♪ announcer: support for the pbs presentation of this program was provided by general motors. woman: the world is ever-changing. what hasn't really changed is the way we move around it. but that way is giving way to a whole generation of people who will charge their cars

just like their phones, and who will judge vehicles not by the rev of an engine but by the hum of change. the start button to an all-electric future has been pushed. david: you get a call from steve jobs. tim: there was a sparkle in his eye that i'd never seen in a ceo before. david: did your friends tell you this was not a good idea? tim: they thought it was nuts. david: warren buffett still uses that old flip phone. tim: i told him that i'll personally come out to omaha to do tech support for him. david: you exposed your own personal life a bit. tim: i thought, "i'm making the wrong call." david: why was it called the apple watch and not the iwatch? tim: i kind of like the apple watch. what do you think? david: well, you're the ceo, so... [laughter] woman: would you fix your tie, please? david: well, people wouldn't recognize me if my tie was fixed, but ok. just leave it this way. all right. ♪

i don't consider myself a journalist. and nobody else would consider myself a journalist. i began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. how do you define leadership? what is it that makes somebody tick? [cheering and applause] david: that's quite a reception you got here. tim: i thought it was for you. david: no, it's for you. so, when you were a graduate student here, did you get this kind of reception? tim: i don't recall. [laughter] david: so, you've now been the ceo of apple since about july of 2011. the earnings are up about 80%.

so, have you ever thought you can't do better than this and maybe you should just say, "well, "i've done a great job and now i'm gonna do something else with my life"? tim: we view the stock price and revenues and profits as a result of doing things right on the innovation side, on the creativity side, focusing on the right products, treating customers like they're jewels, and focusing on the user experience. and so, that's what we put our energies on, and we believe, we have the faith, that if we do those well, then the other things willollow. i didn't even know the numbers that you just quoted. this is not something that i-- that's not even in my orbit, to be honest with you. david: so, when you announce your quarterly earnings, analysts always say, "well, they dn't sell as much of this product as we thought they would." and so, does that bother you? tim: it did at one time. it doesn't anymore.

the--we run apple for the long term. and so, it's always struck me as bizarre that there's a fixation on how many units are sold in a 90-day period. we're making decisions that are multi-year kind of decisions. and so, we try to be very clear that we do not run the company for people that want to make a quick buck. we run the company for the long term. david: one of the shareholders who recently surfaced as having bought 75 million additional shares is warren buffett. are you pleased to have him as your shareholder? tim: i'm overjoyed. i'm thrilled. [laughter] because warren is focused on the long-term. and so, there is-- we're in sync. it's the way we run the company. it's the way he invests. and yeah, so, i could not be happier. david: well, have you thought about this? warren still uses that old flip phone.

[tim laughs] i know. david: he has no smartphone. have you thought how much more of your stock could go up if he actually used the product? [laughter] tim: i am working on him. and i told him that i'll personally come out to omaha to do tech support for him. [laughter] if i could get rid of that bloody flip phone. i don't even think they're sold anymore. and so, i think he bought 5 or 6 of them back 10 years ago or something. david: no doubt. that must've been the case. tim: he does use an ipad. david: so, you're now in a building that was designed and inspired initially by steve jobs. tim: apple park. david: apple park. tim: the fabulous thing about it is that it's built for collaboration. steve had the vision that the workplace should be very important and facilitate people working together. and if you think about, many business leaders never looked about the workplace like that. they looked at the workplace as a place that

you tried to get the cheapest space you could find, you know, and i think steve learned a lot from his pixar work about the value of having these common areas that people could work together and run into each other without planning on doing it, and that the level of ideas and creativity and innovation that would come out of that would be phenomenal, and we're seeing that. the other thing that i'm-- that i personally had no clue was going to be the case is i had such high expectations of moving in there, and i have to tell you it's exceeded all of them by a large amount. the thing that for me that was the most surprising is the company feels like a small company in that building, and the reason is before, we were in many different buildings. but now when you're all in one building, you see a lot of people in the normal course of the day that you didn't see before, because people stuck to their buildings,

