Steve Jobs

Lisa Brennan-Jobs & Natalie Portman

Actress Natalie Portman is the latest name to be thrown in the mix of potential stars in the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic written by Aaron Sorkin. The information comes courtesy of Deadline, which reports that Portman is “in talks to join” the project in a leading role although the specific character is unknown. It’s possible Natalie Portman is being considered to portray Steve Jobs’ daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs.
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A new report claims that the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic, led by veteran screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, is set to change hands. According to Hollywood magazine Deadline, the film will be moving from Sony Pictures to Universal Pictures by tomorrow at the latest. Despite the studio move, production of the movie is expected to remain on the fast track.
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When Steve Jobs said something was going to happen, it generally did. One notable exception, though, has been Apple’s mobile advertising platform, iAd. Jobs said back in 2010 that it would grab 50% of the mobile ad market; right now, it’s sitting at just 2.6%. That may be about to change after advertising middleman Rubicon announced that automated purchasing of iAds will soon be supported … 
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Aaron Sorkin sat down with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang for an interview and talked about a variety of topics including his upcoming Steve Jobs biopic. The film has been in the works for several years now, with at least three different actors reportedly having been considered or confirmed to play the Apple co-founder at some point.

In the interview, which airs later tonight, Sorkin says that the movie will follow the executive’s interactions with several key people, including Steve Wozniak and John Sculley. As previously noted, the biopic will consist of three half-hour segments set directly before important Apple keynotes.

You can see a clip from Sorkin’s interview below…

The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Christian Bale will not star at Steve Jobs in the upcoming biopic:

Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the actor has fallen off the Jobs biopic that is being directed by Danny Boyle. […]

Sources say Bale, after much deliberation and conflicting feelings, came to the conclusion he was not right for the part and decided to withdraw.

Just last month, the film’s writer Aaron Sorkin had stated that Bale would star as the Apple co-founder in the movie as Bale was “best actor on the board in a certain age range.”
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In an interview with the Financial Times, Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page talked about an ongoing debate that he had with Apple’s Steve Jobs: whether their companies were doing too much or too little to affect the lives of their customers.

Page, as is evident in Google’s seemingly unending push into new markets and technologies outside of search and even the web, came down on the side of doing as many things as possible to make an impact in peoples’ lives, while Jobs was insistent that a focused approach on a single set of problems was better for the company and its users.

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Variety reports that actor Seth Rogen has been cast to play Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak in the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic from Sony:

Seth Rogen has been set to star as Steve Wozniak opposite Christian Bale in Sony’s Steve Jobs biopic.

We learned earlier this month that Christian Bale, who starred in the recent Batman trilogy, will portray Steve Jobs in the Aaron Sorkin directed film. Sorkin later confirmed the report adding that Christian Bale didn’t have to audition for the role in the film.

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dg_2UJDrTQ]

In an interview with Bloomberg confirming that Oscar-winning actor Christian Bale will play Steve Jobs in the forthcoming biopic, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin said that there wasn’t even a need for an audition … 
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Apple is reportedly adding the ability to track what users do inside certain apps in order to present them with targeted in-app ads across iOS devices, reports digital media site Digiday.

Say, for example, a visitor to a retailer’s iPhone app adds a pair of shoes to his cart but ultimately decide not to buy it. In this scenario, the retailer will now be able to retarget that user with an ad for that exact pair — even in another app on his iPad. When tapped, the ad would direct him back to his abandoned checkout page and automatically add the shoes to his online shopping cart.

Ad agencies say that Apple has been pitching the new capability since last month …

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Variety reports that sources have confirmed actor Christian Bale is in talks to play the role of Steve Jobs in the upcoming biopic based on Walter Isaacson’s official biography of the late Apple co-founder. Variety adds that insiders believe Bale will begin filming for the biopic this spring.
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Jobs introducing MacBook Air at Macworld 2008

Macworld has announced that its Macworld/iWorld conference is going on hiatus and no show will take place in 2015. The show was previously planned to take place in March, which was a bit later than the typical January/February timeframe.

Early Tuesday, IDG World Expo released a statement noting that the venerable Apple-oriented trade show, Macworld/iWorld would go on hiatus and not be held in 2015 as planned. The contents of that statement are: “We are announcing today that Macworld/iWorld is going on hiatus, and will not be taking place as planned in 2015. Our MacIT event, the world’s premiere event for deploying Apple in the enterprise, will continue next year with details to be announced in the coming weeks.

