Tim Cook comments on Elon Musk, AR/VR and Apple Car

He finally shed some light on Apple’s own electric car! He expressed a strong opinion that ‘autonomous cars are robots’. He said there are many things that can be done with autonomous vehicles and ‘we’ll see what Apple does’.

Cook also said that the company is constantly investigating many possible variations of a product, but many of them simply don’t see the light of day.

When Swisher asked if it is going to be ‘a technology within a car’ or a car, he laughed and avoided answering the question. He said: “We love to integrate hardware, software, and services”. This is indeed a very Apple thing to say. He added that he wants to have complete control of all of the three components, so the final product works as seamlessly as other Apple products.

Kara Swisher mentioned the upcoming WWDC21 conference with a tagline ‘Glow and behold’, and asked if this sentence is supposed to hint at a VR headset. Cook said that he strongly believes in AR, and he’s already seeing use for it even on a smartphone. Therefore, this is definitely part of Apple’s future plans in a big way.

When he was questioned about the new administration in the US, Apple’s boss stayed very politically correct, and said that he’ll seek involvement in policy, and not politics (if he does at all).

The interviewer teased him with a question about people being able to vote from their iPhones, and he was positive about it, underlining the fact that most of our data is already on our phones, so using a phone for voting for the next president, might not be so far fetched of a concept.

Yet, he doesn’t like the idea of moving into politics, but said he wants to advance work on climate change, job creation and ‘retraining’. He is willing to work with whoever is keen on helping Apple to achieve these goals.

He also spoke about coming out as gay, highlighting the idea of being able to help young people feel safe about being themselves. He said he is going to speak out about discriminatory laws.