Our first question when we saw the pics of the huge stage Apple is hammering into place at the already cavernous Flint Center is: what are they going to show off there? Has Craig Federighi’s hair become too inflated for a proper roof?
Could be a concert (to show off some yet undreamt feature of the long-awaited iPhone 6?) or a fitness demo to get all of us off the couch with the power of the iWatch?
What do you think? Let us know in the comments what else Apple might cook up on that huge stage.
SAN FRANCISCO — Myles Weissleder has witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to startup demos.
The former VP of public affairs at Meetup.com presides over SF New Tech, a showcase for disruptive hopefuls that he’s run for more than eight years. Over 750 companies including SkyBox, Twilio, Prezi, Flipboard and Twitter have come to his networking mixer to demo before a live audience in a trendy SOMA club.
In San Francisco’s competitive startup environment, you can demo your game-changing idea (or Pet Rock app) every night of the week, but SF New Tech is one of the longest-running and largest showcases. Wannapreneurs face a few hundred audience members — many of them from influential companies like Apple or venture capital firms like CMEA capital — where the mingling is fueled by drinks and tacos.
During a recent demo night, Cult of Mac sat down with the indefatigable Weissleder, who is as at home on the stage with a mic as he is hobnobbing at the bar, to get his top tips on how not to bomb when you take the stage with your great idea, hoping to find cash and connect with influencers.
Has the iPhone done away with the good-old-fashioned celebrity autograph? The answer is a resounding “yes” according to pop singer and professional bitter-ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift. In a new op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Swift writes that:
The spotlight on Tim Cook isn’t going away anytime soon, especially when Apple has yet to unveil any of the new “product categories” he promised would come this year.
In a new profile by The Wall Street Journal, Cook’s efforts to shape and mature Apple are detailed, including the fact that he is “actively seeking” new members for the company’s board of directors.
Cook has been consistently bringing in fresh blood to help him lead Apple, like former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts. It makes sense for him to also expand Apple’s board, were the current leadership is very engrained in the history of Apple under Jobs’ leadership.
Tim Cook has been an ardent supporter of LGBT rights while leading the ship at Apple. That continued this weekend, as Apple (in a display known as “Apple Pride”) participated in the San Francisco Pride Celebration & Parade, one of the many gay pride parades held Sunday across the United States.
Apple gave out $1 iTunes gift cards to onlookers at the parade, allowing them to download free songs from the iTunes Store. It also celebrated the event by including an “LGBT Gay Pride” station on iTunes Radio.
Siri: “How long should a keynote last?”
As anyone who watched Wednesday’s nearly three-hour livestream of the Google I/O kickoff, the answer to that question should be 90 minutes or less.
As the event dragged on, the tone on Twitter went from restrained interest about Google’s somewhat underwhelming announcements to reports of sleeping reporters and jabs at the ponderous presentation’s length. “Apple just launched a keynote shortener,” tweeted Dave Pell.
Tim Cook and Craig Federighi took a few swipes at Android during WWDC’s keynote, but now that Google is readying its hype machine for Google I/O tomorrow, Sundar Pichai, the head of Android, tossed a few jabs Apple’s way in an interview with Bloomberg this morning.
Pichai noted that all the data points to people adopting Android faster than any other operating system, but the dude’s so gosh darn nice, he couldn’t insult Apple without flattering them in the same breath.
Addressing Tim Cook’s comments that Android is a “toxic hell stew of vulnerabilities,” Pichai said it’s difficult to compare the two, because iOS is like the $100,000 Mercedes Benz of mobile platforms, and Android is like your cheap ass Honda Civic, taking over the world one delicious dessert fueled update at a time.
With iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, Apple is finally showing us its idea of how we’ll compute in the future. Perhaps not surprisingly, this pristine vision of our computing destiny — unveiled after years of secret, patient and painstaking development — aligns perfectly with how we currently use our computers and mobile devices.
The keynote at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month not only showed off a new way to think about computing, based on data not devices, but also silenced pretty much every criticism leveled at the company over the past few years.
Let’s take a look at Apple’s new way of doing things, which fulfills Steve Jobs’ post-PC plan by minimizing the importance of the Mac.
Now that Katie Cotton, Apple’s longtime head of corporate communication, has retired, Tim Cook is on the hunt for a “friendly, more approachable” face to head its PR going forward.
According to Re/code, Apple is looking outside the company for high-profile candidates to fill Cotton’s role. Depending on who replaces her, Apple’s relationship with the media could begin to warm up considerably.
Six years after Apple pioneered what it means to be a mobile app, the company has reinvented the concept in iOS 8.
Thanks to what the company calls Extensibility, iOS 8 can let apps talk to one another and work together like never before. Once developers figure out how to implement their newfound flexibility, apps won’t just be apps anymore. They will become tools and services. Not just silos that can’t communicate, but pipes feeding into each other.
“Extensibility is tremendously interesting, and it’s fair to say developers have hoped for something like this practically since day one,” said David Chariter of AgileBits, makers of 1Password. Developers like AgileBits see iOS 8 as a sign that mobile apps will become not only smarter, but more powerful in their ability to aid users.