Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles - Hey everyone, James Rath here. I have a special guest this time around, and I'll let him introduce himself. Tell them a little bit about what you do, who you are. Take it away. - My name is Tim, and I work here at Apple. And I have the privilege of working with some of the most incredible people in the world, and there's not a day that goes by that I'm not thankful for it. - So, thank you. And, so I just wanted to have a conversation with you on a couple of topics, but really, it's the month of Global Accessibility Awareness Day and just being around, we're here at Apple Campus and there's, I see signage, I see just the awareness being spread amongst the culture here. - [Tim] Yeah - And so, tell me a little bit about, as an Apple user myself, in all the platforms, I just want to know, why does Apple take the time to invest in research and accessibility? What's the return? What does Apple get from that? - Yeah, it's a good question. I've been asked that before by a few people. For us, we believe very deeply that accessibility's a human right. And we try very hard to make all of our products accessible for everyone because of that. And so it's a basic value. Think back to how Apple was founded, and it's still the case today, we make tools for people to do incredible things and change the world with them. And that's everybody, not a particular group of people. We want everybody to be able to use our products that would like to, and so we actually don't look at this as a return. I've never, ever, in the 20 years of being at Apple, ever looked at a, what's our return on investment here. My guess is there's not one in the traditional sense of measuring that, but we don't care because this is one of those things that fit in the just and right category, and it wouldn't be Apple without doing this. This is just, it's a part of our values that we will not compromise at all. - And has this been like a value since your leadership, or even going back a bit, 'cause I just remember being able to start up a Mac decades ago, it would talk to you, so even a blind person like myself who, even someone who has less sight than I do, they would be able to start up a Mac with no assistance. - Yeah, it's been the values since day one. It's not something that I brought in or that anyone here today created in the last several years. We try very hard to push it forward and continue thinking broader and broader about what accessibility means, but it's really been here from the beginning. I mean, you think about it, one of the things Steve wanted to do early on being at Apple was to put a Mac in every classroom, right? That's a form of accessibility of democratizing technology so that everybody, not just the big rich corporations or the institutions, could have technology but everyone would. And so that basic thought of democratizing things so everyone can create whatever they would like to create, or solve whatever problem they would like to solve, that's what we're about, that's why we're here. And it's been that way for over 40 years. - That's it. So being someone who uses a lot of accessibility features, I use Zoom, VoiceOver in the morning when my eyes are more or not ready for the day. I tend to use speech selection, display adjustments, and all that. Have you ever found yourself ever using any of the accessibility features for yourself and if so, how? - Yeah, absolutely, I use Night Shift all the time. Occasionally, I use things to change the contrast because sometimes I have a difficulty with certain colors. I use HomeKit many, many times a day. You're absolutely right, there's so many features that may have been done for one reason but are applicable for many reasons. Yeah, I find those to be incredibly useful for me and I hope everyone does. - On the topic of HomeKit, it's definitely something that's been around for a little while now, but it's definitely picking up more traction, I've been seeing - It is, yeah. - In recent months, this year, and what do you find is very beneficial about HomeKit, and what do you want people to know about it. - The thing, to me, it goes back to democratizing the, it's that home automation was for the rich and the powerful, right? And what we wanted to do was democratize it and make it for everyone, and so we built it into our mobile operating system, iOS. And that is what has been the sort of the tipping point to get more people to hook up more devices on HomeKit. And so I use it every day. It's how I open the garage door. It's how I open doors. It's how I turn on and off lights. I set scenes with it. This morning, I turned on the fireplace because it was chilly in the house, and I did that with my voice. And so there's just a whole variety of things that I use it for, and I think we're just on the surface right now as to what can be done. There are lots of, you know, innovation that will continue to flow here. And so it's an area I'm really excited about, and I love the fact that, again, when you really think through it, there's so many accessibility features there. And we really thought through those and really thought through the security and the privacy aspect of this as well, which are so important. This is not a place for the Wild, Wild West to take off because you really want to authenticate the user in, you know, in a private and secure manner. - Absolutely. And so being integrated into the OS, being well kind of rooted in that, with everything else being VoiceOver, Switch Control, this enables people who maybe couldn't even reach the light switch, or couldn't find the light switch. - That's right. - And they can either just do it automated just from their phone or tell me how Siri's integrated into HomeKit. - Yeah, this will be, I think, over time one of the largest uses of Siri over time. So I actually don't use the Home app to control my house, I use Siri, completely, 100%. - Wow. - And so when I get up in the morning, I have the Good Morning scene set up. And that triggers a whole set of things in the house. When I approach the house in the evening, and hit the geofence that I've set up, a certain number of things, from the thermostat to the garage door and all of these kind of things happen as well. And then what I also love to do is, because I like to read at night, and I'm super sensitive from a sleep point of view and what I'm doing the last one to two hours of the evening, so I like to set the lights at a certain kind of point. And so all of these things with HomeKit are just simple, are really simple. I couldn't be more excited about it. I'm so glad that we are democratizing it so, for anybody, they can see themselves with this. They might just want one device, you know, or they may want to do something, multiple devices in every room. People have that choice and we try to make it really simple. - What exactly, 'cause you mention scenes, tell me what a scene is. - A scene is where, let's say, for something that you do every day,