Nearly three years after Steve Jobs’ death, Apple’s keynotes have become pale imitations of their former glory. The last major keynote — November’s introduction of the iPad Air and Retina mini — was a major international snoozefest.
Utterly devoid of excitement, it served only to stoke the pervasive rumors of Apple’s lack of innovation after Jobs (which aren’t true, but nonetheless).
It’s time for Jony Ive to take over.
As another week full of news passes, your host Joshua Smith is here to give you a wrap-up on some of the latest and biggest features. iOS devices held for ransom, Apple’s big Beats acquisition and a rumored Apple iWatch are among just some of the featured stories in today’s rundown.
Take a look at the video and be sure to return next week for another. Subscribe to CultOfMacTV on youtube.com to catch new episodes of the roundup and other great video reviews, how-to’s and more.
Hours after Apple secured its $3 billion acquisition of Beats, Eddie Cue and Jimmy Iovine took the stage at Code Conference to talk about the new partnership along with the state of tech and the future of Apple.
Eddie boasted Apple’s 2014 product pipeline is the best he’s seen in his 25 years at Apple, but the duo also dished on their decade long relationship, the state of streaming music services and what Apple might do to make the TV experience a lot less sucky.
The interview has finally been posted in full by Re/code and while it’s slim on Apple secrets it does provide a fascinating look at where the company might be heading.
Check it out:
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Now that Apple’s acquisition of Beats has finally been made official, Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine took the stage at the the inaugural Code Conference tonight to give a peak behind the scenes of deal, as well as glimpse at what’s to come in 2014 – including the best product pipeline the company has seen in 25 years.
The interview comes as Apple is preparing for its annual developer’s conference in San Francisco next week where it’s expected to announce new versions of iOS and OS X, and while will have to wait to see if any hardware will come out as well, Eddy Cue is already hard at work hyping Apple’s upcoming products.
Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg led the conversation with Eddy Cue starting things off by parroting Tim Cook’s statements that Apple acquired Beats for three reasons: Talent, Headphones, and a Music Subscription Service, before revealing these eight new tidbits on the deal as well as the future of Apple:
We’re less than a week away from WWDC and while Apple’s official app is slim on clues for the event, the company just revealed it will stream its entire keynote to Macs and iPhones so you can learn about all the new goodies, even if you didn’t get a golden ticket.
Apple’s two latest ads in its expanding ‘Your Verse’ campaign tout the iPad as a content creation tool and instrumental part of the creative process. Calling them merely “ads” doesn’t actually do them justice, as they are much fuller stories than 30-second TV spots on Apple’s website.
Called “Orchestrating Sound” and “Exploring Without Limits,” the first narrative is a profile of renowned composer Esa-Pekka Salonen and how he uses the iPad to make symphonies. The second addition follows the deaf travel blogger Chérie King and how she uses the iPad on all of her trips around the world.
Hearing an Apple executive talk about their work in a relaxed setting is pretty unusual stuff, but that’s what happened earlier this week when Lisa Jackson, Apple’s VP of Environmental Initiatives, spoke as part of Fortune’s Brainstorm Green conference.
The 16-minute conversation, with Fortune Senior Editor (and former Apple author) Adam Lashinsky, touches on various topics related to Apple’s desire to go green — including some potentially revolutionary plans for its 400+ chain of retail stores.
Your Facebook app is about get a lot smarter at knowing what you’re listening to and watching on TV.
In an upcoming update in the App Store, Facebook will add the ability to automatically tag music and TV shows within a status update. The Shazam-like feature will have to be manually enabled by the user, and links to songs and shows will be attached to statuses in the News Feed. Facebook hopes the feature encourages people to share more, while it’s sure to cause some users to worry about sharing too much.
Apple is having some fun with the mystery surrounding its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, updating the WWDC app to include whimsical session titles designed to give devs a chuckle even as they’re guessing what’s next.
Just about the only solid piece of information from the app update is that Tim Cook and company will kick off the annual event with a special keynote June 2 at 10 a.m. Pacific in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Apple is expected to reveal details of iOS 8 and the next version of OS X during the address.