The technology giant's CEO, Tim Cook, addresses
issues concerning his company -- including encryption technology,
corporate taxes, and manufacturing products in China
The following is a script from "Inside Apple" which
aired on Dec. 20, 2015. Charlie Rose is the correspondent. Michael
Radutzky, Andrew Bast and Glen Rochkind, producers.
Apple is one of the most interesting business stories in generations and
it finds itself at the heart of some of the biggest issues facing
American companies today: the way terrorists may be using encrypted
technology to plot attacks, the battle over the corporate tax rate, and
the challenges of working in China. We talked about all of that with
Apple CEO Tim Cook as part of a journey through the world's biggest and
richest company.
Apple CEO Tim Cook
CBS News
What
is it that makes Apple so innovative and so profitable, and yet so
secretive, almost obsessively secretive? Apple agreed to let us in, to
an extent, beginning at the annual launch in September of Apple's new
products. [Backstage: Go!
Tim Cook taking stage: Thank you! Thank you! It's really been an incredible year for Apple.]
Tim Cook has been running Apple for the past four years, but for most of the 15 years before that...
[Steve Jobs taking the stage at a product launch event: We've had some real, revolutionary products...]
...the stage belonged to Apple's late cofounder Steve Jobs.
[Steve Jobs: We're going to make some history together today...]
Jobs transformed the computer from a cumbersome machine into
perhaps the most personal and sleek consumer product of all time. The
iPhone is 12,000 times more powerful than the original Macintosh, and
next year it will have sold one billion units. Following Steve Jobs was
one of the most challenging successions imaginable, a daunting
responsibility for the man he handpicked --- Tim Cook.
Tim Cook: I've never met anyone on the face of the earth like him before. And it was a privilege--
Charlie Rose: "I've never met anyone on the face of the earth--
Tim Cook: No one.
Charlie Rose: --like him?"
Tim Cook: No one.
Charlie Rose: Not one person?
Tim Cook: Not one.
Charlie Rose: Who had?
Tim Cook: Who had this incredible and uncanny ability to see
around the corner. Who had this relentless driving force for perfection.
The spirit of Steve Jobs hovers over Apple. He was a
founder like no other: a volatile visionary capable of creating products
people wanted before they even knew it. Cook is a measured and
passionate engineer from Alabama. On the Apple campus, employees still
talk about Steve Jobs in the same way that Tim Cook does.
Tim Cook: It's a bar of excellence that merely good isn't good enough.
It has to be great. As Steve used to say, "Insanely great."
Charlie Rose: You believe you can do things other companies can't do.
Tim Cook: You do. You do. We all do. And we have. Fortunately.
It begins on the Apple campus at 9 a.m. every Monday morning at the executive team meeting.
Charlie Rose: I'm from 60 Minutes and I'm in search of the brains
at Apple, and someone said go in this room and you'll find them.
Tim Cook: No, no, this is not the place.
Attendance is mandatory. If you are in this room you are one of
the most important people at Apple. They wouldn't let us attend the
meeting, but they were eager to tell us what they like so much about
their company. That's Jeff Williams, officially named the new chief
operating officer this week. That's Eddy Cue. He is the guy who helped
create iTunes.
"This is Steve's company. This is still Steve's
company. It was born that way, it's still that way. And so his spirit I
think will always be the DNA of this company."
Eddy Cue:
It's amazing to be able to work in a place where you're building
products that everybody in the world uses. Whether it's a two-year-old
or 100-year-old, they get to experience the products that we're building
and that's amazing.
Charlie Rose: Is the DNA of Steve Jobs baked deeply into everything just said?
Tim Cook: It is. It is. This is Steve's company. This is still
Steve's company. It was born that way, it's still that way. And so his
spirit I think will always be the DNA of this company.
And
if there was anyone at Apple who comes close to sharing Jobs' DNA it
would be this man, Jony Ive, Apple's chief design officer. He's
considered by many at Apple to be the most important person at the
company. EveryAapple device on the market today was either created or
inspired by this reserved and polite son of a British silversmith. We
met Ive in his design studio, but Apple's preoccupation with secrecy
allowed us to see only so much.
Charlie Rose, left, and Jony Ive
CBS News
Charlie Rose: What's interesting in this room is that I see these covers over some of these desks. You know, why is that? Jony Ive: That's so you can't see what's underneath it, Charlie.
