Apple’s Tim Cook Pits iPhone Against Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

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Apple’s interim CEO Tim Cook and a couple other company executives reportedly met with Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi recently to talk about where Apple is heading in the not-too-distant future.

Forbes reports that Cook apparently indicated Apple will explore lower-priced iPhone models, and has “clever things” planned for the prepaid markets. That would lend credence to previous rumors of entry-level iPhones and the possibility of an iPhone with a software-based SIM card that’d allow people to easily and quickly hop between prepaid networks.

Cook also predicts that the tablet market will eventually overtake the PC market but that Apple will face tougher competition in the tablet space than it does in the phone space. As an aside, I keep having this gut feeling that Apple’s going to announce an iPad tomorrow with a starting price of even less than $499. That’d certainly help Apple and, ultimately, the tablet market.

Cook apparently finished up with the notion that the “iPhone was just below food and water on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” according to Forbes.

That’s odd considering that, as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is often portrayed as a pyramid with basic needs such as breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis and excretion making up the base of the pyramid, for the iPhone to be below those needs would be pretty serious.

Perhaps it’s supposed to go in between water and sex: breathing, food, water, iPhone, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion.

Even if the iPhone were to be found just above those basic needs, it’d still beat out the security of body, employment, resources, morality, the family, health and property. Whatever the case, that’s a magical device indeed.

More on TIME.com:

What Happens If Apple’s Lead Designer Moves to London?

Latest iPhone Nano Scuttlebutt: Cheaper? Yes. Smaller? No.

Whispers of a No-Contract, Carrier-Jumping iPhone