

Steve's health was such that he couldn't continue to be the CEO, he told the board that, and you were announced as the CEO, I think, around July of 2011, something around there.

When you became the CEO, did you feel you had, that Steve would say, here's what I was interested in doing and you fulfill my goals, or did you feel you had your own view on what you should do, and how did you balance the 2?

We have a really open company, and so most of us could finish the other person's sentences, even when we might disagree with them.

And so it wasn't a matter of Steve having this secret file or something.

He was always sharing his ideas all the time.

And I thought, honestly, my thought at that time, and I know people have told me you're just not very smart, but my view at that time was he was gonna be chairman and he would do that forever.

And that we would figure out the, you know, the sort of the relationship change there.

Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.

You have a product that is the most successful consumer product in the history of mankind, which is the iPhone.

There was a sense that it was a profound product, that it was a game changer.

If you go back and watch the keynote that Steve announced it, you can feel his passion in it.

And the way he described it, I still remember it like it was yesterday.

So there are 7.5 billion people on the face of the earth, so 1 out of every 7 people has 1, more or less.

Well some people probably have bought more than 1 along

Well, you do have new ones coming out every so often.

So if I buy a new iPhone, should I expect another 1 in 2 years?

You should expect that Apple's going to keep innovating, and you should jump on the train now though, okay?

Okay, well, I have it here, and I have my iPhone here, actually, and I do use it, and I love it.

And 1 time when you and I were in China, I couldn't quite work something and I asked you to help me.

And you said, look, I normally don't do tech support for people, but you were nice and it did work.

You came out with the Apple Watch not too long ago.

Because you have iPhone, iPod, iPad, why not iWatch?

I'm sure it's not a novel idea, but I'm just curious.

No, It wasn't a crazy question at all and

Well, you're the CEO so Okay, when CEO says something, okay, so how are they doing?

They're doing fantastic Cellular is now on the watch.

You don't have to travel with your iPhone, you can just use your watch.

1 of the my best moments of a day is to go through my emails that are from users.

And I get so many each week from people that found out they have a heart problem from their watch.

It's alerting you if you've been sitting and your heart has climbed to a level that doesn't make sense relative to the activity that you've been doing.

Suppose you don't wanna know if you have a heart problem.

Well, we think most people do, because you can then go seek help.

And seriously, David, so many people have written and said, the watch alerted me to a problem.

I took an action and went to the cardiologist.

He told me that if I had not gone there, I wouldn't be alive.

So when you say you go through your emails, nobody emails you directly.

Well, how can you respond to all those emails?

But it doesn't mean that I can't read a fair number of those myself because I think it's important to sort of keep your hands on the pulse of the user.

Have you ever thought that maybe you could run for president of the United States?

Because I think, yeah, You know, the president is something that you'd love to be president, but not ever run.

And that should never happen in our country.

Today, let's talk about some of the values that you've been espousing.

We see privacy as a fundamental human right.

To us, it's right up there with some of the other civil liberties that make Americans what they are.

We see that this is becoming a larger and larger issue for people.

And so our tactics on this is we take a minimum amount of data from customers, only that which we need to provide a great service, and then we work really hard to protect it with encryption and so forth.

Okay, you've also talked about the importance of equality.

As I look at the world, many of the problems of the world come down to the lack of equality.

It's the fact that it's the kid that's born in 1 zip code who doesn't have a good education because they happen to be born in that zip code.

It's someone that is maybe an LGBT community that is fired because of that.

It's someone that has a different religion than the majority and therefore they're ostracized in some way.

And so very simply, I think, if 1 day you could wave a wand and Everybody in the world would treat each other with dignity and respect.

There were many, many problems that would go away with that.

So you exposed your own personal life a bit.

The privacy that you've said other people should have, you kind of gave up some of your privacy.

It became clear to me that there were lots of kids out there that were not being treated well, including in their own families.

And that kids need someone to say, oh, they did okay in life and they're gay, so it must not be a life sentence in some kind of way.

And when I were getting these notes, it would tug on my heart even more, and it got to the point where I thought, I'm making the wrong call by trying to do something that is comfortable for me, which is to stay private, that I needed to do something for the greater good.

So Now you're obviously in the public eye.

Recently you had a meeting with President Trump.

