Today Is Katie Cotton's Last Day at Apple - Re/code
Today, Katie Cotton, perhaps the most powerful communications exec in tech, is retiring from Apple after 18 years.
As Code/red columnist John Paczkowski noted in reporting the departure earlier this month, the VP of worldwide corporate communications at Apple “helped steward the announcement of some of tech’s most transformative products” and “played a key role in shaping the mystique and exclusivity surrounding the Apple brand.”
This is true, largely under company co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs and, after he died two years ago, with current CEO Tim Cook; she was in control of how the tech giant rolled out everything from the iMac to the iPad. In this job, she has been tough, relentless and someone who most definitely and definitively put the interests of Apple and its business at the forefront of her communications strategy.
Sometimes that has been very controversial — largely around accusations that she lied during the protracted illness of co-founder and CEO Jobs, an issue over which she threw a pretty big cloak in what was an unusual and difficult situation. So, too, the options backdating scandal, another event where Cotton played very hard.
These and other less heated times sometimes resulted in less than copacetic encounters with some in the press, especially those who did not get the kind of access they wanted from a iconic company that has been at the center of a lot of the digital landscape over the past two decades.
Full disclosure: Both Walt Mossberg and I have always had a good relationship with Cotton, and Apple’s top leaders, most notably Jobs, have appeared at our events to talk about where Apple was headed. That includes this past week, with this Code Conference interview with Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine about the Beats deal.
This was obviously a beneficial thing for us over the years, but much terrific content and solid news were typically the result.
Still, despite what many of her detractors have written since the news of her departure came, I was never “scared” of her, any more than I fear any of the other hard-charging PR and communications execs I have encountered over the many years I have covered tech.
Was she aggressive? Sure. (So is Facebook’s Elliot Schrage.)
Did she sometimes ice our reporters out, ignore calls or reply with newsless answers? Sometimes. (Please meet Yahoo PR for much of my time covering it over the last two decades, especially under the current administration, which has not return any of my calls in years.)
Did she try her hardest to showcase Apple and its products in a way that benefited it? Yep. (Paging Andreessen Horowitz’s Margit Wennmachers!)
Was she vocal when she did not like something we did? And how. (So are Microsoft’s Frank Shaw and Google’s Rachel Whetstone, both of whom can throw a pretty decent uppercut when they are not happy with something we have written.)
So what?
That kind of hard driving is part and parcel to the business, even if she was harder driving and, because of that, more successful than most. As she once told me when we talked about her outsize reputation in the tech press: “I am not here to make friends with reporters, I am here to put a light on and sell Apple products.”
It was no surprise that some used the opportunity of her exit to drag out their complaints in the kind of strange rage that has been — at least to my mind — oddly emotional and sometimes full of vitriol that would never be directed at a man who was similarly strong.
Consider the various words used to describe her: “Queen of Evil,” “wicked witch,” “cold and distant,” “frigid supremacy,” “queen bee” and, perhaps most obviously misogynistic, “dominatrix.” One time, horror of horrors, she hung up in anger on one reporter, who later took to the comments section of one recent story about her Apple departure and used astonishingly inappropriate words to describe anyone with whom she got along.
I only dwell on this because it’s both sad and disturbing that it’s still okay to talk about a high-ranking woman in this way and make it seem as if it was a cogent and valid commentary on her performance as a professional executive.
Recently, the same has been true around the firing of New York Times editor Jill Abramson, who was called “pushy” and “brusque.”
Get in line on this one — I can’t tell you how often I get called such things and much worse. In fact, after I wrote a piece about Abramson’s ouster, I got a plethora of emails from strong women who almost continually are on the receiving end of the same kind of thing at their workplace.
Guess what — most of us ladies have somehow managed to deal with it without having to throw back similar gutter invective.
To my mind — and you can accuse me of being in some fictional tank for Apple all you like — Cotton was a strong and unwavering proponent for the company and did that using techniques that she felt were best for the company and its charismatic leader, Jobs.
In fact, this is a very important point. We often forget she worked for most of her career for him, and this is also how he wanted the communications around Apple to be. Cotton was in close collaboration with Jobs who, more than most CEOs, had strong ideas about press relations and also direct lines to reporters.
This was sometimes a double-edged sword, because she worked for a tech legend who wanted exactly what he wanted when it came to media. But it was clear that both saw the press as extremely important, although largely for the opportunity to repeat and validate what they were saying. Neither suffered fools, and neither had much use for those with tough criticism or opposing views.
But it worked and brilliantly, as Apple has become pretty much the most successful brand on the planet under her tenure. Amazing launches, incredibly tightly held and presenting Apple in the best possible way.
Not impressed anyway with Cotton’s work? Still all foot-stomping pissed off because you did not get any PR love from her? Grow up.
Whether I agreed with her or not over the years, I always respected that Cotton was a person who did it her way. And, judging from Apple’s success, there is no way you can separate her work from contributing in a significant way over the years. That some say the products have shined in spite of her is a canard.
So let’s let her retire with some level of class, no matter how many bare-knuckled bouts were had. Ironically, Cotton leaves just ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where there are likely to be some big announcements that she would have been central to carefully and meticulously rolling out.
No longer. As Cotton told Re/code about leaving Apple: “This is hard for me. Apple is a part of my heart and soul.”
If you believe anything about Cotton, you can most certainly believe that.
