Nicholas Carlson
The overwhelming reaction from the executives who spent $5,000 on tickets to go to this conference was: snore.
No one blamed WSJ editor-in-chief Gerard Baker, who interviewed Cook. Baker peppered Cook with tough, provocative questions.
It's just that Cook was, as usual, very good at sticking to his talking points.
He even rolled out his oft-repeated line that TV sets and cable boxes are stuck in the 1970s, and that TV is an area of great interest for Apple.
The problem is, Cook isn't much of a story-teller so interviews with him never go anywhere. He just answers the questions posed to him, or does not.
(He did take one implicit shot at Google. Without using the company's name he said said the world will finally wake up to it's creepy ways after some sort of major privacy scandal. Funny: Isn't that what just happened to Apple with the whole nude celebrity photo thing?)
After the interview, I spoke with a senior executive at another tech company.
This person told me his overwhelming feeling after the interview was one of jealousy.
Most CEOs wouldn't get to go to so many conferences and repeat so many boring lines about their company's products. Cook gets to over and over.