Tim Cook

U.S. President Barack Obama met with Apple CEO Tim Cook and other technology company executives today to discuss government surveillance, according to a report from Politico. Earlier this week, according to the report, the President and his staff began holding confidential meetings about surveillance tactics and topics such as the recent NSA-related controversies with company executives and other members of pertinent organizations.

Those invited were mostly senior executives, including Cook, Stephenson and Cerf, as well as representatives of groups like the Center for Democracy and Technology and Gigi Sohn, the leader of Public Knowledge, according to three sources familiar with the meeting. Each declined comment for this story.

The report names AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and former Google Vice President Vint Serf as the other technology community members involved in the meetings. Serf recently was appointed by President Obama to the National Science Board, and Serf is also known as a pioneer of the internet…

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Fox Business News’ Charlie Gasparino, noting that his “sources are solid on this”, reports that Apple’s Board of Directors are concerned about Apple’s pace of innovation and the product pipeline coming from the company. From the video above, Gasparino states that this “does not mean that Tim Cook is out of a job or that there’s a job search inside Apple”, however, the Board is expressing deep concern about the lack of notable products coming out of Cupertino.

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January File Photo

According to a local Chinese report, Apple CEO Tim Cook was recently back in China hoping to jumpstart relations with Chinese carriers this week. Cook met with China Telecom, already a strong Apple partner. The topic of conversation wasn’t revealed but likely on the plate is Apple’s lower cost plastic iPhone, perhaps called the iPhone 5C, and overall flattening growth in Apple’s second biggest market.

Apple CEO Tim Cook in China, visited with China Telecom, possibly to talk about declining iPhone sales, say local reports.

— Michael Kan (@Michael_Kan) July 30, 2013

The article speculates that he probably met with the other local carriers including partner China Unicom and the world’s biggest carrier, China Mobile who has around 700M subscribers – none of which have direct access to Apple’s iPhone yet.

It is Cook’s third known trip to China since he took over as CEO almost two years ago. Other things that may come up include Pegatron’s supposed worker violation issues and perhaps even another Beijing scalping problem.

Rough translation below:
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Apple’s Tim Cook, Bob Mansfield, Kevin Lynch

Apple has begun assembling a team of hardware and software engineering, medical sensor, manufacturing, and fitness experts, indicating the company is moving forward with a project to build a fitness-oriented, sensor-laden wearable computer, according to our sources.

Over the past half-decade-or-so, Apple has experimented with and shelved numerous wearable computer designs. Internal prototypes have included designs that could clip onto different pieces of clothing (like an iPod shuffle/nano) in addition to devices that could wrap around a wrist.

Based on comments from Apple CEO Tim Cook and numerous reports, the wrist is the part of the body in which top Apple executives are currently targeting…

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Apple’s Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue was spotted alongside Tim Cook at the annual Sun Valley conference for technology and media executives. According to a tweet from Bloomberg‘s Jon Erlichman, Cue and Cook arrived today at the conference, as pictured above.

In response to a question about the event being a “big week,” Cook reportedly said, “we’ll see.”

The week long conference held in Idaho, which Tim Cook attended last year, is a media-and-content-heavy conference focused on making deals, partnerships, and acquisitions. While an earlier report confirmed  Cook’s attendance at the conference earlier, Eddy Cue’s appearance is unexpected…

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Image via Getty Images

Apple CEO Tim Cook and his leadership team are moving to implement sweeping changes to the way iPhones are sold and marketed in order to deflect competition from smartphones running Google’s Android operating system. Hints of the new iPhones sales push were described at a secretive summit at San Francisco’s Fort Mason for Apple Retail Store Leaders from across the globe, according to multiple people familiar with the internal event…

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“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 Center, testified 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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There were no shortage of details regarding Apple’s much rumored radio service leading up to today’s keynote address. The rumors said Apple was planning on introducing a free, ad-supported radio service, similar to Pandora, that would be highly integrated with a tweaked model for its iAd business. Apple has now officially unveiled the service dubbed ‘iTunes Radio’ and provided some details on exactly how it will work during its keynote presentation this morning at Moscone West in San Francisco.

The new iTunes Radio app is built in to the iOS radio app, and works on the Mac and Apple TV as well. As rumored, iTunes Radio will be free, supported by ads. In a twist, however, iTunes Radio will be completely free (free of ads) if you’re a subscriber to iTunes Match:

The Music app has a beautiful new design and includes the new iTunes Radio, a free Internet radio service featuring over 200 stations and an incredible catalog of music from the iTunes Store®, combined with features only iTunes can deliver. iTunes Radio is the best way to discover new music. When you tune into iTunes Radio on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac®, PC or Apple TV®, you’ll have access to stations inspired by the music you already listen to, Featured Stations curated by Apple and genre-focused stations that are personalized just for you.

