AT&T has announced that Apple’s home city of Cupertino will be the first west coast location to get its gigabit fiber Internet service, GigaPower, reports Re/code.
Cupertino is among several Bay Area cities that AT&T had previously said it was considering — a list that included San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Campbell and Mountain View. Specific timing, availability and pricing for the Cupertino service will be announced later, AT&T said.
GigaPower is a 100 percent fiber optic network offering speeds of up to one gigabit. To put that speed into perspective, you could download an HD TV show in three seconds and download 25 music tracks in one second.
AT&T’s rivals in the gigabit Internet race include Google Fiber, based in nearby Mountain View. You can check availability of GigaPower on AT&T’s site.
New Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores Angela Ahrendts is continuing her Apple debut tour this week. The former Burberry Chief Executive Officer today toured through Apple’s many stores in the New York City area and she also held a question-and-answer session with select Apple Retail Store managers earlier this week week. Ahrendts today sent a memo with a transcript of some of the Q&A points to all retail employees, and a full copy of that transcript, sent in by a source, is below:
Just over a week ago, thousands of Apple employees, including CEO Tim Cook, took to the streets of San Francisco to take part in the Pride Parade. The company has not been hesitant to share its views on LGBT rights, and the parade was yet another instance of that. This evening, Apple uploaded a video to its official YouTube channel showing off all of the effort that went into the Pride Parade last week and its “unwavering” support for equality and diversity.
Apple is out in full force including CEO Tim Cook for the Pride Parade in San Francisco today. Apple’s CEO hasn’t ever been ambiguous about his support for LGBT issues and he was joined by Apple Environment Director Lisa Jackson and what looks like thousands of other Apple employees on Market St. in San Francisco today. Update: Reuters reported that:
In an unusual step for the sometimes secretive Apple, the company has spoken out about its support for the Pride festival. To help attendees navigate the packed event, the company set up a dedicated LGBT station on iTunes Radio and featured several apps on its App Store, including the Find My Friends app. Company employees also handed out iTunes gift cards to bystanders.
“Apple believes equality and diversity make us stronger, and we’re proud to support our employees and their friends and families in this weekend’s celebration,” Apple spokeswoman Michaela Wilkinson said.
Employees are also handing out $1 iTunes gift cards in celebration. A ton of Tweets and Instagrams are below and you can follow with hashtags #pride, #ApplePride and #SFPride:
City Tours is best described as a guided-camera Flyover view. After activating the tour, the Maps app changes to satellite mode and begins zooming and panning to different landmarks in the city. For example, in the video, the tour rotates and pans between a couple of different cathedrals. More screenshots after the break …
After being on the job for approximately a month and a half, new Apple Senior VP of Retail and Online Stores Angela Ahrendts has sent her first memo to Apple Retail employees. In the memo, Ahrendts discusses Apple’s culture, her visits to stores thus far, and her plans for the future.
“I have spent most of my time getting to know and understand the many functions and teams in Cupertino, along with our short and long term initiatives. I was thrilled to meet many of you at stores in San Francisco and London this month, and I’m looking forward to Tokyo and the Omotesando opening,” Ahrendts said. “Every couple of weeks, we will be visiting stores across the world to see and learn what we do best and hear your thoughts about opportunities ahead,” she added.
A partnership between famed industrial designer Yves Behar and company Mark One are today announcing the Vessyl, smart cup that seeks to track data for the nutrition in beverages. The concept sounds simple. Pour a drink into the sensor-packed Vessyl cup, and an accompanying iPhone application will instantly tell you the type of beverage (like soda or milk), the brand (perhaps Coke or Pepsi), calorie content, fat content, and sugar content…
Seth Weintraub|8:33Apple Store still up….what does it all mean? Head South to the comments to discuss.
Someone forgot to take the AppleStore down…unless Apple got some new 1990’s technology that doesn’t require the store to go down for updates—
Seth Weintraub (@llsethj) June 02, 2014
Mark Gurman|8:07We are just under two hours away from the kickoff WWDC keynote, and here’s the latest news: there are cars situated inside Moscone West. This likely indicates that some significant CarPlay announcements are in-store for today. Also, some OS X 10.10 and iOS 8 APIs for developers are already appearing on some open source WebKit files.
