Tim Cook: Apple is a pretty narrow funnel (video)

In a 20-minute CNET interview, Apple’s CEO rings the privacy alarm, pushes back at Elizabeth Warren and takes another crack at Apple’s mission statement.

From the full text:

Our mission is to make the best products in the world in those areas that we choose to participate that enrich people’s lives. And so, if we can’t make the best product, we don’t go in. If we can make a great product, but it doesn’t help anybody, it doesn’t enrich their life, then we’re not gonna go in that either.

That’s a pretty narrow funnel then, because you’re working on a few things. And we know that in order to do them at the quality level that we want to do them, we can only do a few. And, you know, we can do more than we used to do, because we’re a bit larger now. But still, in the scheme of things, relative to the size of Apple, we do a very few things.

My take: The interview is worth watching for the other good stuff, but I zeroed in on this bit because I’m picking up signals that it’s hard at Apple these days to think outside the funnel. The AirPower charger famously didn’t make it through the orifice in March because it didn’t work. But it was always a me-too product that made sense as a line extension but was never going to “enrich” a lot of lives.

Cue the video:

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