What was the meeting with President Trump like?

You know, I wouldn't want to say what he said.

What I talked about was I talked about trade and the importance of trade and how I felt that 2 countries trading together make the pie larger.

And that it's true, I think undoubtedly true, that not everyone has been advantaged from that in either country, and we've got to work on that.

But I felt that tariffs were not the right approach there, and I showed him some more analytical kinds of things to demonstrate why.

We also talked about immigration and the importance of fixing the Dreamer issue now.

You know, we're only 1 court ruling away from a catastrophic case there.

CAP has roughly $260 billion of cash, more or less.

We're going to create a new site, a new campus within the United States.

And so we're going to spend $30 billion in CapEx over the next several years.

And so, number 1, we're investing, and investing a ton in this country.

We're also going to buy some of our stock because we view our stock as a good value.


Speaker 0: You get a call from Steve Jobs.

Speaker 1: There was a sparkle in his eye that I'd never seen in a CEO before.

Speaker 0: Did your friends tell you this was not a good idea?

Speaker 1: They thought I was nuts.

Speaker 0: Warren Buffett still uses an old flip phone.

Speaker 1: I told him that I'll personally come out to Omaha to do tech support for him.

Speaker 0: You exposed your own personal life

Speaker 1: a bit. I thought, I'm making the wrong call.

Speaker 0: Why was it called the Apple Watch and not the iWatch?

Speaker 2: I kind of like the Apple Watch.

Speaker 1: What do you think?

Speaker 0: Well, you're the CEO, so... I'll take the Apple Watch. Would you fix your tie, please? Well, people wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixed, but okay. Just leave it this way.

All right. ♪ I don't consider myself a journalist. Nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though I have a day job running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership?

What is it that makes somebody tick? It's quite a reception you've got here.

Speaker 1: I thought it was for you.

Speaker 0: No, it's for you. You've now been the CEO of Apple since about July of 2011. The earnings are up about 80%. So have you ever thought you can't do better than this and maybe you should just say, well, I've done a great job and now I'm going to do something else with my life. We view the stock price and revenues and profits as a result of doing things right on the innovation side, on the

Speaker 1: creativity side, focusing on the right products, treating customers like they're jewels, and focusing on the user experience. I didn't even know the numbers that you just quoted. This is not something that I, that's not even in my orbit, to be honest with you.

Speaker 0: Well, so when you announce your quarterly earnings, analysts always say, well, they didn't sell as much of this product as we thought they would. And so does that bother you?

Speaker 1: It did at 1 time. It doesn't anymore. We run Apple for the long term. And so it's always struck me as bizarre that there's a fixation on how many units are sold in a 90-day period is we're making decisions that are multi-year kind of decisions. And so we try to be very clear that we do not run the company for people that want to make a quick buck.

We run the company for the long term.

Speaker 0: 1 of the shareholders who recently surfaced as having bought 75 million additional shares is Warren Buffett. Are you pleased to have him as your shareholder?

Speaker 1: I'm overjoyed. I'm thrilled. Because Warren is focused on the long term. We're in sync. It's the way we run the company, it's the way he invests.

Yeah, so I could not be happier.

Speaker 0: Well, have you thought about this? Warren still uses that old flip phone. I know. He has no smartphone. Have you thought how much more your stock could go up if he actually used the product?

Speaker 1: I am working on it. And I told him that I'll personally come out to Omaha to do tech support for him.

Speaker 0: So you're now in a building that was designed and inspired initially by Steve Jobs. Apple Park. Apple Park. And you've moved in recently.

Speaker 1: Steve had the vision that the workplace should facilitate people working together. Having these common areas that people could work together and run into each other without planning on doing it, and that the level of ideas and creativity and innovation that would come out of that would be phenomenal. And we're seeing that.

Speaker 0: You're convinced standing up working is better than sitting down?

Speaker 1: We have given all of our employees 100% standing desks. If you can stand for a while and then sit and so on and so forth, this is much better for my lifestyle. We can stand

Speaker 0: up for a little while. We'll be standing up, OK? So let me ask you about how you came to this position. So you grew up in Alabama.

Speaker 1: A very, very small, rural town between Pensacola and Mobile, on the Gulf Coast.