We’re approximately two hours away from Apple’s major WWDC 2014 keynote address, and we’ll be providing live blogging and analysis of the event as it proceeds. We’re expecting Apple to discuss updates to iOS and OS X 10.10, with the former seeing enhancements across the system and the latter receiving a complete redesign to bring the software in line with the iOS 7 design aesthetic. You can catch our full analysis and live updates from the conference below:
Apple has invited its employees through an internal memo to participate and represent the company together next month at San Francisco’s annual LGBT pride parade. Apple will host a base camp for registered attendees made up of Apple employees and their families and will supply entertainment and breakfast as well as T-shirts for participants. This year’s Pride Celebration and Parade marks the 44th annual gathering and has been host to the likes of Apple, Google, and Facebook (including CEO Mark Zuckerberg) in recent years. Expand Expanding Close
IDG’s senior VP Jason Snell tried to provoke comment with the view that “Apple must release a smart watch in 60 days or it’s all over,” but if the rest of the clips are any guide, there wasn’t too much controversy in the rest of the discussion …
The show opened yesterday in San Francisco, and ends tomorrow.
The store will replace Apple’s existing Stockton Street location, adding about fifty new jobs in the process. Apple’s new building will feature a two-floor design with 23-foot glass sliding doors and a plaza behind the store that will be shared with the hotel next door with free Wi-Fi to visitors.
The iconic Ruth Asawa fountain behind the store will be relocated (slightly) to accommodate the design of the plaza, which caused some concern among members of the city’s planning commission, though Apple has assured the city that the fountain will be entirely preserved during the process.
More renderings of the gorgeous new store can be found below:
A set of new renderings of the proposed Union Square Apple retail location was presented to the San Francisco Planning Department this week that show an updated design for the store’s entrance. The new renders depict the store with massive 23-foot wide sliding glass doors (which measure nearly 45 feet tall each) that a large section of the storefront to open to the street.
Regular-sized doors on either side of the larger ones will allow customers to come and go if the main doors are closed.
We’ve already seen retailers and major venues like Macy’s, the Apple Store, MLB, and even CES implement iBeacon technology into their overall visiting experience, and today inMarket is kicking off its Mobile to Mortar campaign (viaTechCrunch) to bring the Bluetooth LE beacons to over 200 grocery store locations and more. Expand Expanding Close
Ifo Apple Store notes that this expansion will put the store at 7,690 square feet—more than double the size of the existing space—allowing more room for customer training that the current store does not have. The expanded store will occupy two adjacent spaces previously held by other retailers. Part of a third space is also being added to the store, though the rest of that space will remain unused.
Apple has plans to open thirty new retail stores worldwide in the coming year, which will bring the total number of stores to around 448, with stores in fourteen countries and counting. The company also plans to expand twenty of its existing locations.
Earlier this year, Apple announced that it would be relocating its flagship Downtown San Francisco to the Union Square District. The new store, with a fully glass front, would be larger, and it would be able to serve more customers and employee more workers. Since then, the new store design came under scrutiny from San Francisco officials because it would remove a famous fountain designed by Ruth Asawa.
In late August, Apple submitted redesigned renderings of the upcoming store that retain the historical fountain. The new renderings also showed a tweaked front glass panel that would relocate the iconic Apple logo to the brushed metal, street-facing side of the store. Now, we’ve learned that Apple has presented a 3D model of the upcoming store’s design to the City of San Francisco’s Historic Preservation Commission…
Amazon’s French and German sites are currently showing the Apple TV as out of stock, with availability “from 23 October,” lending a small amount of weight to suggestions that a new Apple TV will be one of the announcements at Apple’s launch event the day before.
As Engadget notes, Amazon listings are not the most reliable of indicators, as stock levels change all the time for all kinds of reasons, but the availability date is at least an interesting coincidence.
Ahead of Apple’s October 22nd iPad-focused event, major accessory maker ZAGG seems to be getting its offerings in order for the new Apple tablets. The company posted a listing for an iPad 5 keyboard case on its website this week, and the images for the case clearly show an iPad with a thinner-bezel. The case features backlit keys, white and black color options, and comes in at 7.6mm. While this case does not provide any breakthrough details about Apple’s new iPad, it does demonstrate that case makers expect that the iPad 5 will look just like the several leaks over the course of last many months. The above case launched for the current iPad mini earlier this year.
Earlier today, Apple announced that it will be holding its fall event on October 22nd. The event will take place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California. However, like in some past years, Apple will hold a simultaneous event to cater to media not located in the United States.