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Apple Paying Less Than $500 Million for Beats Music Streaming Service - Wall Street Journal
Updated May 30, 2014 12:51 a.m. ET
Apple Inc. AAPL -0.37% Apple Inc. U.S.: Nasdaq $633.00 -2.38 -0.37% May 30, 2014 4:00 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) : 19.82M AFTER HOURS $633.40 +0.40 +0.06% May 30, 2014 7:59 pm Volume (Delayed 15m): 328,063 P/E Ratio 15.04 Market Cap $545.25 Billion Dividend Yield 2.08% Rev. per Employee $2,185,850 05/30/14 Apple's New Finance Chief Maes... 05/30/14 Google's Motorola Mobility to ... 05/30/14 Samsung's Formidable Tablet Ri... More quote details and news » is paying slightly less than $500 million for the Beats Music streaming service, and more than $2.5 billion for Beats Electronics in its $3 billion deal, according to people familiar with the matter.
The breakdown between the two portions of Beats Electronics LLC offers insight into Apple's thinking for the most expensive acquisition in its history.
A person familiar with Beats said its 2013 sales totaled close to $1.3 billion—all from the electronics unit that sells headphones and other audio gear—and the company was profitable. Beats launched its streaming-music service in January.
The valuation of the $10-a-month streaming service, which counts 250,000 paying subscribers, is generous based on its subscriber numbers. Spotify AB, which has 10 million subscribers world-wide, raised $250 million in November at a valuation of $4 billion, or $400 per subscriber. By that measure, Beats would be worth $100 million.
Calculating subscribers' worth "is clearly not how they got there," said Triton Research analyst Rett Wallace.
The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the breakdown of the purchase price was largely an accounting issue, because the two Beats units are backed by different investors.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in an interview Wednesday that growing Beats' existing businesses was "not the reason for doing the deal."
Instead, he said, the deal was about recruiting the right people for Apple, which revolutionized music consumption with the iPod and its iTunes digital-music store but has risked falling behind in newer businesses such as streaming.
Beats, the high-end headphone company founded by music mogul Jimmy Iovine and rap star Dr. Dre, bought the streaming service Mog for about $14 million in 2012 and launched a new version, Beats Music, in January. It will discontinue the Mog service in June.
Some investors, such as billionaire Len Blavatnik, whose holding company Access Industries owns Warner Music Group, had invested only in the music-streaming service. Beats Music's chief executive, Ian Rogers, and its chief creative officer, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, both have stakes in Beats Music but don't own stock in Beats Electronics.
Others are more heavily invested on the electronics side. Carlyle Group spent $500 million last year on an approximate 30% stake in the headphone division, and a 5% stake in the music service, which was reduced after Mr. Blavatnik's group bought in. When Carlyle purchased its stake last year, it valued the entire Beats empire at between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
An Apple takeover of Beats figured into Carlyle's thinking from the onset. As they pondered investing in Beats, Carlyle's deal makers sent a memo to the firm's executives that listed Apple as a potential acquirer of the business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Apple never contacted Spotify during the process of acquiring Beats, according to two people familiar with the matter, suggesting that Apple was more interested in Beats for its brand power and star leadership than in acquiring a generic streaming service. A Spotify spokesman declined to comment.
In the Wednesday interview, Mr. Cook said Beats Music is a better service than Spotify and Pandora Media because it uses humans to help pick which songs to stream. Other services mostly rely on computer algorithms, he noted.
"It's not all about zeros and ones," Mr. Cook said.
Horace Dediu, founder of Asymco, an independent analysis firm focused on the mobile industry, said Apple may have paid more than other potential acquirers for Beats because of the strategic value to the company. "To reposition the iTunes music empire for the future, that's easily worth $3 billion," he said.
Apple's entrance into subscription streaming comes as Amazon.com Inc. prepares to launch its own music-streaming service, possibly as soon as next month. Amazon has signed deals with Warner Music Group and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment that will allow Amazon Prime customers to stream some older music on demand, according to people familiar with the matter. The offerings won't include the record companies' new releases, those people said, only a limited catalog of songs more than six months old. Amazon raised the price of its Prime membership to $99 from $79 in March.
Write to Hannah Karp at hannah.karp@wsj.com, Ryan Dezember at ryan.dezember@wsj.com and Alistair Barr at alistair.barr@wsj.com
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What to expect at the 2014 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference - CBS News
Apple, always a notoriously secretive company, has kept the rumor mill going on overdrive for months about what may be in store at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, which runs June 2-6 in San Francisco.
Ahead of the conference, Apple put at least one big rumor to rest by announcing its plans to acquire Beats Electronics, the headphone and music streaming company, for $3 billion. Which of these other possible plans will pan out?
"Smart Home" Technology
Apple is reportedly getting ready to launch a "smart home" system that will allow users to control their home's lights, security system, and other connected appliances via their Apple device. Last November the tech giant filed patents for a system that did not require manual input to control -- it would be based on location awareness. So the air conditioning could automatically turn on as you headed home from work, and the lights would turn themselves on when you arrived.
The next iPhone
First reported a few weeks after the iPhones 5S and 5C became available last fall, the next iPhone is most likely to have a larger screen. The iPhone 6 -- or whatever the next reiteration of the popular smartphone is called -- may be available with 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch screens, according to a February report by the South China Morning Post. Further evidence that larger screen sizes were in the works could be seen in internal reports, which were revealed as part of Apple's legal battle with Samsung.
iOS Update
Another of the more credible rumors is an update for iOS, which many expect to have a revamped Maps app and Siri personal assistant, with Shazam integration. iTunes Radio, launched last year, may be getting its own app, instead of being bundled into the Music app. Another rumor would be the launch of a "Healthbook" app that would keep track of vital statistics, sleeping patterns, nutrition habits, physical activity and more.
