Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 9/21/26

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1:16Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Kramerica. Oh, my friends, I'm just about trying to make you some money. My job is not just to entertain, but to teach. So call me at 1-800-743-CNBC or tweet me at Jim Cramer. Tonight, we're hosting a Mad Money Masterclass. We are cracking open the vault so you can learn from a legend. We want to shine a light on one of America's greatest business people and a fantastic story, Tim Cook's remarkable run at Apple. Tim's extraordinary tenure as CEO ended September 1st, 2026. And I'm looking back at more than a decade of our conversations, because if you want to understand what terrific leadership really looks like, you can learn a lot from watching Tim Cook.

2:02So tonight, as part of our Invest in America series, we're revisiting some of my favorite moments with Tim and the lessons investors can take from one of the great CEOs of our time. And our story starts in 2015. For Mad Money's 10th anniversary, Tim surprised me by calling into the show. I had no idea that phone call would begin a decade of conversations on this set at Apple headquarters, inside Apple stores and on American factory floors. This is where it all began. Take a look. Let's take a call. Go to Tim in California. Tim. Hey, Jim, I'm calling from Cupertino, California, to be exact. This is Tim Cook at Apple, and I want to congratulate you on 10 great years of mad money.

2:48Well, wow. That's a good call. I want to congratulate you for running the greatest company on earth and for creating such amazing wealth and the best products on earth for everybody. You have done a remarkable job, Tim. I am honored that you're calling in. It's a great team here that does it. Jim, you've been a champion for American innovation. And, of course, Apple feels the same way. And we love the fact that you highlight innovation as a centerpiece of your show. Well, you know what? You make us proud, and you do such incredible, incredible innovation yourself every time. You know I am totally involved with what you're doing for the phone, but of course for the watch and for the research kit.

3:31I basically am looking at your company as being the health company of the future. I'm looking at you as being the credit card company of the future. There really are the great growth areas you are in charge of right now, Tim. You know, it's really incredible. Since in the first 24 hours of Research Kit, we've had 11 ,000 people sign up for a study in cardiovascular disease through Stanford University's app. And to put that in perspective, Stanford has told us that it would have taken normally 50 medical centers an entire year to sign up that many participants. So this is Research Kit is an absolute game changer.

4:09I think that this is the most, but people don't understand why you absolutely have to have this device, which is why I can't wait until it comes out. I also am focused on the fact, Tim, that your product for retail with Apple Pay is by far the best. I have to believe that given the banks, given Visa, given MasterCard, it's perfectly realistic to believe that the customers will demand it from every major retailer in the world. Do you think I'm right? I totally think you're right. You said last year, I think when it first came out, that it would take the country by storm, and it's doing it. We've already got 700 ,000 locations accepting Apple Pay.

4:44And, by the way, we really want to add your Bar San Miguel to that. Done! And if you do that, I'm joining you there for dinner. You are too much. Tim, I've got to ask you, Tim. And we always hear that the company is so big, whatever. I mean, I think you're I look at your company and I think it's not that expensive. You've got the best balance sheet in the world. Country company doesn't matter. You know, my mantra, people should own Apple, not trade it. Do you think that eventually people will understand what I'm talking about? I think eventually they will. Yes. I mean, you know, for people that have owned the stock for 10 years or so, our stock price 10 years ago when you started Mad Money was less than$6 on a split adjusted basis.

5:36And so you can bet those people are extremely happy right now. Well, everyone's thrilled with what you've done. When you come to work every day, I know you come in hungry. The competition, are you feeling like that you've kind of left it behind or you just every day do you come in and say someone might have a better mousetrap? We're always paranoid. We live paranoid, and we always want the very best product. And so if we're not beating someone else, we're trying to beat the thing that we have currently shipping. Everybody here lives on edge. Well, do you think that people are worried about the world, people are worried about Europe, people are worried about currency.

