Goodrich, who worked for Jobs since 1998, was promised by late chairman of the world’s most valuable company in a one-on- one meeting in May 2005 that he would always have a job at Apple, according to the complaint. The conversation took place after Jobs’s return from medical leave to receive treatment for pancreatic cancer, Goodrich said.
Just playing devil’s advocate here, but aren’t things like this said all time? “You’re good, you’ll always have a job here.” Things change.
Eric Slivka for Mac Rumors:
Microsoft’s market capitalization peaked on December 30, 1999, reaching an intraday high of $119.94 per share. With Microsoft having documented 5,160,024,593 outstanding shares as of October 31, 1999 in its quarterly earnings report, the company would have had a market capitalization of $618.89 billion on December 30.Apple’s most recent quarterly filing listed 937,406,000 outstanding shares as of July 13, 2012, and with the company’s stock price hitting $660.73 today, its market capitalization reached $619.37 billion.
Impressive.
Apple opened its 374 and 375 retail store worldwide this weekend in Canada. While meeting with Apple, I was able to get a few details about how the retail operation is going overall. […]
Forbes:
One Apple product, something that didn’t exist five years ago, has higher sales than everything Microsoft has to offer. More than Windows, Office, Xbox, Bing, Windows Phone, and every other product that Microsoft has created since 1975. In the quarter ended March 31, 2012, iPhone had sales of $22.7 billion; Microsoft Corporation, $17.4 billion.Now when we say “worth” there’s a number of different things that we can mean.
Agreed. “Worth” may be a bit misleading but there’s no argument about the sales numbers.
Halifax has never seen anything like it. Hundreds of people lined up to see Apple launch its latest retail store, screaming and clapping, as excited as you would expect people to be on Christmas morning before opening their gifts. […]
Motorola Mobility unit said it filed a new patent-infringement case against Apple claiming that features on some Apple devices, including the Siri voice-recognition program, infringe its patents.
Lawsuits flying all over the place.
NASDAQ:
Apple Inc.’s retail boss told employees that the company made mistakes with its staffing levels, leading to news reports that the company was cutting employees, according to two people familiar with the matter.Apple acknowledged the retail staffing changes. “Making these changes was a mistake and the changes are being reversed,” said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman. “Our employees are our most important asset and the ones who provide the world-class service our customers deserve.”
This comes on the heels of a detailed IFOAppleStore report about various changes Senior VP of Retail John Browett was making to the retail environment increase the the stores contribution to company profit.
The proposed settlement would require the three settling publishers — HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster — to terminate their existing agency pricing contracts with Apple. Apple says that isn’t fair: “The Government is seeking to impose a remedy on Apple before there has been any finding of an antitrust violation.” This case, the company states, revolves around “an alleged conspiracy to force Amazon to adopt agency.” So a settlement “enjoining collusion or precluding publishers from forcing agency on Amazon would be appropriate,” but Apple is entitled to defend its contracts in court.
It does seem unfair to impose a settlement without giving Apple a chance to defend itself.
Apple on Tuesday updated its retail store pages in Canada noting the opening of two stores on Saturday, August 18. One store will open in Coquitlam, British Columbia and the other in my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. […]
PC Mag:
While Apple could still make a physical TV, I think this move incorporating Hulu and Amazon is very telling of Apple’s future TV strategy. The key here is that for Apple’s current TV device to make money, it needs content. By biting the bullet and offering competing services to iTunes, the value proposition of an Apple TV device rises. Apple can now accelerate its TV plans through areas it excels in, namely software and human interfaces. I believe that it can do all that it wants to do in these areas through an external box that connects to a TV and delivers iTunes and its cloud services.The problem with TVs is that people buy them and hold on to them for five to seven years on average. While Apple could design a TV that could be upgraded in software, it makes more sense to create a sophisticated box that works with all televisions and allows the company to innovate around this model.
Bajarin has been around for a long time and is a smart guy. I’ve been saying the same thing about Apple’s direction with regards to the Apple TV set-top box but The Esteemed Publisher of The Loop still believes Apple will still produce an actual HD television set. Time will tell.
