It's not often that Apple chief executive Tim Cook comes to Dublin. The head of one of the biggest tech companies in the world first came to Cork almost 18 years ago and has been spotted around the Hollyhill facility in Co Cork on a number of occasions since taking over the CEO job.
He was due back there again to talk to staff about the company’s expansion plans that could see it add 1,000 jobs over the next year and a half, but on this occasion, Cook was coming to Dublin first.
He was meeting the Taoiseach Enda Kenny before being awarded the Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage o f the University Philosophical Society at Trinity College.
He joins illustrious company. The Trinity College Philosophical Society, known as the Phil, counts John Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde among its members, and has a list of honorary patrons that range from Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel and former Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez to astronaut Chris Hadfield and former US speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.
Addressing the society, Cook paid tribute to the former members of the society.
“I’ve been humbled to think the alumni of the society produced some of the most enduring literary works of all time, writing by hand, sometimes by typewriter,” he said. “Now imagine what they could have done with an iPad.”
He even quoted some of the alumni, drawing on Oscar Wilde to emphasise the potential presented by the assembled students.
“Oscar Wilde once wrote that the one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. He meant that although out history informs us, it must never constrain us,” he said. “I would add that our greatest obligation is not to the past but to the future. There is history ahead that has yet to be written. You’re the ones who get to write it.”
Cook said Ireland felt like home to Apple, emphasising the company’s 35-year history here that predates most of its popular products, from the Macintosh to the iPad.
He also praised Ireland’s record on fighting for equality and human rights .
“It takes leadership and resolve to fight for such a world, to fight for human rights, and leadership is exactly what Ireland has shown,” he said, referencing the Defence Forces’ work in peacekeeping with the United Nations.
“Apple will always be proud to call Ireland home,” he said. “We share a long held belief in the power of values to shape history.”
He fielded questions from the audience on why the iPad was more expensive than other tablets (“Because it’s better”) and offered up some leadership advice (“It’s important to stay true to your values; the how is as important as the why”) as well as some advice to photographers about how they could silence noisy shutters - use an iPhone.
Cook also talked about Apple’s business, including the future of the iPad. He said he believed the iPad would return the tablet to growth; sales of Apple’s original tablet have fallen off in recent quarters, but the company is poised to launch the iPad Pro , which Cook said, was expected to boost Apple’s shipments.
Despite professing a good relationship with Microsoft, saying it was better today than it’s been in years, the Apple chief executive had some harsh criticism for its competitor’s hardware, describing the Surface Book as “sort of a deluded thing”.
“I don’t believe in a product that tries too hard to do too much,” he said. “It’s trying to be a tablet, it’s trying to be a notebook. I think that’s cool to do from some reects, but the overall result is that its’ not the best tablet and it’s not the best notebook.”
He also discussed his decision to publicly acknowledge his sexuality last year.
“Sometime around after becoming CEO it became clear to me that I could help some of the people by being more public in my life,” he said.
“I came to the conclusion that I needed to do something. There would be no amount of donation that I could ever make that would influence people as much as me just standing up and saying I am proud to be gay. I think we need more people who will do that.
“A kid in rural Ireland or rural USA might say ‘wow, if he can do it, so can I’.”