Speaker 0: And you grew up, were you a star athlete? Were you a star scholar? Were you a tech nerd? What were you when you were in high school? I'm not sure

Speaker 1: I would say I was a star of anything. I worked hard at school. I had some reasonably good grades. The benefit I got in my childhood was being in a family that was a loving family and a public school system that was good and you know that's a huge benefit and honestly a benefit that many many kids don't have these days.

Speaker 0: You went to Auburn, and how did you do there?

Speaker 2: I did pretty good. I did

Speaker 1: pretty good. I really got into engineering in a big way and

Speaker 0: industrial engineering. So then you went to work for IBM?

Speaker 1: I did, yes. I started as a production engineer out designing manufacturing lines. At that time, robotics were beginning to take off, and so we were focused on automation. I wouldn't say we successfully focused on it, But I learned a lot from going through that as well.

Speaker 0: So you were there for about 12 years, and then you joined another company called Compaq. Yes. So you were at Compaq, which at the time, I think, was 1 of the biggest manufacturers of personal computers.

Speaker 1: They were the number 1 at the time, yeah.

Speaker 0: So you're there for about 6 months and you get a call from Steve Jobs or somebody working for him saying, can you come and join Apple? Apple was modest compared to Compaq. Why did you take the interview and why did you join Apple?

Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. Steve had come back to the company and was essentially replacing the executive team that was there at the time. I thought, you know, this is an opportunity to talk to the guy that started the whole industry. And Steve met me on Saturday. And it was like just minutes into talking with him, I want to do it, which I was totally, I was shocked myself.

Speaker 2: But

Speaker 1: there was a sparkle in his eye that I'd never seen in a CEO before. He was sort of turning left when everyone else was turning right. It was almost on everything that he talked about, he was doing something extraordinarily different than conventional wisdom. Many people were abandoning the consumer market because they were just, it was a bloodbath. Steve was doing the exact opposite.

He was doubling down on the consumer at the time everybody else, the conventional wisdom said, go put your money in storage and servers. And I thought it was brilliant. And so talking with him And the type of questions he asked were also different. And I did, literally, before I left, I think, I hope he offers me a job because I really want to do this.

Speaker 0: Did your friends tell you this was not a good idea?

Speaker 1: They thought I was nuts. They thought I was nuts. Again, conventional wisdom was you're working for the top personal computer maker in the world. Why would you ever leave? You've got a great career ahead.

And it wasn't a decision that you could kind of sit down and do the engineering kind of analysis saying here are the pluses and here are the minuses, because that analysis would always say stay put. It was this sort of voice in your head that was saying, go west, young man, go west.

Speaker 0: Despite the fact that there was no state income tax in Texas and there is in California, you still said, you're going to go west. So in hindsight, this was the best professional decision of your life, I assume.

Speaker 1: Maybe the best decision of my life. I'm not sure you need to put professional in that.

Speaker 0: Steve's health was such that he couldn't continue to be the CEO.

Speaker 1: I thought, honestly, my thought at that time was he was going to be chairman and he would do that forever. And it, you know, unfortunately

Speaker 0: it didn't turn out that way. ♪♪ ♪♪ So you go there, and what is your job at Apple?

Speaker 1: Running worldwide operations. In the company at that time. And so we found partners that were expert at manufacturing and we maintained the intellectual knowledge of how the process and obviously all of the design of the product. Now When you

Speaker 0: got there and you're working for Steve, was it better than you thought, worse than you thought, more challenging than you thought?

Speaker 1: I found it to be liberating, is the way I would describe it, because you could kind of talk to Steve about something very big, and If it resonated with him, he would just say, okay, and you could do it. It was like a total revelation for me that a company could run like this, because I was used to these layers and bureaucracy and studies and studying things, sort of the paralysis that companies can get into. Apple was totally different than that. And I realized that if I couldn't get something done, I could just go to the nearest mirror and look at it, and that was the reason.

Speaker 0: Steve's health was such that he couldn't continue to be the CEO, he told the board that, and you were announced as the CEO, I think, around July of 2011, something around there. When you became the CEO, did you feel you had, that Steve would say, here's what I was interested in doing and you fulfill my goals, or did you feel you had your own view on what you should do, and how did you balance the 2? You're succeeding a legendary figure.

