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  • - 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,