Apple ’s chief operating officer are fascinating : Where Steve Jobs cultivate a shrewd maven character , Tim Cook ’s journey to Apple ’s upper echelon is equally inspiring . In his George Washington first spoken communication this weekend , Cook partake some item about that journey — and confound in an iPhone joke or two .
Commencement speeches incline to be part humblebrag and part sickening optimism , but at the very least , Tim Cook blab out about some very individual accounts of his life in the South , meeting governor and US president , and eventually Steve Jobs . Here are some of the good bits :
Tim Cook on grow Up in the South [ 2:30 – 6:10 ]

Before we leave , the Alabama delegation took a trip to our state capital in Montgomery with a meeting with the governor . The regulator ’s name wasGeorge C. Wallace . The same George Wallace who in 1963 stood in the school door at the University of Alabama to block African Americans from enroll . Wallace embraced the evils of sequestration . He pitted whites against blackness , the south against the north , the figure out form against the so - called elite . Meeting the governor was not an honor for me . My heroes in life were Dr. Martin Luthor King and Robert F. Kennedy who fought against the very thing that Wallace stood for . Keep in creative thinker that I produce up in a place where King and Kennedy were not held in gamy regard . When I was a kid , the South was sitll coming to grip with its story . My textbooks even said that the Civil War was about states right . They scantily refer bondage .
So I had to picture out for myself what was good and true . It was a hunt . It was a appendage . It drew on the moral sense that I learn from my parents , and in church service , and in my own heart and led me on my own journey of discovery . I found ledger in the public depository library that they probably did n’t know they had . They all pointed to the fact that Wallace was wrong . That injustices like segregation have no position in our humans , and that equality is a right .
As I say , I was only 16 when I satisfy governor Wallace , so I shook his manus as we were anticipate to do , but shaking his hand feel like a betrayal of my own beliefs . It felt wrong . Like I was betray a firearm of my soul .

fill Steve Jobs [ 9:10 – 10:54 ]
Twenty years after my sojourn to Washington , I meet someone who made me question everything , who up ended all my effrontery in the very good way . That was Steve Jobs . Steve had construct a successful party . He ’d been sent away and come back to notice it in ruin . He did n’t know it at the time , but he was about to dedicate the rest of his living to deliver it and leading it to heights greater than anyone could ever imagine . Anyone that is , except for Steve . Most the great unwashed have forgotten but in 1997 and early 1998 , Apple had been adrift for year . Rudderless . But Steve call up Apple could be peachy again and he wanted to know if I ’d like to help . His vision for Apple was a company that turned potent engineering into peter that were easy to use , tools that would aid people bring in their dreams , and exchange the universe for the good .
I had studied to be an engine driver and earned an MBA . I was cultivate to be pragmatic , a problem solver . Now I found myself sitting before and heed to this very animate 40 - something guy with visions of switch the world . It was not what I had expect .

Screw them haters [ 18:10 - 18:56 ]
The one thing I ’d care to bring to you from Cupertino , California is the idea that onward motion is possible whatever course of work you choose . There will always be cynic and critic on the sidelines tear hoi polloi down , and just has harmful are those the great unwashed with good design who make no donation at all . In his letter from the Birmingham clink , Dr. King wrote that our society needed to repent not just for the mean Holy Scripture of the bad multitude , but for the dismaying silence of the expert people .
iPhone rules , Android drivel

You ’ve heard this one before , about still your phone . For those of you with an iPhone , set it in silent mode . For those of you who do n’t have an iPhone , please exit it to the halfway gangway . Apple has a world - class recycling program .
Damn , Cook . Someone put on some stale H2O immediately to that sick sunburn . [ Vimeo ]
connect with the author at[email protected ] .

AppleSteve JobsTim Cook
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