A long-awaited feature for iOS 8 for iPad might be coming for diehard multitaskers: split-screen multitasking. Citing unnamed sources, 9to5Mac reported that Apple was planning to match Microsoft Surface's multitasking "snap" feature, which allows users to view multiple apps on a single screen. However, sales reports have shown that the multitasking feature did not send users flocking to buy the Surface, which snagged only 2.1 percent of the worldwide market share in 2013.
OSX Update
Following an iOS update, it is likely that an OSX update is going to be announced as well. Last year, the Apple desktop operating system underwent deeper integration with iOS, with iCloud Keychain for storing passwords across all Apple devices; Calendar update with continuous scrolling; and other familiar iOS apps, such as Maps, iMessages and iBooks. It is unknown whether the update will be free to download, as Mavericks was, or what new features OSX will have.
Apple TV
News could be unveiled at WWDC about Apple TV. Although probably not the iTV that many users have been wishing for, while at the CODE Conference this week, Apple SVP Eddy Cue said that Apple TV will continue to evolve as the company seeks to improve today's TV experience, reported TechCrunch. Early reports have given hints as what Cue meant by that. An FCC filing by Comcast and Time Warner in April mentions "development of an Apple set-top box." Earlier reports also suggest that Apple was working on a content partnership with Time Warner -- and now presumably Comcast -- as the streaming device added apps such as Hulu Plus, HBO Go, Watch ESPN, and Major League Soccer in 2013.
Wearable Tech
Multiple reports have hinted that a wearable -- or "iWatch," as it is commonly known -- might finally be on the horizon for Apple. Patent filings, according to AppleInsider, show plans for environmental sensors that could check the outside temperature, pressure and humidity. Earlier reports by Chinese analysts claim that the iPhone 6 could come with its own barometer to detect other factors including temperature, humidity, and air pressure.
© 2014 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Today Is Katie Cotton's Last Day at Apple - Re/code
Today, Katie Cotton, perhaps the most powerful communications exec in tech, is retiring from Apple after 18 years.
As Code/red columnist John Paczkowski noted in reporting the departure earlier this month, the VP of worldwide corporate communications at Apple “helped steward the announcement of some of tech’s most transformative products” and “played a key role in shaping the mystique and exclusivity surrounding the Apple brand.”
This is true, largely under company co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs and, after he died two years ago, with current CEO Tim Cook; she was in control of how the tech giant rolled out everything from the iMac to the iPad. In this job, she has been tough, relentless and someone who most definitely and definitively put the interests of Apple and its business at the forefront of her communications strategy.
Sometimes that has been very controversial — largely around accusations that she lied during the protracted illness of co-founder and CEO Jobs, an issue over which she threw a pretty big cloak in what was an unusual and difficult situation. So, too, the options backdating scandal, another event where Cotton played very hard.
These and other less heated times sometimes resulted in less than copacetic encounters with some in the press, especially those who did not get the kind of access they wanted from a iconic company that has been at the center of a lot of the digital landscape over the past two decades.
Full disclosure: Both Walt Mossberg and I have always had a good relationship with Cotton, and Apple’s top leaders, most notably Jobs, have appeared at our events to talk about where Apple was headed. That includes this past week, with this Code Conference interview with Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine about the Beats deal.
This was obviously a beneficial thing for us over the years, but much terrific content and solid news were typically the result.
Still, despite what many of her detractors have written since the news of her departure came, I was never “scared” of her, any more than I fear any of the other hard-charging PR and communications execs I have encountered over the many years I have covered tech.
Was she aggressive? Sure. (So is Facebook’s Elliot Schrage.)
Did she sometimes ice our reporters out, ignore calls or reply with newsless answers? Sometimes. (Please meet Yahoo PR for much of my time covering it over the last two decades, especially under the current administration, which has not return any of my calls in years.)
Did she try her hardest to showcase Apple and its products in a way that benefited it? Yep. (Paging Andreessen Horowitz’s Margit Wennmachers!)
Was she vocal when she did not like something we did? And how. (So are Microsoft’s Frank Shaw and Google’s Rachel Whetstone, both of whom can throw a pretty decent uppercut when they are not happy with something we have written.)
So what?
That kind of hard driving is part and parcel to the business, even if she was harder driving and, because of that, more successful than most. As she once told me when we talked about her outsize reputation in the tech press: “I am not here to make friends with reporters, I am here to put a light on and sell Apple products.”
It was no surprise that some used the opportunity of her exit to drag out their complaints in the kind of strange rage that has been — at least to my mind — oddly emotional and sometimes full of vitriol that would never be directed at a man who was similarly strong.
Consider the various words used to describe her: “Queen of Evil,” “wicked witch,” “cold and distant,” “frigid supremacy,” “queen bee” and, perhaps most obviously misogynistic, “dominatrix.” One time, horror of horrors, she hung up in anger on one reporter, who later took to the comments section of one recent story about her Apple departure and used astonishingly inappropriate words to describe anyone with whom she got along.
