Silicon Valley

HBO unlocks 500 hours of free content, but not Game of Thrones

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You'll have to subscribe to HBO Now to see Game of Thrones.
You'll have to subscribe to HBO Now to see Game of Thrones.
Photo: HBO

HBO is joining the wave of companies that are offering free access to their content to placate everyone sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Starting on April 3, the HBO Now and HBO Go apps will offer freebies to anyone the doesn’t already have a paid subscription. The trove of over 500 hours of free content includes all seasons of The Sopranos, Silicon Valley, The Wire and Ballers. But if you’re hoping to finally catch up Game of Thrones for free, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

Apple Affordable Housing Fund launches with $150 million for projects

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Tim-Cook-Gavin-Newsom
Tim Cook discusses plans with Governor Gavin Newsom.
Photo: Apple

The first wave of Apple-funded affordable housing projects is about to get underway in Silicon Valley.

Housing Trust Silicon Valley revealed this week that Apple has given it a $150 million grant to help projects in the Bay Area. The non-profit organization is using money from Apple’s $2.5 billion commitment to help the affordable housing crisis in Silicon Valley and they’re ready to hand out some big checks.

Apple drops hilarious first trailer for Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet

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Apple TV+ comedy Mythic Quest coming to PAX South gaming expo
Apple TV+ has a quality. Now it just needs some more quantity.
Photo: Apple TV

Apple finally unveiled the official trailer for its first major comedy series Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet and so far it appears the wait has been worth.

Co-created by It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia stars Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day, Mythic Quest follows a team of video game developers hellbent on creating an epic sequel to the biggest multiplayer video game ever made. Mythic Quest‘s cast is packed with hilarious actors playing nerds with big egos that could turn it into the perfect successor to Silicon Valley which just aired its last episode.

Prepare to laugh your socks off:

Apple buys $290 million worth of more office space in Cupertino

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Applecampus
The new Apple campus in Cupertino.
Photo: Google Maps

It seems like Apple just completed its move into Apple Park just recently but apparently, the iPhone-maker is growing so quickly it already needs a major office space expansion.

Local news outlets in the Bay Area recently reported that Apple just gobbled up another two giant office complexes in Cupertino, giving the company over 200,000 square-feet within throwing-distance of the new Apple HQ and the old Infinite Loop campus it still uses.

Learn what it takes to be a Silicon Valley success story [Deals]

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Learn what it takes to make in Silicon valley, from more than a dozen people who have actually done it.
Learn what it takes to make in Silicon valley, from more than a dozen people who have actually done it.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

We’ve all heard the legendary stories of Silicon Valley success. But chances are, you haven’t heard from the people behind those stories. So this bundle of video lessons offers unique insight into the minds and experience of the Valley’s top players.

Apple employees think they make the world a better place

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Apple leases new offices near to Apple Park
Apple leases new offices near to Apple Park
Photo: Duncan Sinfield

A majority of Apple employees believe their company is making the world a better place, according to a survey by the anonymous workplace app Bind.

Blind sent its base a single True-False question – I believe my company is making the world a better place – and nearly 67 percent out of 10,589 Silicon Valley workers responded in the affirmative.

How Steve Jobs poached a Microsoft employee with a restaurant menu

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A successful Steve Jobs recruitment pitch came from an Il Fornaio menu. (It's an Italian restaurant in Palo Alto, California.)
"Do you want to eat pasta all your life, or join me and change the world?"
Photo: Lou Stejskal/Flickr CC

It’s not exactly breaking news that Steve Jobs was a great salesman. But a hilarious anecdote from Adam Fisher’s recent oral history of Silicon Valley, Valley of Genius, gives a great example of Jobs’ next-level skills.

Want to know how Jobs persuaded a product marketing expert from Microsoft to join his company NeXT? It turns out it involved little more than a bit of patented Steve Jobs charm — and a helping hand from a local Italian restaurant menu.

This post contains affiliate links. Cult of Mac may earn a commission when you use our links to buy items.

Even a fat Apple paycheck won’t buy an overpriced Bay Area house

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Apple salaries
Hardware engineers at Apple's Cupertino campus.
Photo: Apple

Your fantasy about working in Cupertino probably leads you to believe the pay is good. You would be correct, but according to more than half of the developers and supervisors at Apple, even their fat paychecks aren’t not enough to afford a house in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Some 60 percent of Apple workers, as surveyed by anonymous messaging app Blind, say home prices are too spendy even with salaries that exceed the national average by more than double.