6:15Are those just the kind of things that Wall Street worries about? And if you're at home or you're watching, you own 100 shares of Apple, you should just be thinking that Tim Cook and the team are ready for pretty much anything that the world might throw at us. Your currency is clearly a problem, but frankly, the best companies will figure out a way to manage it. And I regard your company with the highest ideals and the greatest manufacturing. I know every day when you come to work, I feel you must think that you have a stewardship that you've got to fulfill because of Steve Jobs. I want you to know that you have far exceeded whatever anyone, I think, could have done.

6:54But you still walk in his footsteps. How do you feel about the legacy? You know, there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about Steve. And he is still the core part of Apple. His DNA is deep in the company. And his office is still next to mine with his name on the door. and the values that he placed in here and sort of the spirit that we are here to make the very best products in the world that enrich people's lives, that is still the centerpiece of this company. And do you think that there are, I know that from Walter Osseson's book, that the pipeline that you're using really, while it was definitely had good things in it from Steve, a lot of these devices are yours and your teams, aren't they?

7:41Oh, absolutely. Yes. I mean, we're now, you know, quite a ways away from, unfortunately, his passing. And so there's been a lot of things that have started in creation after his passing. Let me ask you about where you think they're going. I know that the car, the home, do you think of them as connectivity, social, mobile, cloud connectivity? Do you realize these are the next frontiers? Or is there a frontier that I'm missing. I'm not thinking big enough. Well, I think those are two big ones that you talked about. I think health may be the biggest one of all, because for years, people have depended on strictly somebody else to determine their health.

8:24And now, now are these devices, in essence, empower people to manage and track their own health and fitness. And so I think that market is probably significantly underestimated. Well, let's go there, because I know my cardiologist, well, working on the Stanford Project, knows about it and told me that it's within our lifetime that we will have your watch, and your watch will show whether my blood pressure spiked, which it did, by the way, when you called, because I had no idea you were calling. But we will have, from your watch, diabetes, maybe blood pressure, maybe even cancer detection because of the great app system you have and because of the health care.

9:04Do you think this is within the realm of our lifetime? Oh, I absolutely do. I absolutely do. And, you know, discovering and curing some of these diseases will push our life expectancy much longer than it currently is. And so we'll be able to enjoy mad money 50 years from now. Tim, I got to tell you, I am deeply honored that you called in. I think you're the best we have. Maybe the best it's ever been. Thank you so much, Tim Cook. I really appreciate that. You know, Jim, you say that some people want to make friends. I just want to make money. But let me tell you, you've made at least one friend in me, and I wish you all the best.

9:44So happy anniversary. Thank you so much, Tim Cook, CEO of the biggest company in the world, Apple. Great to talk to you, sir. Yes. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Wow. Coming up, we'll turn back the clock a full decade when Tim Cook visited Kramer on the Mad Money set. Next. Don't miss a second of Mad Money. Follow at Jim Cramer on X. Have a question? Tweet Cramer. Hashtag Mad Mentions. Send Jim an email to madmoneyatcnbc.com or give us a call at 1-800-743-CNBC. Miss something? Head to madmoney.cnbc.com.

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11:59Welcome back to our Mad Money Masterclass. A year after our first phone call, Tim Cook joined me for our first sit-down interview on Mad Money Set. Apple was at an inflection point. The watch was brand new. The iPhone was changing the world. And while Wall Street focused on each tick in the stock, Tim was focused on the customer and where Apple could go next. And there's a lesson in that. Great CEOs build for the long term. It's one reason I've spent all these years saying the same thing. Own Apple, don't trade it. You can hear the beginnings of that story right here. Take a look. The smartphone market, eventually everyone in the world will have a smartphone.

12:41Penetration today is in the 40s. Long way to go. Emerging markets like India. LTE penetration is zero. We've got great innovation in the pipeline from new iPhones that will incent you and other people that have iPhones today to upgrade to new iPhones. I will need something else because I don't think. You will need something else. But I can't think of anything else that I need. But we're going to give you things that you can't live without that you just don't know that you need today. Okay. That's what I want. And that has always been the objective of Apple, is to do things that really enrich people's lives, that you look back on and you wonder, how did I live without this?

