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Phil Schiller

Senior Vice President - Worldwide Marketing

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Phil Schiller rejoined Apple in 1997 as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, the same year that Steve Jobs returned. Phil is a well recognized Apple executive with his regular, enthusiastic stage presence at Apple events. He is also known for personally addressing customers’ product concerns. Some of his major accomplishments include the rise in popularity of Mac computers, innovating in the mobile phone space with iPhone, and spearheading the digital music revolution with iTunes and iPod. Also, he is supposedly credited with conceiving the click wheel idea for the original iPod.

Phil first started at Apple in 1987 as a Product Marketing Manager. He went on to work as the Director of Product Marketing at FirePower Systems and then as the Vice President of Marketing at Macromedia before he returned to Apple after a decade. Even though his Bachelor’s degree is in Biology from Boston University, he has a background as a programmer and systems analyst in addition to his almost thirty years of marketing and management experience.

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Early iPhone 5 buyers were already asking for bigger screens, reveals confidential document

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Patent trials generally aren’t the most exciting of events, but documents revealed through the second Apple vs Samsung case are certainly providing a lot of fascinating glimpses behind the scenes.

The latest is the above summary of research Apple carried out among early buyers of the iPhone 5 to find out what they thought of the phone and what improvements they wanted to see, tweeted by Jay Yarow. While longer battery-life and better maps will surprise no-one, it’s interesting that even at the beginning of last year, bigger screens was third on the list … 
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New Steve Jobs email a treasure trove of information about Apple TV, Google ‘holy war,’ and behind-the-scenes strategy

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A new email from Steve Jobs that was published during today’s Samsung lawsuit (via The Verge) has revealed a lot about Apple’s plans for its products in 2011 and beyond. As we’ve previously noted, Jobs referred to 2011 as a year of “holy war” against Google, but this document goes above that and describes how exactly Apple planned to wage this war.

A few choice bits are below, followed by the complete email.


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Apple so rattled by ‘Next Big Thing’ ads, it almost changed ad agency, claims Samsung

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Apple senior VP of marketing Phil Schiller was so concerned about Samsung’s Next Big Thing ad campaign, in which the company poked fun at Apple customers, that he emailed Tim Cook to suggest a change of ad agency to fight back – according to a claim by Samsung lawyer Jon Quinn.

The Verge reports that Quinn made the claim in his opening arguments in the patent trial in which Apple is accusing Samsung of violating five of its iOS-related patents.

Quinn says Schiller became “obsessed” with the campaign, writing CEO Tim Cook to suggest the company look into using another ad agency instead of its mainstay TBWA\CHIAT\DAY. That even led to Apple board discussions over the issue, Quinn added …


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Apple execs discuss 30 years of the Mac, the Surface-style touchscreen approach, and the coexistence of OS X & iOS

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Marking the 30th anniversary since Apple gave us the Mac, Macworld spoke with Apple’s Phil Schiller, Craig Federighi, and Bud Tribble to discuss the Mac in an era dominated by the iPhone and iPad.

The execs looked back at the Mac’s impact on the PC market and its historical significance for the company, and while they acknowledged the success of iOS, insisted the Mac has a permanent place in the hardware lineup. Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, even dared to promise the Mac is forever:

“There’s a role for the Mac as far as our eye can see. A role in conjunction with smartphones and tablets, that allows you to make the choice of what you want to use. Our view is, the Mac keeps going forever, because the differences it brings are really valuable.”

Federighi, who leads Apple’s software platforms including both OS X and iOS, discussed the importance of keeping the platforms separate:


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Apple SVP Phil Schiller shares report showing Android had 99% of mobile malware last year

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Like he has done before, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller has taken to his Twitter account to share a new report highlighting a much higher amount of security threats on Android compared to iOS. Schiller linked to Cisco’s 2014 annual security report covering mobile malware trends over the last year, which happens to highlight a rise in malware on Android as one of its key takeaways:

Ninety-nine percent of all mobile malware in 2013 targeted Android devices. Not all mobile malware is designed to target specific devices, however… Many encounters involve phishing, likejacking, or other social engineering ruses, or forcible redirects to websites other than expected. An analysis of user agents by Cisco TRAC/SIO reveals that Android users, at 71 percent, have the highest encounter rates with all forms of web-delivered malware

That 71% encounter rate for web-delivered malware on Android mentioned above compares to just 14 percent for iPhone users, according to the report. The report’s finding that 99 percent of all mobile malware last year targeted Android marks an increase for Android when comparing to the last report Schiller shared. In March of last year, Schiller shared a report from security firm F-Secure that estimated Android had around 79% of all mobile malware for 2012 compared to just 0.7 percent for iOS.