Apple lists good deeds to avoid Cupertino ‘head tax’

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Apple Park Close up
Apple has long been based in Cupertino, where Steve Jobs grew up.
Photo: Apple

Apple is the reason why most non-locals know the name Cupertino. Just in case free international advertising wasn’t enough, however, the company just sent a letter to the Cupertino City Council, outlining all the nice things Apple does to benefit its hometown.

Although it doesn’t mention it, the letter conveniently arrives on the eve of a discussion on whether to impose a “head tax” on Apple employees in the area.

Learn to code on iOS with awesome perks — for a price

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This is a great opportunity to add the super marketable skill of coding to your resume.
Lambda School's coding academy sounds almost too good to be true.
Photo: Cult of Mac

A Silicon Valley is offering wannabe coders the opportunity to get a free MacBook and free housing while taking their 30-week iOS coding course.

Of course, there’s a bit of a catch with the offer. Lambda School CEO Austen Allred revealed his school’s amazing offer along with the stipulation that if you do find a job and start earning over $50k a year, you have to pay the school back.

Foxconn starts Silicon Valley invasion with new AI company

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Terry Gou
Foxconn founder Terry Gou (right) says he's making the U.S. a bigger focus in 2020.
Photo: Voice of America/Wikimedia Commons

Foxconn Technologies is starting a new company in California’s Silicon Valley to concentrate on artificial intelligence for factory floor automation.

The plan comes as Foxconn looks for ways to deal with the slowdown of smartphone sales globally, demands for higher wages and a changing workforce that is sidestepping manufacturing. Foxconn assembles thousands of iPhones and iPads and is among Apple’s biggest contractors.

Apple Park sparks huge rise in property values

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Apple Park
Apple's new "Spaceship" campus is contributing to soaring property values.
Photo: Duncan Sinfield

Innovation is great but having it as a neighbor can be a mixed blessing.

Silicon Valley counties are reporting soaring property values thanks to a tech sector boom led by Apple and Google, who have spent the last few years buying huge swaths of land to build new headquarters.

Big Sick creators write funny immigration TV series for Apple

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big sick
Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon are writing a TV show for Apple.
Photo: Film Nation Entertainment

Immigration is one of the hottest issues in Washington D.C. this week and with a little help from Apple, the issue is about to take over Hollywood too.

Apple is developing yet another original TV show called Little America that’s being written by Silicon Valley star Kumail Nanjiani and his partner Emily V. Gordon.

Apple raids Silicon Valley Data Science for new hires

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Apple leases new offices near to Apple Park
Apple's building a huge team of data scientists.
Photo: Duncan Sinfield

Apple’s data team just got a big talent boost after the company raided a local Silicon Valley consultant firm in hiring spree of data scientists.

Some of Silicon Valley Data Science’s key employees have reportedly joined Apple, giving the company more experts that can analyze data to make products even better.

12 white dudes in room is totally diverse, says Apple VP of Diversity

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diversity Apple
Apple is pledging to do more on the diversity front.
Photo: Apple

Creating diversity at Apple isn’t just about making sure more people of color get added to the mix, according to the exec put in charge of creating a more diverse and inclusive culture at the iPhone maker’s offices.

Denise Young Smith, Apple VP of Diversity and Inclusion, was part of a recent panel discussion on fighting racial injustice where she talked about her mission at Apple. White men currently account for 56% of Apple’s workforce, but Young Smith says that doesn’t mean the company isn’t diverse.

Apple’s self-driving Lexus gets caught on camera

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Apple Car
Apple's first self-driving Lexus.
Photo: Bloomberg

Apple’s self-driving cars have been spotted in the wild for the first time, giving fans an early peek at the tech that could change roads forever.

The California DMV issued a permit to Apple earlier this month allowing it to test its self-driving cars on public roads. Apple is only registered to drive three Lexus cars around Silicon Valley, but the company is wasting no time in its efforts to catch up to the competition.

