Who knew that Tim Cook was a Mad Money fan? The Apple CEO surprised CNBC’s Jim Cramer by calling in today to congratulate the show host on his 10th anniversary of being on air.
The two men discussed ResearchKit, dealing with competition, Apple’s incredible growth on Wall Street over the last decade, and more.
Cramer has been very bullish on AAPL lately, and Cook praised him for being a “champion for American innovation.”
Cook talked about how Stanford was already seeing amazing engagement with ResearchKit, the open-source medical diagnosis tool Apple released earlier this week.
When asked about how Cook deals with competition, he said, “We’re always paranoid. We live paranoid… And so if we’re not beating someone else we’re trying to beat the thing that we have currently shipping.” That’s a little different from the we-don’t-care-about-competition vibe Apple has given off in the past.
Cramer’s mantra is that “people should own Apple [stock], not trade it.” Cook agrees, noting that shareholders who bought AAPL 10 years ago are pretty happy right now.
While the whole call was allegedly unscripted and a surprise to Cramer, the 8-minute segment seemed to clearly have set talking points and an intended flow of conversation.
Unscripted or not, it’s clear that Cramer “reveres” Tim Cook. Right before Cook hung up, he said “I think you’re the best we have. Maybe the best that’s ever been.”
You can watch the full segment over at CNBC.
Alex Heath is a journalist who works for Tech Insider. He’s the former co-host of The CultCast. He has been quoted by the likes of the BBC, KRON 4 News, and books like “ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation.” He lives in Lexington, Kentucky. If you want to pitch a story, share a tip, or just get in touch, additional contact information is available on his personal site. Follow him on Twitter.
4 responses to “Tim Cook’s ‘surprise’ call shakes up Mad Money”
I don’t think it was a “surprise”, I do think it was genuine – at least for Jim.
It is always scripted. There is never a surprise.
Scripted or unscripted, Kramer was right about the success of Apple. It is something the Apple haters and the Tim Cook haters (the latter are noticeably fewer than a few years ago) cannot deny.
Oh, I made a note to myself to be sure to buy some Apple stock about a dozen years ago, but it was at about $42 a share and I thought that was just a little too high for our miserably thin little budget… I din’t and my budget is still miserably thin.