Cook spoke with Bloomberg following Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose.
The president’s decision to withdraw from a landmark environmental agreement is not in the best interest of the country, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said on Monday.
“I think he did listen to me. He didn’t decide what I wanted him to decide, ” Cook told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang on Monday. “And I think he decided wrong. I think it’s not in the best interest of the United States, what he decided.”
On Thursday, President Trump announced that the United States would pull out of the Paris Agreement, a treaty designed to prevent global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Cook sent an email to staff last week reassuring them that Apple would continue to protect the environment.
Apple’s new headquarters, Apple Park is the ” world’s largest naturally ventilated building, ” according to the company, porojected to require no heating or air conditioning for nine months of the year. About 96 percent of Apple’s operations use renewable energy, according to the company. The company is also the steward of multiple forests.
The environment wasn’t the only political difference with Trump that Cook expressed during the interview. Cook also explained why he didn’t join Trump’s business council.
“It wasn’t about not wanting to advise on something where I thought that we could help or we had a point of view that should be heard, ” Cook said. “I’m doing the latter. I can’t imagine a situation where I wouldn’t do the latter, because I think it’s in the best interest of America to do it, and I am first and foremost an American.”
Cook’s comments followed Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose. At the event, Apple unveiled a new high-end home speaker, new operating systems for Mac, Apple Watch and iPhone, and new and refreshed hardware, including an iPad Pro, iMac Pro, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
Siri was front and center during the event, serving as a conduit for Apple’s machine learning capabilities. Augmented reality was also a focus of the keynote address, where a new development platform was demonstrated.
The $349 HomePod is much more expensive than similar products that have already been released by rivals: Amazon’s $179.99 Echo device and Google’s $129 competitor, Google Home .
Apple “deeply cares” about Music, after creating the iPod, and wants to reinvent music in the home as well, Cook said. Music is just the beginning, Cook told Bloomberg, though he declined to say whether the speaker will eventually make phone calls or enable e-commerce, the way other speakers do.
“For us it’s not about being first, it’s about being the best, ” Cook said. “And giving the users an experience that delights them every time. So we don’t let the impatience result in shipping something that’s just not great.”
— CNBC’s Todd Haselton and Tom DiChristopher contributed to this report
