Steve Jobs' vision for Apple realized as iPhones reveal injustice, says Tim Cook

Steve Jobs’ vision of Apple products helping to change the world has come true, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said on Sunday, thanks to iPhone cameras enabling people to capture instances of injustice on film.

Cook was delivering the commencement speech at George Washington University, in Washington DC.

“His vision for Apple was a company that turned powerful technology into tools that were easy to use, tools that would help people realize their dreams and change the world for the better,” Cook said of Jobs, Apple’s co-founder who died in 2011.

“Our products do amazing things, and just as Steve envisioned, they empower people all over the world,” Cook continued. “People who are blind and need information read to them because they can’t see the screen. People for whom technology is a lifeline because they are isolated by distance or disability.

“People who witness injustice and want to expose it. And now they can, because they have a camera in their pocket all the time.”

In one recent, high-profile instance, a video recorded by a bystander in South Carolina showed a white police officer shooting Walter Scott, a 50-year-old black man, eight times in the back as he ran away. The officer, Michael Slager, was charged with murder.

In his 20-minute speech, Cook spoke about growing up in southern Alabama, where former governor George C Wallace blocked school doors to prevent blacks from enrolling. According to Cook, Wallace “embraced the evils of segregation”.

“Meeting my governor was not an honor for me,” Cook said. “My heroes in life were Dr Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy, who have fought against the very things that Wallace stood for.

“Keep in mind that when I grew up, I grew up in the place where King and Kennedy were not held in high esteem. When I was a kid, the south was still coming to grips with its history. My textbooks even said that the Civil War was about states’ rights. They barely mentioned slavery.”

Cook said that when he was 16, shaking hands with Wallace felt like a betrayal of his own beliefs. He impressed upon the students that “injustices like segregation have no place in our world” and that “equality is a right”.

“In his letter from the Birmingham jail, Dr King wrote that our society needed to repent – not merely for the hateful words of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people,” Cook said.

“Sidelines are not where you want to live your life. The world needs you in the arena. There are problems that need to be solved. Injustices that need to be ended. People that are still being persecuted.”

Since coming out last October, Cook has used his position to speak out against ‘religious freedom’ laws mooted in states such as Indiana and Arkansas, which critics say enable discrimination against gay people.

As he introduced Cook, GW’s president, Steven Knapp, said: “You’ve used your position as a platform to speak out about injustice and press for societal progress in the United States and around the world. As you recently told Fortune magazine, you want to be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripples for change.”

Cook was invited to be the commencement speaker on the suggestion of the GW students. He joined Apple in 1998 and served as chief operating officer before taking over as CEO in 2011.

Ending his speech, Cook put his iPhone camera to use by taking a photo of the graduates.

“This is the best view of the world,” he said.