As we reported prior to today’s event, the underlining technology is based on Apple’s iTunes Genius feature with iTunes Radio tailoring the experience to your iTunes usage. Apple says there will be Siri integration, and also aims to offer users “access to exclusive “first listen” premieres from top selling artists.”
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Live on stage at Apple’s WWDC keynote presentation this morning, CEO Tim Cook has opened things up with the usual updates on some of the company’s core businesses and accomplishments over the past year. Sharing numbers on how its products have been selling and outpacing the competition has become somewhat of a tradition for Apple keynote addresses. Below you’ll find a roundup of the stats that Cook shared today including info on retail stores, iPhones and more:

-6 Million registered developers, 1.5M in last year

-WWDC sold out in 71 seconds

-1m daily visitors at Apple retail

-Millions of customers come for personal training

-407 stores in 14 countries

-50 billion apps

-900,000 apps (93% downloaded each month)

-375k iPad apps

-575,000,000 store accounts (more accounts with credit cards than any store online)

-paid developers 10 billion (3 times more than all other mobile platforms combined)
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(Preparations for Apple’s 2013 WWDC developer conference / Image via Nick)

There’s a lot we already know about what we’ll be seeing next week at WWDC– we’ve already brought you exclusive details on iOS 7, OS X 10.9, a MacBook refresh, Apple’s new Radio service, and much more. What else might we see Apple show off next week? Below are a couple of our best predictions based on what we think Apple is most likely to show off as well as few things we’ve been hearing:
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(via <a href="http://www.ap.org" target="_blank">AP</a>)

The U.S. Department of Justice has released its case against Apple in the alleged ‘ebooks pricing fix’ case (via CNET) that claims Apple made deals with book publishers to manipulate the price of ebooks.

The Justice Department believes Apple moved to raise ebook prices before Apple launched the iPad and the iBookstore so the company could benefit at the cost of the consumer.

Notably, everyone mentioned in the complaint has settled out of court ahead of this week’s trial, but Tim Cook has remained adamant that Apple is innocent of any wrongdoing.

Apple’s iBookstore has established deals with all of the major book publishers and sells ebooks on its proprietary store for viewing on Apple’s iOS devices including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

As we noted this morning, Tim Cook echoed this message at last week’s D11 conference:

The e-book case to me is bizarre. We’ve done nothing wrong there, and so we’re taking a very principled position. … We’re not going to sign something that says we did something we didn’t do. … So we’re going to fight.

The Justice Department released all 81 slides outlining its case against Apple, which you can view in its entirety below.
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In the midst of the U.S. government’s interest in Apple and other large multinationals that “avoid” paying taxes in the U.S. or repatriating funds stored abroad, RudeBaguette.com notes that the French society of authors, composers, and music publishers (SACEM) has announced that Apple owes around 5 million euros in unpaid taxes.

The funds apparently come from unpaid royalties on iPad sales for 2011 that France and other EU countries, such as Germany, collect for devices capable of transferring and displaying copyrighted material:

To give a bit of a background, the copie privée is a tax in several countries including France & Germany that is applied to all digital devices that can transfer, read, or otherwise make use of copyrighted material. The tax goes to the SACEM, which then takes the lump sum of all the taxes collected and deals them out to authors, creators, producers, actors, etc. accordingly… the problem here isn’t so much the tax, but that Apple actually charged the consumers this tax, and didn’t pay it out to the SACEM.

The news comes as reports claim France is beginning to crack down on tax schemes of large companies with plans to force  Apple, Google, and others to disclose details of foreign business activities and tax practices:
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We discussed Tim Cook’s speaking at Duke’s Fuqua Business school on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his MBA back in April. This weekend, Duke published  insightful snippets of the remarks he made and they are incredibly insightful. Perhaps most interesting was Cook’s views on collaboration:
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Tim Cook noted during his interview at the D11 conference tonight that “Apple has no religious issue porting an iOS app to Android,” but was careful to point out that they would only do so “if it made sense.”

When asked about Facebook’s Android home screen replacement and whether such access would ever be available to developers on Apple’s platform, Cook noted that there are plans to allow deeper access to iOS, but such changes will only be allowed if they don’t impact the customer’s experience. Kara Swisher specifically asked about the possibility of Chat Heads becoming part of iOS, but Cook was quick to shoot the idea down:
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Live on stage during his interview at the AllThingsD D11 Conference tonight, Tim Cook has for the first time talked at length about his view on wearable technologies as competitors like Google and others push ahead with Glass and other wearable projects. While noting that broad range appeal with a product like Google Glass is “tough to see,” Cook said he thinks “the wrist is interesting” while calling the form factor “somewhat natural” compared to head mounted products.

Nike Fuel Band well made for the fitness category. Works well with iOS. The ones that do more than one thing aren’t great. They won’t convince a kid who has never worn glasses, a band, or a watch to wear one. There are lots of things to solve in this area, ripe for excitement. I think there will be tons of companies playing in this (won’t respond to Walt asking if Apple will). I see this as a very key branch of the tree… referring to the post-PC era.

Cook did note that “people want wearables to be light, unobtrusive, reflect their fashion/style” and that it would take some convincing to show people ‘why it’s worth wearing them’:

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