13:20Now, why is the story not talked about nearly as much that this is also a service? That it's become, it's viewed as a device. You're a hardware company, oh, 60 % hardware, can't go to the sky, it's done. versus what we know, which is that other than, say, the Netflix bill, maybe the Amazon bill, you can put things on this, whether it be my music. I've got the family plan, whether it be because I've got a lot of pictures and I do the iCloud backup, the Apple Pay. Why do people not talk about the fact that this is not a dead device? It's something that we belong to. I think in fairness, we didn't talk about it a lot until recently.

14:00And so I take that. But as you say, services now is the second largest revenue segment at Apple. It was for last quarter. It was for the first half of the year, as far as that goes. And so last quarter, we were at$6 billion, up 20%. It's a fast-growing. And you look at what it is. It's things like the App Store. You go and you buy apps far after the sale. You might subscribe to Apple Music. You might use Apple Pay. You might buy songs. You might rent movies. And so it's all of these things. And it really adds up. And that, of course, is based on how many people are using our devices, how many devices out there.

14:48And there's over a billion devices in use. I want to talk about the stock a little bit. It is mad money, huge buyback. A lot of people saying, well, wait, they keep buying back one-fifth of the company. But what has it done? Your stock is down below where you bought the average amount, a much higher price. Is it a waste versus innovation, or is it not really a tradeoff? It's not a tradeoff is the answer to that. We first look at all the money that we need to invest in the company, in R &D, in stores, in the supply chain, all of the areas we need to do, including M &A. Okay. And we take the money that's left over, if we have some, and we do at this point.

15:28Right. And we give it back to our shareholders. And we do that in terms of dividends and buybacks. And so if you look at dividends, we just raised it for every year, every year since the beginning. We raised it to 57 cents this time, and we're very happy to give that to our shareholders. And on the buyback side, I didn't see how the stock performed today, but we were still below, the last time I looked, we were still below the average that we paid. And we tend to be opportunistic in buying it. And so we don't have some regimented program that, you know, is X shares a day or whatever. But if you talk about macro headwinds, dominant on the theme, on the conference call, difficult compares, dominant, currency, no new iteration yet.

16:16Why not wait? What's the urgency? If you're going to be opportunistic, wouldn't that say let all the negativity come out? Let all these hedge funds blow it out. And then we'll make a statement. Well, opportunistic to me means you buy it when you think the company's undervalued. We believe the company's undervalued. Fair enough. When we talk about innovation, again, I don't want to beat the dead horse, but you know the rap. The rap is they're not innovating. And yet we find ourselves wanting to buy the new iteration. I mean, you are a surprise company. It would be ridiculous for you to talk about what's going to be in the seven because it's a statement and it's also a play.

16:52It's a drama. There's drama at Apple. There's no drama to Wintel. I mean, there was never any drama to Yulopac. How important is drama to you? Because I also know that you're a thoughtful guy who likes literature, likes movies, likes TV, and you like an arc. Yeah. We don't talk about futures as a company, as you say. We're fairly secretive. We don't talk about products that are in the roadmap. But I would tell you that we're incredibly excited about things we're working on. Incredibly excited. And so I don't want to be more specific than that. But I think that the other thing maybe that's worth pointing out is if you kind of look at all the things Apple has done over time, at the time they were done, they were rarely ever seen like they were in retrospect.

17:39Well, this bust, you talk about the bust of the watch? I think the watch would be like that, too, because if you look at iPod, iPod wasn't viewed as a success, but today it's viewed as an overnight success. The iPhone was the same way. People were writing about there's no physical keyboard. Obviously, nobody would want it. And so I think that in a few years, we will look back and people would say, how could I have ever thought about not wearing this watch? Because it's doing so much for you. And then it will all of a sudden be an overnight success. I went to the second letter that Icon sent you about doing it.