Charlie Rose: What? Meaning if I could see what's underneath it, I would know where the future is of Apple?
Jony Ive: You'd know what we're working on next. And so that's one
of the reasons that, that, that it's extraordinarily rare that people
come into the design studio.
Charlie Rose: And that's why you don't like people in this room, period.
Jony Ive: That's right. We don't like people in this room, period.
Ive's team of 22 designers are a very close group --- in 15 years only two have left the company.
We noticed that Ive's studio is quiet and looks a lot like an
Apple store. No coincidence, Ive designed both around his signature
wooden tables. Here, Ive and his team create prototypes of future
products before the specifications are sent overseas to be manufactured.
With the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the design team made 10 different-sized
models before deciding which worked best.
Jony Ive: And we
chose these two because partly they just felt right, they somehow, not
from a tactile point of view. But just emotionally they felt like a good
size.
Charlie Rose: Do you do this about every product, this amount of dedication to emotional context?
Jony Ive: This is the tip of the iceberg. Because we've found that
different textures considerably impact your perception of the object,
of the product, what it's like to hold, and what it's like to feel. So
the only way that we know how to resolve, and address, and develop all
of those issues is to make models is to make prototypes.
Ive
also showed us how he prototyped the Apple Watch. It begins with a
sketch of the watch casing. Then a computer-aided-design specialist
transforms the sketch into a 3-dimensional electronic blueprint. That is
sent to this high-precision milling device known as a CNC machine.
Jony Ive: We attach to this fixture in there a block of aluminum.
And the cutter that you can see there in this CNC machine is now
machining incredibly accurately-- the form-- at the back of the watch--
Charlie Rose: And creating the round edges.
Jony Ive: Yeah. And all of the tiniest details as well.
Once it's been carved, the prototype of the watch casing is sanded
and polished by hand by veteran craftsmen. Ive's team oversees every
design detail, including testing hundreds of different hues and shades
of red, blue, and yellow for the watch bands.
Jony Ive: All
of these things I think in aggregate, if we manage to get them right,
you sort of sense that it's an authentic, really thoughtfully conceived
object.
Ive described the process that comes next ---
turning a prototype into a working product requires a high level of
complex engineering. When he wanted to make the new Macbook Apple's
thinnest and lightest laptop ever, Ive worked with Apple's head of
hardware engineering Dan Riccio to create a battery powerful enough to
last all day but also small enough to fit into Ive's slim case design.
Dan Riccio: Every tenth of a millimeter in our products is sacred.
Charlie Rose: Every tenth of a millimeter is sacred--
Dan Riccio: With this design, it involved, you know, mechanical
designers, toolmakers chemists, and it also involved software engineers
to go off and design a pack that would fit within the surfaces with-- of
the product, but still work reliably.
One of the most
complex engineering challenges at Apple involves the iPhone camera, the
most used feature of any Apple product. That's the entire camera you're
looking at in my hand.
Charlie Rose: How many parts are in here?
Graham Townsend: There's over 200 separate individual parts in this-- in that one module there.
Graham Townsend is in charge of a team of 800 engineers and other
specialists dedicated solely to the camera. He showed us a micro
suspension system that steadies the camera when your hand shakes.
Graham Townsend: This whole sus-- autofocus motor here is
suspended on four wires. And you'll see them coming in. And here we are.
Four-- These are 40-micron wires, less than half a human hair's width.
And that holds that whole suspension and moves it in X and Y. So that
allows us to stabilize for the hand shake.
In the camera lab, engineers calibrate the camera to perform in any type of lighting.
Graham Townsend: Go to bright bright noon. And there you go.
Sunset now. There you go. So, there's very different types of quality of
lighting, from a morning, bright sunshine, for instance, the noonday
light. And then finally maybe--
Charlie Rose: Sunset, dinner--
Graham Townsend: We can simulate all those here. Believe it or not, to capture one image, 24 billion operations go on.
Charlie Rose: Twenty-four billion operations going on--
Graham Townsend: Just for one picture--
The company is known for focusing as much energy on how products
are marketed and sold as it does on the way they're designed and built.
We weren't sure what to make of it when Apple took us to this unmarked
warehouse off the main campus. Inside we found yet another prototype ---
a mock store where Apple's head of retail Angela Ahrendts is
continually refining new designs for Apple's 469 stores worldwide.