I only dwell on this because it’s both sad and disturbing that it’s still okay to talk about a high-ranking woman in this way and make it seem as if it was a cogent and valid commentary on her performance as a professional executive.
Recently, the same has been true around the firing of New York Times editor Jill Abramson, who was called “pushy” and “brusque.”
Get in line on this one — I can’t tell you how often I get called such things and much worse. In fact, after I wrote a piece about Abramson’s ouster, I got a plethora of emails from strong women who almost continually are on the receiving end of the same kind of thing at their workplace.
Guess what — most of us ladies have somehow managed to deal with it without having to throw back similar gutter invective.
To my mind — and you can accuse me of being in some fictional tank for Apple all you like — Cotton was a strong and unwavering proponent for the company and did that using techniques that she felt were best for the company and its charismatic leader, Jobs.
In fact, this is a very important point. We often forget she worked for most of her career for him, and this is also how he wanted the communications around Apple to be. Cotton was in close collaboration with Jobs who, more than most CEOs, had strong ideas about press relations and also direct lines to reporters.
This was sometimes a double-edged sword, because she worked for a tech legend who wanted exactly what he wanted when it came to media. But it was clear that both saw the press as extremely important, although largely for the opportunity to repeat and validate what they were saying. Neither suffered fools, and neither had much use for those with tough criticism or opposing views.
But it worked and brilliantly, as Apple has become pretty much the most successful brand on the planet under her tenure. Amazing launches, incredibly tightly held and presenting Apple in the best possible way.
Not impressed anyway with Cotton’s work? Still all foot-stomping pissed off because you did not get any PR love from her? Grow up.
Whether I agreed with her or not over the years, I always respected that Cotton was a person who did it her way. And, judging from Apple’s success, there is no way you can separate her work from contributing in a significant way over the years. That some say the products have shined in spite of her is a canard.
So let’s let her retire with some level of class, no matter how many bare-knuckled bouts were had. Ironically, Cotton leaves just ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where there are likely to be some big announcements that she would have been central to carefully and meticulously rolling out.
No longer. As Cotton told Re/code about leaving Apple: “This is hard for me. Apple is a part of my heart and soul.”
If you believe anything about Cotton, you can most certainly believe that.
via apple - Google News http://ift.tt/1nPNQGe
Apple Paying Less Than $500 Million for Beats Music Streaming Service - Wall Street Journal
Updated May 30, 2014 12:51 a.m. ET
Apple Inc. AAPL -0.37% Apple Inc. U.S.: Nasdaq $633.00 -2.38 -0.37% May 30, 2014 4:00 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) : 19.82M AFTER HOURS $633.40 +0.40 +0.06% May 30, 2014 7:59 pm Volume (Delayed 15m): 328,063 P/E Ratio 15.04 Market Cap $545.25 Billion Dividend Yield 2.08% Rev. per Employee $2,185,850 05/30/14 Apple's New Finance Chief Maes... 05/30/14 Google's Motorola Mobility to ... 05/30/14 Samsung's Formidable Tablet Ri... More quote details and news » is paying slightly less than $500 million for the Beats Music streaming service, and more than $2.5 billion for Beats Electronics in its $3 billion deal, according to people familiar with the matter.
The breakdown between the two portions of Beats Electronics LLC offers insight into Apple's thinking for the most expensive acquisition in its history.
A person familiar with Beats said its 2013 sales totaled close to $1.3 billion—all from the electronics unit that sells headphones and other audio gear—and the company was profitable. Beats launched its streaming-music service in January.
The valuation of the $10-a-month streaming service, which counts 250,000 paying subscribers, is generous based on its subscriber numbers. Spotify AB, which has 10 million subscribers world-wide, raised $250 million in November at a valuation of $4 billion, or $400 per subscriber. By that measure, Beats would be worth $100 million.
Calculating subscribers' worth "is clearly not how they got there," said Triton Research analyst Rett Wallace.
The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the breakdown of the purchase price was largely an accounting issue, because the two Beats units are backed by different investors.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in an interview Wednesday that growing Beats' existing businesses was "not the reason for doing the deal."
Instead, he said, the deal was about recruiting the right people for Apple, which revolutionized music consumption with the iPod and its iTunes digital-music store but has risked falling behind in newer businesses such as streaming.
Beats, the high-end headphone company founded by music mogul Jimmy Iovine and rap star Dr. Dre, bought the streaming service Mog for about $14 million in 2012 and launched a new version, Beats Music, in January. It will discontinue the Mog service in June.
Some investors, such as billionaire Len Blavatnik, whose holding company Access Industries owns Warner Music Group, had invested only in the music-streaming service. Beats Music's chief executive, Ian Rogers, and its chief creative officer, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, both have stakes in Beats Music but don't own stock in Beats Electronics.
Others are more heavily invested on the electronics side. Carlyle Group spent $500 million last year on an approximate 30% stake in the headphone division, and a 5% stake in the music service, which was reduced after Mr. Blavatnik's group bought in. When Carlyle purchased its stake last year, it valued the entire Beats empire at between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
An Apple takeover of Beats figured into Carlyle's thinking from the onset. As they pondered investing in Beats, Carlyle's deal makers sent a memo to the firm's executives that listed Apple as a potential acquirer of the business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Apple never contacted Spotify during the process of acquiring Beats, according to two people familiar with the matter, suggesting that Apple was more interested in Beats for its brand power and star leadership than in acquiring a generic streaming service. A Spotify spokesman declined to comment.
