Tim Cook Pokes Fun at Windows During MIT Commencement Address
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Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered the 2017 commencement address at MIT on Friday morning. Beyond speaking about Apple’s history and his own experience with co-founder Steve Jobs, Cook also took the opportunity to poke fun at Windows.
During one portion of the speech, Cook expanded on the difficulty of finding his true purpose in life, while throwing in a playful swipe at Microsoft’s flagship computer. “I tried meditation. I sought guidance in religion. I read great philosophers and authors. And in a moment of youthful indiscretion, I might even have experimented with a Windows PC, and that obviously didn’t work.”
Cook went on, however. It was this inability to find true meaning or purpose that eventually brought him to Apple, he said. This was in 1998, when Apple was on the brink of bankruptcy. But Cook arrived in Cupertino around the same time that Steve Jobs returned to the company. Jobs had just begun the company’s breakthrough “Think Different campaign,” Cook explained. “Before that moment, I had never met a leader with such passion or encountered a company with such a clear and compelling purpose: to serve humanity.”
And it was working with Jobs that ultimately led Cook to embrace a similar purpose, he added. “It was in that moment, after 15 years of searching, that something clicked. I finally felt aligned with a company that brought together challenging, cutting edge work with a higher purpose…
Steve and Apple freed me to throw myself into the work and embrace their mission and make it my own. How can I serve humanity? This is life’s biggest and most important question.”
Ahead of today’s commencement address, Cook toured the MIT campus yesterday. “So impressed by MIT students and faculty who are finding new ways to tackle the world’s biggest challenges. Thanks for sharing your work,” Cook tweeted. He concluded his speech Friday with a similar sentiment, saying that he’s optimistic in the next generation’s future and urging students to use minds, hands and hearts to build something “bigger than yourselves.”
