At the D11 conference last night Tim Cook, the Apple CEO was put on the spotlight and bombarded with questions about Apple’s future products and plans, we give you the highlights of the interview.
Apple has a ‘grand vision’ for TV, 13 million Apple TVs sold, half in the last year;
Apple CEO Tim Cook just dropped the latest sales figure for the Apple TV: 13 million, with “about half” sold in the last year. He claims the company has a “grand vision” in place. He was impressed with the popularity of the Apple TV has become much larger than we thought it would. We aren’t marketing it.
Wearables are ‘incredibly interesting’ but Google Glass lacks broad appeal
“-tough to see it [Glass] having a broad-range appeal,
-its an area that’s ripe for exploration
-there will be tons of companies involved”
Tim Cook indicated that Apple’s interested in wearable tech, including Google Glass. When questioned about the current state of wearables, he mentioned that fitness devices like the Nike FuelBand which he uses regularly will need to be able to do more than one thing to really catch on with the public. Cook sees the potential of the wearables space to accelerate the industry further into a Post-PC era as smartphones and tablets did. When asked about Apple’s plans to make a wearable, Cook wouldn’t comment on
the existence (or non existence) of an iWatch.
Jony Ive has been key to iOS redesign
Craig Federighi is running both teams, and Cook mentioned designer Jony Ive has been “really key” to this version of iOS. He left it up to interviewer Kara Swisher to decide if the changes made are as dramatic as have been reported, stating only that collaboration has been enhanced, with an “amped up” intersection of hardware, software and services.
Another name dropped is that of Eddy Cue, who is busy heading up work on services since Scott Forstall’s departure. We’ll have to wait until WWDC to find out the fruits of the various executives’ labor but Cook did leave us with this to chew on.
On Android Market Share : winning has never been about having the most
“Do I look at that? Of course, I don’t have my head stuck in the sand,” said Cook.” But for us, winning has never been about having the most.” Instead, he stands by the old Apple line of quality versus quantity.
“Arguably, we make the best PC, but we don’t make the most,” he added. “We made the best music player, and we wound up making the most — but we didn’t initially.” “Almost every study I see has the iPad in the 80s (percentage).” Before even broaching the subject of Google’s mobile OS, Cook cited NetApp figures that show 59% of worldwide web traffic from smartphones and tablets comes from iOS devices.
Apple will open up its APIs
Tim Cook has pledged that Apple will open up its APIs more, but “not to the degree that we put the customer at risk of having a bad experience.” When pressed about giving developers the ability to build better experiences and present customers with more choice.
We have no issue porting its apps to Android
While it may seem far-fetched that Apple would consider following BlackBerry Messenger’s footsteps and bring some of its apps to Android, it turns out that such a move isn’t out of the question. “We have no
religious issue with porting an Apple app to Android,” said Cook in response to whether iCloud should branch out to other platforms. “If it made sense for us to do that, we would do that. You could apply that to every area of Apple.” That’s far from a guarantee that apps coded by Cupertino will turn up on Google’s mobile OS, but the fact that we could see iMessage make a Google+ Hangouts-like pilgrimage to rival territory is tantalizing.
Image & Video Credit: AllthingsD
