Tim Cook is going to Washington to testify before a Senate committee next week, but the Apple CEO is pulling a rare move for the company and going on the offensive early by giving media interviews to explain its position.
During an interview with Politico, Cook addressed the controversy surrounding Apple’s cash hoard by explaining where its offshore cash comes from, how Apple plans to bring more manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., and why the company will push for policy change in Washington:
Apple has fallen under plenty of scrutiny for storing a majority of its $100+ billion cash horde overseas to avoid paying U.S. corporate taxes, the highest tax rate in the world. Now Apple CEO Tim Cook has been summoned to speak at a Senate hearing next week as part of an investigation into the offshore tax practices of U.S businesses.
If you’re an Apple fan (and who reading this isn’t?), there are few conversations that would be better than sitting down with one of the company’s top execs to quiz them over all things Cupertino.
That was the rationale behind a 2013 auction to raise money for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. The prize? A cup of coffee with Tim Cook at 1 Infinite Loop. The eye-watering (iWatering?) price tag: $610,000.
Even at that price he’s not going to tell you what the iPhone 7 looks like, or if Jony Ive is working on an aluminum hover board, but it would still be the conversation of a lifetime. If you’re feeling a bit cash-strapped, you could try lunch with Mr. Fix-It Eddy Cue. A related auction went for "just" $10,000.
The charity auction to score a coffee date in Cupertino with Apple CEO Tim Cook has closed, and the winning bid ended up being $610,00. Yes, that’s more than a half million dollars for an hour of Cook’s time. The estimated price was originally $50,000.
After 86 bids that quickly sent the auction into the stratosphere, an anonymous bidder known only as “a********s” swooped in today and won with the closing bid.
Apple looks to be building another retail store in Beijing, which could open its doors in time for the launch of new iPhones and iPads this fall. Construction has begun on a building that bears a strong resemblance to a typical Apple retail outlet in Beijing’s China Central Place Shopping Center.
There’s no doubt that the iPhone is one of the most popular pieces of technology ever invented. The rush of people lining up for hours just to buy one usually causes competing carriers to trip all over themselves for the opportunity to sell the iPhone, except recently the list of carriers clamoring for the iPhone has slowly dwindled to just a few prospects.
Despite its successes, Apple is missing out on the chance to sell the iPhone to as many as 2.8 billion new smartphone customers, and according to some experts, the only thing that’s stopping them is Apple’s own rules.
Slip on your Nikes and grab your Kool-Aid, dear brethren, it’s time for a new episode of The CultCast. This time around, iOS 7 takes over your car; 5S gets better at selfies; Jony Ive is under pressure; Tim Cook really doubles down on secrecy, ya’ll; and we pitch our favorite tech and apps on an all new Fave’s ‘N Raves.
All that and more on this week’s CultCast! Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.
Break on through to the other side for the show notes.
That historic “grab a cuppa joe with Tim Cook” auction, which still has a couple of weeks to go and has already broken records, has had a little bit of a set back: credit card fraud that has set the auction back by thousands of dollars.
Apple executives have a long history of appearing at the All Things Digital (or “D”) conference every year. Steve Jobs gave some of his most revealing public interviews at D over the years, and Tim Cook’s first major interview as Apple’s newly-appointed CEO was at D10 last year.
For D11, Tim Cook will be headlining once again with an interview on the conference’s opening night, May 28th.
Despite having a mountain of cash overseas, Apple has decided it’d be cheaper for the company to go into debt for its stock buyback program, rather than bring the money back to the U.S. to be taxed.
After taking the initial steps yesterday toward offering bonds to investors, Apple opened up its order book today and plans to sell $17 billion worth of bonds. The six-part all dollar offering has already attracted more than $50 billion of orders within the first few hours, in what has become the largest non-bank bond deal in history.
According to a report from Reuters, Apple is offering $17 billion worth of bonds in the following six bond types to investors:
Japanese telecom provider KDDI’s mobile branch is planning to kick off its iPhone 5S pre-orders on June 20 ahead of a launch in July, according to an internal document that has been making its way around the web. The carrier expects the device to offer a 13-megapixel camera as well as Apple’s latest iOS 7 operating system.
This time around on CultCast: why we need $150,000 $230,000 $500,000 for coffee with Tim Cook; Mr. Cook talks iPhone with a 5-inch screen; and with mobile products like the iPad taking over, could Apple eventually stop selling Macs? Plus, we’re finally getting a new Xbox console; the next iOS and OS X at WWDC; and the current Apple hardware drought needs to end!
All that and more on this week’s CultCast. Stream or download new and past episodes on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.
Show notes up next.
UPDATE: Bidding just reached $505,000!
Earlier this week we wrote about a Charitybuzz auction that will get you coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. At the time, the auction had reached $5,250, but its estimated value was just under ten times that amount at $50,000.
Just a few days later, the auction has received 68 bids and reached a whopping $295,000 with 18 days still to go. It’s now Charitybuzz’s biggest ever auction.
(Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on Medium, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Evan Williams’ new publishing platform.)
Usually during Apple’s quarterly earnings calls, you have to read between the lines to guess what Apple’s really thinking. On Tuesday, all you had to do was read the actual lines, because Cupertino was remarkably candid for a change: there was no way that the Apple of 2013 could match the numbers of the Apple of 2012, but “new product categories” — like the iWatch — were going to blow the roof off the house in 2014. In the meantime, Apple needs investors to be patient… and they’re not above paying them off to make it happen.
If you dream of chilling with your homie Tim Cook in the morning and grabbing coffee but never had the chance to meet Silicon Valley’s most powerful CEO, then here’s your chance.
