Here’s a link to the official live-stream page. Bookmark it and pass it along.

The event is a week from today at 10a PT, 1p ET.

Very exciting.

Prashant Gopal, writing for Bloomberg:

Tap your phone, and AC/DC’s “Back in Black” blasts. Tap again, and the bath runs at a blissful 101 degrees. Sweet, right? Of course, your dad might view it as a bit over the top. All told, $30,000 worth of gadgets and gizmos were on display here, many run with Apple’s free HomeKit app.

And:

Apple is teaming up with a handful of builders and using these kinds of test beds to inch its way into the market for Internet-connected home furnishings, a nascent field that has attracted rivals like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon.com Inc.

At the core of this article is Apple’s strategy to bring your home into the Apple ecosystem. If you buy a home “wired” for HomeKit, you are more likely to move to iOS, buy an iPhone to control it all.

If I go down this road, will my house be worth less if I sell to an Android buyer? When I am looking for a house, will Android vs Brillo (Google’s Internet of Things platform) be part of the realtor’s pitch?

Quartz:

Apple’s product launches are notoriously secretive, but the Cupertino, California tech giant is sure to do one thing ahead of a big reveal: file trademark paperwork in Jamaica.

It did this for Siri, the Apple Watch, macOS, and dozens of its major products months before the equivalent paperwork was lodged in the United States. Likewise, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft routinely file trademarks for their most important products in locales far flung from Silicon Valley and Seattle.

And:

The tech giants are exploiting a US trademark-law provision that lets them effectively claim a trademark in secret. Under this provision, once a mark is lodged with an intellectual property office outside the US, the firm has six months to file it with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). When the firm does file in the US, it can point to its original application made abroad to show that it has a priority claim on the mark.

Loopholes. Where would we be without them?

Fortune:

Ahrendts views the company’s newly redesigned retail outlets not just as stores, but as the company’s next big products…she and Apple view their stores as potential town squares within each of the cities they reside.

“The store is now the biggest product we produce and we have five new features [for iPhones and iPads]. Accessories are avenues, and the huge digital screen in each store is the forum,” Ahrendts said.

By the end of this year, 95 stores will be fully redesigned with this vision, the first of which were the San Francisco Union Square location and the London Regent Street outpost. The community aspect to each store is key, Ahrendts said, with these town squares serving as educational centers.

An interesting metaphor. It’ll be interesting to see how this is implemented.

Also interesting:

There are nearly 500 Apple stores worldwide, and retail sales are responsible for some 18% of the company’s $233.7 billion in sales, amounting to $42 billion in yearly revenue.

That 18% number is impressive, given the relatively small number of stores per consumer in the world.

Earlier this morning, I posted about Apple removing security tethers from devices in the Apple Stores.

One question I had was how this would impact shoplifting, how Apple was able to keep an eye on things.

From this 9to5mac post by Ben Lovejoy:

A source tells us that the current special OS images on demo devices include a software ‘kill switch’ which disables them when they go out of range of the store Wi-Fi. This means that Apple no longer has to use Find My iPhone to disable them manually.

Read the rest. Pretty interesting.

Mark Gurman and Alex Webb, writing for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. has drastically scaled back its automotive ambitions, leading to hundreds of job cuts and a new direction that, for now, no longer includes building its own car, according to people familiar with the project.

Hundreds of members of the car team, which comprises about 1,000 people, have been reassigned, let go, or have left of their own volition in recent months, the people said, asking not to be identified because the moves aren’t public.

New leadership of the initiative, known internally as Project Titan, has re-focused on developing an autonomous driving system that gives Apple flexibility to either partner with existing carmakers, or return to designing its own vehicle in the future, the people also said. Apple has kept staff numbers in the team steady by hiring people to help with the new focus, according to another person.

The article is a fascinating behind-the-scenes on how this project slowly shifted direction to its current focus.

The Economist, on Apple opening an App Academy in a tough, but emerging, Naples neighborhood:

“We go to places nobody thought were possible”, explained Lisa Jackson, vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives at Apple, at the inaugural event. Naples lags far behind northern Italy for transport and digital infrastructure, and criminality is rife. The Camorra, a mafia gang, runs one of the biggest drug-trafficking enterprises in the world from the city. The neighbourhood in which Apple has opened the academy (it is located inside a new campus of Federico II University) used to be more dangerous. “We used to see our friends die on the ground,” recalls Davide Varlese, a cousin of Mr Ciarravolo. But things have improved over the past decade as authorities have clamped down. At least the Camorra doesn’t come asking for money in bars any more, locals say.

The draw for Apple is the engineering program at the university.

Nikkei Asian Review:

Cook, who was visiting Japan for the first time as CEO, said Apple will open a research and development base in Yokohama, near Tokyo, later this year. The facility — the first of its kind outside the U.S. — will develop AI and other technologies. Cook described it as a center for “deep engineering” and said it will be “very different” from the R&D base Apple plans to build in China.

And:

Some analysts say a sales slowdown in China has prompted Apple to shift back toward Japan, where the iPhone commands a large market share. Cook said Apple sees “kindred spirits” in Japan, since it has “a lot of partners, supplier partners, and the developer community here is so vibrant.”

Not particularly revealing, but interesting. One quote towards the end struck me:

On filling Jobs’ role, Cook said, “I never tried to replace him. I’ve just tried to be myself and do the best thing that I can do. … I think if he were here, I would have loved it, because I would have loved going through many of these things with him. But it unfortunately wasn’t to be.”

Imagine if Steve was still around, with Tim Cook running the company and Steve visioning new products to life. What kind of partnership would they have? What kind of person would Steve have become? Just a thought.

Stephen Hackett, writing for 512 Pixels:

Now that the iPhone 7 starts at 32 GB of storage, the constant juggling needed to avoid a full device has been left behind by more users than ever before.

So let’s talk about iCloud storage.

And:

5 GB often isn’t enough to back up an iPhone and an iPad, let alone store years worth of family photos.

Unlike One Drive or even Dropbox, iCloud storage is key to extending and improving the experience of using a Mac or iPhone. Dropbox may be a semi-magical folder that syncs data to other devices, but iCloud is the glue between Apple’s various platforms.

Great post, great point.