Apple CEO Tim Cook has responded to a New York Times expose that explained in great detail the harsh conditions faced by workers at Foxconn, one of Apple's key manufacturers. In response, Cook sent out a long email to Apple employees refuting that report.
The email, obtained by 9to5Mac, flatly denies --- in the opening paragraph --- the assertions made in the New York Times article. Cook said:
"As a company and as individuals, we are defined by our values. Unfortunately some people are questioning Apple's values today, and I'd like to address this with you directly. We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don't care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It's not who we are."
We're not Apple fanboys, but we're not fans, in general, of corporations, period. These sound like good words, but does anyone --- anyone with common sense --- doubt that corporations, which want to make a lot of money for their shareholders and executives, cut corners as much as they can get away with?
Particularly troubling were the words from a former Apple executive, who said,
“We’re trying really hard to make things better. But most people would still be really disturbed if they saw where their iPhone comes from.”
Casting at least part of the blame on consumers who want the newest device at the cheapest price was a current --- not former -- Apple executive, who said,
"You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards. And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China."
Cook seemed to set the email up as something that "should" or "would" be leaked to the press. He concluded with a paragraph that points to Apple's Supplier Responsibility Report. He said,
"We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues. What we will not do – and never have done – is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain. On this you have my word. You can follow our progress at apple.com/supplierresponsibility."
Apple has posted its fiscal Q1 earnings for 2012, which are for the quarter ended December 31, 2011. Unlike fiscal Q4 2011, which saw Apple have a rare miss of analysts' estimates, Apple had a record quarter, with record sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs.
The company's revenue was a record $46.33 billion, up 73 percent year-over-year. Apple also posted a record profit, of $13.06 billion (or $13.87 per share), up 118 percent over fiscal Q1 2011.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected sales of $38.91 billion. It was a welcome change from last quarter, fiscal Q4 2011, when for the first time in 32 quarters, Apple failed to meet analysts' estimates.
In terms of iDevices, it was a solid quarter, with one exception. Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones in the quarter, up 128 percent year-over-year. The company sold 15.43 million iPads during the quarter, which was a 111 percent unit increase over fiscal Q1 2011. It also sold 5.2 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase year-over-year.
The lone poor performer were iPods, which dropped 21 percent year-over-year, to 15.4 million units sold. That, however, is a continuing --- and expected --- decrease, as more end users gravitate away from stand-along music players.
International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter's revenue.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs. Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline."
Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO added "We are very happy to have generated over $17.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter. Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 13 weeks, we expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $8.50."
Apple stock was down $7.00 to $420.41 or 1.64 percent in Tuesday trading. The stock has leaped to $453.80, up $33.49 or 7.97 percent in after-hours trading, at the time of this writing.
On Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012, at 6:35 a.m. EST, former Penn State head coach Joe Paterno died of complications of lung cancer. But on Saturday, the day before, a Tweet issued by Onward State, an online news organization that serves Penn State's students, faculty, staff, alumni, and along with State College, Pa. became another example of how unconfirmed Internet reports can lead to false assumptions.
Onward State Tweeted that Joe Paterno had died, but on Saturday, not Sunday. As if that weren't bad enough, the story was then picked up by major media, including CBSSports.com, which ran a photo of Joe Paterno with a caption that said that the former Penn State head coach had lost "his battle with lung cancer at 85."
While Paterno did lose his battle just the next day, the incident shows the risks of taking unconfirmed Web reports and trying to "be first" with them. It's the same thing that Onward State admitted being guilty of, saying in an apologetic post that "In this day and age, getting it first often conflicts with getting it right, but our intention was never to fall into that chasm. All I can do now is promise that in the future, we will exercise caution, restraint, and humility."
The managing editor of Onward State, Devon Edwards, has resigned over the incident.
Meanwhile, CBSSports.com admitted their mistake as well, also apologizing and saying the error "was the result of a failure to verify the original report. CBSSports.com holds itself to high journalistic standards, and in this circumstance tonight, we fell well short of those expectations."