18:18By the way, that was in the mid-120s. It was obviously, in retrospect, a trader, I think, saying this is the time to buy. But he talked about 20 million watches and then 40 million watches. When we see these things in fiscal year 2016, we see these things, we say, how did they get them? I just want to be making clear, it is not your guidance. You never talked about numbers like 20 and 40 million, right? Never. That is just other people running with the ball. And why do they run with it when you say, listen, we're not making any projections like that? I don't know. The way that we look at the watch, though, our first goal is to establish a new category.

18:54Smartwatch category wasn't really established. So we needed to establish the category, and we wanted to roll out slowly. Today, to put it in perspective, you can buy Apple Watch in 14 ,000 locations. You can buy the iPhone at over 200 ,000. And so we're still in learning mode. We're learning fairly quickly, though. We know a lot more than we did a year ago. And you'll see the Apple Watch get better and better. Stick around. Our Mad Money Masterclass continues with Kramer's trip to Apple HQ in California. Next.

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21:06Our Mad Money Masterclass continues in 2017. I had brought Tim Cook into my world. Now he was bringing me into his. I went out to Apple Park in Cupertino, where I got to see the bigger picture of what Apple was building. The company wasn't simply selling devices. It was creating an ecosystem of hardware, software, and services with extraordinary reach. Tim was thinking beyond what Apple was to what it could become. Take a look. Tim, last year at this time we sat down, the stock was at 93. The headlines were all about how the company's best days were behind it. You said that the customers love the product.

21:44As long as they do, then I'm not going to worry. Do you feel vindicated? You know, I didn't really worry about what people were saying then, because I care very much about our users. And I strongly believe that if they're happy over the long term, other things will take care of itself. And so we had a lot of confidence, and it's good to be here today, but we don't really look at the stock, you know, because for us, it's about the long term. And so we're very much focused on long-term shareholder value, but not the short-term kind of stuff. But there has to be a sense that when you read that the company is dead, that it just seems like it's a bit unfair.

22:26Well, I just thought it was absurd. Okay. And people just not understanding the company. I think the iPhone is the best consumer product ever. That's what I feel about it. And it's become so integrated and integral to our lives. You wouldn't think about leaving home without it. Your health data is there. You're paying with it from an Apple Pay point of view. You're messaging your friends, the community that you're a part of. It's your navigation system. It's your news. For many people, they've moved all of their video to watching on a mobile product. And, you know, the iPhone is at the center of that.

23:15The 7 Plus clearly is a cord cutter. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so there's so many of these things that it's so integrated into all aspects of your life that I think I don't know that there's a consumer product that's made such a profound change in people. And with the ecosystem behind it, the fact that it's unleashed millions of developers to develop their passion and provide to customers something that maybe it's been a hobby for them. But now they're unleashing it around the world. And it's unbelievable. On video in particular, what we see that the video world has kind of hit an air pocket.

24:03and where cord cutting has been happening on some kind of basis, we think it's accelerating massively and that it's clear what the end story looks like here. The trajectory is a debate, but we'd like to play in this because we do think that the best experience for a customer is to view things when they want, the way they want, and have many different additional information around what they're watching, not just the linear TV feed. And so, yeah, we are working on some original content now. We're learning, and we'll see where this takes us. Tim, let's talk about Apple's role in the world. You're a huge company.

24:51What are you doing to create jobs? Yeah, that's a good question. A lot of people ask me, do you think it's a company's job to create jobs? And my response is a company should have values because a company is a collection of people. And people should have values. So by extension, a company should. And one of the things you do is give back. So how do you give back? We give back through our work in the environment and running a company on renewable energy. We give back in job creation. And so if you look at job creation in particular, we've now created two million jobs in America. Two million. And so let me give you a little bit of information on this.

25:35And this doesn't include the multiplier effect, by the way, that would make it a ton more. As you look around this campus, we now have 80 ,000 people in the United States. About 25 ,000 are here doing R &D. But we have a huge facility in Austin as well that has 6 ,000 people that does everything from engineering to customer support to financial services, etc. And, of course, we have stores across the United States. In addition to this, we buy a lot from U.S. suppliers. And this includes things like we manufacture here. Our suppliers manufacture here. Corning is an example of this. We buy the glass from iPhone and iPad from Corning.