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Apple marketing chief Schiller unfollows Nest & Tony Fadell on Twitter following Google deal

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Schiller and Fadell on the left (image via web)

Schiller and Fadell on the left

Only a few days after “father of the iPod” Tony Fadell agreed to sell thermostat and smoke detector maker Nest to Google for north of three billion dollars, Apple senior vice president (and former Fadell colleague) Phil Schiller has unfollowed the Nest CEO and the Nest company on Twitter.

Here’s Schiller’s following list from a recent cache:


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Samsung accuses Apple’s attorney of racist remark during closing arguments in damages case

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As the retrial to settle the damages in the Apple vs Samsung patents case reaches its closing arguments, Samsung’s lawyer Bill Price accused Apple attorney Harold McElhinny of a racist remark, asking for a mistrial to be declared, reports Bloomberg.

Harold McElhinny, Apple’s attorney, spoke yesterday of his memory as a child of watching television on American-made sets, and how because the manufacturers didn’t protect their intellectual property their products no longer exist. “We all know what happened,” he said at the conclusion of a damages retrial […]

McElhinny was “appealing to race,” Price told the judge. “I thought we were past that.” … 
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iPhone was a “bet the company” product, says Phil Schiller, in opening remarks

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Phil Schiller’s real testimony in the Apple v. Samsung damages trial will come later today, but he put the importance of the iPhone into perspective in his opening remarks yesterday by stating that Apple “bet the company” on it (via CNET).

There were huge risks [with the first iPhone]. We had a saying inside the company that it was a ‘bet-the-company’ product […] We were starting to do well again in iPod […] Then here we’re going to invest all these resources, financial as well as people, in creating this product … 
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Phil Schiller tweets links to iPhone 5s photos in National Geographic

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Apple’s Senior VP of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller tweeted a link to a National Geographic feature in which photographer Jim Richardson used his iPhone 5s for a photo feature on Scotland in the definitive landscape photography magazine.

iPhoneography http://t.co/1MYjDgV2sj

— Philip Schiller (@pschiller) October 8, 2013

Richardson said that the transition from his usual Nikon kit wasn’t an easy one.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t struggling to make pictures. Walking down the Royal Mile surrounded by all things Scottish nothing seemed worth a picture. Out of desperation I took a few glib shots. Awful! Surrounded by great subjects I could see nothing. Made me feel worse.

But that using it over four days, he came to be impressed … 
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Report finds almost all Android OEMs, not just Samsung, cheat on benchmarks

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When Apple SVP Phil Schiller pointed us to a story earlier this week that Samsung was artificially inflating benchmark scores for its new Galaxy Note 3, many were quick to point out it wasn’t the first time Samsung had been caught engaged in such a practice. The same issue was discovered by AnandTech for the Galaxy S4 back in July, and today the site has an extensive report showing that almost every Android smartphone manufacturer is shipping devices that do the same.

As pictured in the chart above, that includes the HTC One, HTC One mini, LG G2, Galaxy Tab 10.1, and many others. In fact, the only companies that appear to not be using the method is Apple and Motorola, as well as Google with its Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 devices:

We started piecing this data together back in July, and even had conversations with both silicon vendors and OEMs about getting it to stop. With the exception of Apple and Motorola, literally every single OEM we’ve worked with ships (or has shipped) at least one device that runs this silly CPU optimization. It’s possible that older Motorola devices might’ve done the same thing, but none of the newer devices we have on hand exhibited the behavior. It’s a systemic problem that seems to have surfaced over the last two years, and one that extends far beyond Samsung…  None of the Nexus do, which is understandable since the optimization isn’t a part of AOSP. This also helps explain why the Nexus 4 performed so slowly when we reviewed it – this mess was going on back then and Google didn’t partake.

