Tim Cook

As noted in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today, Tim Cook on Monday was awarded 560,000 restricted Apple stock units. Cook was given these stocks as time and performance awards. At Apple’s stock price at the end of day Tuesday of $103.12, those stocks are worth roughly $57.5 million.

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The email Apple CEO Tim Cook sent to CNBC analyst Jim Cramer, and which was read on the air, may have violated Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, according to lawyers speaking to MarketWatch. The regulations are designed to ensure that information that may impact a company’s share price is made available to the public in a fair and open way, rather than privately disclosed to particular individuals or entities.

Cook’s email revealed that the growth in iPhone activations “has actually accelerated over the past few weeks, and we have had the best performance of the year for the App Store in China during the last 2 weeks” – information that Apple had not previously disclosed … 
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Apple hasn’t officially confirmed its expected September 9th iPhone 6S event just yet, but we now know where Tim Cook will be at the end of next month. Box announced today that the Apple CEO will be joining Box CEO Aaron Levie for a fireside chat to open the enterprise cloud service’s BoxWorks conference in California. The conference runs September 28-30 at Moscone Center in San Francisco with Cook’s fireside chat set to take place on September 29th. 
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Cook surprised Cramer on his 10th anniversary episode of Mad Money earlier this year.

Although the stock market is currently experiencing turbulence, with $AAPL stock dipping below $100 in pre-market trading, Tim Cook has made a rare exception and directly responded to CNBC analyst Jim Cramer who raised doubts about Apple’s Chinese growth. Cook notes that Apple has seen strong business growth for its products in China though July and August. Quoting from the email via CNBC:

Growth in iPhone activations has actually accelerated over the past few weeks, and we have had the best performance of the year for the App Store in China during the last 2 weeks.

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Just as many students and teachers around the country are preparing to start or already have started the new school year, Apple is set to announce a new education program that aims to ‘end America’s public schools’ digital divide’. The new plan will be unveiled tomorrow morning with ABC’s Good Morning America program airing an exclusive interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook discussing the company’s latest education initiative with Robin Roberts (seen wearing an Apple Watch in the promo shot).
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Apple has updated its diversity report with new data about gender, race, and ethnicity hiring at the company. The updated diversity report comes one day after Apple committed to sponsoring a minority-focused technology program and one year after releasing its first report on such data.

While the new data does not show dramatic diversity improvements compared with last year’s report, Apple does highlight some key changes in hiring over the last 12 months. The company is still mostly male with men accounting for 69% of Apple around the world, but that’s moved slightly from 70% a year ago.

The same is true for race, as whites make up 54% of the overall company in the United States, but the new report shows an increase in Asian (18% from 15%) and black (8% from 7%) employees from the previous year.

Apple’s report also breaks out gender, race and ethnicity of new hires over the last year, with 35% of new employees around the world being woman.and in the United States, 19% of US hires being Asian, 13% Hispanic, and 11% black. Apple’s diversity website further breaks out each group by sector, including tech and non-tech jobs, leadership, retail, and retail leadership.

Denise Young Smith, Apple’s VP of Worldwide Human Resources, sent the following memo to employees regarding the latest diversity report:
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One of the numbers disclosed in Apple’s Schedule 14A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission was the amount Apple spends annually on protecting CEO Tim Cook. Patently Apple spotted the entry listing “security expenses in the amount of $699,133.”

Tim Cook rarely has much visible security when seen at public events, but bodyguards are doubtless there in the background. It’s likely that a sizeable chunk of the expenditure protects his surprisingly modest four-bedroom home … 
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Congressional Black Caucus member and California Congresswoman Barbara Lee has called on Apple to release federal data on the diversity of its workforce, following a meeting with Tim Cook to discuss the issue, reports USA Today.

Apple is one of a number of tech companies that issues its own reports on employee diversity, but refuses to release data from its federally-mandated filing. Companies are required by law to file the information, but are not obligated to make it public … 
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News first surfaced earlier this year that Apple and BMW had engaged in negotiations over the possibility of the Cupertino company using components from the carmaker for its own electric vehicle project. The negotiations reportedly fell through following a visit by Tim Cook and other Apple execs to BMW in Germany, but a report from Reuters today adds that talks between the two companies “may be revived at a later stage.”

