Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, is known to sit down with folks from time to time and have a discussion. In most cases, it’s boilerplate stuff that leans into privacy. That is certainly the case with his latest interview.
This time around it’s sitting down with the CEO and founder of a media company called Brut. Guillaume Lacroix’s company creates short-form video content, and he sat down for a virtual chat with Cook to discuss several different topics. However, the focal point is apps, the App Store, and user privacy.
The interview was part of this year’s VivaTech conference, which is billed as Europe’s largest conference for startups and the tech industry. You can check out the recording of the live conversation in the video below.
You won’t be surprised to hear Cook say privacy is a “basic human right,” something that he has reiterated for years now. It’s a major tentpole element to Apple’s business as a whole these days. Cook brings up Apple’s co-founder and former CEO, Steve Jobs, saying that Jobs used to say getting a customer’s permission is a key element to that.
We see it as a basic human right. A fundamental human right. And we’ve been focused on privacy for decades. Steve used to say privacy was stating in plain language what people are signing up for and getting their permission. And that permission should be asked repeatedly.
Moving on to privacy laws, Cook said that when it comes to regulation, the company is in favor of even stricter rules down the line.
We were big supporters of GDPR from the beginning, and we would support going even further than the GDPR in privacy because there’s still so much left to do in the privacy world.
Android was brought up, too, by way of the App Store and apps. Malware, too. Cook says that Android has 47x more malware than iOS, and the chief executive says that’s because of the way the App Store is developed and maintained. Cook notes that all apps are reviewed before they are made available in the digital storefront. Cook says that standing up for the user is the company’s core tenet still to this day.
There is quite a bit said in the interview, most of which is something Cook has said in the past in some way or another. It’s certainly worth a watch.