26:19But there's many other examples. We buy adhesives from 3M. 3M manufactures in my home state of Alabama and many other places as well. And so we actually spent over$50 billion last year in this country. I mean, this is incredible. And then we have a developer community. These are folks from really small businesses, a party of one, to larger companies, and they're writing apps that change the world. And we're giving them the platform, and we've created an incredible store that allows them to sell their product in 155 countries in the world. It's a really unbelievable, empowering experience as a new business.

27:09And so each of these areas, Jim, we ask ourselves, how can we increase it further? How can we create even more? You know, we're not satisfied with just 2 million. And so you can bet we're going to be hiring thousands of employees in the future, thousands more employees in the future. On the developer community, we're asking ourselves, how can we empower the next generation of developers? How can we touch even more people? How can we train more people to code so they can pursue their passion? Would you ever put money behind that to make it? We would. We would, and we will, and you'll be hearing more about that across the summer.

27:51In the other category, manufacturing, we ask ourselves, how can we get more people to do advanced manufacturing in the United States? And I'm proud to tell you that we're creating an advanced manufacturing fund. We're initially putting$1 billion in the fund. This I did not know about. We're announcing it today. So you're the first person I'm telling. And I'm not the first person because we've talked to a company that we're going to invest in already. But this is a billion dollars of Apple's$256 billion putting it in. It's a billion dollars of our U.S. money, which we have to borrow to get. That's another whole topic.

28:32But, yeah, we're really proud to do it. And by doing that, we can be the ripple in the pond because if we can create many manufacturing jobs around, those manufacturing jobs create more jobs around them because you have a service industry that builds up around them. And we'll be announcing the first investment from this fund later in the month of May. And so we're really proud of this. And so you can see we're really looking at this thing deeply. How do we grow our employee base? How do we grow the developer base? How do we grow manufacturing? And you will see us bring things to market in all of those areas across this year.

29:17We're really proud to do that. This is why we are in business. We're in business to help people achieve their objectives, to empower them to do great things. But are there gating factors to new product, artificial intelligence, machine learning, where the phone just can't get you there because of the physical infrastructure around the world that we have to leapfrog that somehow? I think AI is huge. We use AI in so much of what we do today, but we're going to be able to use it even more in the future because the processing and GPUs are getting so incredible. The capability is so incredible. We're going to be able to do a lot more.

29:54I don't want to get into details, but there's a lot more there. AR, you know, I've said in the past, this is something we're really excited about. You're still loving the job, still getting the people you're willing. I love it. Yes, yes. You know, there's no bigger privilege in the world than to work at this company at this moment in time and to be able to work with all the great people I get to work with every day. It was beyond my wildest imagination, and there's not a day that I don't go by that I thank God for it. When we return, Kramer's not going shopping, but he did go to the Apple store with Tim Cook in 2019.

30:36Don't miss that interview next.

30:46The next stop in our Mad Money Masterclass takes us to where Apple meets its customers. In 2019, Tim and I sat down at the Apple Store in the company's Cupertino Visitor Center. By then, Apple Stores were destinations of their own right, a physical expression of the brand Tim Cook helped build. Because for Tim, the customer experience didn't end when you bought an iPhone. It was part of the product and a crucial piece of Apple's success. Take a look. Tim, you know I always say, own it, don't trade it. But right now, people are saying, Jim, give me the investment case for buying the stock. Well, you know, I never try to sell the stock.

31:26I try to sell the product. Never have. However, let me tell you the way I look at it. Okay. We manage the company for the long term. The most important things in Apple, one, a culture of innovation. This team is unbelievable in creating hardware and software and services and getting them all to work together. It just works. Second, we have a very large active install base. It hit$1.3 billion a year ago, and we've added about$100 million in the last 12 months. Third, highest customer satisfaction and loyalty in the industry. So you put those two things together. If you've got a lot of big active install bays and you've got a lot of heavy customers, then you have a recurring revenue stream on your product business.

