Tim Cook

After announcing new iPhones and iPads plus an updated Apple TV in San Francisco last week, Tim Cook is taking a slight victory lap in New York City with a media blitz that leads to an interview with Stephen Colbert tonight on CBS’s The Late Show. Before a surprise visit yesterday at NYC’s iconic Fifth Ave store with Eddy Cue, the Apple CEO gave a quick interview with Buzzfeed. In it he told John Paczkowski that his Apple Store visit really is a surprise to everyone.

“I almost always go in unannounced,” he says. “It’s rare that I tell anyone that I’m going. But I do try to go to stores every time I’m traveling to a new city. It’s important.”

Cook also discussed the privacy implications of an always-listening Siri, what he likes best about the iPhone 6s, and even the possibility of being able to delete system apps in the future…

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It was announced last week that Apple CEO Tim Cook would appear on CBS’s The Late Show and now the Apple executive has arrived in New York City for the show. As seen in a variety of images shared on Twitter, Cook today made an appearance at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store. While at the store, Cook mingled and took selfies with customers, essentially causing chaos in the packed retail store. Apple executive Eddy Cue also was at the store today.

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The Wall Street Journal today announced that Apple CEO Tim Cook will appear at the second annual WSJ.D Live conference in October. Cook, of course, appeared at the inaugural WSJ.D conference last year and gave an in-depth interview with the publication. This year’s conference is slated to run from October 19th through October 21st at The Montage in Laguna Beach, California.

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Apple today officially announced its long anticipated revamped Apple TV set top box, marking one of the biggest jumps forward for a product category the company previously classified as a hobby project. Prior to today’s event we reported extensively on Apple’s development of the new Apple TV and the features it planned for the device and developers.

While proclaiming that “The future of TV is apps,” Tim Cook and team highlighted the key areas of the updated hardware and software: new powerful hardware, a modern OS, an all-new user experience, developer tools, and an App Store.

Head below for all the details…
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Apple’s Wednesday, September 9th event is shaping up to be one of the largest in the company’s history. The Cupertino-based company is planning to unveil several major new products on stage, including a pair of new iPhones with revamped internals, a sequel to the Apple TV, a larger version of the iPad Air, a refreshed iPad mini, and new Apple Watch accessories. The company is also likely to discuss at least two of its latest software platforms: iOS 9 and watchOS 2. We’ve reported the lion’s share of what is to come at next week’s event, so this article outlines everything we’re expecting and adds some new details…

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Tim Cook’s efforts to influence policy in Washington DC in ways that better serve Apple have been hard to miss during his tenure as CEO. Pushing the company’s strong stance on privacy has been met with great pushback from the justice department and Apple was unhappy with how the ebook pricing case against it went so it’s no surprise its lobbying efforts have climbed in recent years. Now Politico, a news site focused on politics, has dedicated a lengthy 4,000+ word profile on Tim Cook’s relationship with Washington DC over the last four years.
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IDC today published an updated forecast for worldwide tablet shipments this year, predicting the segment will experience a “notable slowdown” with both iOS and Android expected to record a year over year decline in growth. While IDC notes that the majority of the 212 million tablets it expects to ship this year will be “pure slate tablets”, it does anticipate growth in the 2-in-1 hybrid tablet/laptop category, of which it’s apparently including the larger 12-inch+ iPad that Apple is expected to introduce later this year:
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As noted in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today, Tim Cook on Monday was awarded 560,000 restricted Apple stock units. Cook was given these stocks as time and performance awards. At Apple’s stock price at the end of day Tuesday of $103.12, those stocks are worth roughly $57.5 million.

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The email Apple CEO Tim Cook sent to CNBC analyst Jim Cramer, and which was read on the air, may have violated Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, according to lawyers speaking to MarketWatch. The regulations are designed to ensure that information that may impact a company’s share price is made available to the public in a fair and open way, rather than privately disclosed to particular individuals or entities.

