Get this: Tim Cook refused to spill the beans on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night, which means the Internet can go back to speculating about whether Apple is working on a driverless car.
“You guys aren’t big on secrets, tell me about it,” Colbert told the Apple CEO, who was the third tech boss to appear on the new TV show in a week. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was a guest last week, and he said Apple is working on a driverless car as if it’s a done deal.
Tuesday night, Cook whipped out a familiar refrain: “We look at a number of things along the way, and we decide to really put our energies in a few of them.”
Other than that, the two men bantered about things many Apple observers already know, with Colbert making light of almost everything — even Cook’s coming out as gay — and Cook laughing and playing along.
“You came out as gay recently,” Colbert said. “Was that an upgrade, or just a feature that had not been turned on?”
“It’s like discovering something in your iPhone that it’s always done but you didn’t quite know it,” Cook quipped. As he said last year when he came out by writing an essay on Businessweek.com, he felt like he could help others who are gay and are being discriminated against because of it.
Colbert had a couple of things he wanted to know about the iPhone 6s the company showed off last week:
“No new charger, right? Because I will stab you in the neck with a fondue fork.” Cook’s defense: The company has only changed the charger for its devices once.
On 3D Touch, the phone’s responsive, pressure-sensitive new feature: “If I hang up hard enough on someone, will it actually hit them on the other side?”
After other talk about the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs — Cook hasn’t seen the movies — and feels “people are trying to be opportunistic” — and the company’s focus on social responsibility, the interview ended on a lighthearted note, with Colbert asking Siri what else he should ask Cook:
“Do me a favor,” the sometimes-amusing personal digital assistant replied. “Ask him when I’m going to get a raise.”
Photo: Oh, Stephen Colbert, you crack Tim Cook up. (Jeffrey R. Staab/CBS via AP)
