While in London, Tim Cook (left) also had a pint with “Slow Horses” star Jack Lowden
Apple CEO Tim Cook has given a rare personal interview in which he recounts how Apple Watch fall detection saved his father’s life, and recommends where to eat in San Francisco.
During his December 2024 visit to the UK where he showed King Charles around Apple Battersea, Tim Cook also recorded an interview on the food podcast, “Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware.” In it, he mostly answered familiar questions about Apple, but he was also unusually candid about his personal life.
One moment that touched on both his personal and professional life was when he was asked about Apple Watch. Specifically, the hosts wanted to know whether he had ever had a medical alert on his own Watch.
“I haven’t, but my father, when he was alive, he fell in the house and he was living alone,” said Cook. “And the other thing the watch does is send a notification to your family and to emergency services if you fall, because it detects the fall because of the accelerometer in [it].”
“It notified emergency services and they came out to the house,” continued Cook. “He didn’t respond to the door and so they kicked the door down — and it was a good thing they did because he was not conscious at the time.”
The podcasts hosts assumed that Cook’s father would then have always boasted about how his son’s device saved his life, but apparently not.
“No, he was focused on the door, to be honest,” said Cook. “He was more upset, ‘they kicked out my door!'”
Apple makes jam
Even as the discussion centered more on food, Cook shared news that has not generally been known before about Apple and specifically Apple Park. Part of that included how the site’s Cafe Macs caters for tastes from around the globe.
“We have so many employees from different parts of the world there,” he said. “There’s food from all around the world… Lots of Chinese food, lots of Indian food, there’s a sushi bar, there are burgers, there’s pizza, there’s salads, there’s soups.”
“I mean, you name it and Cafe Max has it,” he continued.
Cook also brought the hosts a gift of jam — “but the special thing about this is that it’s from Apple Park,” he said. “This jam is from the trees that are grown there.”
In return, he was given food including chocolate. Cook admitted to loving chocolate, and preferring dark to milk, but wouldn’t be drawn on whether UK or US chocolate is best.
Cook’s choice
He did also, though, reveal that he often eats out at a Palo Alto restaurant called Ethel’s Fancy. “That is a really cool, eclectic kind of place that you generally have shareables [at],” he said. “[You need to eat with] “somebody that likes to explore new foods.”
Ethel’s Fancy reportedly services food “from all over the world,” but Cook’s recommendation is octopus.
Cook also briefly discussed how Apple employees work from home, and how that has been changing. “I go into the office four days a week, and then on Fridays I typically work from home,” he said.
“Because we’re on this 3/2 kind of schedule,” he explained. “[On Fridays] nobody’s in the office and it’s depressing when there’s nobody there.”
“COVID changed things in a major way,” he continued. “It taught us that we could get some amount of work done online, but it also taught us the value of all being together.”
