Obama

President Obama threw some shade Apple’s way yesterday, failing to mention it as one of the tech companies putting user privacy and security first, while describing his new Cybersecurity National Action Plan.

Obama talked about businesses which “empower Americans” by keeping them safe with extra layers of security like fingerprints scanners — only to then namecheck “companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft… and Visa.”

No mention of the company which actually popularized Touch ID then? No, just checking!

Pete Souza, the Chief Official White House Photographer, just posted a huge album of all of the many wonderful shots he has taken with his iPhone over the last year.

“Welcome to Spotify, Mr. President,” tweeted the streaming music giant Friday morning. That’s right: The president of the United States just shared two vacation playlists — and he didn’t use Apple Music.

The two music lists, titled “The President’s Summer Playlist: Day” and “The President’s Summer Playlist: Night,” contain 20 songs each, showing an eclectic taste with a diverse artist representation, including the Isley Brothers, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding and (ugh) Coldplay.

The Apple-watching world lost its shiz yesterday when Obama made his first tweet from his brand-new presidential Twitter account using an iPhone. But don’t get too excited, because the White House has revealed that the phone in question isn’t Obama’s regular handset after all.

Which prompts the question, “Who did it belong to?” Maybe Apple should commission JFK director Oliver Stone to shoot an advert/paranoid conspiracy thriller on the subject of the Obama iPhone.

Apple Pay has already become the top mobile wallet at a number of stores, but now Apple’s about to take on the great outdoors.

During his address at today’s White House cybersecurity summit, Tim Cook said that starting in September you’ll be able to use Apple Pay for transactions with the federal government, including paying fees to get into Yosemite and the other national parks.

Cook’s visit to the summit was a big win for Apple Pay, which Cook says is now supported by more than 2,000 banks, putting us one step closer to the age when your wallet will be a thing of the past. The White House has given Apple Pay its stamp of approval, too, and announced plans to enable it on all federal-payment cards.

Tim Cook and President Obama are attending today’s White House Cyber Security Summit to talk about a range of issues facing the U.S. tech industry.

Mark Zuckerberg, Marrisa Mayer, and Google CEO Larry Page all decline invites to the summit where Obama is expect to urge tech firms to share data with the government. While Silicon Valley’s elite have snubbed the event, Cook’s appearance could be a big deal in his effort to advocate for the importance of privacy for users. Tim Cook’s appearance is expected soon, while President Obama is scheduled to take the stage at 2:15 ET.

You can watch a live feed of the summit below:

We’re nearly a week away from ringing in the new year and all the craziness that 2015 is going to bring with it, but before we go into holiday hibernation mode, we wanted to take a look back at the most GIF-worthy events of 2014.

From Ellen’s hilarious Oscar selfie, to ‘the greatest catch ever’, 2014 was filled with incredible moments that captured the Internet’s fascination thanks to the glory of the GIFs.

Without further adieu, these were our favorite GIFs of 2014:

President Obama, sadly, does not have an iPhone 6. But he totally wants one, leading him to openly lust after Apple’s newest handset in a meeting Tuesday at the United Nations.

Apple has been looking a lot friendlier ever since its PR boss Katie Cotton left the company last May, and even though no one has been tapped to fill her vacancy yet, Cupertino might be looking to make a huge splash by tapping President Obama’s former press secretary for the post.

President Barack Obama may not be able to use an iPhone for security reasons, but that doesn’t mean he can’t praise the work Apple is doing.

In his State of the Union address to the American people Tuesday, Obama credited a number of technology companies — Apple included — for helping with his ConnectED program, which aims to improve Internet access at schools across the U.S.

The White House has announced that President Obama is scheduled to meet with a number of top-level tech executives in the industry tomorrow, including Apple’s Tim Cook. Topics of discussion will be the recent controversy surrounding the NSA’s phone surveillance, HealthCare.Gov, and ways the government can work with tech companies to grow the economy.

It was only six months ago that the White House officially went on record saying that they thought cell phone unlocking should be legalized. The statement was issued in response to a 114,000+ signature petition, which rightfully argued that if you have paid off a device on-contract, it should belong to you, full-stop.

The Obama Administration said flat-out they agreed… which is why it’s distressing to find out that they may have been misleading us. In fact, while telling the American public that it supported laws to make cell phone unlocking legal, it appears that the Obama Administration has secretly been working against it.

To ease the minds of millions of Americans worried about their health insurance, Obama held a press conference today and admitted that his administration fumbled the launch of Healthcare.gov. Continuing his speech with optimism, Obama then turned to his favorite tech company – Apple – as an example, saying everybody needs to chillax and that buying health insurance won’t ever be as easy as purchasing a song from iTunes.

