Tim Cook Wants Apple to Literally Save Your Life

Every clip I sojourn the Apple Park campus, my caput flashes to a circuit I took months earlier operation was finished, erstwhile determination was particulate connected the terrazzo floors and mud wherever lush vegetation present flourishes. My usher was Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. With a proprietor’s pride, helium ushered maine done the $5 cardinal circular colossus, explaining that committing to the caller field was a “100-year decision.”

Today I americium returning to the Ring—pulsing with vigor 7 years aft it opened—to spot Cook again. The tech satellite is astatine an inflection point. The mightiest companies volition either stumble oregon unafraid their dominance for decades. We are present to sermon Cook’s large determination successful this high-stakes environment: the impending merchandise of Apple Intelligence, the company’s archetypal important offering successful the white-hot tract of generative AI. Some see it belated. All year, Apple’s competitors person been gaining buzz, dazzling investors, and dominating the quality rhythm with their chatbots, portion the world’s astir invaluable institution (as I write) was showing disconnected an expensive, bulky augmented-reality headset. Apple has to get AI right. Corporations, aft all, are little apt than buildings to basal arrogant for a century.

Cook didn’t panic. Like his predecessor Steve Jobs, helium doesn’t judge that archetypal is best. “Classic Apple,” arsenic helium puts it, enters a cacophonous tract of first-movers and, with a beardown grasp of novelty versus utility, unveils products that marque the latest technologies relatable and adjacent sexy. Think back to however the iPod rethought integer music. It wasn’t the archetypal MP3 player, but its compactness, easiness of use, and integration with an online store thrilled radical with a caller mode to devour their tunes.

Cook besides contends that Apple has been preparing for the AI gyration each along. As acold backmost arsenic 2018, helium poached Google’s apical AI manager, John Giannandrea, for a uncommon enlargement of the company’s elder vice president ranks. Then helium pulled the plug connected a long-running smart-car programme (an unfastened concealed ne'er publically acknowledged by Apple) and marshaled the company’s machine-learning endowment to physique AI into its bundle products.

In June, Apple announced the results: a furniture of AI for its full merchandise line. Cook had besides brokered a woody with the golden modular successful chatbots, OpenAI, truthful that his users could person entree to ChatGPT. I’d gotten a fewer demos of what they were readying to reveal, including a instrumentality to make customized emoji with verbal prompts and an easy-to-use AI representation generator called Image Playground. (I hadn’t yet tested the revivification of Siri, Apple’s lackluster AI agent.)

Perhaps what astir distinguishes Apple’s AI—at slightest according to Apple—is its absorption connected privacy, a hallmark of the Cook regime. The AI tools, which are rolling retired done bundle updates connected the latest iPhone and comparatively caller Macs, volition mostly tally connected the instrumentality itself—you don’t nonstop your information to the cloud. The computation for much analyzable AI tasks, Cook assures, occurs successful unafraid regions of Apple’s information centers.

Another happening I’m reminded of connected my instrumentality to the Ring is however skillful Cook is astatine touting the results of his large decisions, from the Apple Watch to his stake connected customized silicon chips, which unleashed innovations that boost Apple phones and laptops. (And not mentioning decisions that didn’t cookware out, similar that multibillion-dollar smart-car project.) When helium strolls into the league country wherever we’re meeting, I cognize Cook volition beryllium meticulously cordial, displaying manners honed during his Alabama boyhood, portion calmly hyperbolizing the virtues of Apple’s products and fending disconnected criticisms of his precise almighty company. (And erstwhile asked for remark connected the predetermination results, which came successful aft our talk, helium chose to support his views to himself.) Steve Jobs would travel astatine a writer similar the rainfall successful Buenaventura, aggressively pitching his message; Cook envelopes his interlocutors successful a gentle mist and confides awed assessments of his company’s efforts.

The eventual assessments, of course, volition travel from users. But if 40 years of covering Apple has taught maine anything, it is this: Should this archetypal iteration of AI autumn short, an unrepentant Cook volition amusement up astatine a aboriginal pretaped keynote hailing a caller mentation arsenic “the champion Apple Intelligence we’ve ever built.” Despite each the pressure, Tim Cook ne'er lets you spot him sweat.