Day4:
How easy is it to spread disinformation?One afternoon we sketched out a screw in our 3D program, a very strange screw where the head was neither a star, tracks, pentalobe or whatever, but a unique form, also very impractical. We rendered the image, put it in an email, sent it to ourselves, took a picture of the screen with the mail and anonymously uploaded the image to the forum Reddit with the text ”A friend took a photo a while ago at that fruit company, they are obviously even creating their own screws ”.Then we waited …
If you ever wonder where all these untrue Apple rumors come from, this will answer the question for at least some of them. It also shows how many web sites post “information” with little to no facts, research, details or common sense attached.
Today marks the 25th anniversary of HyperCard, Apple’s groundbreaking visual programming tool.
Eastman Kodak, which is planning to auction 1,100 digital patents, received two bids from investor groups including Apple Inc and Google Inc of between $150 million and $250 million, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Mat Honan:
I know how it was done now. Confirmed with both the hacker and Apple. It wasn’t password related. They got in via Apple tech support and some clever social engineering that let them bypass security questions.
The good news is the hacker didn’t brute-force the password. The bad news… yeah.
In the sworn declaration, Mr. Stretch admits to having “brought five Samsung prospective witnesses, accompanied by two interpreters, and three Samsung in-house attorneys, to see the Ceremonial Courtroom on the afternoon of August 2, 2012”.
“[Copying] creates a huge problem in marketing on many levels. We market our product as the hero and how distinctive it is, how consistent we’ve kept it over time,” said Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, as he was questioned by Apple lawyer Harold McElhinny. “Now when someone comes up with a product that copies that design and copies that marketing, then customers can get confused on whose product is whose… If you steal [the way the iPhone looks] you’re stealing all the value we’ve created.”
Sounds like Schiller did a great job in court today.
Kodak won a partial victory against Apple over patent claims.
Apple’s lawyer William Lee on Samsung releasing evidence to the press:
“Mr. Quinn’s declaration does not adress two of the Court’s questions: who drafted the statement and who released it,” Lee wrote. “Samsung’s multiple references to the jury in its statement make plain its intent that the jurors in our case learn of arguments the Court has excluded through the press.”
Fender did not pursue the Strat-clone manufacturers in court; and then after attempting to trademark the iconic Statocaster contours decades later, a court ruled in 2009 that “the body shapes were generic and that consumers do not solely associate these shapes with Fender Musical Instruments Corporation”. The ruling went so far as to say “in the case of the [Stratocaster] body outline, this configuration is so common that it is depicted as a generic electric guitar in a dictionary.”
Protect your property from thieves or lose the rights to it.
Russian cell phone service provider MTS says the iPhone is a tough sell to its customers because of Apple’s restrictions.
The Telegraph:
Apple might be the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalisation of $556bn, but its design chief insists it is not in it for the money.Sir Jonathan Ive, whose personal fortune stands at an estimated at $130m, said yesterday that Apple’s guiding principle was nothing to do with its balance sheet, and that it simply wanted to make “great products”. “Our goal isn’t to make money. Our goal absolutely at Apple is not to make money. This may sound a little flippant but it’s the truth,” said the British designer.
Kara Swisher:
Apple and Twitter did do some courting, but it was a while back, so the Journal was right.Twitter don’t need the dough — it has a big amount of money in its kitty, so the Times was right.
Nothing to see here.
A fingerprint sensor chip maker says it’s been acquired by Apple in a deal valued at $356 million.
Time:
Jobs was a visionary whose great genius was for design: he pushed and pushed to make the interface between computers and people elegant, simple and delightful. He always claimed his goal was to create products that were “insanely great.” Mission accomplished.
Michael Lopp:
The best stories, the ones we love, have a surprise ending. Since Steve returned to Apple, an essential part of the keynote was the anticipation of the unexpected, and that means aggressive and invasive secrecy. Not because they don’t want you to know, but because they want to tell you a great story.
Another great piece from Michael.
Apple has updated its consumer and pro photo editing software apps with Mountain Lion support and various other tweaks.
Greg Kiladze says we shouldn’t take analysts’ guesses about Apple earnings as seriously as we do.
Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that Mountain Lion will be released on Wednesday, July 25th.
Apple on Tuesday reported a quarterly profit of $8.8 billion profit on $35 billion in revenue.
According to Apple, the company sold 26.0 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 28 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. It also sold 17.0 million iPads during the quarter, an 84 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. […]
Apple has sent out another reminder to iWork.com public beta users that their service is being shut down on July 31.