Apple’s Tim Cook talks about how his Alabama upbringing shaped him

No matter how far Apple CEO Tim Cook goes, his thoughts often return to his childhood in Robertsdale.

The 65-year-old head of the giant technology company recently sat down for a profile in The Wall Street Journal and recalled his beginnings in Alabama.

Cook is the son of a shipyard worker and a part-time pharmacist. For a time, the family moved to Pensacola before settling on East Silverhill Avenue in Robertsdale when Cook was in high school.

Your first job? Delivering newspapers.

“I was about 12 years old,” he said in a video accompanying the profile. “Everyone was expected to work in my family. I would get up at three in the morning, take the pile of papers and start throwing them away. And he usually goes back and takes a nap before school. Role playing helped start my college education.”

He later was salutatorian of his graduating class in 1978 and voted “most studious.” Cook said math was the first thing he remembered excelling at.

“I was a good student and loved math,” he said. “I loved figuring out complex equations and so on, and I wanted to be an engineer.”

He had planned to attend Auburn University since childhood, despite his parents not having attended college.

“I knew it was a privilege I didn’t need to waste,” Cook said. “Everyone saw college then, and I hope today, as opening many doors.”

There, he studied industrial engineering, watched football and “learned to ask a lot of questions”.

“I went from believing that if you ask questions it means you’re not fundamentally intelligent, to believing that the more you ask, the more curious you become, the smarter you become,” Cook said.

At Auburn, Cook reportedly learned to program and even created a system to improve the timing of traffic lights near the university.

Of course, this was many years before the series of products that Apple produced under the direction of the late Steve Jobs and, later, Cook himself. As the Journal notes, the iPhone alone generates more money per year than the largest bank in the United States, as well as half of Apple’s revenue. Then there are other products – desktops, laptops, tablets, headphones, watches, hardware, software, products and services, as well as streaming media.

The Journal asked if he ever imagines what his childhood in Alabama would have been like if it had been filled with similar products.

“Yes, I do,” he says calmly. “This was before the Internet, and just the idea that you could find people like you would have been an extraordinary idea at that time.”