Tim Cook is auctioning off 30min-1hour of his time for CharityBuzz.com. Proceeds go to support the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, and you’ll get to hangout with Tim at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. Who knows. Maybe if you woo him he’ll show you the latest iWatch prototype.
The current bid is set at $5,250 but the estimated value of the prize is $50,000. The winner will get to bring themselves and 1 guest to coffee-time with Tim, but don’t expect to get too cozy with Tim as the auction details explain you’ll have to undergo a security screening before you get close to him, and he’s not going to pay for your hotel and airplane either.
Source: CharityBuzz
Via: Twitter
Today Apple announced its financial earnings for the last fiscal quarter, reporting the first year-over-year loss in profit the company has seen in ten years. The tone of Apple’s call with investors was quite different than past quarters. Tim Cook and co. seemed very much on the defensive, as Wall Street has been hammering AAPL for the past several months.
There were still several interesting tidbits from the call that we’ve rounded up. Tim Cook spoke vaguely about exciting new products in the fall and throughout 2014. Comments were made about the possibility of a larger iPhone, iMac supply constraints, and, of course, plenty of numbers.
Tim Cook is a well-liked CEO, at least according to employee ratings on Glassdoor, a website that allows employees of any company to post reviews, ratings, and other such metadata about the companies they work for.
The current rating of Apple CEO Tim Cook on the service is a high 94 percent, gathered from all the employees who have rated him on the service, a total of 724 as of this writing. While Glassdoor is an opt-in survey system, it is anonymous. If they hated the guy, they’d probably say so. Anonymity plus the internet is anything but overly polite.
Apple just released its Q2 2013 Financial results, and even though Apple beat its own estimates, Tim Cook started the Quarterly Financial Call on the defensive.
Cook started the call by explaining how exceptional Apple’s 2012 financial results were for Apple, so it’s hard for the company to improve sales this quarter. Then Cook commented on Apple’s struggling stock price by saying he’s “very frustrated” with the stock’s declining value the last few quarters, but they’re staying focused on the future.
Hoping to appease investors, Apple announced today that it will payback $100 billion to investors by 2015. Apple has yet to release a major product in 2013, but Cook reassured investors that Apple can’t wait to release new hardware and software this Fall and throughout 2014.
I’ve been writing for Cult of Mac for almost three years now, and in that time I’ve covered some pretty farfetched Apple rumors. But the latest from Forbes comes with a whole new level of crazy.
“Some Wall Street sources close to some Apple executives” say the Cupertino company could be searching for a replacement for Tim Cook, it claims, before suggesting Cook could turn Apple into another Hewlett-Packard or JC Penney and insisting “Apple’s shine has faded” since the passing of Steve Jobs.
We get ca-rayyy-zee on this week’s CultCast, takin’ ’bout iPhone 5S’ rumored new camera; why megapixels don’t matter; Facebook Home coming to iOS; why teens really love Snapchat; and we review the new iSteve mockumentary—it’s either way better or way worse than you heard. Plus more!
Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.
Be excellent to each other, and party on through for the show notes.
Four out of the five highest-paid executives in the United States work for Apple, Bloomberg Businessweek reports, but not one of them is CEO Tim Cook.
According to fiscal 2012 compensation figures for top earners filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Apple’s Bob Mansfield, Bruce Sewell, Jeffrey Williams, and Peter Oppenheimer join Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to make up the top five corporate earners last year.
Steam! That’s what Steve Jobs would have had rocket from his ears when he heard about Facebook Home. We’ll explain why on our newest CultCast, but also covet aloud the one feature we hope Apple borrows for iOS. Plus, inside Leander Kahney’s Jony Ive book; Ron Johnson father of the Apple Store takes a boot to the rear; and we wrap with an all new Faves ‘N Raves, the segment where we pitch our favorite tech and apps then vote on which one’s best!
Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing now on iTunes, or hit play below and let the good times roll.
Click on through for the show notes.
Apple’s U.S. Mac sales changed around 7.5% during the first quarter of 2013, according to research firms IDC and Gartner, but neither agree on whether they were up or down. While IDC reports that shipments were down 7.5% during January to April, Gartner sales that sales were up 7.4%. So who’s right?
Apple's forthcoming Campus 2 is set to become Silicon Valley's most envy-inducing headquarters: the kind of futuristic home base that belongs in a James Bond movie.
With work progressing nicely, en route to a 2016 opening, we thought the time was right to look at some of the (fictional) headquarters it will be competing against for title of best secret lair of all time.
Scroll through our gallery to take a look at some of our other picks. You never know when Tim Cook will decide to incorporate an underground cave or shark tank into Apple's new home...
The budget for Apple’s “spaceship” campus has ballooned from $3 billion to “nearly $5 billion” since 2011, according to a new report from Bloomberg Businessweek. Five people close to the project say its cost will now eclipse the $3.9 billion being spent on the new World Trade Center complex in New York City.
iPhone theft has become a huge problem in places like New York City and San Francisco. District Attorney George Gascón is on a mission to curb smartphone theft by having manufacturers implement a kill switch once a phone has been reported stolen, but that’s proven more difficult than Gascón imagined.
During his crusade to get answers from manufacturers, Gascón talked with Apple’s government liaison about getting a kill switch added to the iPhone, but was told that might not be possible because the next two iPhones were developed while Steve Jobs was still CEO at Apple.
Apple has been getting pounded by the Chinese press lately for its warranty policies service and not talking to the press whenever they want a statement (welcome to Apple news my friends). Hoping to end the onslaught from the government-supported press, Apple issued an apology letter to Chinese customers signed by Tim Cook.
The letter, which was written in Chinese and posted to Apple’s website, said that Tim Cook and the rest of the company have been reflecting on the feedback regarding its warranty policies and apologizes the poor communication that has made customers so angry.