Charlie Rose, left, and Angela Ahrendts
CBS News
Charlie Rose: How many iterations of what I'm looking at have you gone through?
Angela Ahrendts: I mean, honestly there are meetings in here every
single week. And there's a floor set. We use this as a stage, and we
say, "This is rehearsal."
Ahrendts wants customers to be transfixed from the moment they walk through the doors.
Angela Ahrendts: The most important goal is, is that it is
dynamic. People are used to living on their phone. So they're used to
being dynamic, emotive, immersive. And so how do we make sure when they
walk into a store they say, "Wow"?
Apple's huge profit
margins --- roughly 40 percent across the board --- have made it the
most valuable company in the world, worth about $600 billion. People may
love their Apple products, but if there is one complaint you hear a
lot, it's that by the time you buy one, a newer, better version is
already on the way. Apple's head of marketing Phil Schiller admits that
the company often pits one product against another.
Charlie Rose: Is there danger of one product cannibalizing the other product?
Phil Schiller: It's not a danger, it's almost by design. You need
each of these products to try to fight for their space, their time with
you. The iPhone has to become so great that you don't know why you want
an iPad. The iPad has to be so great that you don't know why you why
you want a notebook. The notebook has to be so great, you don't know why
you want a desktop. Each one's job is to compete with the other ones.
The first new product to come from Apple since Tim Cook took over as CEO was the Apple Watch.
There is intense speculation about everything Apple does,
including that the watch may not be the breakout product Apple had
hoped. It has been on the market for eight months, but Apple has not
released any sales figures.
Charlie Rose: You think it's a product that needs improvement?
Tim Cook: I think all products are--going to be--
Charlie Rose: I know that. Of course I know that.
Tim Cook: Yeah. And-- I think the watch is no exception to that, is we're-- we're gonna--continue to fine tune--
Charlie Rose: So you're disappointed--in some of the things.
Tim Cook: I'm not disappointed in it. It's every par--
Charlie Rose: But you saw room to improve it?
Tim Cook: Charlie, when we launch a product, we're already working
on the next one. And possibly even the next, next one. And so yes, we
always see things we can do.
[Tim Cook: This is the future of television, coming now.]
And then there is Apple TV and suggestions that Apple wants to do
much more in the television business... as well as speculation about
Apple developing a car. But Tim Cook is keeping that a secret too.
Charlie Rose: How hard is it to say Apple will be in the car business?
Tim Cook: (Laughs)
Charlie Rose: But OK, how hard is it to say yes we've done this,
we're looking it, we may very well go there, how hard is that?
Tim Cook: One of the great things about Apple is probably have more secrecy here than the CIA.
Whatever secret products Apple may be working on, no one feels the pressure to deliver more than Jony Ive.
Charlie Rose: Is there any possibility that Apple can get too rich and too fat and too complacent?
Jony Ive: That possibility absolutely exists. I think one of the
things that characterizes the way that we work is that our heads tend to
be down at these tables worrying about what we're doing. And our heads
don't tend to be up, looking around at what we've--
Charlie Rose: Thinking how great we are, what we achieved?
Jony Ive: Yeah. And we're more aware of the distance between us and the perfection that we're chasing than ever before.
Apple has one million people manufacturing its products in China.
Why doesn't it bring those jobs home? That part of the story when we
return.
Part Two
Apple is based in Cupertino,
California, but the vast majority of its revenue, workers, and customers
are overseas. That raises a number of issues for the world's biggest
company. Why won't Apple bring home more manufacturing jobs from China?
Why doesn't Apple pay U.S. taxes on the nearly $200 billion it keeps
overseas? But perhaps the most pressing issue facing Apple today is
encryption. It is believed that the terrorists in last month's attacks
in Paris used encrypted apps to avoid surveillance. U.S. law enforcement
immediately renewed its calls for Apple and other companies to provide
access to its customers' encrypted texts and emails. Apple CEO Tim Cook
has refused to do so. And though we interviewed him prior to the
attacks, Cook has since told us that Apple is cooperating with
authorities to combat terrorism, but he has not changed his position on
encryption.
Charlie Rose: In the government, they say it's like
saying, you know, you have a search warrant, but you can't unlock the
trunk.