and i think that's a unmeasurable privilege, to have that. david: now, you have a gigantic office and then anterooms. how does somebody-- tim: i wouldn't call it gigantic. you know, there's a lot of things that are the same. it's a minimalist kind of approach. where it's high quality, it's simple. as our products are, you know, because we know that simple is best and simple's a lot harder than complex in many ways. so, i have the same chair that everybody else has in the company. i have the same kind of stand-up desk that everybody has. david: you're convinced standing up working is better than sitting down. tim: we have given all of our employees, 100%, standing desks. if you can stand for a while and then sit, and so on and so forth, this is much better. [laughter] david: [indistinct]. tim: yeah, we could stand up for a little while. [applause] david: so, let me ask you about

how you came to this position. so, you grew up in alabama. a suburb of mobile? mobile, alabama? tim: a, very, very small rural town between pensacola and mobile on the gulf coast. david: and you grew up. were you a star athlete? were you a star scholar? were you a tech nerd? what were you when you were in high school? tim: i'm not sure i would say i was a star anything. i worked hard at school. i had some reasonably good grades. the benefit i got in my childhood was being in a family that was a loving family and a public school system that was good, and that's a huge benefit. and honestly, a benefit that many, many kids don't have these days. david: you went to auburn. and how did you do there? tim: i did pretty good. i did pretty good. i really got into engineering in a big way, industrial engineering. david: so then you went to work for ibm? tim: i did, yes.

i started as, like, a production engineer out designing manufacturing lines. and at that time, robotics were beginning to take off, and so, we were focused on automation. i wouldn't say we successfully focused on it, but i learned a lot from going through that as well. david: so, you were there for about 12 years or so? tim: yeah, yeah. david: and then you joined another company called compaq. tim: yes. david: so, you were at compaq, which at the time i think was one of the biggest manufacturers of personal computers. tim: they were the number one at the time, yeah. david: so, you were there for about 6 months and you get a call from steve jobs or somebody working for him saying, "can you come and join apple?" apple was modest compared to compaq. why did you take the interview and why did you join apple? tim: yeah. it's a good question. steve had comeack to the company and was essentially replacing the executive team

that was there at the time. i thought, you know, this is an opportunity to talk to the guy that started the whole industry. and steve met me on saturday. and it was like just minutes into talking with him, i want to do it. which i was totally-- i shocked myself. but i--there was a sparkle in his eye that i'd never seen in a ceo before. and there was-- he was sort of turning left when everyone else was turning right. it was almost in everything that he talked about. he was doing something extraordinarily different than conventional wisdom. many people were abandoning the consumer market because they were just-- it was a bloodbath. steve was doing the exact opposite. he was doubling down on the consumer at the time everybody else, the conventional wisdom said go put your money in storage and servers.

and i thought it was brilliant. and so, talking with him, and the type of questions he asked were all so different. and you know, i did, literally, before i left, i think, "i hope he offers me a job, because i really want to do that." david: did your friends tell you this was not a good idea? tim: they thought it was nuts. [laughter] they thought it was nuts. again, conventional wisdom was you're working for the top personal computer maker in the world. why would you ever leave? you have got a great career ahead. and it wasn't a decision that you could kind of sit down and do the engineering kind of analysis saying here are the pluses and here are minuses, because that analysis would always say stay put. it was this voice in your head that was saying, "go west, young man, go west." david: despite the fact that there was no state income tax in texas and there is in california,

yol said you're gonna go west. so, in hindsight, this was the best professional decision of your life, i assume? tim: maybe the best decision of my life. i'm not sure you need to put professional in that. david: so, you go there, and what is your job at apple? tim: running worldwide operations, and the company at that time was struggling in many different areas, and operations was no different. our economies of scale didn't lend itself to us doing manufacturing in different places like existed in the company at that time. and so, we found partners that were expert at manufacturing. and we maintained sort of the intellectual knowledge of how, the process. david: but when you got there and you're working for steve, was it better than you thought? worse than you thought? more challenging than you thought? tim: i found it to be liberating, is the way i would describe it,

because you could kind of talk to steve about something very big and if it resonated with him, he would just say, "ok." and you could do it. and so, it was like a, you know, like a total revelation for me that a company could run like this, because i was used to these layers and bureaucracy and studies and, you know, studying things. sort of the paralysis that companies can get into. and apple was totally different than that. and i realized that if i couldn't get something done, i could just go to the nearest mirror and look at it, and that was the reason. david: steve's health was such that he couldn't continue to be the ceo. he told the board that. and you were announced as the ceo i think around july of 2011, something around there. when you became the ceo, did you feel you had-- that steve would say, "here's what i was

