In case you hadn’t noticed, the United States has a new leader — and President Donald Trump has a bone to pick with Apple. Several, actually.
Will Trump’s “America first” stance and pro-business policies help Apple or give Tim Cook a series of premium headaches? Cult of Mac editors Leander Kahney and Lewis Wallace come out swinging in this week’s edition of “Friday Night Fights.”
Apple’s Mac team has “lost clout” with the company’s industrial design group and software team, claims a new report, arguing that Cupertino has “alienated Mac loyalists.”
The picture painted by the article is of a division with a lack of clear direction from senior management, departures of key employees, and technical challenges — all conspiring to make the Mac one of Apple’s forgotten divisions.
Apple has launched its legal challenge against the European Union’s demand of $14 billion in allegedly unpaid back taxes.
In a statement, Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell said Cupertino has been targeted because of its success, implying that European legislators picked on the company for largely symbolic reasons.
This week on The CultCast: Why Apple’s done pursuing the “new hit product business.” Plus: The demise of Pebble Watch is a bad omen for wearables; Foxconn secretly prepares to make more Apple products in the United States; and we remember our favorite movies of 2016!
Our thanks to Harry’s for supporting this episode. Harry’s super-sharp, German-made razors ship right to your door for way less than drugstore razors, and you can use code CultCast at checkout to score $5 off your order at Harrys.com.
Apple has “sought incentives” to set up a manufacturing facility in India, according to a new report.
Apple reportedly made its case to the country’s Department of Revenue and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeITY).
Jay Z and Apple aren’t going to be joining forces anytime soon, according to Apple Music head honcho Jimmy Iovine.
In a new interview, Iovine poured cold water on Tidal takeover rumors, saying: “We’re really running our own race” and “we’re not looking to acquire any streaming services.”
Apple’s always been the company that promised us the world. Steve Jobs’ genius was his ability to convince us that every single thing Apple did shifted the Earth on its axis.
Recently, that feeling of magical futurism has faded. Apple events have been preceded by a feeling of “been there, done that.”
Forget the “wireless future” that Apple talked up at yesterday’s iPhone 7 event as it tried to convince us that we really want AirPods and a dongle rather than a headphone jack. If Apple has a strategy in 2016, it’s underpromise and overdeliver.
And it’s working great!
July 14, 2008: Apple crows that its newly opened App Store hit a massive 10 million downloads in its first 72 hours.
“The App Store is a grand slam, with a staggering 10 million applications downloaded in just three days,” Steve Jobs said in a statement issued eight years ago today. “Developers have created some extraordinary applications, and the App Store can wirelessly deliver them to every iPhone and iPod touch user instantly.”
Cold hard cash, and a surprising amount of creative input from top Apple executives, are key to Cupertino’s plan for making Apple Music a hit, according to a new behind-the-scenes report about the streaming service.
With quarterly revenue declining for the first time in more than a decade, Apple execs Tim Cook and Luca Maestri put on their game faces during today’s Apple earnings call to tell us why things aren’t really all that bad in Cupertino.
The sad truth is that slumping iPhone sales, which joined the iPad and Mac lineups in the down column, will likely take a toll on Apple’s image — and on its stock price.
Still, there were plenty of other intriguing and optimism-inspiring things we heard during Apple’s Q2 2016 earnings call. Here are the most important takeaways from this historic Apple moment.
Apple is looking to decrease its reliance on data infrastructure that it currently outsources to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
Dubbed “Project McQueen,” the new project is meant to speed up Apple’s cloud services, like moving photos and videos onto your iOS devices.
Apple and Google boasted that they paid over $17 billion to app developers over the last year. What they left out is that they also made a tidy $7.3 billion off those sales, thanks to the 30/70 split pioneered by Steve Jobs with the launch of iTunes in 2003.
That split could coming to an end soon, though, according to a new report claiming Apple plans to make a departure from its old pricing formula in an effort to make Cupertino’s devices more appealing to media companies.
This is my last chance to say something before the great and terrible Steve holds his tablet aloft (and even then, rumormongers might have beaten him to the punch), so let me give you a bit of a long-view perspective, something usually left out when we’re discussing whether we’ll see a 10-inch or 11-inch LCD panel on the device.
You see, I’ve been thinking a lot about Apple and its insane run of success over the last nine years. Consider this: In 2001, Apple’s revenue was about $6.5 billion. In 2009, that revenue was $42.3 billion. Essentially, the company grew by more than 550 percent in eight years.
How exactly is that possible? Was it the great products? Partly. Great leadership? Sure. Killer marketing? No question. But more than all of those combined, the secret to Apple’s success was that it defined and followed the right strategy and the right era. Steve Jobs is king of the world right now because he hit on the idea for the digital hub.
Tech buffs can delve into Silicon Valley history by perusing Apple Computer’s first business plan and IPO documents.
The 1977 38-page IPO filing, done in a typewriter-y font with the odd punctuation issue, lists management as the fourth risk factor for potential investors: “Apple Computers’ Management team is young and relatively in-experienced in the high volume consumer electronics business.”
And would you put money into a company headed by these key execs?
* “S.P. Jobs, V.P. Operations, Attended Stanford and Reed College, Engineer – Atari – 2 Yrs”
* “S.G. Wozniak, V.P. Engineering, Attended University of Colorado and University of California at Berkley [sic], Engr. Tennant – 1 Yr., Engr. Electroglass – 1 Yr., Engr. – Hewlett-Packard – 3 Yrs.”
The IPO document was donated to the Computer History Museum by original Apple investor Mike Markkula, who saw massive potential in the green startup. In 1977, Steve Jobs met with Markkula and convinced him that personal computers were an exciting opportunity. Markkula invested $250,000 in Apple for a one-third stake in the company and served as president from 1981 to 1983.