Walter Isaacson on Apple in Post Steve Jobs Era [VIDEO]

Walter Isaacson, Aspen Institute president & CEO, and author of the very famous book, Steve Jobs, provides insight on Apple, and shares his thought on the future of the tech giant after the death of founder Steve Jobs.

Walter Isaacson video and transcript below

germany dax down 70, 0.84 points andrew. the stock managed to get back to the $500 level a day after carl icahn announced he took a position in the brand. icahn talking to ceo tim cook about a possible buyback. joining us, the perfect person to talk about all this for the next hour. he is the as spin president ceo walter isaacson, author of the best book, steve jobs. i want to talk to you about united and the airline business as well and the washington post, bezos. let’s start with apple. it’s great to have you here. tim skook gets a call from carl icahn. you know tim cook. right. he thinks what? you know, tim cook is a verymeasured, sensible guy. so he’s not emotional. he probably thinks, let me do what’s right. let me figure out theshareholders. i think apple’s issue that tim cook is facing is what’s the next big product? every three years, steve jobs came along and kind of blew us away. we didn’t know we needed 1,000 songs in our ipod. we didn’t know we needed a new cell phone, our own cell phone was broken dead. what’s the time?within i finished your book. there was a moment when he talked about revolutionizeing the tv business. i think anybody that finished the book thought the next big rell revolution at apple.the next industry disrupted was tv. it’s probably been about twoyears since then. we haven’t seen that happen. what do you think has gone wrong? was there something steve hadplanned that hasn’t got him out the gate? yeah, disrupting thetelevision business is not just a hardware issue. it’s not even just a software issue. it’s like what happened when steve and apple had to disrupt the music industry. you had to get all the big music labels to play. then you had to get the artists in. you had to be able to get the content on demand. that’s very hard with the cable bundleing system we have and it would mean disrupting — i remember you said in your book, he thought he cracked the code on tv. do you know what that was? he was talking about being able to get whatever you want on demand like you could with any song for 99 cents instantly in the original itunes store. and it was an easy interface. it’s not that tough.how to get rid of two ridiculous remote control boxes you can’tphysical out when you go to a hotel room or something. that is something i think apple can crack. i think the harder nut to crackis how do you disaggregate content from this bundleing article.they won’t want to go the way of the industry. content. exactly.that’s what digital disruption is all about. i think television is great hardware and software. that’s why there is troubledisrupting it. i think the idea of the remote, it’s like a better web interface than the web can provide. that’s why i think it’s hard tocrack. i still want to ask you about this thing with icahn. is icahn right, in your opinion, to push cook and apple to give away, more of that money, is there a rational reason for apple to sit on, what was the number yesterday, becky? 137. 145, instead of 137.140 billion in cash. is there any possible investment? you are if expert. if you buy back the stock that way, it’s because you do not have anything better to do with that money. you don’t have something you want to launch, to buy, you don’t have something you want to invest. somebody sat in that same chair and said i do not see those as mutually exclusive. you can have a bunch of ideas. the trouble is andrew couldn’t name a single investment that had double digits to it. let alone triple digits, a lot of 2z, 7s and 8s. it’s a social network business. those are many digits.you might say that, you know, in mobile, we need some otherthings. do you think they’re ready to make that type oftransformation? the type of deals would transform people.unsteve, they never did that. is tim cook prepared? i have to admit, i don’t know, steve jobs didn’t do that sort of thing. he bought small companies. wonderful technology. he never did a transforming deal. i don’t know whether tim cook will want to do that. if charm was on the other line with steve what would stevesay? we will take the call. look. take the call. i can just say one thing that i can predict. he would not have been quite as polite as tim cook would have been. right.