Tim Cook talks about Steve Jobs, Apple TV and Beats acquisition in latest interview

After taking the stage at the Flint Center to unveil the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch earlier this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook has participated in a two-part interview on The Charlie Rose Show. Ahead of the full-length question-and-answer session, of which the first segment airs tonight, the show has shared three short video clips in which the chief executive talks about Steve Jobs, Apple TV and the Beats acquisition.

In the first clip, Cook discusses about how his mentor and predecessor in Steve Jobs, who passed away in October 2011 following a long battle with pancreatic cancer, remains very close to him. “He's in my heart,” said Cook. “He's deep in Apple's DNA. His spirit will always be the foundation of the company. I literally think about him everyday. His office is still left as it was, on the fourth floor. His name is still on the door."

Cook added that the core values of Apple are still based around the visionary that Jobs was. "If you think about the things that Steve stood for at a macro level, he stood for innovation; he stood for the simple, not the complex; he knew that Apple should only enter areas where we can control the primary technology. All of these things are still deep in our company, they're still things that we very much believe."

Watch the clips below:

The chief executive also reflected on how television remains stuck back in the 1970s. “When you go in the living room to watch the TV, or wherever it might be, it almost feels like you’re rewinding the clock and you’ve entered a time capsule and you’re going backwards,” said Cook. It has long been rumored that Apple is working on a television set that could help redefine the living room, but so far only offers the Apple TV set-top box.

Cook claims that TVs offer a terrible user interface, which is something that I have to agree with. Even with the emergence of smart TVs from Samsung and other electronics makers, the flat screen is still far less innovative than smartphones, tablets and notebooks. “I don’t want to get into what we’re doing in the future,” said Cook, in response to why Apple doesn’t fix this outdated TV experience. “This is an area that we continue to look at.”

The third segment explains why Apple chose to acquire Beats Music and Beats Electronics earlier this year. Cook claimed that the iPhone maker saw talent that he is “super impressed with” in Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, referring to them as “creative geniuses.” He also explained that while trying out Beats Music one night, compared to some other music streaming services, he realized that Beats recognized the importance of human curation - the sequence of songs playing.

Cook is impressed with the brand that Beats has established, adding that the headphones business is fast growing and that Beats needed a global footprint that Apple was able to offer. Cook felt that he could get a music subscription service, talent and fast growing business in one as three underlying reasons why Apple acquired Beats. In case you missed it, the deal was announced in May for $3 billion following weeks of speculation.

The first segment of the interview will air on The Charlie Rose Show on PBS later tonight, followed by the second segment on Monday night.

Google Spent $1.3B on Acquisitions So Far This Year, Mostly on Waze

In the first half of 2013, Google spent $1.31 billion on 16 acquisitions, it said in a financial filing today.

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The largest of those was the mapping startup Waze, which cost $966 million. (We had previously reported that the deal was worth $1.1 billion, as it included an estimated $100 million in performance payouts to staff, which wouldn't be included in this filing.)

Google explained a little of its math for the Waze deal today: $847 million in goodwill, plus $188 million in intangible assets, minus $69 million of net liabilities assumed.

Other disclosed acquisitions in the first half of this year included Makani Power and Wavii. But there were a lot more deals, too: 15 non-Waze acquisitions of companies and intangible assets cost Google $344 million.

Also in the quarter, Google sold a company of its own: Motorola Home. Arris paid $2.238 billion in cash, plus $150 million in closing adjustment and $175 million in stock, resulting in a net gain of $747 million that was included in second-quarter earnings.

And, lastly, Google cut a bunch of Motorola-related jobs through the Home sale as well as layoffs. In the second quarter, Motorola dropped to 4,599 employees from 15,152. Restructuring has brought cumulative charges of $839 million, Google said.