The report also shares some more insight into Cook’s visit to BMW, noting that talks have stalled due to Apple wanting to “explore developing a passenger car on its own”:

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Apple is officially putting its weight behind new LGBT anti-discrimination legislature currently being proposed in Congress. The company said in a statement to the Human Rights Campaign that it actively supports the Equality Act.

At Apple we believe in equal treatment for everyone, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, how they worship or who they love. We fully support the expansion of legal protections as a matter of basic human dignity.

Apple’s support for the bill that would expand federal protections in the workplace to LGBT Americans in all states follows several years of Apple CEO Tim Cook calling on Congress to pass such legislation, and Apple’s backing is in line with its own company policies.
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Apple’s App Store should join Amazon, eBay, Walmart and others in boycotting the Confederate Flag

[Update 6/25/15: Apple has begun removing apps that “use the Confederate flag in offensive or mean-spirited ways” without removing apps with “educational or historical uses”.]

Apple’s Tim Cook added his voice to the chorus of CEOs speaking against displaying the Confederate Flag on Sunday, indirectly referencing it as a symbol for racism. In a tweet, Cook called to honor the lives of the victims in last week’s tragic South Carolina shooting by “eradicating racism & removing the symbols & words that feed it.” An Alabama native like myself, Cook has been a strong proponent for equality during his tenure as CEO, often speaking out against the South’s tarnished history and the changes we still need to address.

With major physical and online retailers including Walmart, Target, Sears, Amazon, eBay, and Etsy now publicly supporting the boycott against the Confederate flag by removing merchandise that displays it, I believe it’s time for Tim Cook’s Apple to join the campaign by removing digital goods that display the Confederate flag on the App Store.
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In an interview with the Chinese language edition of Bloomberg Businessweek, Tim Cook noted that developers are showing more interest in the Apple Watch than they had in the iPhone and iPad at a similar early stage.

Developers are working on more than 3,500 apps for the gadgets, he said. That’s well ahead of the 500 apps available for the 2008 edition of the iPhone and the 1,000 for the first iPad in 2010, he added.

Cook also confirmed what most had assumed: the gold color introduced for the iPhone, iPad and now MacBook (and presumably real gold for the Watch) was “in part” driven by the popularity of the color in China. Greater China now accounts for a whopping 29% of Apple’s revenue … 
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Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the company’s WWDC keynote presentation today with its usual update on numbers and growth since last checking in. The big numbers so far from today’s event: Siri is now 40% faster and more accurate, the company now supports 2500 banks for Apple Pay, and iOS and OS X adoption continues to outpace the competition. 

Head below for a full roundup of notable numbers and company stats announced during today’s event (we’ll be updating as more come up):
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Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is about to kick off. On Monday, June 8th, company executives will take the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center to provide their annual roadmap for Apple’s software, services, and devices.

Traditionally, Apple has used the conference to introduce major upgrades to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating system iOS, as well as the Mac operating system OS X, along with new services. Of course, 2015 will be no different. Apple has been preparing a new version of iOS 9 codenamed “Monarch,” a release of OS X 10.11 codenamed “Gala,” a new streaming Apple Music service based on Beats Music, and updates for the Apple Watch.

Over the last several years, we have provided advance reports on the lion’s share of announcements that will be made at WWDC, as well as a comprehensive roundup ahead of the event. Read on for our roundup of what’s coming, along with fresh new details not found in our earlier reports.

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Apple ranks in at number 5 on the latest Fortune 500, the annual list that ranks US companies by revenue, this time for fiscal year 2014. The company maintains its same position as last year behind Berkshire Hathaway (no. 4), Chevron (no. 3), Exxon Mobil (no. 2), and Wal-Mart Stores (no. 1).

While Apple comes in at fifth place for revenue, Fortune notes that it “boasts both the biggest profits of any company on the list ($39.5 billion) and the highest market value (more than $700 billion).”
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While speaking at the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s (EPIC) Champions of Freedom Awards Dinner yesterday night, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a speech during which he addressed the ongoing issues that surround privacy in the technology space. Cook, who was not physically in Washington D.C. for the event but rather spoke remotely, commented on both the steps Apple takes at ensuring customer privacy and how other companies are failing at the same task (via TechCrunch).

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