As noted in the report, the gains that OEMs are experiencing from the inflated scores are probably not worth the press they’ve been receiving. AnandTech points out that most of the inflated scores provide under a 10% increase in GPU and CPU performance benchmarks:

The hilarious part of all of this is we’re still talking about small gains in performance. The impact on our CPU tests is 0 – 5%, and somewhere south of 10% on our GPU benchmarks as far as we can tell. I can’t stress enough that it would be far less painful for the OEMs to just stop this nonsense and instead demand better performance/power efficiency from their silicon vendors.

You can check out the full report here, which offers in-depth analysis on the optimizations it found for several devices across various benchmark tests.

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Apple Marketing SVP Phil Schiller calls out Samsung’s Note 3 benchmarking ‘shenanigans’

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Apple Marketing SVP Phil Schiller has been known to take to Twitter in the past to voice his views on rival platforms, and today the Apple executive is once again taking a jab at Android through his Twitter account. Today, Schiller points us to some more Android “shenanigans” with a link to a story from ArsTechinca about inflated Galaxy Note 3 benchmarks.

Ars reports:

After a good bit of sleuthing, we can confidently say Samsung appears to be artificially boosting the US Note 3’s benchmark scores with a special, high-power CPU mode that kicks in when the device runs a large number of popular benchmarking apps. Samsung did something similar with the international Galaxy S 4’s GPU, but this is the first time we’ve seen the boost on a US device. We also found a way to disable this special CPU mode, so for the first time we can see just how much Samsung’s benchmark optimizations affect benchmark scores.

Earlier this year Schiller took another shot at Android on Twitter by tweeting the words “Be safe out there” with a link to a study showing a much higher number of threats on Android compared to iOS. Schiller isn’t the only Apple executive on Twitter as earlier this month CEO Tim Cook started communicating with customers for the first time through his official account. 

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Apple looking to double employee head count for in-house advertising/marketing team

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Apple is looking to double the amount of personnel on its in-house marketing and advertising team, according to a report from AdAge. Currently, according to the report, the team includes 300 employees, but Apple is said to be looking to increase that number to between 500 and 600 people.

Apple, in recent years, has reportedly been resilient to growing the team because of a philosophy created by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs:


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Apple continues new ‘Designed by Apple in California’ campaign with full two page print ads

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Update, June 29: Apple is running different full two-page ads in the Toronto Star and other Canadian newspapers today. The ads includes the same text and “Designed by Apple in California” tagline as the one above, but use alternate images that have also appeared on Apple’s “Designed by Apple” web page. Check out the other ads below.

We previously reported that Apple was starting a brand new ad campaign that focuses on its ecosystem and the people that use it rather than specific products, and today a reader notes that it has also brought the campaign to print with a full two-page ad in the Toronto Star (pictured above). We’d expect this to be the tone of its ads in the coming months, and the ad above (alongside its latest TV commercial), is also currently running on Apple’s “Designed by Apple” web page on Apple.com.
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The era of unshackled Apple executives [Opinion]

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"Can't innovate anymore, my ass."

“Can’t innovate anymore, my ass.”

Over the past few months, it feels as if Apple is on a media and publicity roadshow. Tim Cook has appeared on Rock Centertestified at the Senate’s corporate tax hearing, and was interviewed at All Things D’s D11 conference. In addition, as was mentioned during today’s Happy Hour podcast, the Apple executives took many opportunities during the WWDC keynote to speak directly to recent criticisms about their design decisions and abilities to innovate in the tech industry.