32:15And then because of our ecosystem that we built, which has unbelievable developers in it and an app store to get services out there, We built a services business that was a little over$7 billion in 2010. Last year, for the calendar year, over$41 billion. And we've said that we're going to double the 2016 numbers by 2020. And so we're on a fast clip there. And then, of course, we are shareholder friendly on our capital allocation. So you put all these things together, and those are the most important things for us. innovation, customer satisfaction, and the overall size and loyalty of our customers.

33:03Most tech companies, I think, don't innovate nearly as much as you, but let me just posit what we've got. You take so many risks that I don't think you get credit for. For instance, we had, it turned out to be ridiculous strings around our neck, and then we got the AirPods. We loved our dumb watch that told time, and now we have a smart watch that saves our life. We love the big fat jack and then we got the lightning jack. We loved our Sony$2 ,000 mirrorless camera until we got the iPhone 10, which takes better pictures. Why do you therefore have a 12 multiple? Because to me, that is wrong. Yeah, I think it's wrong too.

33:40But I tell you what I focus on is the customers. And so the customers speak every quarter. They speak every year. They speak every day. And the The most important thing for us is that they're satisfied. And so when I read emails and so forth from customers, they're telling me how the Apple Watch has changed their life. They're telling me how it motivated them to be more fit, be more active. They're telling me that they discovered they had AFib. They're telling me they found a problem with their heart that they didn't know existed. And if they wouldn't have reached out to a doctor, they might have died.

34:16And so these are life-changing things. We've got machine learning embedded in our silicon in our phone. You know, this allows us not only the power efficiency to have an incredible performance in a very small package, but it allows us to manipulate this data on the phone, have the transactions on the phone, as opposed to letting them out in the world. and the whole privacy issue for we've always been on the right side of privacy. But the market is now moving. And so this is an incredible strength that we've built. The photos that you're able to take with your phone, as you said, I mean, these are life-changing things.

35:01If you like to chronicle your life, this morning I picked up my phone and I saw a memory from a year ago. I love them everything. It's cool. I love it. You know, you see my nephew or somebody that's very important to you and their face just appears and you have a slideshow built for you. These things are unbelievable and our customers love them. That's the most important thing. Okay, so let's unpack that. My daughter has the five. Why? Because she loves it. She said, listen, Dad, if you put it in the washing machine like your wife did, I'll get a new one. But you can't pry it out of my cold, dead hands because I love it.

35:41She is not an upgrader because you made the greatest product. What do we do about that? What do you do? The most important thing for me is that she's happy. That is the most important thing. Now, if she's not upgrading for another reason, maybe it's too much of a hassle for her to upgrade. Maybe she's worried about the transfer of data. All of this stuff, we want to help on. And, you know, we've got the store that you're in that's very focused on having the best customer experience there, helping people set up their new phone, making sure all their data is transferred, and also allowing them to trade in their current phone, which begins to look like a subsidy that the carrier may have previously provided.

36:23And it sort of offsets some of the cost of the new phone. For us, we're about making the best product that enriches people's lives. And so we're not about making the cheapest, right? We want to make a great value, but that's not necessarily the cheapest. And so for us, what we've seen is there's enough people in every country in the world that we play in that we can have a really good business by selling the best phone. Don't go anywhere. We're taking you back to Harrodsburg, Kentucky, where Kramer learned how Apple is investing in America. Next.

37:09Welcome back to the Mad Money Masterclass, the Tim Cook edition. 2017 at Apple's headquarters, Tim told me what investing in America meant to him. Eight years later, he took me to see it. We traveled to Harrodsburg, Kentucky. where Corning has been making glass for generations and where Apple is making a major new bet on American manufacturing. This time, we weren't talking about Tim's vision. We were standing on the factory floor watching it take shape from Cupertino to Kentucky. This was Apple investing in America. Well, Tim, we're in downtown Harrisburg. You talked about the ripple effect. Is this it?