Year-after-year in the 2000s, the January Macworld conference was a staple for the Macworld community. Each year, Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs would hit the stage and introduce breakthrough products like the first iPhone, MacBook Air, and key software releases.

Since Apple cut off its affiliation with the conference in 2009, ahead of the 2010 non-Macworld iPad introduction, the conference has seen less attendees and excitement. Five years out from Apple no longer attending the conference, and just weeks after Macworld cut down its editorial staff to a bare minimum, today’s announcement is, unfortunately, not very surprising. Macworld’s magazine also recently came to an end.

The organization behind the conference, IDG, says that this is just a “hiatus,” so perhaps (hopefully) there will again be a time where the Macworld conference exists. The company’s MacIT enterprise focused event will still exist in 2015, according to the announcement.

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DiCaprio and Boyle on the set of the 2000 film “The Beach”

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio has decided not to play Steve Jobs in the upcoming Danny Boyle-directed biopic after all, according to the Hollywood Reporter. DiCaprio was first reported as being considered for the role back in April, with Slumdog Millionaire‘s Danny Boyle set to direct.

The Aaron Sorkin-penned film has been in development for years now and will reportedly depict the thirty minutes prior to three of Apple’s most important keynotes from Jobs’s perspective. David Fincher, who was in talks to direct the movie before Boyle, said in March that Christian Bale would have been his first choice to play the Apple co-founder, though both ended up being rejected by Sony.

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Two days after the Financial Times reported that the European Commission was about to come down hard on Apple’s alleged deal with the Irish government to reduce its tax liabilities, Apple has made a statement to Business Insider claiming that it has received “no selective treatment.”

Apple is proud of its long history in Ireland and the 4,000 people we employ in Cork. They serve our customers through manufacturing, tech support and other important functions. Our success in Europe and around the world is the result of hard work and innovation by our employees, not any special arrangements with the government. Apple has received no selective treatment from Irish officials over the years. We’re subject to the same tax laws as the countless other companies who do business in Ireland.

Since the iPhone launched in 2007, our tax payments in Ireland and around the world have increased tenfold. To continue that growth and the benefits it brings to the communities where we work and live, we believe comprehensive corporate tax reform is badly needed …

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You may remember Apple CEO Tim Cook teasing major new product categories for Apple to be released in 2014. Technically, that will happen with Apple Pay next month, Apple’s first foray into the mobile payments category, but it is far more likely that Cook had been focusing his teases on the Apple Watch. Earlier this month, Apple debuted the fashion and fitness-oriented smart watch to the same crowd that saw the debut of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. While the Watch was demonstrated, it is obviously not a finished product: it’s not shipping until “early 2015,” according to Apple.

How early in 2015? Nobody knows for sure, but a new profile from The Information says “that Apple would be lucky to ship it by Valentine’s Day.” At 9to5, we’ve been hearing similar whispers. Valentine’s Day is in February, and this could be a great target for Apple to try to hit for the Watch’s launch. That Hallmark Holiday isn’t as strong as a shopping season as the December holidays, but it is still a time that many people seek out expensive or fashionable gifts. So why not the Apple Watch Edition, too? Apple has done product launches around that timeframe before, releasing new iOS device storage capacities and pink-colored models on multiple occasions.

Valentine’s Day aside, the bigger picture here is that many signs indicate Apple missed its own 2014 launch target. As The Information says:

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In an Irish radio interview, Bono discusses his various collaborations with Apple, as transcribed by TUAW. Interesting, Bono claims Apple now has 885 million iTunes accounts (up from 800 million as officially announced in April). With his work on a mysterious new music format, he aims to help Apple cross the billion accounts mark. The new medium has apparently been underway for a while, spanning back to a conversation with Steve Jobs in 2009.
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Following the publishing of the first half of the interview, and several subsequent clips, part two Charlie Rose’s full interview with Tim Cook is now available to watch – in full – on Hulu (below) and Charlie Roses’s website. In the interview, Cook discusses a wide variety of topics, ranging from privacy, to U2, and “what comes after the internet.”

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPp0Sc6KEnQ&channel=CharlieRose&op=9to5]

Tim Cook appeared on Charlie Rose in a multi-part interview, the first of which airs today. In three clips released by the show, Cook discusses Steve Jobs’s continuing inspiration at at Apple, the Beats Electronics acquisition, and the Apple TV, the company’s “hobby device” turned full product category.

The second half of the interview will air on Monday night. You can see the other two clips below:

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