’60 Minutes’ goes ‘Inside Apple’ to give a closer look at the company

Tim Cook on 60 Minutes

Apple has a lot going on, even if you don’t include all the rumored things the Cupertino-based company is working on. Plenty of it is a secret, so when 60 Minutes gets to go inside and talk to the executives, it’s worth taking a look.

Charlie Rose, who has interviewed many an executive over the years, has been given the green light to head into Apple’s campus and peruse several different departments, all the while sitting down with a variety of Apple’s executives, engineers and specialists to discover what he wants, and try to take a closer look at the company with a fruit as its namesake. The end result is coverage on a variety of topics, including overseas taxes, encryption and what that means for Apple users’ security, and plenty more.

Of course, most of what Rose and Apple’s executives talk about has been part of a conversation in the past, at least once or twice, especially when it gets to encryption. Tim Cook, Apple’s current CEO, has been vocal in terms of keeping Apple’s users’ secure, thanks to encryption on its devices, and doesn’t seem to want to budge on that at all, despite having plenty of backlash from federal agencies.

Cook, for his part, continues to outline that encryption is vital to a smartphone owner’s privacy, no matter what, simply due to the fact that smartphones hold a ridiculous amount of private information on them. And while simply adding a “backdoor” that could allow Apple to access that information without the user’s direct consent or input seems simple enough, it’s not, as it also means that a backdoor exists for criminals to access that information as well.



During the interview, Rose found himself in an unmarked building on the Apple campus, which, it turns out, happens to be an area that the company has set up to work as a mock retail location. While in that space, which looked exactly like an Apple retail store ought to, Apple’s retail chief, Angela Ahrendts, was there to talk about Apple’s focus on retail, what it means for consumers, and how it all connects.

60 Minutes Angela Ahrendts

“Charlie Rose: How many iterations of what I’m looking at have you gone through?



Rose would also be accompanied by legendary designer Jony Ive, Apple’s current design head, and make a stop into Apple’s “secret” design studio, where products that have been bought in the millions are brought to life. Inside there, Rose discovered that 22 individuals are hard at work on designing the future of Apple’s product lines. And, unsurprisingly, several of the desks inside the studio were covered and the products underneath hidden from prying, curious eyes.

Ive explained how design happens within Apple in an abstract sense, and even went into how the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus came to be, saying that the design team went through 10 different designs for the handsets before finally deciding on the design, and size, of the handsets that are available to buy today.

60 Minutes Apple design studio





It’s also worth noting that Apple has over 800 people working on the camera within the iPhone, and that it’s designed with over 200 separate, individual parts. Apple tests the cameras in a variety of lighting situations, including terrible indoor lighting and even recreating what a sunset would do to pictures taken with the camera.

60 Minutes Apple Campus2

The interview included Cook’s straightforward thoughts on Apple and Steve Jobs, and the impact that Jobs had, and still has, on the company as a whole. Moreover, Cook articulated that, still to this day, he’s never met anyone remotely similar to Jobs:



Tim Cook: No one.

Charlie Rose: –like him?”

Tim Cook: No one.

Charlie Rose: Not one person?

Tim Cook: Not one.

Charlie Rose: Who had?


You can watch Part 1 of the “Inside Apple” special below.

[via 60 Minutes]