interested in doing and you fulfill my goals," or did you feel you had your own view on what you should do, and how did you balance the two? you're succeeding a legendary figure. tim: it's not so sequential as that. we have a really open company and so, most of us could finish the other person's sentences, even when we might disagree with them. and so, it wasn't a matter of steve having this secret file or something. he was always sharing his ideas all the time. and so, very different than that. and i thought, honestly, my thought at that time, and i know people have told me, "you're just not very smart," but my view at that time was he was gonna be chairman and he would do that forever, and that we would figure out the, you know, the--sort of the relationship change there.

and that's what i thought. and it, you know, unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way. [applause] steve: today, apple is going to reinvent the phone. [crowd cheering] david: you have a product that is the most successful consumer product in the history of mankind, which is the iphone. when the iphone was first conceived, you were not the ceo then, but you were obviously involved in a lot of the production of it and so forth. did anybody at apple anticipate that it would become the most successful product in the history of consumer products? tim: i'm sure the answer to. if they did, i've never met them. there was a sense that it was a profound product, it was a game changer. if you go back and watch the keynote that steve announced it, you can feel his passion in it, in the way he describes it. i still remember it like it was yesterday. david: so, how many iphones have now been sold?

tim: well over a billion. david: so, there are 7.5 billion people on the face of the earth, so, one out of every 7 people has one, more or less. tim: well, some people probably bought more than one along the way. [laughter] i hope so, anyway. david: well, you do have new ones coming out every so often. so, is it--if i buy a new iphone, should i expect another one in two years or...? tim: you should expect that apple's gonna keep innovating and... [laughter] and you should jump on the train now, though, ok? [laughter] because life is so short, david, and... [laughter] david: well, ok, well, i-- [applause] i have it here and-- i have my iphone here, actually, and i do use it and i love it. and one time when you and i were in china, i couldn't quite work something and i asked you to help me, and you said, "look, i normally don't do tech support for people," but you were nice and it did work. you came out with the apple watch not too long ago.

why was it called the apple watch and not the iwatch? 'cause you have iphone, ipod, ipad. why not iwatch? did you ever think of that or...? [laughter and applause] well, i-- i'm sure you must've thought of it. i'm sure it's not a novel idea but i'm just curious. tim: it was something that we thought of at the time. david: so, it wasn't a crazy question. tim: no, it wasn't a crazy question at all, and-- david: how come apple watch won out? tim: well, i kind of liked apple watch. what do you think? david: well, you're the ceo, so... [laughter] the ceo says something. ok. so, how are they doing? tim: they're doing fantastic. cellular is now on the watch. you don't have to travel with your iphone. you can just use your watch. one of the--my best moments of a day is to go through my emails. they're from users. and i get so many each week from people that found out they have a heart problem from their watch. it's alerting you if you've been sitting

and your heart has climbed to a level that doesn't make sense relative to the activity that you've been doing. david: suppose you don't want to know if you have a heart problem? [laughter] tim: well, we think most people do, because you can then go seek help. and--seriously, david, so many people have written and said, "the watch alerted me to a problem. "i took an action and went to the cardiologist. "he told me that if i had not gone there, i wouldn't be alive." david: so, when you say you go through your emails, nobody emails you directly? i can't--i assume you can't-- tim: oh, sure they do. david: well, you--how can you respond to all those emails? tim: i can't, but it doesn't mean that i can't read a fair number of those myself, because i think it's important to sort of keep your hand on the pulse of the user. david: let's talk about some of the values that you've been espousing. one is privacy. tim: we see privacy as a fundamental human right. and so, to us, it's right up there with some of the other civil liberties

that make americans what they are. it defines us as americans. and we see that this is becoming a larger and larger issue for people. and so, our tact on this is we take a minimal amount of data from customers, only that which we need to provide a great service, and then we work really hard to protect it with encryption and so forth. david: ok. you've also talked about the importance of equality. tim: yeah. david: why is that important to you? tim: as i look at the world, many of the problems of the world come down to the lack of equality. it's the fact that, it's the kid that's born in one zip code who doesn't have a good education because they happen to be born in that zip code. it's someone that is maybe in lgbt community

that is fired because of that. it's someone that has a different religion than the majority, and therefore, they're ostracized in some way. and so, very simply, i think, if one day you could wave a wand and everybody in the world would treat each other with dignity and respect, there would be many, many problems that would go away with that. david: so, you exposed your own personal life a bit. the privacy that you said other people should have, you kind of gave up some of your privacy. why did you do that? tim: i did it for a greater purpose, is that-- it became clear to me that there were lots of kids out there that were not being treated well, including in their own families. and that kids need someone to say, "oh, they did ok in life and they're gay,