This is, quite simply, the era of unshackled and vocal Apple executives. 
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Apple confirms new version of Final Cut Pro X coming alongside new Mac Pro later this year

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Yesterday’s unveiling of the all-new Mac Pro at Apple’s WWDC keynote certainly made up for the fact that we didn’t see any updates to Apple’s pro apps like we we’re hoping. However, you might have missed Phil Schiller’s rather quick confirmation that a new version of Final Cut Pro X is indeed coming later this year:
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Despite impressive ads, Media Arts Lab execs reportedly frustrated with Phil Schiller’s lack of focus

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phil-schillerYesterday at its WWDC keynote presentation, alongside the expected design overhaul in Apple’s upcoming iOS 7, the company briefly showed off a slightly new direction for its ad campaigns going forward. While it kicked off the presentation with a video describing its focus for the new simplified design elements in iOS 7 (below), Bloomberg reports that its latest ad (above), which just started appearing on TV last night, marks a new direction for Apple’s marketing efforts. It also claims that Apple’s meetings regarding the company’s marketing message have become less focused following Steve Jobs’ death now that Apple’s senior vice president of marketing Phillip Schiller is in charge:
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Tech Industry Analyst Michael Gartenberg officially joins Apple’s marketing team

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According to Forbes, long time technology analyst Michael Gartenberg has joined Apple. According to the report he is now officially working under the marketing team led by Phil Schiller. Gartenberg has always been Apple-focused/leaning in his coverage and a contributor to Macworld magazine among other endeavors.


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Phil Schiller clarifies iPad mini has stereo speakers following Amazon’s Kindle comparison

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When Apple’s Senior Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller unveiled the iPad mini on stage earlier this month, he didn’t discuss the speaker on the new device. There were rumors that the iPad mini might include stereo speakers, but tech specs on Apple’s website only list a “built-in speaker” for iPads. Adding to the rumors that iPad mini might actually have a mono speaker, Amazon posted a comparison of the new iPad and its Kindle Fire HD tablet, listing dual stereo speakers vs a mono speaker as one of the the Kindle’s advantages. A curious 9to5 reader wanted to find out what speaker Apple is actually including in the device and was able to get an email response direct from Phil Schiller.

Hi Mr. Schiller, 

I understand the tech specs about iPad Mini online should cover everything, but the tech specs online neither confirm or deny the rumors of iPad Mini’s speakers being stereo. Is it possible to get confirmation from the man himself as to whether these are mono or stereo?

Schiller responded:
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Borderlands Legends, Cards, Paper for iPad, MapQuest, Dolphin Browser, more

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Borderlands Legends: We knew it was coming and today 2K has finally released the iOS version of the Borderlands franchise. It’s not exactly the full Borderlands you’re familiar with from consoles, but first impressions seem to be strong.

Borderlands Legends is the latest addition to the Borderland franchise, specifically designed for mobile and tablet. Control Mordecai, Lilith, Brick and Roland and take out the oncoming waves of enemies. Collect in-game cash by destroying enemies and purchase new weapons. Earn experience and level up your characters, unlocking new skills and abilities! Each character has their own set of unique skills and abilities, use them wisely to survive!

Cards version 2.0.1: Apple has updated its Cards app for creating and sending physical, personalized greeting cards on iPhone and iPad. One new feature in the update is the ability to “Easily swap photos in cards containing multiple photos.” There are also a few fixes to common issues:

• Easily swap photos in cards containing multiple photos
• Fixes an issue that caused previously mailed cards to display as drafts in Card History
• Fixes several issues that caused the app to quit unexpectedly

Paper by FiftyThree: If you look closely, a few of the features added to the popular “Paper” app today were actually leaked by Phil Schiller on stage during the iPad mini event earlier this month. New features include a Mixer for playing with shades, a new color palette, and and pressure input via the Expressive Ink Engine:
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Apple SVP Phil Schiller talks ‘thinnovation’ on Mac lineup, Optical media, Windows 8 and value

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Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller, who was on stage for the majority of Apple’s Mac announcements earlier this week, sat down with TIME following the event to talk Macs. The first topic of conversation was the sometimes-controversial design of recent Mac refreshes, including: the removal of optical drives, lack of repairability, and new I/O standards:

“This is what Apple has always been about, and the Mac has been about, from the first Mac and first iMac,” Schiller said. “It’s always been about making the best Mac we know how. Among the many benefits are making it easy to use and affordable, with great features. This high level of integration is part of delivering on that.”

While calling Blu-ray a “complex and not-great technology,” Phil talked the removal of old standards, such as optical drives, and the move to SSDs:
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Tim Cook clarifies Apple’s position on 7-inch tablets

Image via <a href="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02377/cook_2377342b.jpg" target="_blank">Telegraph</a>

Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook just clarified, during Apple’s fiscal Q4 earnings call, that the iPad mini is not a 7-inch tablet because Apple does not “think they’re good products.”

