On his tour of London this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook pushed the idea that the new iPad Pro is as versatile a product as the company has ever made with features that appeal to a broad range of users. In his interview with The Telegraph, Cook said the new tablet has the screen and speakers to give the average media consumer a much more robust viewing and listening experience, but when paired with the company’s keyboard case the device is powerful enough to replace a user’s notebook or desktop computer and challenge the PC’s dominance in the workplace. “I think if you’re looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?” Cook said.
When paired with the Apple Pencil, Cook said the device is the first of its kind to give creatives a true alternative to putting pencil to paper for sketching. Addressing criticism that the Apple Pencil is a stylus that users don’t need since their finger can do the same job, Cook told The Independent that the Apple Pencil has won over artists by going far beyond what a stylus can do.
“The traditional stylus is fat, it has really bad latency so you’re sketching here and it’s filling the line in somewhere behind. You can’t sketch with something like that, you need something that mimics the look and feel of the pencil itself or you’re not going to replace it,” Cook said. “We’re not trying to replace finger touch, we’re complementing it with the Pencil.”
When the CEO said the iPad Pro is such a complete package that he was traveling only with it and his iPhone, talk turned to the other Apple devices poised to be pushed to the wayside in the shift. While Cook was frank in his admission that the company’s larger phones could drive down demand for the iPad mini, he insisted that demand won’t fall to zero and isn’t too worried about users choosing one Apple product over another. “I think it clearly created some cannibalization — which we knew would occur — but we don’t really spend any time worrying about that, because as long as we cannibalize [ourselves], it’s fine,” Cook said.
Cook was also bullish on the future of the Apple Watch, saying he anticipates a new sales record for the company this quarter and hinted at further expansion into the health sector, though he was quick to point out he doesn’t want the device to become so health-specific that it’s required to go through the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation process. “I wouldn’t mind putting something adjacent to the watch through it, but not the watch, because it would hold us back from innovating too much, the cycles are too long,” Cook said. “But you can begin to envision other things that might be adjacent to it—– maybe an app, maybe something else.”
Apps were a big topic of conversation when discussing the new Apple TV, as well. While strong early sales are promising, Cook said another important gauge of the device’s success is the surprising number of apps being developed for it. Those apps are aimed at giving users new ways to use their TV, which Cook hopes “will really change the living room entirely.” The Apple TV already has apps that can replace a music stand, teach yoga or help a user manage rental properties, and Cook said development is only in its early stages.
