It's been over a year since Tim Cook succeeded Steve Jobs at Apple (AAPL), but only now, with the stock off 23% from all-time highs reached in September, is he truly opening up about the company. In interviews with NBC News and Bloomberg, Cook spoke about the Apple maps debacle, the advice of Steve Jobs, bringing manufacturing jobs to the U.S. and the future of the company.

"Our whole role in life is to give you something you didn't know you wanted. And then once you get it, you can't imagine your life without it," Cook told NBC's Brian Williams. When pushed for more details, specifically about the much-rumored foray into television sets, Cook offered only, "It's a market that we have intense interest in, and it's a market that we see that has been left behind."

Related: Apple Could Fall Below $500 a Share: Barry Ritholtz

David Garrity of GVA Research thinks the secrecy surrounding an Apple TV may soon come to an end. "Major hints were being dropped," he said, "and I would argue that's something we're gonna be seeing in 2013."

Speaking of 2013, Cook says more manufacturing will be headed to the U.S. in the coming year. "We've been working for years on doing more and more in the United States," he told Williams. "Next year, we will do one of our existing Mac lines in the United States."

Related: Apple Is in a Multi-Year Decline, Shares to Fall 50-70% Says Schatz

Regardless of what products come out of Cupertino and how the manufacturing process is altered, Garrity notes that Apple as a whole is going through a conversion of sorts. "Apple is going to be changing as a company under Cook's leadership versus that under Jobs leadership."

As much as his fans scream and yell when he walks on water or levitates, most people have a pretty good idea that magician/illusionist Criss Angel is somehow tricking them and not actually defying the laws of physics.

In much the same why, when this morning's surprisingly strong jobs data came out, professional investors and economists alike knew immediately that something was up. In a month when one of the nation's most disruptive storms in recent history occurred, for the Bureau of Labor Statistics to report that Hurricane Sandy did not have an impact and the unemployment rate fell to a four-year low of 7.7% and 146,000 new jobs were created, that defies the laws of reason.

"It's a little hard to believe quite honestly," says Dan North, chief economist at Euler Hermes, in the attached video. "If there's any report that deserved caveats and conditions it's this one."

And he's not alone. Peter Kenny from Knight Capital calls the report a ''head scratcher'' in a note to clients today, saying he never looks a gift horse in the mouth, but just can't get comfortable with the numbers. And Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller, Tabak & Co., who correctly called for a much stronger than expected number yesterday, is already expecting the 20,000 reduction in construction jobs to be short-lived, reminding clients that "we know what follows any disaster."

Related: Resist Urge to Panic on November Jobs Report Says Wilkinson

It's not like the markets weren't ready for a wild pitch, so to speak, of a jobs report. The Wall Street Journal went as far as calling it "the least important jobs report in five years" given the diffused post-election environment and the fact the Fed meets next week.