Tim Cook and James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke: dissecting an awkward ride

The journey to Wednesdays Apple occasion raises essential concerns: was the OneRepublic tune truly about Steve Jobs? And why Sweet Home Alabama?

The Apple occasion that saw the unveiling of the iPhone 7 and AirPods opened with a brief movie of CEO Tim Cook in a Carpool Karaoke session with Late Show host James Corden. It was practically as uncomfortable as it sounds.

The video of Corden accompanying Cook to the occasion in San Francisco, opens with the set belting OneRepublics I Lived, that includes the lyric: Hope when the crowd shrieks out, theyre shouting your name.

Not to check out excessive into the option, however is it a stretch to picture this specific belief resonating with Cook, who is not and never ever will be Steve Jobs? I indicate, hes actually ready to take the phase at an Apple item launch, and simply in 2015 there was a whole movie devoted to scenes of crowds rapturously welcoming Steve Jobs as he took the phase at item launches.

After the set take part in some small talk and messing about with Siri, the singer-songwriter-producer Pharrell Williams hops into the rear seat, and the trio get into Lynyrd Skynyrds 1974 struck Sweet Home Alabama.

Cook comes from Mobile, Alabama, which might describe the tune option or could there be another aspect at work here? Lynyrd Skynrd composed the tune as a something in between an action to and attack on Neil Young, who over the last few years has actually ended up being a growing number of dedicated to the advancement of the Pono, a portable digital media and music gamer that Young would quite like you to think is a rival to Apples different items. Is Cook tossing shade?

The video is the a lot of enjoyable youll have enjoying an aging CEO stress to appear good-natured all day, presuming that the rest of your day does not in some way include discovering yourself in Elon Musks workplace as he recognizes that somebody has actually moved the blotter on his desk a quarter-inch to the.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/07/apple-event-tim-cook-james-corden-carpool-karaoke