Tim Cook: Here's the situation is on your smartphone
today, on your iPhone, there's likely health information, there's
financial information. There are intimate conversations with your
family, or your co-workers. There's probably business secrets and you
should have the ability to protect it. And the only way we know how to
do that, is to encrypt it. Why is that? It's because if there's a way to
get in, then somebody will find the way in. There have been people that
suggest that we should have a back door. But the reality is if you put a
back door in, that back door's for everybody, for good guys and bad
guys.
Charlie Rose: But does the government have a point in
which they say, "If we have good reason to believe in that information
is evidence of criminal conduct or national security behavior?"
Tim Cook: Well if, if the government lays a proper warrant on us
today then we will give the specific information that is requested.
Because we have to by law. In the case of encrypted communication, we
don't have it to give. And so if like your iMessages are encrypted, we
don't have access to those.
Charlie Rose: OK, but help me understand how you get to the government's dilemma.
Tim Cook: I don't believe that the tradeoff here is privacy versus national security.
Charlie Rose: Versus security.
Tim Cook: I think that's an overly simplistic view. We're America. We should have both.
National security isn't the only battle Tim Cook has been fighting
with Washington. Apple earns two-thirds of its revenue overseas. Rather
than bring it back and pay hefty U.S. taxes, Apple, like many U.S.
multinationals, parks billions of dollars in overseas income in
subsidiaries in countries like Ireland. The practice is not illegal, but
it's at the heart of a battle that has been unfolding in Washington to
reform the corporate tax code and bring that money home.
Charlie Rose: How do you feel when you go before Congress and they say you're a tax avoider?
Tim Cook: What I told them and-- what I'll tell you and-- and the
folks watching tonight is we pay more taxes in this country than anyone.
Charlie Rose: Well, they know that. And you should because of how much money you make.
Tim Cook: Well, I don't deny that. We happily pay it.
Charlie Rose: But you also have more money overseas, probably, than any other--
Tim Cook: We do.
Charlie Rose: --American company?
Tim Cook: Because as I said before, two-thirds of our business is over there.
Charlie Rose: Yeah, but why don't bring that home, is the question?
Tim Cook: I'd love to bring it home.
Charlie Rose: Why don't you?
Tim Cook: Because it would cost me 40 percent to bring it home.
And I don't think that's a reasonable thing to do. This is a tax code,
Charlie, that was made for the industrial age, not the digital age. It's
backwards. It's awful for America. It should have been fixed many years
ago. It's past time to get it done.
Charlie Rose: But
here's what they concluded. Apple is engaged in a sophisticated scheme
to pay little or no corporate taxes on $74 billion in revenues held
overseas.
Tim Cook: That is total political crap. There is no truth behind it. Apple pays every tax dollar we owe.
Tim Cook has spent much of the last decade expanding Apple's reach around the world, nowhere more than in China.
In October, Cook made his ninth trip there since becoming CEO four
years ago. In the last year, Apple's sales in china have doubled.
Charlie Rose: Will there be, at some point in the near future, a bigger market than the United States?
Tim Cook: Yes. I am as certain as I can be of that.
Charlie Rose: The numbers simply tell you that?
Tim Cook: The numbers tell us-- tell me that. And not just the
numbers of people, but the numbers of people moving into the middle
class. That, for a consumer company is the thing that really begins to
grow the market in a big way.
And most Americans would be
surprised to know that nearly all Apple products are manufactured by one
million Chinese workers in the factories of Apple contractors,
including its largest: Foxconn. Yet Tim Cook insists that China's vast
and cheap labor force is not the primary reason for manufacturing there.
Foxconn
CBS News
Charlie Rose: So if it's not wages, what is it? Tim Cook: It's skill.
Charlie Rose: Skill?
Tim Cook: It's skill. It's that Chi--
Charlie Rose: They have more skills than American workers? They have more skills than--
Tim Cook: Now-- now, hold on.
Charlie Rose: --German workers?
Tim Cook: Yeah, let me-- let me-- let me clear, China put an
enormous focus on manufacturing. In what we would call, you and I would
call vocational kind of skills. The U.S., over time, began to stop
having as many vocational kind of skills. I mean, you can take every
tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room
that we're currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have
multiple football fields.
Charlie Rose: Because they've taught those skills in their schools?
