Posts tagged with "apple"

A Company Made of People→

Allen Pike (via Brent Simmons) writes about Tim Cook’s Apple:

Of course, this is a shift, not a revolution. Apple will never get to the point where their culture tolerates, say, employees publicly tweeting that their CEO should step down. Indeed, as a public company with fierce competitors, they’re obligated to maintain decorum and secrecy around things that are materially sensitive.

Still, around the things that aren’t core secrets - developer relations, employee personality, and standing up for their values - Apple is feeling more like a chorus of real people and less like a monolith.

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Apple Launches 2014 Back To School Promotion

Apple has launched its annual Back To School promotion today, giving qualifying education customers extra credit when buying a Mac, iPhone, or iPad. As in previous years, Apple’s promotion allows customers to receive $100 of extra credit when purchasing a Mac, and $50 when buying an iPhone or iPad. Apple is giving away Apple Store Gift Cards, which can be used for Apple Store purchases (unlike iTunes gift cards for digital purchases given away in previous years).

The 2014 Back To School promotion runs until September 9 and qualifying customers in the US include “faculty, staff, students, and parents” of any public or private K12 and higher education institution. Apple published a PDF document on its website with further details on eligible customers and products available in the promotion.

For more details on gift cards and educational pricing, you can check out Apple’s official page for Back To School 2014. The promotion is live today in the US and international markets including Canada, the UK, and several European countries.

Apple Announces Q3 2014 Conference Call for July 22

Apple’s third quarter earnings report and conference call will take place on July 22nd, 2014, according to an Investor Relations update on Apple’s website first noted by setteBIT. Apple will provide a live audio webcast of the call.

Apple plans to conduct a conference call to discuss financial results of its third fiscal quarter on Tuesday, July 22, 2014 at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET.

In the second quarter of 2014, Apple posted revenue of $45.6 billion and sold 16.4 million iPads, 43.7 million iPhones, and 4.1 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $10.2 billion.

For Q3 2014, Apple set its guidance at revenue between $36 billion and $38 billion, with gross margin between 37 percent and 38 percent. Apple didn’t release major new products since their Q2 earnings call, but updated its MacBook Air line with faster processors and announced its acquisition of Beats Electronics and Beats Music for a total of $3 billion. The company also recently introduced a new entry-level iMac and upgraded its low-end iPod touch, but, more notably, held its annual WWDC in San Francisco where they announced iOS 8, OS X Yosemite, and a variety of new technologies that will launch this Fall. Apple is rumored to introduce new versions of the iPhone, iPad, as well as a wearable device later this year.

In the year-ago quarter, Apple posted revenue of $35.3 billion. The company sold 14.6 million iPads, 31.2 million iPhones, and 3.8 million Macs, earning a quarterly net profit of $6.9 billion.

We will provide live updates from the conference call on our site’s homepage on July 22nd starting at 2 PM PT.

The Apple QuickTake 100 Turns 20→

Stewart Wolpin, writing at Mashable:

Back in Apple’s dark ages — during Steve Jobs’ interregnum in the mid-1990s — the company experimented with some strange products. Everyone remembers the ill-fated Newton PDA, for instance, which was considered ahead of its time. Less memorable was the QuickTake 100, the first mass market color consumer digital camera.

First unveiled at the Tokyo MacWorld Expo on February 17, 1994, the QuickTake 100 went on sale 20 years ago from yesterday — June 20, 1994. It was priced at $749 and initiated the age of consumer digital photography.

The Apple QuickTake 100 was one of the first digital cameras, a market that, in a curious turn of events, has shrunk because of smartphones.

See also: Shrine of Apple’s QuickTake 100 page (and video embedded below).

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Starting Anew→

Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s SVP of Retail, in a post published on LinkedIn:

Also, trust your instincts and emotions. Let them guide you in every situation; they will not fail you. Never will your objectivity be as clear or your instincts sharper than in the first 30-90 days. Cherish this time and fight the urge to overthink. Real human dialogue and interaction where you can feel and be felt will be invaluable as your vision, enabled by your instincts, becomes clearer. In honor of the great American poet Maya Angelou, always remember, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I would argue this is even more important in the early days.

It’s strange (and great) to see an Apple executive sharing this kind of thoughts publicly. The post is beautifully written, especially the last few paragraphs.

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Essential

The iPhone is good at many trivial tasks such as playing games and watching videos, but this week I experienced firsthand how much its portability and apps matter when dealing with an emergency situation.

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Jony Ive on Apple’s Design Process→

Brian X. Chen interviews Apple’s Jony Ive for The New York Times:

Often when I talk about what I do, making isn’t just this inevitable function tacked on at the end. The way we make our products is certainly equally as demanding and requires so much definition. I design and make. I can’t separate those two.

This is part of Steve’s legacy. Deep in the culture of Apple is this sense and understanding of design, developing and making. Form and the material and process – they are beautifully intertwined – completely connected. Unless we understand a certain material — metal or resin and plastic — understanding the processes that turn it from ore, for example – we can never develop and define form that’s appropriate.

Bits from this interview were used in a Tim Cook profile published last week.

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Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine Speak at Code Conference, A Brief Recap

Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine. Photo via Re/code

Following the news that Apple was acquiring Beats yesterday, Eddy Cue from Apple and Jimmy Iovine from Beats spoke to Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the inaugural Code Conference. We’ve run through the liveblogs from Re/code and The Verge and highlighted some interesting moments of the discussion below. If you’re interested, I’d recommend reading the full liveblogs yourself and keep an eye out for the full video of the interview (which we’ll link to once posted by the Re/code team).

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