At approximately 11:38AM Cupertino time on Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook posted a cryptic message on Twitter reading only “?”. It was quickly deleted.
Screenshot: Twitter
What could the man in charge of the world’s most valuable brand be trying to say? Was it a mistake? A test? Did the tweet herald a new, Apple-developed two-way neural interface that feeds users pleasant imagery until their mouths are contorted into painful rictus grins, a caricature of genuine human joy? Maybe it was just a ? day.
Wednesday evening, Gizmodo received a revelatory email titled “I know what the Tim Cook smile means.” According to the tipster, who worked for Apple for several years, Cook’s tweet was likely intended as “a private response to someone and he accidentally made it public and then caught his mistake”.
“I know a co-worker, about two years back, who wrote Tim to tell him about a really great interaction my co-worker had with a customer,” writes our tipster. “He was surprised and delighted to actually get an email back several days later. He shared it with several of us. The response was a smile.”
We reached out to Apple for comment but had not heard back at time of writing.