For its September 10 iPhone event, Apple held simultaneous satellite streams in Berlin, Tokyo, and Beijing. For the upcoming event, the stream will be held in London, according to members of international media invited to the stream. The London-based event will begin at 6PM local time and it will be held at the Kings Place Hall. This hall fits a few hundred people.
It is likely that the London stream will also offer an opportunity for local journalists to try out the new devices. We’re expecting an iPad mini with Retina display, redesigned full-sized iPad, new Macs, and talk of OS X Mavericks, so there will be plenty in store for the demo area…
The talks are going to be held in San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Berlin and London. Unusually, Apple is holding two events in each city this year, one for app development and one dedicated to game development. Topics revolve around the new API’s in iOS 7, to further encourage developer adoption of the new technologies. The talks are being held across October, November and December.
Registered developers must apply by September 27th 2013, if they want to attend. Developers can attend either the app developer day or the game developer day, not both.
Apple has revamped its plans for a new flagship San Francisco store in Union Square after concerns that a popular bronze fountain and sculpture would be removed, and that the building design wouldn’t offer sufficient visual interest from the exterior, reports SFGate.
Apple has presented city officials with a revised design for the flagship store it wants to build across from Union Square at Post and Stockton streets. And where the initial proposal in May consigned the fountain to an unknown fate, it now will stand amid steps leading up to a plaza between the back of the Apple Store and the side of the Grand Hyatt San Francisco.
The building design, designed to provide 45 percent more space than its existing Stockton store, also faced accusations that the steel and glass cube would be too boring for passers-by. Apple now plans a full-height window and skylight in what was to have been a featureless wall, and to set the glass frontage back to create a more interesting shape.
Apple’s US stores are the most profitable retail spaces in the country, beating even Tiffany and Harrods in earnings per square foot.
China Mobile, the world’s largest Telecom with close to 700M subscribers, reported mixed earnings today on slow growth of its smartphone business relative to its competitors which both carry the iPhone. Chairman Xi Guohua noted this and said that talks with Apple on carrying the iPhone were progressing.
“Both sides sounded keen (during recent talks),” Xi told a news conference after announcing the company’s first-half results.
“Good progress was made in preparing for the commercialization of TD-LTE,” Xi said, referring to 4G “long-term evolution” network technology that may support newer iPhone models.
Dow Jones’ Paul Mozur noted the remaining issues to be worked out:
#ChinaMobile Chairman says company still having commercial and technical issues with Apple that need to be resolved to sell iPhone
Working out the hurdles and signing up the world’s largest telecom would obviously be a big win for Apple and CEO Tim Cook, who would probably love to announce the carrier relationship at the upcoming September 10th iPhone event in San Francisco. Expand Expanding Close
As reported on 9to5Google last night, Google is rolling out a huge update to its maps app for Android but they are also promising the updates will hit iOS ‘soon’.
Designed for tablets: A dedicated tablet design brings all the features of this new app to Android tablets and iPads, which makes exploring the world from the comfort of your living room much more fluid, smooth and fun.
Enhanced navigation: In addition to current traffic conditions, we’ve added two new features to help you navigate around traffic. You can now see reports of problems on the road that you can tap to see incident details [Hello Waze]. While on the road, Google Maps will also alert you if a better route becomes available and reroute you to your destination faster. This feature is available only on Android and is coming soon to iOS.
Reviews, Zagat and Offers: There’s a new 5.0 star rating system that gives you a quick read on how your friends and others rate places like restaurants, bars and cafes. For an expert’s opinion, the Zagat badge of excellence and curated lists are integrated into search results so you can quickly spot the very best places. From “Best Restaurants to meet for a drink in NYC” to “Best Restaurants in the Mission” in San Francisco, Zagat’s there to help you uncover the local gems.
The updated Android app looks a lot like the Maps app Google released for iOS at the end of last year (prominent reviewers called the iOS Maps app much better than Android’s Maps app). Another interesting fun fact: Because carriers and manufacturers are so slow to update Android, only 60% of Android users will be able to use the new maps (Android 4.03+ only), while over 90% of iOS users are on iOS 6+, which will get the new features. Expand Expanding Close
I had the opportunity to travel to San Francisco this year for WWDC and experience the City by the Bay for my first time. Though I wasn’t among the lucky few to attend the keynote this year, that hardly robbed me of any adventure in the journey. Because this was my first time making the trek (and I was technically covering a portion of the event for work), I deliberately planned what gear was most appropriate for trip and sort of compiled a list of recommendations based on my experience below. Expand Expanding Close
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