"The values of our company are extremely well-entrenched," Cook said. "Frankly we don't settle for anything less than excellence [so] I think regardless of who is in what job, [those values] are embedded in this company." Gottheil agreed. "I think that's fundamentally true," he said. "That really is in their DNA." Apple's Oppenheimer said that the company was predicting a better quarter for January through March 2009 compared with the same period of 2008. Gottheil found the prediction fascinating. "They're saying, 'Well, it's rough but we've stabilized, we sort of see the bottom on this'," he said. "They're kind of thinking 'this is tough, but it's not horrible'. That's the most amazing thing I've heard about the economy in the last several months."