If you’ve ever wished you could grab lunch with Apple’s Tim Cook, now is your chance. Cook is auctioning off a lunch date at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. All proceeds from the action will go to the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights.
And yes, you might be experiencing deja-vu. Cook did a similar auction last year, and the top bidder paid $610,000 to have coffee with the CEO.
Apple turned what could have been a deathly boring financial ritual into an occasion for celebration Wednesday, posting record numbers and making headlines with some unexpected moves.
Here’s our take on everything you need to know from the latest quarterly earnings call.
Tim Cook will put his iPhone on speaker this afternoon to tell the world how much money Apple has made selling us insanely great gadgets, and we’ll be liveblogging the call.
During the quarterly earnings report, which starts at 2 p.m. Pacific, Cook and company will share details about Apple’s Q2 financial performance with investors and the rest of the faithful.
Some analysts predict a yawn-inducing “business as usual” earnings report, but you never know – Cook might have to sing some fancy arpeggios if the numbers don’t jibe with predictions made last year, when he crowed about exciting products in the Apple pipeline.
Whether Tim’s talk leads to boos or a standing ovation, Cult of Mac will brave the recital of all the mind-numbing money-speak to help you tune in to the true meaning behind it all. Keep this page open as we post all the interesting bits.
Under the watchful eye of Tim Cook Apple’s gone from the most powerful tech company in the world to the most green. Yesterday’s new ad shone the spotlight on Apple’s environmental practices but the true celebrations of going green kicked off today for Earth Day.
Select Apple Stores around the world sprouted green leafed logos to go with new Earth Day shirts and lanyards for Specialists and Geniuses, but rather than driving all the way to your local store we’ve gathered shots of Apple Stores near and far celebrating Apple’s pledge to leave the world better than they found it.
Take a look:
Apple has released its latest commercial, and it’s a doozy.
Called “Better,” the ad (which is narrated by Tim Cook) refers to Apple’s work in terms of its environmental efforts — describing the company’s push to reduce its carbon footprint, conserve resources, and inspire others to follow suit.
When it comes to emoji, Apple supports everything from a smiling pile of feces to intricately detailed sunset landscapes. But if you’re looking for racial diversity there’s not a black person to be found and we’re not sure if the dude with the thick mustache is supposed to be latino, but if you scroll through the collection you’ll get the point.
The lack of racial diversity in emojis was not lost on MTV Act’s Joey Parker who decided to email Tim Cook about the controversy and was surprised to get a response the next day about Apple’s efforts to make emoji more diverse.
Here’s what Apple PR Queen Katie Cotton had to say about the emoji controversy:
Secret sauce—it’s the reason Apple keeps winning where others fail, and on our newest CultCast, we discuss the recipe that keeps Apple ahead of the pack. Plus, iOS 8 rumors detail some powerful new features; whispers of an impossibly thin iPhone 6; A-list musicians praise Pono as the digital music player for audiophiles; iPad 4 makes a comeback; and we reveal our favorite Cult movies on a all-new Get To Know Your Cultist!
Guffaw your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the uproarious good time commence.
And thanks to FreshBooks for sponsoring this episode! That’s right, Fresbooks the simple online accounting solution built for small business owners – just like you – who want to skip the headache of tax time. For a limited time, try FreshBooks free 60 days, and enter “CultCast” in the “How Did You Hear About Us” section.
Show notes up next!
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CultCast #118 – The Secret Sauce
Leander Kahney – Cult of Mac Editor-in-Chief, loyal subject of the Queen.
Erfon Elijah – Cult of Mac writer and host of The CultCast.
Buster Heine – Cult of Mac writer and community manager.
iOS 8 Apple considers Notification Center Messages tweaks removing Game Center app (Discussion)
Pegatron And Foxconn Gearing Up For iPhone 6 Production [Rumor]
Apple Retires iPad 2, Replaces It With Retina Display Model
Apple Confirms The 8GB iPhone 5c Will Not Be Sold In The U.S.
Tim Cook has been named one of the top 50 greatest leaders in the world by Fortune. The 53-year-old Apple CEO is positioned at number 33 on the list, and the only American tech CEO above him is Amazon’s Jeff Bezos at number 10.
Dozens of books have been written about Apple and Steve Jobs since the latter’s passing in 2011. None have painted as grim a picture for Apple’s future as Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs by Yukari Iwatani Kane, but in a rare public statement Tim Cook has come out to bash the book, calling it simply “nonsense.”
In our review, Luke Dormehl says Kane’s book was a missed opportunity that ultimately falls shorts, but Tim is a bit harsher with his criticism, saying Haunted Empire doesn’t properly capture Apple, Steve, or anyone else in the company for that matter.
Here’s the money quote from Tim:
Writing a book about any technology company is hard. Books take a long time to write, and a longer time to make it into print and arrive in stores. Technology, on the other hand, moves quickly. As a tech author, you have two options. One is to write a book that tries its best to be timely by making it to market as soon as possible. The other is to wait until a book-length narrative has unfolded, and then to write about it. Tech writers, I suggest, would typically prefer the latter. Book publishers prefer the former.
Activist investor Carl Icahn is at it again — and Apple might be lending moral support to his latest target.
