As Apple’s longest-running annual keynote event, it’s no surprise that WWDC has played host to some absolutely enormous announcements over the years.
From strategies that changed the company’s course to the debut of astonishing new products, here are our picks for the most important ones. Check out the list below.
Jimmy Iovine wants people to pay for music again and he’s got a plan that just might work: make free music streaming suck.
The Apple exec and music industry legend sat down for a new wide-ranging interview, during which Iovine lamanted that artists aren’t getting paid enough for their music anymore. And it’s mostly Spotify and YouTube’s fault.
Steve Jobs wanted The Fly and Jurassic Park actor Jeff Goldblum to be the “voice of Apple,” the actor claimed in a recent interview on the Today Show in Australia. “Steve Jobs called me up a few decades ago,” said Goldblum. “That was early on, and I did not know it was Steve Jobs.”
Sadly it didn’t exactly happen like that. It seems that, unlike life, Steve Jobs, uh, couldn’t find a way…
Apple pulled back the curtain of its new spaceship campus in a new interview that highlights all sorts of crazy facts about what went into the new campus, including how it Steve Jobs originally wanted it to look like a penis.
Obviously, Penis Park got scraped in favor of Apple’s perfect circle. But the perfect campus might not have been a disaster if Steve Jobs’ hadn’t shown some early drawings to his son, according to Wired’s deep look into the campus that also reveals how Apple went out of its way to invent an all-new pizza box that keeps crusts fresh.
Apple’s epic Apple Park campus is more or less complete, and it’s celebrated in a great new Wired cover story, written by one of the best Apple journalists out there.
In the article, Steven Levy — who has had the inside scoop on Apple since the 1980s, and written two great books (The Perfect Thing and Insanely Great) on the company — makes a great argument that Apple Park is nothing less than the final product of Steve Jobs himself.
Here’s why:
Apple’s new spaceship campus still isn’t quite ready for employees to move into yet, but the amount of work done over the past year has been absolutely astonishing.
In the latest aerial video of Apple Park, drone videographer Matthew Roberts takes fans through a breathtaking review of all the construction that’s gone on in the past year. You can watch as Tim Cook’s beautiful pile of dirt gets slowly redistributed across the campus as solar panels, glass walls and hundreds of trees get put in their proper place.
Check out the progress Apple’s made:
Apple currently offers more products than ever before. Whether you’re buying an iPhone, an iPad, a Mac, or even an Apple Watch, there are a bunch of options to consider before you hand over your cash in an Apple store.
Having options is always a good thing, but has Apple’s product portfolio become too confusing for consumers? Does the company even have the resources to keep everything fresh and fully-supported, or is its larger lineup hurting its products?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we battle it out over whether it’s time for Apple to streamline its product lineup.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn’t always see eye to eye. When it came to their kids’ relationships to technology, however, it seems they agreed on more than they disagreed on.
That’s based on a new interview with Microsoft co-founder Gates, in which he says he and his wife didn’t allow their children to have cellphones until they were 14 — and limited other screen time as well. Jobs did much the same.
The first iMac’s frightful code name was an in-joke that reflected Steve Jobs’ respect for Sony. The working name — “MacMan” — was so horrible it would “curdle your blood,” according to Ken Segall, the Apple exec who eventually came up with the name “iMac.” Nearly 20 years after Apple shipped the iMac G3, we now have an explanation for the craptacular internal name — courtesy of Phil Schiller, the guy who came up with it.
Apple fans looking for a dose of Mac nostalgia can now relive the early days of the Macintosh’s black-and-white software from the comfort of the internet.
This week on The CultCast: Official new Nvidia drivers make your Mac compatible with the best GPUs on the market! Plus: A mole gives us our best look yet at what it’s really like to work in an iPhone factory; Apple’s working on a “breakthrough” diabetes treatment with the Apple Watch; and the saga of Ron Wayne, the forgotten Apple co-founder who traded his $22 billion of Apple stock for just $800.
Our thanks to Casper, maker of the internet’s favorite mattress, for supporting this episode. Learn why and save $50 off your order at casper.com/cultcast.
