Tim Cook's plan to take Apple to a new frontier veers off script
Advertisement
Alexei Oreskovic
Jun 24, 2020, 20:22 IST
Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Advertisement
Hello and welcome back to Trending, Business Insider's weekly look at the world of tech. I'm Alexei Oreskovic, Business Insider's West Coast Bureau Chief and Global Tech Editor. If you want to get Trending in your email inbox every Wednesday, just click here.
This week: Tim Cook takes Apple to a new frontier
Complimentary Tech Event
Transform talent with learning that works
Capability development is critical for businesses who want to push the envelope of innovation.Discover how business leaders are strategizing around building talent capabilities and empowering employee transformation.Know More
Apple's leadership team reported for greenscreen duty on Monday as the iPhone-maker put on the first-ever virtual edition of its developers' conference. Tim Cook, Craig Federighi, and the rest of the gang were all there, doing their best impersonations of a QVC host, hamming it up for the camera and hard-selling all the latest features and innovations cooked up in Cupertino.
Depending on who you ask, the virtual format was either an awkward infomercial or a much more efficient format that should become the norm.
Privacy is increasingly important to Apple as it competes with Google for users and developers. But what Apple probably didn't expect as it was planning its WWDC announcements was that its nemesis, Google, would get a boost of goodwill without doing anything.
That's because Apple's App Store was hit with a wave of negative news right before WWDC, including a pair of investigations by the EU and a high-profile spat with the developer of a buzzy new email app called Hey. Apple's threats of blocking Hey from the App Store made it look like the bad guy compared to Google and its hands-off treatment of app developers.
The move appeased developers and Apple ultimately emerged without suffering too much damage. But with Apple trying to differentiate itself from Google based on its privacy policies, the episode was an unwelcome and unplanned script change on its big day — and it may not be the last time.
In other words, Pichai's team of direct reports have their work cut out for them. Check out Hugh Langley's profiles on the 15 execs that report directly to Pichai:
There's more to see in Wisconsin than cows and corn. As one sharp-eyed cheesehead noticed recently, Elon Musk appears to have planted a crop of futuristic space-based internet receivers in Wisconsin's fertile soil.
The mysterious, bulbous devices — tucked among rows of grain corns in Merrillan, Wisconsin and discovered by a telephoto-toting Reddit user by the name of darkpenguin22 — appear to be the clearest images yet of ground antennas for the Starlink satellites.
NewsletterSIMPLY PUT - where we join the dots to inform and inspire you. Sign up for a weekly brief collating many news items into one untangled thought delivered straight to your mailbox.