Apple’s Tim Cook on Steve Jobs, Leadership and Manufacturing

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, showed he had mastered his predecessor’s skill at promising big things for the future while revealing as little as possible about what it may bring.

Mr. Cook was making his debut performance at the D: All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., the annual confab of the tech elite and one of the few non-Apple events at which Steven P. Jobs, the late Apple chief executive and co-founder, spoke. It was a wide-ranging interview, in which Mr. Cook dropped plenty of hints about interesting things Apple might do without committing to doing any of them — something at which Mr. Jobs was also especially adept.

Mr. Cook’s cryptic comment when asked whether Apple would make a television set: “It’s an interesting area. We’ll have to see what we do.”

On whether Apple intends to strike a partnership of some kind with Facebook: “I think we can do more with them. Stay tuned on this one.”

His hint on improvements coming soon in Siri, the voice-activated digital assistant in the iPhone: “We’ve got some cool ideas about what Siri can do.”

On whether the packaging for an Apple product might ever say that it was made in the United States, rather than China: “It may.”

The lack of detail is, of course, nothing new from Apple, a company that Mr. Jobs turned into a fortress of secrecy when it came to future products, the better to build anticipation about the company’s plans. Mr. Cook talked about some of the subtle ways in which things have changed at Apple since he took over as chief executive last fall — a philanthropy program for employees, a dividend for Apple shareholders — but he made it clear that he was not about to let his mouth run on about Apple’s plans.

“We’re going to double down on secrecy about our products,” he said.

Mr. Cook was more talkative on the subject of leadership, in particular his interactions with Mr. Jobs, including near the end of his life. When Mr. Jobs called Mr. Cook to his home to discuss becoming Apple’s chief executive, the Apple co-founder told him to avoid the mistake the Walt Disney Company made after the death of its namesake founder, when executives routinely made decisions based on what they believed Mr. Disney would do.

“He looked at me with those intense eyes and he said, ‘Never ask what he would do,'” Mr. Cook said, adding that Mr. Jobs told him, “Just do what’s right.”

Mr. Cook said Mr. Jobs was “irreplaceable,” so he hadn’t tried to mimic his predecessor. “I never really felt the weight of trying to be Steve,” he said. “I am who I am and I’m focused on that and being a great C.E.O. to Apple.”

Mr. Cook reminisced about his first meeting with Mr. Jobs, whom he met during a job interview in 1998 when Mr. Jobs was attempting to recruit him from Compaq. Apple at the time was a struggling company on the verge of bankruptcy, and Mr. Cook only reluctantly agreed to the meeting after being hounded by a recruitment firm Apple had hired. But Mr. Cook said he was ready to join Apple “five minutes into the conversation” with Mr. Jobs.

“I went back and resigned immediately,” Mr. Cook said.

One thing that impressed him was the loyalty of Apple customers. Apple was the only technology company he knew of “where if the customer got angry at the company, they would yell and yell loudly but they would continue to buy.”

“At Compaq, if people got angry at Compaq, they would just buy from Dell,” he said.