Cook’s email revealed that the growth in iPhone activations “has actually accelerated over the past few weeks, and we have had the best performance of the year for the App Store in China during the last 2 weeks” – information that Apple had not previously disclosed … 
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Apple hasn’t officially confirmed its expected September 9th iPhone 6S event just yet, but we now know where Tim Cook will be at the end of next month. Box announced today that the Apple CEO will be joining Box CEO Aaron Levie for a fireside chat to open the enterprise cloud service’s BoxWorks conference in California. The conference runs September 28-30 at Moscone Center in San Francisco with Cook’s fireside chat set to take place on September 29th. 
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Cook surprised Cramer on his 10th anniversary episode of Mad Money earlier this year.

Although the stock market is currently experiencing turbulence, with $AAPL stock dipping below $100 in pre-market trading, Tim Cook has made a rare exception and directly responded to CNBC analyst Jim Cramer who raised doubts about Apple’s Chinese growth. Cook notes that Apple has seen strong business growth for its products in China though July and August. Quoting from the email via CNBC:

Growth in iPhone activations has actually accelerated over the past few weeks, and we have had the best performance of the year for the App Store in China during the last 2 weeks.

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Just as many students and teachers around the country are preparing to start or already have started the new school year, Apple is set to announce a new education program that aims to ‘end America’s public schools’ digital divide’. The new plan will be unveiled tomorrow morning with ABC’s Good Morning America program airing an exclusive interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook discussing the company’s latest education initiative with Robin Roberts (seen wearing an Apple Watch in the promo shot).
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Apple has updated its diversity report with new data about gender, race, and ethnicity hiring at the company. The updated diversity report comes one day after Apple committed to sponsoring a minority-focused technology program and one year after releasing its first report on such data.

While the new data does not show dramatic diversity improvements compared with last year’s report, Apple does highlight some key changes in hiring over the last 12 months. The company is still mostly male with men accounting for 69% of Apple around the world, but that’s moved slightly from 70% a year ago.

The same is true for race, as whites make up 54% of the overall company in the United States, but the new report shows an increase in Asian (18% from 15%) and black (8% from 7%) employees from the previous year.

Apple’s report also breaks out gender, race and ethnicity of new hires over the last year, with 35% of new employees around the world being woman.and in the United States, 19% of US hires being Asian, 13% Hispanic, and 11% black. Apple’s diversity website further breaks out each group by sector, including tech and non-tech jobs, leadership, retail, and retail leadership.

Denise Young Smith, Apple’s VP of Worldwide Human Resources, sent the following memo to employees regarding the latest diversity report:
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One of the numbers disclosed in Apple’s Schedule 14A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission was the amount Apple spends annually on protecting CEO Tim Cook. Patently Apple spotted the entry listing “security expenses in the amount of $699,133.”

Tim Cook rarely has much visible security when seen at public events, but bodyguards are doubtless there in the background. It’s likely that a sizeable chunk of the expenditure protects his surprisingly modest four-bedroom home … 
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Congressional Black Caucus member and California Congresswoman Barbara Lee has called on Apple to release federal data on the diversity of its workforce, following a meeting with Tim Cook to discuss the issue, reports USA Today.

Apple is one of a number of tech companies that issues its own reports on employee diversity, but refuses to release data from its federally-mandated filing. Companies are required by law to file the information, but are not obligated to make it public … 
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News first surfaced earlier this year that Apple and BMW had engaged in negotiations over the possibility of the Cupertino company using components from the carmaker for its own electric vehicle project. The negotiations reportedly fell through following a visit by Tim Cook and other Apple execs to BMW in Germany, but a report from Reuters today adds that talks between the two companies “may be revived at a later stage.”

The report also shares some more insight into Cook’s visit to BMW, noting that talks have stalled due to Apple wanting to “explore developing a passenger car on its own”:

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Apple is officially putting its weight behind new LGBT anti-discrimination legislature currently being proposed in Congress. The company said in a statement to the Human Rights Campaign that it actively supports the Equality Act.

At Apple we believe in equal treatment for everyone, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, how they worship or who they love. We fully support the expansion of legal protections as a matter of basic human dignity.

Apple’s support for the bill that would expand federal protections in the workplace to LGBT Americans in all states follows several years of Apple CEO Tim Cook calling on Congress to pass such legislation, and Apple’s backing is in line with its own company policies.
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