Select a region
Apple is widely known for the incredible secrecy it keeps not just around its products, but its office space, staff and just about everything surrounding the company.
It’s with interest, then, that Apple fans will have noticed that US news show 60 Minutes recently got access not only to the Apple Campus in Cupertino, but also to senior executives and even Jony Ive’s iconic design studio.
As well as the full campus tour there was a sit-down with CEO Tim Cook, as well as a glimpse at the new Apple HQ being built.
Here’s all the important things we learned.
Every Monday morning Apple’s senior executives – essentially the ones you see on-stage at their live events – get together for a meeting. Attendance is mandatory, but frankly you don’t make it to this level without showing up to every meeting.
Those you hear speak early in the piece, most notably Tim Cook and iTunes chief Eddy Cue were keen to stress just how passionate they are about the company. Cue said: “It’s amazing to be able to work in a place where you’re building products that everybody in the world uses. Whether it’s a two-year-old or 100-year-old, they get to experience the products that we’re building and that’s amazing.”
Meanwhile Cook also praises the lasting legacy of Steve Jobs, as we see his portrait still hangs in the lobby of the main campus.
“I’ve never met anyone on the face of the earth like him before,” said Cook.
The cameras were also surprisingly allowed inside Jony Ive’s design studio, arguably the most secretive place at Apple. But there was a catch – lots of blankets draped over tables, covering various products. What would happen if we saw underneath them?
“You’d know what we’re working on next,” said Ive. “And so that’s one of the reasons that it’s extraordinarily rare that people come into the design studio.”
Not only is the team in the studio extremely close-knit – just two of 22 have left in the last 15 years, but they are verging on obsessive when it comes to getting products right. For example, when building the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, 10 different sized prototypes were made to help them settle on the right one.
The first ever design of the Apple Watch was sketched out by Ive before being rendered on a computer and made on-site. All prototypes are made at Apple’s HQ, and they’re sanded and polished by hand as well. And these are just the prototypes. Hardware engineering chief Dan Riccio sums up the attitude of the company by saying “every tenth of a millimetre in our products is sacred.”
Just for practice. Obviously.
Phil Schiller admitted to Charlie Rose that Apple’s products “by design” are aiming to cannibalise each other.
“You need each of these products to try to fight for their space, their time with you,” he said.
“The iPhone has to become so great that you don’t know why you want an iPad. The iPad has to be so great that you don’t know why you want a notebook. The notebook has to be so great, you don’t know why you want a desktop. Each one’s job is to compete with the other ones.”
“One of the great things about Apple is we probably have more secrecy here than the CIA,” was all Tim Cook would say on the subject.
The Apple chief repeated his belief that encryption is a tool that protects people. He also called claims of tax avoidance levelled at the company by US Congress as “total political crap”.