In the Wednesday interview, Mr. Cook said Beats Music is a better service than Spotify and Pandora Media because it uses humans to help pick which songs to stream. Other services mostly rely on computer algorithms, he noted.
"It's not all about zeros and ones," Mr. Cook said.
Horace Dediu, founder of Asymco, an independent analysis firm focused on the mobile industry, said Apple may have paid more than other potential acquirers for Beats because of the strategic value to the company. "To reposition the iTunes music empire for the future, that's easily worth $3 billion," he said.
Apple's entrance into subscription streaming comes as Amazon.com Inc. prepares to launch its own music-streaming service, possibly as soon as next month. Amazon has signed deals with Warner Music Group and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment that will allow Amazon Prime customers to stream some older music on demand, according to people familiar with the matter. The offerings won't include the record companies' new releases, those people said, only a limited catalog of songs more than six months old. Amazon raised the price of its Prime membership to $99 from $79 in March.
Write to Hannah Karp at hannah.karp@wsj.com, Ryan Dezember at ryan.dezember@wsj.com and Alistair Barr at alistair.barr@wsj.com
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What to expect at the 2014 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference - CBS News
Apple, always a notoriously secretive company, has kept the rumor mill going on overdrive for months about what may be in store at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, which runs June 2-6 in San Francisco.
Ahead of the conference, Apple put at least one big rumor to rest by announcing its plans to acquire Beats Electronics, the headphone and music streaming company, for $3 billion. Which of these other possible plans will pan out?
"Smart Home" Technology
Apple is reportedly getting ready to launch a "smart home" system that will allow users to control their home's lights, security system, and other connected appliances via their Apple device. Last November the tech giant filed patents for a system that did not require manual input to control -- it would be based on location awareness. So the air conditioning could automatically turn on as you headed home from work, and the lights would turn themselves on when you arrived.
The next iPhone
First reported a few weeks after the iPhones 5S and 5C became available last fall, the next iPhone is most likely to have a larger screen. The iPhone 6 -- or whatever the next reiteration of the popular smartphone is called -- may be available with 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch screens, according to a February report by the South China Morning Post. Further evidence that larger screen sizes were in the works could be seen in internal reports, which were revealed as part of Apple's legal battle with Samsung.
iOS Update
Another of the more credible rumors is an update for iOS, which many expect to have a revamped Maps app and Siri personal assistant, with Shazam integration. iTunes Radio, launched last year, may be getting its own app, instead of being bundled into the Music app. Another rumor would be the launch of a "Healthbook" app that would keep track of vital statistics, sleeping patterns, nutrition habits, physical activity and more.
A long-awaited feature for iOS 8 for iPad might be coming for diehard multitaskers: split-screen multitasking. Citing unnamed sources, 9to5Mac reported that Apple was planning to match Microsoft Surface's multitasking "snap" feature, which allows users to view multiple apps on a single screen. However, sales reports have shown that the multitasking feature did not send users flocking to buy the Surface, which snagged only 2.1 percent of the worldwide market share in 2013.
OSX Update
Following an iOS update, it is likely that an OSX update is going to be announced as well. Last year, the Apple desktop operating system underwent deeper integration with iOS, with iCloud Keychain for storing passwords across all Apple devices; Calendar update with continuous scrolling; and other familiar iOS apps, such as Maps, iMessages and iBooks. It is unknown whether the update will be free to download, as Mavericks was, or what new features OSX will have.
Apple TV
News could be unveiled at WWDC about Apple TV. Although probably not the iTV that many users have been wishing for, while at the CODE Conference this week, Apple SVP Eddy Cue said that Apple TV will continue to evolve as the company seeks to improve today's TV experience, reported TechCrunch. Early reports have given hints as what Cue meant by that. An FCC filing by Comcast and Time Warner in April mentions "development of an Apple set-top box." Earlier reports also suggest that Apple was working on a content partnership with Time Warner -- and now presumably Comcast -- as the streaming device added apps such as Hulu Plus, HBO Go, Watch ESPN, and Major League Soccer in 2013.
Wearable Tech
Multiple reports have hinted that a wearable -- or "iWatch," as it is commonly known -- might finally be on the horizon for Apple. Patent filings, according to AppleInsider, show plans for environmental sensors that could check the outside temperature, pressure and humidity. Earlier reports by Chinese analysts claim that the iPhone 6 could come with its own barometer to detect other factors including temperature, humidity, and air pressure.
© 2014 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Today Is Katie Cotton's Last Day at Apple - Re/code
Today, Katie Cotton, perhaps the most powerful communications exec in tech, is retiring from Apple after 18 years.
As Code/red columnist John Paczkowski noted in reporting the departure earlier this month, the VP of worldwide corporate communications at Apple “helped steward the announcement of some of tech’s most transformative products” and “played a key role in shaping the mystique and exclusivity surrounding the Apple brand.”
This is true, largely under company co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs and, after he died two years ago, with current CEO Tim Cook; she was in control of how the tech giant rolled out everything from the iMac to the iPad. In this job, she has been tough, relentless and someone who most definitely and definitively put the interests of Apple and its business at the forefront of her communications strategy.
Sometimes that has been very controversial — largely around accusations that she lied during the protracted illness of co-founder and CEO Jobs, an issue over which she threw a pretty big cloak in what was an unusual and difficult situation. So, too, the options backdating scandal, another event where Cotton played very hard.