Tim Cook was reportedly one of several tech leaders, along with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who was consulted by eBay CEO John Donahoe for advice on how best to deal with Icahn.
Donahoe has been locked in conflict with Icahn regarding Icahn’s suggestion that eBay should spin PayPal off as its own company.
Steve Wozniak hasn’t been involved in Apple business for a long, long time. However, that wasn’t enough to stop him from participating in a recent, wide-ranging discussion at CeBIT 2014 in Hannover — on everything from Tim Cook’s performance as CEO, to whether or not Apple still has the cool factor.
If living next door to Tim Cook is on your bucket list you just missed the narrow window to scoop up the condo next door to the Apple CEO.
After being put on the market just a few weeks ago the four bedroom condo owned by Google Ventures co-founder, Bill Marris has been bought for a little under $3 million.
Earlier this week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Tim Cook for a lunch as part of his tour of the United States.
In the aftermath of the Wednesday meeting, the Prime Minister uploaded a short video clip to his YouTube channel, offering a brief inside glimpse of the Apple headquarters in Cupertino.
Tim Cook lashed out at shortsighted, bottom line-driven investors during Friday’s annual shareholders meeting — telling them to “get out of [Apple] stock.”
The exchange concerned the conservative think tank National Center for Public Policy Research, which was pushing Apple to disclose the cost of its sustainability programs, and the impact this had on the company’s earning power.
Cook was asked about Apple’s plans to have 100 percent of its power come from green sources — and whether this was the case only because of government subsidies on green energy.
Asked to commit point-blank to only pursuing moves immediately profitable to Apple, Cook responded with anger — noting that Apple does many things because they are right and just, and not simply about making a return on investment (ROI).
This time on The CultCast: hipsters have beards installed; the mysterious life of Timothy Cook; exciting rumors around the new Jobs movie; Mavericks 10.9.2’s features and fixes; why you should install iOS 7.0.6 like, right now; Netflix pays off Comcast; and we’re too sexy for this podcast.
Laugh your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin.
And thanks to Lynda.com for sponsoring this episode. Learn at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at Lynda.com.
The Apple TV made a staggering $1 billion in sales in 2013. Tim Cook shared the news during Apple’s annual meeting with shareholders today in Cupertino, California.
“It’s a little more difficult to call it a hobby these days,” said Cook during the meeting. For years, Apple has referred to the Apple TV as a hobby, but the company’s tone towards the $99 product is starting to change.
Apple confirmed to CNBC late on Monday that it has asked Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to veto the controversial religious freedom bill SB1062.
Apple is the latest company to urge Brewers to veto the bill, which critics have suggested will allow companies to use religious belief as a basis for discriminating against the gay and lesbian community.
Following the unexpected uncovering of Tim Cook’s high school photos, Apple has updated the official iPhone 5s page and iSight section to pay tribute to the company CEO’s gawky yearbook origins. Looking good, Tim!
Apple may be great at making trackpads, but they are pretty terrible at making computer mice. On the positive side, though? Those mice make pretty great fashion statements.
Successor to Steve Jobs, BFF of Steve Wozniak, and all-around “creative genius” Kanye West had some harsh words for Tim Cook over the weekend.
Speaking/singing on stage at a Saturday night show in Newark, NJ, West blasted the Apple CEO for allegedly asking him to perform for free at an Apple event.
Getting Apple to dish on secrets is practically impossible, but if you’re looking for an inside line to one of the most powerful CEOs in tech, the house next door to Tim Cook just went on the market.
That’s right, even you could become Tim Cook’s neighbor, as long as you got a cool $2.8 million in the bank to drop on a condo.
Tim Cook has acknowledged that Apple has bought back $14 billion of its own shares over the past two weeks — reacting to an 8 percent decline in shares following the recent financial quarter results.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Cook admitted that he was “surprised” by Wall Street’s reaction to Apple’s last quarter, in which the company broke records by selling 77 million iOS devices over the holiday season.
Apple’s recent share repurchase is the largest of its kind for a company of Apple’s size over a similar timespan. During the past 12 months, Apple has bought back $40 billion of its own shares — part of a plan to repurchase a total of $60 billion. In the past two weeks Cook says that Apple bought $12 billion of its shares through an “accelerated” repurchase program, and a further $2 billion on the open market. Apple plans to disclose updates to its buyback program either next month or in April.
Apple is the fourth greenest tech/telecoms company — generating 85 percent of its power through green power sources — according to a new list published by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The recently published report compares the amount of power used by America’s top technology and telecom firms with the percentage that comes from renewable “green” resources, such as wind, solar, bio-gas and other options.
Tim Cook has made a journey over to Ireland this week to visit with staff at the company’s Cork offices. Along with addressing the 4,000 employees responsible for assembling the MacBook Pro, Cook also met up with the country’s prime minister, Taoiseach Enda Kenny today to talk about Apple’s presence in the country, and the Irish tax laws that help it avoid paying billions extra.
The Irish Prime Minister denied claims that the Irish government courts multinational companies like Apple to give them special deals on their corporate tax rate. According to a report from theJournal.ie, Edna Kenny said the tax issue came up during his conversation with Cook and told him they’re in discussions with the OECD about an international response, but the country’s statutory rate of 12.5% applies to all companies.