Trump’s visa crackdown will likely upset Silicon Valley

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President Trump: Apple encryption could protect ‘criminal minds’
President Trump may butt heads with Apple again.
Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr CC

As if Silicon Valley needed another reason to not approve of President Donald Trump, the White House has started to deliver on its promise of cracking down on work visas given to overseas workers — many of whom toil in the tech industry.

This week, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency issued a memo detailing moves it intends to make to fight “fraud and abuse” of the program, while also warning employers that they shouldn’t discriminate against U.S. workers in their hiring.

Tim Cook spotted dining with Google CEO

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Does this mean the thermonuclear war is over?
Does this mean the thermonuclear war is over?
Photo: Amit Pradhan

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:

Watch Tim Cook introduce Al Gore’s new movie to Silicon Valley

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LOVELOUD
Tim Cook has pushed Apple to be one of the world's most environmentally friendly companies.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

Apple CEO Tim Cook made a special appearance during one of the first screenings of former vice president Al Gore’s new movie this week.

To kick off the Silicon Valley screening of Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” Cook gave a short speech before the silver screen lit up. Tim praised Gore for his work on the movie which is a direct sequel to the Academy Award-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” which highlighted the signs and dangers of climate change.

New Tom Hanks movie The Circle imagines world where Apple is evil

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The Circle looks a lot like Apple's spaceship.
The Circle looks a lot like Apple's spaceship.
Photo: STX Entertainment

Ever wonder what would happen if Tim Cook decided to go evil and use everyone’s iPhone data for nefarious purposes?

That’s basically the plot of Tom Hanks’ new movie, The Circle, which is set at an infinite-loop-shaped campus in Silicon Valley where everything looks absolutely perfect from the outside (just like Apple).

This retro photo shows how much Apple changed the face of Silicon Valley

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The site of Apple's spaceship campus back in 1961.
The site of Apple's spaceship campus back in 1961.
Photo: Santa Clara Public Library.

When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple way back in 1976, they had no idea how much their company would literally change the landscape of Silicon Valley, let alone the tech world.

Thanks to some old photographs of Cupertino, we can now see just how big of an imprint the Steves’ company has left behind.

White House uses Steve Jobs video to recruit techies

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Steve Jobs is the star of the government's new ad campaign.
Steve Jobs is the star of the government's new ad campaign.
Photo: U.S. Digital Service

The U.S. government has always had a hard time getting techies to work for it, but with a little help from Steve Jobs, the White House’s Digital Service team is hoping that will change.

President Barack Obama created the U.S. Digital Service as a “startup” within the White House in 2014 to help improve and expand the government’s online services. The service just launched a new marketing campaign this week that features Jobs giving inspirational advice to people who want to change the world.

See Uncle Steve posthumously recruit government tech workers in the ad below.

World’s first HomeKit community springs up in San Jose

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HomeKit is now getting packaged into new homes.
HomeKit is now getting packaged into new homes.
Photo: KB Home

Apple’s HomeKit platform is set to power an entire community currently under construction in San Jose.

Real estate development firm KB Home revealed today that its new community, Promenade at Communications Hill, will be the first ever in the US to have HomeKit technology built-in, providing a seamless experience from the foundation up.

Woz and other tech icons sign anti-Trump open letter

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wozniak
Woz joins Silicon Valley's anti-Trump crusade.
Photo: Reddit

Silicon Valley is uniting against presumed GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in an open letter today that calls out the candidate for his “anger, bigotry, fear of new ideas and new people, and a fundamental belief that America is weak and in decline.”

The letter is signed by some of the biggest names in the tech industry, including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mark Pincus at Zinga, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Vint Cerf and dozens of others.

Surprise: Silicon Valley campaign donations lean to the left

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surprise-silicon-valley-campaign-donations-lean-to-the-left-image-cultofandroidcomwp-contentuploads201605Crowdpac-tech-political-donations-jpg
Crowdpac silicon valley campaign donations companies
You won’t find a lot of Trump yard signs in the valley. Source: CrowdPAC

Silicon Valley campaign donations have poured way more money into the presidential bids of Democrats than Republicans, surprising nobody, ever.

This shocking revelation comes from a report from CrowdPAC, a non-partisan, political crowdfunding organization that has discovered that the companies most likely to donate to campaigns are Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. And while the findings don’t include fine-grain data like individual amounts or the actual numbers of employees, they do make one overwhelming conclusion:

Techies don’t like Donald Trump.