"so, it must not be a life sentence in some kind of way." and we're getting these notes, it would tug on my heart even more. and it got to the point where i though "i'm making the wrong call "by trying to do something that is comfortable for me, which is to stay private." that i needed to do something for the greater good, and so, that's why. david: so, no regrets? tim: no regrets. [applause] david: you've had a number of heroes that you've talked about in your life. one of them is robert kennedy. why was he so important to you? tim: i loved his focus and dr. king's focus on equality and human dignity, for the reasons that we just talked about, and the--you think about the arc of dr. king's life,

equality was sort of defined larger and larger over time, because he had the wisdom, the vision to know that there are many things that are systemic in our culture that produces inequalities and that these had to be addressed in addition to thcivil rights acts and so forth that began to move laws. and i felt that bobby kennedy was out of the same-- sort of the same mol david: apple has roughly $260 billion of cash, more or less. what do you intend to do th that cash? tim: we're going to create a new site, a new campus within the united states. we're gonna hire 20,000 people. and so--and we're gonna spend 30 billion in capex over the next several years. and so, we're--number one, we're investing, and investing a ton in this country.

we're also going to buy some of our stock, because we view our stock is a good value. and so, from a shareholder point of view, if we can buy stock from people that think that it's worth less than we do, then that's good for the company and actually, it's good for the economy as well, because if people sell stock, they pay taxes on their gains. david: so, your-- did your parents live to see your success? tim: my mother passed away 3 years ago, and--but my father's still alive. david: so, your mother lived to see you be the ceo? tim: she did. david: and did she say, "well, you're great. i always knew "you'd be successful, and can you "help me with my iphone? can you help this or..."? [laughter] tim: well, i did get both of them on ipad and i finally convinced my father to start using iphone.

and so, but they-- honestly, they treat me like they did 20 years ago and 40 years ago, 60 years ago. david: he calls you with tips about what to do or tell you how to do things or not really? tim: if i do something he doesn't think is good, he tells me about it. "i saw you on that show. you weren't very good." [laughter] so, i'm hoping you edit this well. [laughter and applause] david: you're obviously a pretty public figure. you were not before. have you ever thought that maybe you could [cheering and applause] tim: i'm not political, right? i-- i love focusing on the policy stuff, but in the dysfunction kind of in washington between the legislative branch and so forth, i think that i can make a bigger difference in the world doing what i'm doing. and i appreciate the comment,

but i think, yeah, you know, the president is something that... you'd love to be president, but not ever wrong. and that should never happen in our country, and so, that kind of eliminates me. david: of all the ceos that i know that have run major companies, you are the lowest ego, kind of most self-effacing person i've seen in this kind of position. so, have you ever noticed that you're different than the other people or ceos [laughter] and how do you maintain the self-effacing kind of modest demeanor when you're running the biggest company in the world? tim: when you work at apple, there is a high expectation on everyone to perform and to contribute, and because of that high bar, and you never quite get there, including the ceo,

including every job in there, and so, i'd never feel that way very long, if i ever felt that way. david: well, thank you for taking the time today, and i would say... tim: yeah, thank you for having me. david: you're the first person i've interviewed without a tie on, and so, i was in your honor. and... [laughter] tim: i bet you sleep in a tie, david. [laughter and applause] tim: thank you. david: appreciate it. tim: thank you. wow. announcer: support for the pbs presentation of this program was provided by general motors. woman: the world is ever-changing. what hasn't really changed is the way we move around it. but that way is giving way to a whole generation of people who will charge their cars

just like their phones, and who will judge vehicles not by the rev of an engine but by the hum of change. the start button to an all-electric future has been pushed. ♪ vo: you're watching pbs.

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