The Obama Administration has been under heavy fire the last few months thanks to the disastrous rollout of Healthcare.gov and has pulled a couple Apple metaphors out of his hat to cope with the mess.

Obama’s not the only one in Washington looking to Apple for inspiration with the Healtcare.gov mess though. The GOP released a series of attack ads that spoof Apple’s famous “Mac vs. PC” campaign. Take a look:

President Obama announced today that he has tapped Catherine Novelli, VP of Worldwide Government Affaris for Apple to fill a position in the State Department. Novelli has been Apple’s top lobbyist since 2007 but is set to serve as Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment.

Although the nomination still has to be approved, it sounds like the president is confident Novelli and the other nominees will be joining his administration his soon:

“It gives me great confidence that such dedicated and capable individuals have agreed to join this Administration to serve the American people. I look forward to working with them in the months and years to come.”

Hate the fact that your wireless carrier keeps your smartphone locked? President Obama does too. The White House has filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission asking that wireless carriers be required to unlock all mobile devices.

Over the weekend, President Obama weighed in on the famous Apple vs. Samsung patent disputes by vetoing an import ban proposed by the International Trade Commission that would have prevented Apple from bringing iOS devices older than the iPhone 4S and iPad 3 into the country.

An avowed fan of Apple’s products, it was the first time a U.S. presidential administration had vetoed a product ban by the ITC since 1987, and seemed to signal that the Obama Administration was not going to penalize an American company like Apple in favor of a foreign company like Samsung.

Financial Markets took notice. Samsung’s market cap is down a billion dollars since the vetoing.

The term “patent troll” tends to be thrown around a lot when talking about Apple, Samsung, et al.’s endless patent litigation, but there’s a big difference between companies trying to protect their patent profiles in court and the sort of trolls who exist for no other reason than to sue other companies for violations on overly broad patents that they aren’t using, stifling innovation (for example, notorious in-app patent troll Lodsys).

Reforms to the patent system to neuter patent trolls is something that have been called for for years, but it seems like President Obama is finally doing something. The White House has just announced that they are taking on the patent troll problem with seven new legislative proposal. But even if Congress won’t budge? Obama says he’s going to take five executive actions to thwart patent trolls, which he can do even without congressional approval.

Even though Steve Jobs had a solid working relationship with News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, it’s no secret that Steve Jobs hated Fox News. In fact, in Walter Isaacon’s authorized biography, Steve Jobs said that “Fox has become an incredibly destructive force in our society.”

Rather than associate Apple’s brand with Fox News, Steve Jobs decided to personally order all of Apple’s ads to be removed from the conservative TV network.

A group of U.S. Senators have introduced a new bill that will allow cellphone owners to legally unlock their devices again after their contract has expired.

Called the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, and backed by Al Franken and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the bill would reverse a Library of Congress ruling from October 2012 that deemed cellphone unlocking illegal unless the process was performed by a carrier.

There’s been a lot of noise lately surrounding smartphone unlocking. On October 28, 2012, the Library of Congress said it was going to be illegal to unlock your smartphone starting on January 26, 2013.

Since then, Obama has stepped in and said that’s totally not fair. And then a few legislators have brought up bills to make sure people can unlock their smartphones without facing criminal charges. Now AT&T says it wants to be perfectly clear that they don’t really want you to go to jail for unlocking your smartphone.

Last month, a petition was created on the White House’s ‘We The People’ website that demanded the White House ask Congress to rescind its decision to make unlocking cellphones illegal.

After 114,000 signatures were collected on the petition, the White House invited experts on telecommunications, technology and copyright law to come over to the White House and talk about the issue.

The official White House response was issued today stating that the Obama Administration believes that consumers should be able to unlock their cellphones without risking criminal penalties.

Apple is an LGBT-friendly company that embraces all sorts of people as long as they are committed to excellence, so it’s bracing to see that they are urging the Supreme Court to support legalizing gay marriage.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will be rubbing shoulders with the Obama family at the U.S. State of the Union address on Tuesday, February 12th. First Lady Michelle Obama has invited Cook to sit in her box while President Barack Obama gives his speech.

Despite posting one of their most profitable quarters ever, Apple’s stock (AAPL) has taken a dive over the last two months. It’s been down nearly 25% from it’s recent highs and some analyst have said that the stock is great buy right now.

This morning, Brian White from Topeka claimed that the sell-off in Apple’s stock over the past weeks has been “insanely insane” given how Apple is poised to have a record breaking holiday quarter. Since making his claim, Apple’s price has jumped up 5% today.

President Barack Obama has called Apple CEO Tim Cook alongside other Fortune 500 chiefs to discuss economic growth and the looming “fiscal cliff.”