It is not the first time that a faux Internet took the world by storm. In 2008, a CNN iReport (iReporters submit stories that are not fact-checked or verified) said that then Apple CEO Steve Jobs had a heart attack. Apple stock plummeted as a result; Jobs did not have a heart attack that day, but eventually did pass away in 2011 as a result of complications from pancreatic cancer.
Meanwhile, false report aside Joe Paterno died on Sunday morning, Jan. 22, 2012 at the age of 85. While he had an impressive legacy, including the record for most Division 1 college football victories (409), his legacy will be forever tainted by the still-ongoing Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal.
Jerry Sandusky, a former Penn State assistant coach, has been indicted for numerous counts of child sex abuse with boys. Although prior to Sandusky's arrest, Paterno was revered in college football, he was accused of inaction, or lack of sufficient action, when it came to a report from then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary who told Paterno that he had witnessed Sandusky in the showers with a boy.
Only days after the indictment was handed down, Paterno was fired by Penn State's board of trustees.
And now, nine weeks after his final game on Nov. 5, Joe Paterno is gone. Some felt he would coach forever. Others felt that once he was fired, his time would not be long, although none were aware of his lung cancer at the time.
Still, those who made the latter statement were aware how much the Penn State job meant to Paterno. He passed up numerous chances to coach at other places, including the pros. Perhaps those who felt he would not survive long after his firing were not far off.
We already expected this event, and we also expected the typical "at least one week" lead time, and we got it: Apple has scheduled an event for Jan. 19. As we expected, the event will focus on education.
Apple says the event will be about education and will take place on January 19 at the Guggenheim Museum. The event begins at 10:00 a.m. ET. Apple likes to start things at 10 a.m., and apparently it doesn't matter if it's Eastern, Central, and Pacific.
While vague in its description, according to an anonymous source close to Apple, the event will not feature any new devices, but instead focus on a new push by Apple into the e-textbook business.
In the Steve Jobs official biography, which came out in October, the late former Apple CEO told biographer Walter Isaacson that he wanted to "transform" the textbook market by hiring prominent textbook authors to create e-textbooks for the iPad.
It's something that it was once felt Amazon.com's Kindle DX would achieve. In Jobs' case, he added that he felt Apple would be able to avoid state textbook certification processes by making them free.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is not netting a near-$400m annual salary, despite reports supposedly detailing the chief exec’s bulging paycheck, as the top-tier benefits are contingent on him staying with the company for a decade. Speculation as to Cook’s financial position began yesterday, with an AP report citing the restricted Apple stock the company’s board approved as part of his taking the role Steve Jobs vacated last year. However, subsequent reports failed to recognize when, exactly, Cook could expect to see any cash.
There was speculation running rampant on Monday that newly minted Apple CEO Tim Cook was making 378 million times as much as the late Steve Jobs in the same position, but it turns out it was all just a big mistake.
On the other hand, in 2011 Cook did make $900,017 times as much as Steve Jobs typically made in a year. Jobs was famous for taking only $1 as his Apple CEO salary. Naturally, most of his wealth came from his Apple stock, so taking only $1 didn't really affect him adversely.
Meanwhile, Tim Cook took home a salary of $900,017, contributed $14,700 to his 401(k) account, and paid life-insurance premiums worth $1,820. That was his income, but what screwed up the calculations of many are the 1 million shares of restricted stock options we reported he received, back in August of 2011.
Those shares are worthless right now. Half of them vest in 2016, five years after the initial grant. The other half will vest in 2021. We have no doubt that Cook will be around if he wants to be, so this is just an insurance policy to make sure he stays around.
Since the shares must vest, they don't account for any 2011 income --- or 2012, 2013, 2014, or 2015.
Two years after its debut, a "Drivers License" app has been removed from the App Store. It's amazing it survived this long: the app had templates allowing users to create realistic-looking licenses from all 50 states.
Ostensibly a joke app, users could e-mail a resulting "joke" image, and then print and laminate the result to potentially make a decent-looking fake driver's license, all for gratis, as the app was free. The software was pulled after a letter from Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) was sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
According to AppShopper, the app first hit the App Store on Nov. 4, 2009, and is / was described as follows:
Create your coolest license EVER. With Drivers License, you can make realistic, crazy, or hilarious drivers licenses for any state.*
Take pictures with your iPhone or use pictures you already have and paste them into to the app for endless hours of fun. Take pics alone or with friends, take mug shots or make faces, whatever you can think of, this app will support it.
Drivers License lets you change all the info on the licenses, too! Create a fake name, job, or title. The app stores everything you do so just hit “change state” to see what your license looks like in New York or sunny California.
Best of all, once your license is complete, you can email or share it with your friends on Facebook.
Unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses
Licenses for all 50 states
Use any picture you take or have stored on your device
Play with names, address, weight or any other category
Give your license an autograph
Send and share licenses whenever you want via email or Facebook!
This app is completely free for your entertainment! To get a REAL license check out DriversEd.com!
We can see that the app was designed to draw attention to a Drivers Education school. We can also see how it might be misused.
A blurb for the app still appears on DriversEd.com, but the app is no longer in the App Store.
Brian Zimmer, President of the Coalition for Secure Driver's License stated that he first brought the app to Apple's attention on April 4 of this yet, but the Calif.-based company didn't take action until a senator weighed in. Zimmer said,
"I applaud Senator Casey's efforts. Apple has a responsibility to its users to ensure that its technology does not facilitate crime. Counterfeit driver's licenses are not novelties. They present a very real risk to public safety and national security. Apple should have had measures in place to prevent the 'License' application from ever making it to the App Store. Apple Corporation's lack of action to pull this application when I first notified them in April, 2011, of its risk to public safety was dismaying. Apple should establish a careful policy of reviewing applications for the App Store that might lead to a child's injury through inappropriate use. The License App presents a clear risk to public safety."
In fact, Apple does have a careful review policy on apps in its App Store, so careful that some have called it draconian, overbearing and overreaching. While the app apparently managed to slip by the initial review, it's difficult to understand why they didn't pull it as soon as Zimmer brought it to their attention.
Of course, with scanners, printers, and laminators around, we know there's absolutely no other way folks could create a fake driver's license, right?
You might think that since Steve Jobs said he wanted to "destroy Android," that there would be no way that Apple would choose to license any patents to an Android OEM, but apparently that's not the case. The Verge has learned that back in November of 2010, Apple offered to license the patent for a feature known as "scrollback" to Samsung.
Indeed, while some have wondered if Apple's stance on Android might soften somewhat now that Steve Jobs has passed away, that offer took place while the former Apple CEO was still leading the company. Apple has already licensed the patent, #7,469,381, to both Nokia and IBM.
Scrollback refers to a feature which shows users the background of an app when they scroll past its edge. The revelation came via text behind blacked-out portions of a court order issued by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California late on Friday, one which denied Apple's request for a preliminary injunction against Samsung.
Apple sought the injunction against a number of Samsung's Android devices, both tablet and smartphone, which the Cupertino, Calif.-based company said are essentially blatant copies of iDevices.
Koh said that allowing Samsung's Galaxy S 4G, Infuse 4G, Droid Charge, and Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices to remain on sale would not harm Apple enough to justify an injunction [it's unclear if Koh is into technology enough that she knows that all of those except perhaps the Galaxy Tab 10.1 have been supplanted in consumers' minds by newer devices]. Koh added that such an injunction would likely benefit other OEMs at the expense of Samsung.
What's unclear is why a deal fell apart, if licensing of the patent was offered to Samsung. It could be that although a deal was offered, the licensing fees that was presented were exorbitant. We'll probably never know the actual reason.
The fact that there was what seems to be honest-to-goodness negotiation between the two parties, even while "willing to go thermonuclear" Steve Jobs was still CEO of Apple, could mean things could still work out amicably, or relatively so, between the two parties.
Apple's newly minted CEO Tim Cook has responded to what might eventually be called "Siri-gate," or perhaps even "Abortion-gate." It was reported earlier that Apple's iPhone 4S Siri voice assistant was not responding to requests for abortion centers or birth control, prompting the ACLU and others to call for a fix.
The ACLU even created a petition in response.
At issue was the fact that Siri, which seems quite happy to bring up escort services, seems to have difficulty when asked to retrieve information about abortion clinics or women's health services in some areas, even if such locations are nearby.
In some cases, when people asked Siri where to find an abortion clinic, the response was directed them to a "crisis pregnancy center" (CPC), also called pregnancy resource centers (PRC) which are not abortion clinics, and instead, are organizations established to advise pregnant women against having an abortion.
Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, wrote a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook about the Siri matter. His response was:
Nancy, Thanks for your note.
Our customers use Siri to find out all types of information and while it can find a lot, it doesn't always find what you want. These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone, it simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better and we will in the coming weeks.
I appreciate you pointing this out.
Best Regards, Tim
The only negative to that is that it is PR-speak. Spokesman Tim Neumayr said the exact same thing, word for word, as did Natalie Kerris, Apple spokeswoman.
We'd expect PR to be "on message," but we would have hoped Cook would use his own words, at least. Of course, if it had been late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, it might have been a one sentence email response, as he was known to do, so perhaps this is better.
We don't Siri-ously believe this is some sort of conspiracy, particularly with a beta product. Siri is expected to exit beta sometime in 2012.
Following an earlier ChangeWave survey which showed that the Kindle Fire has made at least a few potential iPad 2 owners put their purchases on hold, comes a new survey published by electronics shopping guide Retrevo.
Retrevo surveyed more than 1,000 consumers last month. Of those, 12 percent said they plan to purchase an Kindle Fire tablet this holiday shopping season, while only 10 percent said they would buy an iPad in the same timeframe. Among those polled who were already tablet owners (any type), 27 percent said they would buy a Kindle Fire, while 20 percent said they planned an iPad purchase.
When specifically asked about purchasing a Kindle Fire instead of an iPad, 44 percent said they would consider it. 44 percent said they did not know enough about the Kindle. 12 percent said that the only tablet they would consider was the iPad.
Interestingly, despite assertions by the late Steve Jobs that tablets with screens less than 10-inches in size are DOA, Retrevo's blog post said that "Perhaps there are a lot of iPad owners who feel the iPad is a tad heavy and difficult to hold in one hand because only about half the iPad 2 owners said the iPad was 'just right.'" Of course, we never hesitate to point out that the iPad and iPad 2 screens are only 9.7-inches in size (ahem), and that to us, the 7-inch form factor of many Android tablets is a lot easier to heft and transport.
Retrevo concludes: "Up until now, no tablet has been able to compete with Apple’s iPad. Operating System confusion and lack of 'tablet' apps on the Android side may have helped keep Android tablets at bay however, the iPad 2 is starting to show its age and the new Kindle Fire is about to make the scene with a very attractive $199 price point."
Apple CEO Tim Cook isn't too worried. He believes that the fact that the Kindle Fire carries a forked version of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) will just worsen Android fragmentation, killing its chances.
Just as RBC analyst Mike Abramsky said in his research note addressing the earlier ChangeWave survey, Retrevo pointed out that the Kindle Fire has to live up to expectations around battery performance, image quality, video playback, and more, or the future may dim for the 7-inch Kindle Fire and its expected 8.9-inch larger brother.
Amazon.com's Kindle Fire tablet will start shipping on November 15th, and analysts believe fourth-quarter shipments could total as many as 5 million units.
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