37:46This is it. It really makes my heart sing to see a town that is doing so well, that's thriving off of Corning, and our relationship with Corning is at the root of that. And so it feels fantastic. Now, there are other towns, of course, that didn't get blessed by two companies that care as much as you and Corning. The atmosphere is very different, isn't it? Well, we can't be everywhere. I wish we could. But we are putting$600 billion to work in the next four years, And so it is an extraordinary commitment. And there's 79 factories across the U.S. that will benefit from this. But don't you think you'd have to put up 10 times that if you're just to be able to say, I mean, look, you've got to put the money to work.

38:37You promised the president you're going to put it to work. Yes, we are putting it to work. But$2.5 billion is a drop in the bucket of what you have to do. $2.5 billion is just one of those 79. Okay. And so one of the 79. And so it's a great start and a very important one because the glass is something you interface with all the time, right, on your phone. And we couldn't be prouder of the relationship that we built up over what is now since the first iPhone in 2007. Now, when you speak about the ripple effect, it's not just what it does with towns. I imagine that there will be companies, foreign companies, that will say, okay, I now have to put a factory there because Apple's there and they're building a supply chain and I can be part of it.

39:28That's right. That's the ripple effect. If we come, there will be more companies coming. It's a domino effect kind of thing. It's better than anything the government can do, isn't it? I think what the... Enterprise versus government. I think the government has a role in terms of the regulation kind of role and setting the leadership, which which the president has clearly done. He's really stated his objective to get more and more manufacturing into the United States. And so I think there's a role for for each party. I wanted to say that the one thing that seems to be left out the president wants to be able to have everything built here but you have to have a great education a town like this is going to have to up its game but you're not responsible for that well what we can do is bring the manufacturing academy in Detroit to small and medium sized businesses Corning obviously has enough statute to train their own employees But we can help that significantly with small and medium business.

40:39And we can help with community colleges and these sort of things in getting some of our curriculum out into those schools. Tim, you talk to shareholders all the time, part of your job. Do any of them say, you know what, look,$500 billion. I wish you would just buy back stock with the$500 billion. Why are you wasting shareholder money? You know, I think most of our shareholders believe that we're in the best position to to make these type of decisions. And so I have to honestly say I haven't gotten a single complaint about the 600 billion. When it went from 500 to 600. Not one. I have not seen one.

41:16Not one. Not one. That's kind of remarkable. Yes, it is. I would think there are people who could be enraged and say, you know what? I think that he's just doing it so he can sell in China or to appease the president. I'm sure there's somebody out there like that, but they haven't contacted me. I'm astonished. Yes. I really am. I mean, maybe I'm too cynical on Wall Street. I figured that there would be some people who would say, listen, you could give us a better dividend. Instead, you're helping Harrisburg. Yeah, I think most people look at it and say, it's great that you're investing in America.

41:51And so I think they look at it through that lens and depend on us making decisions in their best interest for the shareholders. Is it like it's a wonderful life? Is this, it could be Pottersville if it weren't for you? We want several places like this to exist across the United States. Who's monitoring it internally for you? Kevin, the CFO? Of course, Kevin is all over it. And I'm personally monitoring it to make sure that we're living up to our commitments. Are there towns that don't know it yet that are about to be blessed with a lot of business? There are. There are, of course. Because these things take some amount of time.

42:38And so there will be some surprises in there, I would think. Now, why was in 2017 it was a billion-dollar commitment and a lot of people were shocked at a billion? I mean,$600 billion is a lot more than you announced when you announced the plan on our show in May of 2017. I mean, it's quantum. It's quantum. It's quantum, and we're so proud of it. We're proud to be making a difference in people's lives. Coming up, Kramer's delivering a toast to one of the greats as he reflects on Tim Cook's tenure as CEO. Next.