Cook specifically stressed the 7.9-inch screen size of the iPad mini provides 35 percent more screen area than the 7-inch competition:

“(…) referencing all comments Steve made before about 7-inch tablets: Let me be clear, we would not make one of the 7-inch tablets. We don’t think they are good products, and we would never make one. Not just because it’s 7 inches, but for many reasons. One of the reasons…is size. I’m not sure if you saw our keynote. The difference in just the size between 7.9—almost 8—versus 7 is 35 percent. And when you look at the usable area, it is much greater than that. You know, it is from 50 percent to 67 percent. The iPad mini has the same number of pixels as iPad 2 does. You have access to all 275,000 apps in our App Store. So, iPad mini is a fantastic product. It is not a compromise product like the 7-inch tablets. It is a whole different league.”

Follow 9to5Mac’s live blog for more minute-by-minute details from the call.

[tweet https://twitter.com/llsethj/status/261588725874696192]


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New iPod codes and colors: 1136×640 display Touch is N78, Nano is N31, Shuffle is N12B, iPhone/iPod touch panorama mode?

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Alongside the information we have already posted about the new iPod touch, iPod nano, and iPod shuffle, we received possible code names for the devices. Like developer @chronic, we’re hearing that the new iPod touch has the internal codename of N78.

We also understand that the iPod nano is codenamed N31 and that the iPod shuffle is codenamed N12B. Like we posted last week, the new Shuffle and Nano will ship in 8 colors. We also understand that the new iPod touch will come in several variations, which we speculate points to colors other than black and white.

We previously reported that the new iPhone is codenamed N42. Like the new iPod touch, the new iPhone will include an 1136 x 640 Retina display, as we first reported in May.

With the iPad mini launching next month, many, including us, have wondered what would happen to the iPod touch price point. Even with an iPad mini en-route for a rumored $200-250 price point, our sources are saying that the iPod touch will stay at an entry-level price point at or around $200.

@Chronic is also saying that the new iPod touch will run a processor named S5L8942X which is similar to the AppleTV single core A5:

This processor codename seems to just be a couple of levels up over the 40X A5 processor we reported a few months ago (along with a bunch of minor specs). We assume Apple will refer to this new iPod touch processor as an A5, though.

@Chronic also tweeted that the new iPhone and iPod touch may include a new Panorama feature. Several references to Panorama were found in iOS 5 code last year, but the feature was never released. iMore recently hinted at this as well:

It’s not hard to imagine the iPhone 5 will once again include a camera demo, perhaps Phil Schiller showing off automagical new Panorama software, and other optical wonders.

We’ll surely know all tomorrow at 10AM Pacific/1 PM Eastern. We’ll have full live coverage of the announcements.
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Phil Schiller: App Store is more democratic than traditional retail, Passbook is not a direct payment service

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In a recent story about growing concerns among app developers who want better ways to promote their apps in the App Store, The Wall Street Journal published quotes from an interview with Apple’s Vice President for Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller about the “tremendous amount” of work Apple does to help new apps get discovered. Schiller also talked about how things will improve with the redesigned App Store, Facebook integration, and new user tracking tools for developers in iOS 6:

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Phil Schiller explains why Apple removed Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil Speakers Touch app (Update: Rogue responds)

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Update: Rogue Amoeba replied to Phil Schiller’s email in a response published on its website. The full response is below.

Following Apple’s decision to pull Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil Speakers Touch app for a feature allowing iOS devices to stream to one another over AirPlay, Apple explained the app was removed for the feature’s use of non-public APIs. It currently only allows Apple TV and certain third-parties such as speaker manufacturers to access the AirPlay streaming protocol. The app was earlier this week allowed back into the App Store without the iOS-to-iOS streaming feature, but today we get word from Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller who explained in an email the reason behind removing the app.

An email to Apple’s CEO Tim Cook from concerned consumer Kevin Starbird regarding the app’s removal was met with a direct email response from Schiller. 9to5Mac independently confirmed the emails are authentic. Here is Kevin’s full email addressed to Cook followed by Schiller’s response:

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