It’s not too often that you see well known Apple execs interviewed, and it’s certainly not often that these interviews are conducted in groups. Bloomberg Businessweek, however, has done just that, having today published an interview with CEO Tim Cook, senior software chief Craig Federighi, and head of design Jony Ive.
The interview focuses on how Apple and its executives feel about the company’s direction and their thoughts on the recurring suggestion for Apple to change strategy and sell cheaper products. It also discusses things such as Android and how the execs cooperate together on a daily basis.
“We never had an objective to sell a low-cost phone,” said Cook. “Our primary objective is to sell a great phone and provide a great experience, and we figured out a way to do it at a lower cost.” (If only Cook had said this months ago, it could have saved for some several hundred inaccurate headlines.) “There’s always a large junk part of the market,” he adds. “We’re not in the junk business.”
Ive and Federighi are also questioned a bit on how they work together in designing software for Apple’s products. “Successful collaboration, in your mind, could be that your opinion is the most valuable and becomes the prevailing sort of direction,” Ive said. “That’s not collaborating.” The two execs reportedly sit just a short minute walk from each other’s desk, and will frequently discuss and collaborate on what may seem to be small design points, such as the new background effect in iOS 7.
While Apple acknowledges Android’s popularity, it tries to point out that it doesn’t think its very good. “When you look at things like customer satisfaction and usage, you see the gap between Android and iOS being huge,” said Cook. He also comments, “It’s even more a two-operating-system world today than it was before.” Sorry Microsoft.
Go here to read the full interview. It’s not excessively long and it’s packed with enough interesting information about Apple’s perspective to definitely deserve your time.
