| Cult of Mac

Apple lawsuit alleges startup poached engineers who stole chip secrets

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Apple's lawsuit against Rivos alleges recruited engineers stole proprietary information.
Apple's lawsuit against Rivos alleges recruited engineers stole proprietary M1 chip information.
Photo: Apple

Apple filed a lawsuit Friday against a “stealth mode” startup known as Rivos, saying it poached engineers who stole proprietary information as part of the recruitment process.

Cupertino said Rivos plans to design chips that will compete with its own — and starting with Apple’s own technology.

Why it pays for startup founders to use iMessage blue bubbles

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iMessage
Blue bubbles good. Green bubbles bad. Or something.
Photo: Killian Bell's Peartree Productions/Cult of Mac

Considering that blue and green aren’t too far apart on the color spectrum, the difference between sending blue bubble messages and green bubble messages is pretty stark. The former, of course, means that the user is sending an iMessage, while the latter is a generic SMS, probably from an Android device.

For years, a certain segment of the population have mocked the green bubble crowd — with the gist being that a green bubble sender must have something wrong with them if they don’t own an iPhone. In a recent tweet, the CEO of a popular startup noted something else: That green bubble startup founders may have a tougher time landing investment.

“Unfortunate reality: if you don’t have iMessage, you are less likely to succeed at work,” Joshua Browder, the CEO of legal tech firm DoNotPaytweeted this week. “The blue bubbles build trust!”

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.

Apple invests $1 billion in world’s biggest tech fund

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tim cook in a car
Apple invested $1 billion in Didi Chuxing last year.
Photo: Tim Cook/Twitter

Apple confirmed today that is getting into the venture capital game by investing in one of the world’s largest tech funds.

SoftBank’s new Vision Fund received $1 billion from Apple, according to a company spokesperson that revealed the company is investing in the $100 billion fund to gain access to future technology.

7 tips for making your live demo not suck

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Myles Weissleder Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Myles Weissleder of SF New Tech. Portrait: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

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.

From Your iPhone, With Love: Thank You Pen Does What Cards App Can’t [Feature]

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Say hello to Thank You Pen.
Say hello to Thank You Pen.

A warehouse nestled in the heart of Louisville, Kentucky is home to hundreds of unnamed machines. Each white box gently wields a robotic arm that grips a normal-looking pen. As I walkdown the aisles separating the machines, disjointed sounds of clicks and squeaks fill the air. I’m in the home of Thank You Pen, a new startup that aims to blend technology with good, old-fashioned, dead-tree communication. “And while the service’s creator modestly says he can’t compete with Apple, Thank You Pen is doing what Cards can’t: putting love, care and soul into every card sent.”

Learn How to Use Keynote for Your Startup For FREE [Deals]

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CoM - keynote-logo

If you’ve always wanted to learn how to make mockups, prototypes, sales videos, cartoons and more to help you communicate your dream to the world, then Cult of Mac Deals has something for you. It’s a course that will teach you how to use Apple’s Keynote to help lift your message about your startup to new heights. When you’ve completed this course you’ll have actionable steps on how to get the most out of that amazingly effective piece of software.

And – as a token of our appreciation – we’re giving it to you for free.

Chomp? Why Didn’t Google Think Of That?

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Cathy Edwards
Cathy Edwards was the CTO and cofounder of Chomp, an innovative app search engine acquired by Apple. She is now a senior iTunes engineer. She'll be working on one of the thorniest problems faced by the iOS users -- how to find the best apps.

Apple announced this week the acquisition of Chomp, an app-search startup.

Chomp CEO Ben Keighran is reportedly working already in Apple’s marketing department, and CTO Cathy Edwards is already employed as a senior iTunes engineer.

Chomp crawls the data associated with all the apps in an app store and uses a sophisticated algorithm-based search function to enable people to search and actually find the apps they really want. Less appreciated by the public (but not Apple) is what appear to be incredible analytics tools, enabling a deep understanding of what people are searching for, how successful they are at finding it and detecting meaningful trends in app demand.

Sound familiar? Search algorithms and analytics are Google’s core competency.