Speaker 1: It's not so sequential as that. We have a really open company, and so most of us could finish the other person's sentences, even when we might disagree with them. And so it wasn't a matter of Steve having this secret file or something. He was always sharing his ideas all the time. And so Very different than that.

And I thought, honestly, my thought at that time, and I know people have told me you're just not very smart, but my view at that time was he was gonna be chairman and he would do that forever. And that we would figure out the, you know, the sort of the relationship change there. And That's what I thought. And it, you know, unfortunately, it

Speaker 0: didn't turn out that way.

Speaker 1: Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.

Speaker 0: You have a product that is the most successful consumer product in the history of mankind, which is the iPhone.

Speaker 1: There was a sense that it was a profound product, that it was a game changer. If you go back and watch the keynote that Steve announced it, you can feel his passion in it. And the way he described it, I still remember it like it was yesterday.

Speaker 0: So how many iPhones have now been sold?

Speaker 1: Well over a billion.

Speaker 0: So there are 7.5 billion people on the face of the earth, so 1 out of every 7 people has 1, more or less.

Speaker 1: Well some people probably have bought more than 1 along

Speaker 0: the way. OK. OK. Well, I

Speaker 1: certainly hope so anyway.

Speaker 0: Well, you do have new ones coming out every so often. So if I buy a new iPhone, should I expect another 1 in 2 years?

Speaker 1: You should expect that Apple's going to keep innovating, and you should jump on the train now though, okay? Because life is so short, David.

Speaker 0: Okay, well, I have it here, and I have my iPhone here, actually, and I do use it, and I love it. And 1 time when you and I were in China, I couldn't quite work something and I asked you to help me. And you said, look, I normally don't do tech support for people, but you were nice and it did work. You came out with the Apple Watch not too long ago. Why was it called the Apple Watch and not the iWatch?

Because you have iPhone, iPod, iPad, why not iWatch? Did you ever think of that? I'm sure you must have thought of it. I'm sure it's not a novel idea, but I'm just curious.

Speaker 1: It was something that we thought of

Speaker 0: at the time. So it wasn't a crazy question.

Speaker 1: No, It wasn't a crazy question at all and

Speaker 0: how come Apple watch 1 out?

Speaker 2: Well, I kind of like the Apple watch

Speaker 1: What do you think?

Speaker 0: Well, you're the CEO so Okay, when CEO says something, okay, so how are they doing? They're doing fantastic Cellular is now on the watch.

Speaker 1: You don't have to travel with your iPhone, you can just use your watch. 1 of the my best moments of a day is to go through my emails that are from users. And I get so many each week from people that found out they have a heart problem from their watch. It's alerting you if you've been sitting and your heart has climbed to a level that doesn't make sense relative to the activity that you've been doing.

Speaker 0: Suppose you don't wanna know if you have a heart problem.

Speaker 1: Well, we think most people do, because you can then go seek help. And seriously, David, so many people have written and said, the watch alerted me to a problem. I took an action and went to the cardiologist. He told me that if I had not gone there, I wouldn't be alive.

Speaker 0: So when you say you go through your emails, nobody emails you directly. I assume you can't. Oh, sure they do. Well, how can you respond to all those emails?

Speaker 1: I can't. But it doesn't mean that I can't read a fair number of those myself because I think it's important to sort of keep your hands on the pulse of the user.

Speaker 0: Have you ever thought that maybe you could run for president of the United States?

Speaker 1: Because I think, yeah, You know, the president is something that you'd love to be president, but not ever run. And that should never happen in our country. And so that kind of eliminates me.

Speaker 0: Today, let's talk about some of the values that you've been espousing. 1 is privacy.

Speaker 1: We see privacy as a fundamental human right. To us, it's right up there with some of the other civil liberties that make Americans what they are. It defines us as Americans. We see that this is becoming a larger and larger issue for people. And so our tactics on this is we take a minimum amount of data from customers, only that which we need to provide a great service, and then we work really hard to protect it with encryption and so forth.

Speaker 0: Okay, you've also talked about the importance of equality. Yeah. Why is that important to you?

Speaker 1: As I look at the world, many of the problems of the world come down to the lack of equality. It's the fact that it's the kid that's born in 1 zip code who doesn't have a good education because they happen to be born in that zip code. It's someone that is maybe an LGBT community that is fired because of that. It's someone that has a different religion than the majority and therefore they're ostracized in some way. And so very simply, I think, if 1 day you could wave a wand and Everybody in the world would treat each other with dignity and respect.