43:20As I've been saying all night, Tim Cook built the Apple brand into a powerhouse. The stock rallied nearly 2300 percent under his leadership. That's some incredible performance. So much of the discourse about Tim rests on the legacy of Steve Jobs, whose unfortunate passing came at such a young age, 56, in October of 2011. We all wonder what else Jobs might have invented if he'd survived. The rap on Tim Cook is that he kept the trains running on time by being smart about creating an unassailable supply chain. Of course, that sounds like faint praise when you judge it alongside the legacy of Steve Jobs.

43:58But as someone who covered Tim for his entire tenure as CEO, I can tell you the man doesn't get the credit he deserves. When Tim took over, Google's Android operating system had more than 40 percent of the U.S. market versus under 30 percent for Apple. when Tim retired. The iPhone had 55 % to 60 % market share in this country, leaving Android in the dust. Sure, he didn't invent the iPhone, but after getting pushed back by new competitors, he led Apple to dominate the industry. This was a great run, powered by the fact that the iPhone is the product with the best technology, the best design, and the best security.

44:33I always chuckle when I see someone using another kind of phone. They are not serious people. When I would talk with Tim on earnings days, he always reminded me of his company's market share of all the countries around the world where Apple now dominates, and most of all about the company's elite customer satisfaction ratings. The numbers truly are insane, which belies the importance of making the trains run on time. And it's not just with the iPhone. It was under Tim's leadership that Apple's service revenue, the stream, grew from$9 billion in annual sales, kind of an asterisk, frankly, to more than$100 billion.

45:08The service stream is now 26 % of the total business. Wall Street never gives Apple enough credit for the service stream, which is one of the reasons why Tim has been able to consistently buy back stock at great prices. Since Cook took over in 2011, he shrunk Apple's share count by an astounding more than 40%. Now, I keep hearing that Tim Cook hasn't mastered the art of AI. But honestly, outside of NVIDIA, I don't think anyone's done a really good job with AI. The hyperscalers have wrecked their balance sheets to build these data centers. They're the ones to worry about, not Apple with a pristine balance sheet that's the envy of the industry.

45:41The frontier model is good business, but really kind of some ethical issues ahead. The irony of the AI criticism against Apple is that it has a tie-in with Google Gemini, which comes as an extension of Google Search. And Google Search pays Apple about$20 billion here to be the default option on the iPhone. We don't know exactly what Apple pays for Gemini, but it certainly doesn't offset how much Apple pays, how much Alphabet pays Apple to make Google the default search engine of the iPhone. Apple comes out way ahead. Tim has been adamant that he wants his legacy to be about better health for all.

46:16He's worked tirelessly to make the Apple Watch a lifesaver many times over. He's eliminated substantial risk to life and limb and heart. This company is never going to cure cancer and heart disease, but accidents will happen. and Tim's done more than any government to minimize the fallout and get people to focus on their own health before anything bad occurs. That's a nice coda to a career. On a personal note, although you could say this whole homily is nothing but that, I've seen this man in action many times. He's warm and nice and treats people with dignity wherever he goes, regardless of their station in life.

46:50He never carries himself as a master of the universe. I don't know if he would even know how to act that way. He's an American who developed the number one consumer product in the world. He might be the number one business person of our era. But most important, he's gracious and he's kind. Two qualities you almost never see in business and rarely ever see in life. Tim, you will be missed, even though you're sticking around as executive chairman. You made the world better. What an honor that you let me into your world. But if you're an Apple user, listen, and you send them pictures that you took on your iPhone, You tell him stories about how his watch saved your life, he would let you in too.

47:31I like to say there's always a bull market somewhere, and I promise you I'll find it just for you right here on Mad Money. I'm Jim Cramer. See you next time.

47:41All opinions expressed by Jim Cramer on this podcast are solely Cramer's opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC or its parent company or affiliates and may have been previously disseminated by Cramer on television, radio, internet, or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Kramer as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. Kramer's opinions are based upon information he considers reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy, and it should not be relied upon as such.

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