These and other less heated times sometimes resulted in less than copacetic encounters with some in the press, especially those who did not get the kind of access they wanted from a iconic company that has been at the center of a lot of the digital landscape over the past two decades.
Full disclosure: Both Walt Mossberg and I have always had a good relationship with Cotton, and Apple’s top leaders, most notably Jobs, have appeared at our events to talk about where Apple was headed. That includes this past week, with this Code Conference interview with Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine about the Beats deal.
This was obviously a beneficial thing for us over the years, but much terrific content and solid news were typically the result.
Still, despite what many of her detractors have written since the news of her departure came, I was never “scared” of her, any more than I fear any of the other hard-charging PR and communications execs I have encountered over the many years I have covered tech.
Was she aggressive? Sure. (So is Facebook’s Elliot Schrage.)
Did she sometimes ice our reporters out, ignore calls or reply with newsless answers? Sometimes. (Please meet Yahoo PR for much of my time covering it over the last two decades, especially under the current administration, which has not return any of my calls in years.)
Did she try her hardest to showcase Apple and its products in a way that benefited it? Yep. (Paging Andreessen Horowitz’s Margit Wennmachers!)
Was she vocal when she did not like something we did? And how. (So are Microsoft’s Frank Shaw and Google’s Rachel Whetstone, both of whom can throw a pretty decent uppercut when they are not happy with something we have written.)
So what?
That kind of hard driving is part and parcel to the business, even if she was harder driving and, because of that, more successful than most. As she once told me when we talked about her outsize reputation in the tech press: “I am not here to make friends with reporters, I am here to put a light on and sell Apple products.”
It was no surprise that some used the opportunity of her exit to drag out their complaints in the kind of strange rage that has been — at least to my mind — oddly emotional and sometimes full of vitriol that would never be directed at a man who was similarly strong.
Consider the various words used to describe her: “Queen of Evil,” “wicked witch,” “cold and distant,” “frigid supremacy,” “queen bee” and, perhaps most obviously misogynistic, “dominatrix.” One time, horror of horrors, she hung up in anger on one reporter, who later took to the comments section of one recent story about her Apple departure and used astonishingly inappropriate words to describe anyone with whom she got along.
I only dwell on this because it’s both sad and disturbing that it’s still okay to talk about a high-ranking woman in this way and make it seem as if it was a cogent and valid commentary on her performance as a professional executive.
Recently, the same has been true around the firing of New York Times editor Jill Abramson, who was called “pushy” and “brusque.”
Get in line on this one — I can’t tell you how often I get called such things and much worse. In fact, after I wrote a piece about Abramson’s ouster, I got a plethora of emails from strong women who almost continually are on the receiving end of the same kind of thing at their workplace.
Guess what — most of us ladies have somehow managed to deal with it without having to throw back similar gutter invective.
To my mind — and you can accuse me of being in some fictional tank for Apple all you like — Cotton was a strong and unwavering proponent for the company and did that using techniques that she felt were best for the company and its charismatic leader, Jobs.
In fact, this is a very important point. We often forget she worked for most of her career for him, and this is also how he wanted the communications around Apple to be. Cotton was in close collaboration with Jobs who, more than most CEOs, had strong ideas about press relations and also direct lines to reporters.
This was sometimes a double-edged sword, because she worked for a tech legend who wanted exactly what he wanted when it came to media. But it was clear that both saw the press as extremely important, although largely for the opportunity to repeat and validate what they were saying. Neither suffered fools, and neither had much use for those with tough criticism or opposing views.
But it worked and brilliantly, as Apple has become pretty much the most successful brand on the planet under her tenure. Amazing launches, incredibly tightly held and presenting Apple in the best possible way.
Not impressed anyway with Cotton’s work? Still all foot-stomping pissed off because you did not get any PR love from her? Grow up.
Whether I agreed with her or not over the years, I always respected that Cotton was a person who did it her way. And, judging from Apple’s success, there is no way you can separate her work from contributing in a significant way over the years. That some say the products have shined in spite of her is a canard.
So let’s let her retire with some level of class, no matter how many bare-knuckled bouts were had. Ironically, Cotton leaves just ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where there are likely to be some big announcements that she would have been central to carefully and meticulously rolling out.
No longer. As Cotton told Re/code about leaving Apple: “This is hard for me. Apple is a part of my heart and soul.”
If you believe anything about Cotton, you can most certainly believe that.
via apple - Google News http://ift.tt/1kc3XOe
Apple Paying Less Than $500 Million for Beats Music Streaming Service - Wall Street Journal
Updated May 30, 2014 12:51 a.m. ET
Apple Inc. AAPL -0.37% Apple Inc. U.S.: Nasdaq $633.00 -2.38 -0.37% May 30, 2014 4:00 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) : 19.82M AFTER HOURS $633.40 +0.40 +0.06% May 30, 2014 7:59 pm Volume (Delayed 15m): 328,063 P/E Ratio 15.04 Market Cap $545.25 Billion Dividend Yield 2.08% Rev. per Employee $2,185,850 05/30/14 Apple's New Finance Chief Maes... 05/30/14 Google's Motorola Mobility to ... 05/30/14 Samsung's Formidable Tablet Ri... More quote details and news » is paying slightly less than $500 million for the Beats Music streaming service, and more than $2.5 billion for Beats Electronics in its $3 billion deal, according to people familiar with the matter.
