Apple CEO Tim Cook talks about iPhone apps side-loading, malware, AR, and more

Apple CEO Tim Cook virtually joined developers at Viva Conference in Paris, France to talk about the impact of COVID-19, privacy, future AR products, competing platform Android, and much more. Earlier this month, it was announced that Mr.Cook will be holding a talk at Europe’s biggest startup and technology conference. Other popular tech leaders, like CEO of Zoom Eric Yuan, CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, and CEO of Google Cloud Thomas Kurian.

Tim Cook- VivaTech

Tim Cook discusses the difference between iOS vs. Android security and much more at VivaConference

Starting the thirty minutes chat session with COVID-19 pandemic, Tim Cook explained that Apple faced the pandemic with a “How can we help” attitude and got together with suppliers to produce masks, face shields, developer an exposure notification API with Google, donated Product RED proceedings to buy vaccines for Africa and more. Mr. Cook believes that the COVID-19 pandemic showed human resilience and a healthy intersection between humans and technology.

That observation led to questions on Apple’s focus on privacy, to which Mr.Cook reiterated that privacy is a “basic human right” and a barrier against a “surveillance economy” where people do less and think less because of insecurity. He said that consumers like Apple products, particularly iPhone, for their strong privacy and security maintained by a centralized App Store and its review policy.

Furthermore, Tim Cook opposed the suggestion of allowing alternative app stores on iOS because sideloading will open the system to malware attacks like Android.

“I would say [side-loading] would damage both privacy and security. I mean, you look at malware as an example, and Android has 47x more malware than iOS. Why is that? It’s because we’ve designed iOS in such a way that there’s one App Store and all of the apps are reviewed prior to going on the store. That keeps a lot of this malware stuff out of our ecosystem. Customers have told us very continuously how much they value that. And so we’re going to be standing up for the user in the discussions and we’ll see where it goes. I’m optimistic, I think most people looking at security know that security is a major risk.”

Tim Cook- Privacy

Talking about future products, Tim Cook said that they are working on Augmented Reality technology for iPhone, iPad as it is “a technology that can enhance life” and will see how that capability expands to other products. Mr. Cook added that failure is a huge part of the learning process no matter the size of the company, for it denotes progress in innovation.

“I fail daily. We do allow ourselves to fail. We try to fail internally, instead of externally, because we don’t want to involve customers into failure. But we develop things and and subsequently decide not to ship. We we begin going down a certain road and sometimes adjust significantly because of the discovery that we make in that process.

Failing is a part of life, part of whether you’re a new company startup or a company that’s been around for a while. If you’re not failing you’re not trying enough different things.”

And as expected, when asked about Apple Car, Cook stayed tight-lipped and said that “there always has to be something up our sleeves.”

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About the Author

Addicted to social media and in love with iPhone, started blogging as a hobby. And now it's my passion for every day is a new learning experience. Hopefully, manufacturers will continue to use innovative solutions and we will keep on letting you know about them.

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