Tim Cook: It's because it was a focus of them-- it's a focus of their educational system. And so that is the reality.
Manufacting in China has brought serious labor concerns to Apple
about low wages, long hours and unsafe conditions. After a series of
suicides at Foxconn in 2010, the company installed safety nets outside
its employee dormitories.
Charlie Rose: Do you have a
responsibility to look at the labor conditions in the places where you
manufacture and make sure that whatever might be an incentive for people
to commit suicide is eradicated?
Tim Cook: The answer to
your question is yes. We have a responsibility and we do it. We are
constantly auditing our supply chain. Making sure that safety standards
are, are, you know, are the highest. We're making sure that working
conditions are the highest. All of the things that you would expect us
to look for and more, we're doing it.
According to its most
recent internal review, Apple has limited the work week to 60 hours,
raised pay, and cracked down on child labor. But 30 percent of the
facilities that make its products around the world still do not meet
Apple's own safety standards.
Tim Cook: We believe that a company that has values and acts on them can really change the world.
Since taking over Apple, Tim Cook has broadened his company's
mission beyond making products. Apple has invested billions in renewable
energy to power its data centers and other operations. Cook has also
become a strong advocate for human rights. His motives are personal. He
grew up during segregation in Alabama and last year, he made a bold
public announcement that he is gay.
Charlie Rose: No other
CEO of a Fortune 500 company that might be gay has come out. You said it
was God's greatest gift to you.
Tim Cook: When you're in a
minority group, it gives you a sense of empathy of what it's like to be
in the minority. And you begin to look at things from different point of
views. And I think it was a gift for me.
Charlie Rose: Why didn't you come out earlier?
Tim Cook: Well, I, honestly, I value my privacy. I'm a very
private person. But it became increasingly clear to me that if I said
something, that it could help other people. And I'm glad because I think
that some kid somewhere, some kid in Alabama, I think if they just for a
moment stop and say, "If it didn't limit him, it may not limit me." Or
this kid that's getting bullied or this kid that's co-- worse, I've
gotten notes from people contemplating suicide. And so if I could touch
just one of those, it's worth it. And I couldn't look myself in the
mirror without doing it.
Before we finished reporting our
story, Cook wanted to show us "one more thing," as Steve Jobs used to
say --- a glimpse of Apple's future. So we packed into four-by-fours and
with cameras, drones, and technicians supplied by GoPro we ascended
this giant mound of dirt that has been excavated during the construction
of Apple's new corporate headquarters. It is the company's biggest
project ever.
Apple's new corporate headquarters under construction
CBS News
Charlie Rose: This is like a small city. Tim Cook: It is. There's about 3,500 people working here right now. And this is what people are commonly calling the spaceship.
Charlie Rose: Yes.
Tim Cook: We're gonna have about 13,000 people that are working in
this circle and it's gonna be a center for innovation for generations
to come.
Charlie Rose: Some have said it's a $5 billion project.
Tim Cook: It's a lot. It's a lot. It's somewhere near there.
Charlie Rose: I knew 5 billion was a lot.
Tim Cook: We think it's so important to have a place that inspires you.
It's wider than the Pentagon and when it's completed next
year, 80 percent of the grounds will be landscaped with 7,000 trees and
plants. They will produce some of the fruits and vegetables served in
the cafeteria. A natural ventilation system on the roof will allow the
building to go without heating or air-conditioning nine months of the
year. And the entire facility will be off the energy grid, powered
mainly by solar panels.
Charlie Rose: Here's what's
interesting about this: it is at the core of Apple is this capacity to
think about everything as building a product.
Tim Cook:
Yeah. And this goes down to-- and I think Jony will show you some of
this-- is it goes to the desk, the chair, the stairwell, the doorknob,
the glass, the-- I mean, every single thing.
Apple's chief
design officer Jony Ive played a key role in designing the building. He
took us inside on the same day Apple was installing the first of 3,000
sheets of curved glass imported from Germany. They will wrap around the
entire building.
Jony Ive: This is the largest curved piece
of glass in the world. And there will be miles of this glass. So when
we're standing here, you will get a c-- just a continuous curtain of
glass and no interruption to the views beyond.
Charlie Rose: All that stuff we see there is all gone?
Jony Ive: That will be gone.
Charlie Rose: Where is your office gonna be?
Jony Ive: On the top floor.
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar