Today in Ireland, Apple CEO Tim Cook is said to have met with Taoiseach Enda Kenny in the Irish city Cork, speaking on matters of business operation and possible additional development in the future. Cook is also said to have toured the company's local facilities, and according to The Independent, is "pleased" with how they're operating.
Today on the 30th anniversary of the introduction of the Mac computer to the world by Apple, Tim Cook has taken to ABC to speak not only about oddities like Sapphire Crystal, he's come to speak about the NSA as well. After having actually headed to the White House on the 17th of December, 2013, to speak with the President about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs, here Cook suggests that he wishes he could say more.
This week in celebration of 30 years of Apple's push for Macintosh, Tim Cook spoke with ABC news about several subjects - including, briefly, their investment in USA-based manufacturing facilities. This chat included a reminder that Apple was manufacturing the Mac Pro in Arizona, leading Cook to note their recent investment in Arizona. So-called "sapphire glass" is at the center of this push, and it's quite likely they'll be bringing it to a new product inside this year.
Supposing you were at China Mobile's headquarters store in Beijing on the 16th of January, 2014, you may have been part of the iPhone launch - one that brought Apple CEO Tim Cook to the store to shake hands personally. This launch has been a long time coming, with Apple aiming to move into China for several years and China Mobile being one of the more important steps toward a large spread. Cook visited the headquarters store of China Mobile and helped with distribution - at least for the first few phones.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has pressured the company board on pay, though not the way you might imagine: the chief exec has demanded his salary be more closely linked to Apple's stock price, as a result tumbling by $4m since the company failed to meet its targets. The Apple board had intended to base less than half of Cook's annual stock grants on the CEO performance-based metric it decided to shift to earlier this year. However, according to a preliminary filing with the SEC, Cook himself pushed for a greater chunk of his renumeration to be at risk, arguing that it would "set a leadership example."
Apple is holding its fourth quarter 2013 earnings call this afternoon, and to kick it off, CEO Tim Cook has taken to discussion about new product categories. Unfortunately, he didn't go into details about what those new products would look like, nor even hint at what could be expected, but he did serve up a general timeline on the matter, and we won't have too much longer to wait.
Apple's 4th quarter earnings report here in 2013 had mention of the best of said quarters for iPhones sold in the history of the company - but even that didn't sway one user from asking Apple CEO Tim Cook what the benefits were for the newest set of features for the iPhone 5s over the previous generation. The question itself centered on the iPhone 5s' A7 chip, the motion coprocessor, and the new Touch ID fingerprint sensor, inquiring what Apple had to say to investors that simply did not see the benefit in these features in the short run.
Supposing you've seen the calls of opposition from Apple nay-sayers over the past week, you'll be interested to know that the heads of Apple aren't immune to talk of "non-innovative" releases in the iPhone. Speaking with Bloomberg Businessweek on several topics here in the launch week of both the iPhone 5s / iPhone 5c and the newest Apple mobile operating system iOS 7, Tim Cook, Jony Ive, and Craig Federighi make clear their aim with the iPhone, and what they think of this "innovation" word being thrown around so freely here in the present.
Apple's current state of affairs in the public realm is one of massiveness - the company is worth billions of dollars, and here in the summer of 2013, one of its biggest investors is meeting with Tim Cook over lunch. This meeting will be centered on the possibility of buying back shares. According to Icahn, it wont be a discussion of if, but to what degree a buyback will be executed.
This week during the Apple earnings call that also saw Apple report a record quarter for iPhone sales, CEO Tim Cook suggested that the higher end of the smartphone market has not reached it's peak. This was in response to a question about the iPhone and how possible it was that the "high end" was "reaching saturation". This was in spite of, as the user asking the question made clear, the increase in iPhone sales this quarter.
![iOS 7 gets flat with Apple banner at WWDC [UPDATE: OS X]](https://c.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/img_8620-820x420.jpeg)
Just days away from the start of the multi-day event, Apple has begun to decorate the Moscone Center West in San Francisco for its yearly developers conference WWDC. This year's first banner appears to bring iOS 7 to the mix with a clear and present - and massive - number 7 in rainbow-colored font. Though it's difficult to tell at the moment with so little to go on, this may be indicative of a "flattening" going on in the aesthetic presentation of the mobile software.