The official Apple Park campus should open its doors to employees later this month, but if you can’t wait for Apple to take the wraps off its shiny new spaceship, the Minecraft replica is now complete.
We got our first look at the Minecraft version of Apple Park earlier this month and were blown away by the amount of detail creator Alex Westlund threw in. Now after 413 hours of work, you can fly through Apple’s new campus and gawk at the last Apple product Steve Jobs unveiled.
Check it out:
An ultra-rare Apple-1 prototype used by Steve Jobs as a demo unit is going on display at a Seattle computer museum. It’s the crown jewel of an impressive collection of vintage Apple gear that will be housed in a new wing opening Friday at Living Computers: Museum + Labs.
Lāth Carlson, the museum’s executive director, calls the Apple prototype “the most important computer in history” — and also “the most boring to look at.”
Walt Mossberg, the award-winning tech writer who was one of Steve Jobs’ favorite journalists, is retiring.
Currently serving as executive editor at The Verge and editor-at-large of Recode, Mossberg has been one of the best-known names in tech writing since 1991, when he started writing his “Personal Technology” column for the Wall Street Journal.
Take a good look at that slim iPhone 7 in your hand, or the powerful MacBook Pro balanced on your knees. Then imagine the very first circuit board that flipped the switch to power a revolution that put those devices in your possession.
A video recently posted to YouTube by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London shows a working Apple I computer, one of only six known in the world today.
More than five years after Steve Jobs’ death, a third of Australians rank the former Apple CEO as the ultimate dream boss, according to a new study.
Artist Robert Sikoryak has a knack for introducing skittish readers to dense classic literature with comic book adaptions. Try Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment with a 1950s-era Batman with blood on his ax.
But would you consider reading Apple’s terms and conditions user agreement for iTunes as a graphic novel — all 20,699 dry, legalistic words?
Apple’s new spaceship campus is set to open to the public in April, but if you can’t make the drive all the way out to Cupertino, you can check out the new site on Apple Maps.
The jet black iPhone 7 is one of the most beautiful Apple devices we’ve seen in years, but if you have a hunkering for a more retro look, Colorware’s new mod has got you covered.
Apple is set to move into its new spaceship campus next month, but based on the latest drone video of the construction site, there’s still a lot of work left to do.
The grounds of Apple Park are still littered with construction crews working on everything from landscaping to solar panels. Tim’s big beautiful pile of dirt has been spread throughout the site and some new trees are finally being planted.
Check it out:
An Apple I may not be much use to you these days, but its significance in Apple history makes it one of the most valuable pieces of old technology.
Another rare Apple I, complete with an archive of original documents including the machine’s original user manual, will go to auction in Germany this May — and it’s expected to fetch up to $320,000.
Apple CEO Tim Cook appears to be open to a friendlier relationship with Google than Steve Jobs ever was. Cook got spotted dining with Google CEO Sundar Pichai at one of the top Vietnamese restaurants in Silicon Valley this week. What the two powerful tech leaders were discussing is still a mystery, though.
Here’s another angle:
The stellar support you get at the Genius Bar is one reason why many of us continue to buy Macs, but it almost never made it to an Apple store. Steve Jobs thought the idea was “idiotic” and told former retail chief Ron Johnson it would fail.
Among questions on his favorite sandwiches (“Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger”) and whether he can still jump over a chair (probably not), Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates got asked whether his company had copied Steve Jobs during a Reddit Q&A on Monday.
Gates denied copying Cupertino — but reminded everybody that Microsoft and Apple both borrowed liberally from another Silicon Valley pioneer.
Back in 1984, Steve Jobs didn’t wear an Apple Watch. Instead, he wore a Seiko Chariot timepiece, as seen in an iconic photo used on the cover of Time magazine after Jobs’ 2011 death.
While Jobs’ “heavily worn” original sold for $42,000 at auction last year, Japanese watchmaker Seiko and Tokyo retailer Nano Universe are teaming up to produce a small batch affordable replicas.