The breakdown between the two portions of Beats Electronics LLC offers insight into Apple's thinking for the most expensive acquisition in its history.
A person familiar with Beats said its 2013 sales totaled close to $1.3 billion—all from the electronics unit that sells headphones and other audio gear—and the company was profitable. Beats launched its streaming-music service in January.
The valuation of the $10-a-month streaming service, which counts 250,000 paying subscribers, is generous based on its subscriber numbers. Spotify AB, which has 10 million subscribers world-wide, raised $250 million in November at a valuation of $4 billion, or $400 per subscriber. By that measure, Beats would be worth $100 million.
Calculating subscribers' worth "is clearly not how they got there," said Triton Research analyst Rett Wallace.
The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the breakdown of the purchase price was largely an accounting issue, because the two Beats units are backed by different investors.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in an interview Wednesday that growing Beats' existing businesses was "not the reason for doing the deal."
Instead, he said, the deal was about recruiting the right people for Apple, which revolutionized music consumption with the iPod and its iTunes digital-music store but has risked falling behind in newer businesses such as streaming.
Beats, the high-end headphone company founded by music mogul Jimmy Iovine and rap star Dr. Dre, bought the streaming service Mog for about $14 million in 2012 and launched a new version, Beats Music, in January. It will discontinue the Mog service in June.
Some investors, such as billionaire Len Blavatnik, whose holding company Access Industries owns Warner Music Group, had invested only in the music-streaming service. Beats Music's chief executive, Ian Rogers, and its chief creative officer, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, both have stakes in Beats Music but don't own stock in Beats Electronics.
Others are more heavily invested on the electronics side. Carlyle Group spent $500 million last year on an approximate 30% stake in the headphone division, and a 5% stake in the music service, which was reduced after Mr. Blavatnik's group bought in. When Carlyle purchased its stake last year, it valued the entire Beats empire at between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
An Apple takeover of Beats figured into Carlyle's thinking from the onset. As they pondered investing in Beats, Carlyle's deal makers sent a memo to the firm's executives that listed Apple as a potential acquirer of the business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Apple never contacted Spotify during the process of acquiring Beats, according to two people familiar with the matter, suggesting that Apple was more interested in Beats for its brand power and star leadership than in acquiring a generic streaming service. A Spotify spokesman declined to comment.
In the Wednesday interview, Mr. Cook said Beats Music is a better service than Spotify and Pandora Media because it uses humans to help pick which songs to stream. Other services mostly rely on computer algorithms, he noted.
"It's not all about zeros and ones," Mr. Cook said.
Horace Dediu, founder of Asymco, an independent analysis firm focused on the mobile industry, said Apple may have paid more than other potential acquirers for Beats because of the strategic value to the company. "To reposition the iTunes music empire for the future, that's easily worth $3 billion," he said.
Apple's entrance into subscription streaming comes as Amazon.com Inc. prepares to launch its own music-streaming service, possibly as soon as next month. Amazon has signed deals with Warner Music Group and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment that will allow Amazon Prime customers to stream some older music on demand, according to people familiar with the matter. The offerings won't include the record companies' new releases, those people said, only a limited catalog of songs more than six months old. Amazon raised the price of its Prime membership to $99 from $79 in March.
Write to Hannah Karp at hannah.karp@wsj.com, Ryan Dezember at ryan.dezember@wsj.com and Alistair Barr at alistair.barr@wsj.com
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What to expect at the 2014 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference - CBS News
Apple, always a notoriously secretive company, has kept the rumor mill going on overdrive for months about what may be in store at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, which runs June 2-6 in San Francisco.
Ahead of the conference, Apple put at least one big rumor to rest by announcing its plans to acquire Beats Electronics, the headphone and music streaming company, for $3 billion. Which of these other possible plans will pan out?
"Smart Home" Technology
Apple is reportedly getting ready to launch a "smart home" system that will allow users to control their home's lights, security system, and other connected appliances via their Apple device. Last November the tech giant filed patents for a system that did not require manual input to control -- it would be based on location awareness. So the air conditioning could automatically turn on as you headed home from work, and the lights would turn themselves on when you arrived.
The next iPhone
First reported a few weeks after the iPhones 5S and 5C became available last fall, the next iPhone is most likely to have a larger screen. The iPhone 6 -- or whatever the next reiteration of the popular smartphone is called -- may be available with 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch screens, according to a February report by the South China Morning Post. Further evidence that larger screen sizes were in the works could be seen in internal reports, which were revealed as part of Apple's legal battle with Samsung.
iOS Update
Another of the more credible rumors is an update for iOS, which many expect to have a revamped Maps app and Siri personal assistant, with Shazam integration. iTunes Radio, launched last year, may be getting its own app, instead of being bundled into the Music app. Another rumor would be the launch of a "Healthbook" app that would keep track of vital statistics, sleeping patterns, nutrition habits, physical activity and more.
A long-awaited feature for iOS 8 for iPad might be coming for diehard multitaskers: split-screen multitasking. Citing unnamed sources, 9to5Mac reported that Apple was planning to match Microsoft Surface's multitasking "snap" feature, which allows users to view multiple apps on a single screen. However, sales reports have shown that the multitasking feature did not send users flocking to buy the Surface, which snagged only 2.1 percent of the worldwide market share in 2013.
