JUNE 2019 MACWORLD 11about its efforts in privacy, the
environment, and education nearly every
time it gets on stage to announce a new
product or service.
His views on the need for companies
to “step up” to work with governments and
academia to solve big global problems is
also well-known, but his specific comment
about climate change might be
contentious.ON POLITICAL INFLUENCE
“I would hope that every CEO would
stand up and represent their employees.
And yes, at the end of the day you do
upset some people when you do this.
But I try not to get wrapped up in a
pretzel about who we upset, because at
the end of the day we’ll be judged more
by did we stand up for what we believe
in, not necessarily do they agree with
me. I think still, people appreciate that
even when they do disagree. We’ve
taken some unpopular positions, I
recognize that. But we do them out of
believing deeply that they’re right, and
that we have a unique lens.
“We focus on policies, not politics.
We do not focus on politics. And I
recognize that everything, unfortunately
these days, tends to break down that
way. But we focus on the policy itself.
“This is probably not known to a lot
of people in here, but Apple doesn’tON APPLE’S VALUES
“I’ve always deeply felt that people
should have values, a corporation is
nothing more than a collection of
people, and therefore by extension a
corporation should have values.
“We’ve always had a set of things
that were really important to us and that
we felt said something about us. Part of
that is how we treat the environment,
part of that is evangelizing and
advocating for high-quality public
education, and privacy—before
anybody was talking about privacy. This
has been at the depths of who we are
as a company.
“As I look at the world today, the
issues that we face cannot be
addressed solely by government. We
should not be looking for government to
solve all the problems. It takes the
public sector, the private sector, and
academia working together to solve
some of these huge problems. Climate
change is not going to be solved by
government, as just one example. So we
readily step up and participate in the
conversations, because we think how
we do what we do says as much about
us as what we do.”
Cook’s list of Apple values shouldn’t
surprise anyone who has paid attention to
the company over the years. Apple talks