Speaker 0: There were many, many problems that would go away with that. So you exposed your own personal life a bit. The privacy that you've said other people should have, you kind of gave up some of your privacy. Why did you do that?

Speaker 1: Well, I did it for a greater purpose. It became clear to me that there were lots of kids out there that were not being treated well, including in their own families. And that kids need someone to say, oh, they did okay in life and they're gay, so it must not be a life sentence in some kind of way. And when I were getting these notes, it would tug on my heart even more, and it got to the point where I thought, I'm making the wrong call by trying to do something that is comfortable for me, which is to stay private, that I needed to do something for the greater good. And so that's why I

Speaker 0: did it. No regrets. No regrets. Thank you. So Now you're obviously in the public eye.

Recently you had a meeting with President Trump. What was the meeting with President Trump like?

Speaker 1: You know, I wouldn't want to say what he said. What I talked about was I talked about trade and the importance of trade and how I felt that 2 countries trading together make the pie larger. And that it's true, I think undoubtedly true, that not everyone has been advantaged from that in either country, and we've got to work on that. But I felt that tariffs were not the right approach there, and I showed him some more analytical kinds of things to demonstrate why. We also talked about immigration and the importance of fixing the Dreamer issue now.

You know, we're only 1 court ruling away from a catastrophic case there. So do you

Speaker 0: think you made progress on these issues? I hope so. I hope so. CAP has roughly $260 billion of cash, more or less. What do you intend to

Speaker 1: do with that cash? We're going to create a new site, a new campus within the United States. We're going to hire 20,000 people. And so we're going to spend $30 billion in CapEx over the next several years. And so, number 1, we're investing, and investing a ton in this country.

We're also going to buy some of our stock because we view our stock as a good value.

Speaker 0: So, did your parents live to see your success? My mother passed away

Speaker 1: 3 years ago, but my father's still alive.

Speaker 0: So Your mother lived to see you be the CEO? She did. And did she say, well, you're great. I always knew you'd be successful. And can you help me with my iPhone?

Can you help this?

Speaker 1: Well, I did get both of them on iPad. And I finally convinced my father to start using iPhones. And so, but they, honestly, they treat me like they did 20 years ago and 40 years ago, 60 years ago.

Speaker 0: He calls you with tips about what to do or tell you how to do things or not really?

Speaker 1: Yeah, if I do something he doesn't think is good, he tells me about it.

Speaker 0: Right. He says, yeah,

Speaker 1: I saw you on that show. You weren't very good. So I'm hoping you edit this well.

Speaker 0: You're obviously a pretty public figure. You were not before. Have you ever thought that maybe you could run for president of the United States? Because you've seen the president up close.

Speaker 1: I'm not political. I love focusing on the policy stuff, but in the dysfunction kind of in Washington between the legislative branch and so forth, I think that I can make a bigger difference in the world doing what I'm doing. And I appreciate the comment, but I think, yeah. You know, the president is something that you'd love to be president but not ever run. And that should never happen in our country.

And so that kind of illuminates me.

Speaker 0: Of all the CEOs that I know that have run major companies, you are the lowest ego, kind of most self-effacing person that I've seen in this kind of position. So, have you ever noticed that you're different than the other people who are CEOs? And how do you maintain this self-effacing, kind of modest demeanor when you're running the biggest company in the world?

Speaker 1: Well, when you work at Apple, there's a high expectation on everyone to perform and to contribute. And because of that high bar, and you never quite get there, including the CEO, including every job in there. And so I'd never feel that way very long if

Speaker 2: I ever felt that way.

Speaker 0: Well, thank you for taking the time today. Yeah, thank you for having me. And I would say you're the first person I've interviewed without a tie on, and so I was in your honor.

Speaker 1: I bet you sleep in a tie.

Speaker 0: Thank you.

Speaker 1: I appreciate it.

Speaker 0: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Wow. You

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rewrite this entire transcript but keep the speaker names and remove the timestamps

Rewrite this entire transcript but remove the timestamps and keep the speaker names

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Apple CEO Tim Cook on The David Rubenstein Show