OSX Update
Following an iOS update, it is likely that an OSX update is going to be announced as well. Last year, the Apple desktop operating system underwent deeper integration with iOS, with iCloud Keychain for storing passwords across all Apple devices; Calendar update with continuous scrolling; and other familiar iOS apps, such as Maps, iMessages and iBooks. It is unknown whether the update will be free to download, as Mavericks was, or what new features OSX will have.
Apple TV
News could be unveiled at WWDC about Apple TV. Although probably not the iTV that many users have been wishing for, while at the CODE Conference this week, Apple SVP Eddy Cue said that Apple TV will continue to evolve as the company seeks to improve today's TV experience, reported TechCrunch. Early reports have given hints as what Cue meant by that. An FCC filing by Comcast and Time Warner in April mentions "development of an Apple set-top box." Earlier reports also suggest that Apple was working on a content partnership with Time Warner -- and now presumably Comcast -- as the streaming device added apps such as Hulu Plus, HBO Go, Watch ESPN, and Major League Soccer in 2013.
Wearable Tech
Multiple reports have hinted that a wearable -- or "iWatch," as it is commonly known -- might finally be on the horizon for Apple. Patent filings, according to AppleInsider, show plans for environmental sensors that could check the outside temperature, pressure and humidity. Earlier reports by Chinese analysts claim that the iPhone 6 could come with its own barometer to detect other factors including temperature, humidity, and air pressure.
© 2014 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Today Is Katie Cotton's Last Day at Apple - Re/code
Today, Katie Cotton, perhaps the most powerful communications exec in tech, is retiring from Apple after 18 years.
As Code/red columnist John Paczkowski noted in reporting the departure earlier this month, the VP of worldwide corporate communications at Apple “helped steward the announcement of some of tech’s most transformative products” and “played a key role in shaping the mystique and exclusivity surrounding the Apple brand.”
This is true, largely under company co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs and, after he died two years ago, with current CEO Tim Cook; she was in control of how the tech giant rolled out everything from the iMac to the iPad. In this job, she has been tough, relentless and someone who most definitely and definitively put the interests of Apple and its business at the forefront of her communications strategy.
Sometimes that has been very controversial — largely around accusations that she lied during the protracted illness of co-founder and CEO Jobs, an issue over which she threw a pretty big cloak in what was an unusual and difficult situation. So, too, the options backdating scandal, another event where Cotton played very hard.
These and other less heated times sometimes resulted in less than copacetic encounters with some in the press, especially those who did not get the kind of access they wanted from a iconic company that has been at the center of a lot of the digital landscape over the past two decades.
Full disclosure: Both Walt Mossberg and I have always had a good relationship with Cotton, and Apple’s top leaders, most notably Jobs, have appeared at our events to talk about where Apple was headed. That includes this past week, with this Code Conference interview with Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine about the Beats deal.
This was obviously a beneficial thing for us over the years, but much terrific content and solid news were typically the result.
Still, despite what many of her detractors have written since the news of her departure came, I was never “scared” of her, any more than I fear any of the other hard-charging PR and communications execs I have encountered over the many years I have covered tech.
Was she aggressive? Sure. (So is Facebook’s Elliot Schrage.)
Did she sometimes ice our reporters out, ignore calls or reply with newsless answers? Sometimes. (Please meet Yahoo PR for much of my time covering it over the last two decades, especially under the current administration, which has not return any of my calls in years.)
Did she try her hardest to showcase Apple and its products in a way that benefited it? Yep. (Paging Andreessen Horowitz’s Margit Wennmachers!)
Was she vocal when she did not like something we did? And how. (So are Microsoft’s Frank Shaw and Google’s Rachel Whetstone, both of whom can throw a pretty decent uppercut when they are not happy with something we have written.)
So what?
That kind of hard driving is part and parcel to the business, even if she was harder driving and, because of that, more successful than most. As she once told me when we talked about her outsize reputation in the tech press: “I am not here to make friends with reporters, I am here to put a light on and sell Apple products.”
It was no surprise that some used the opportunity of her exit to drag out their complaints in the kind of strange rage that has been — at least to my mind — oddly emotional and sometimes full of vitriol that would never be directed at a man who was similarly strong.
Consider the various words used to describe her: “Queen of Evil,” “wicked witch,” “cold and distant,” “frigid supremacy,” “queen bee” and, perhaps most obviously misogynistic, “dominatrix.” One time, horror of horrors, she hung up in anger on one reporter, who later took to the comments section of one recent story about her Apple departure and used astonishingly inappropriate words to describe anyone with whom she got along.
I only dwell on this because it’s both sad and disturbing that it’s still okay to talk about a high-ranking woman in this way and make it seem as if it was a cogent and valid commentary on her performance as a professional executive.
Recently, the same has been true around the firing of New York Times editor Jill Abramson, who was called “pushy” and “brusque.”
Get in line on this one — I can’t tell you how often I get called such things and much worse. In fact, after I wrote a piece about Abramson’s ouster, I got a plethora of emails from strong women who almost continually are on the receiving end of the same kind of thing at their workplace.
Guess what — most of us ladies have somehow managed to deal with it without having to throw back similar gutter invective.
To my mind — and you can accuse me of being in some fictional tank for Apple all you like — Cotton was a strong and unwavering proponent for the company and did that using techniques that she felt were best for the company and its charismatic leader, Jobs.
In fact, this is a very important point. We often forget she worked for most of her career for him, and this is also how he wanted the communications around Apple to be. Cotton was in close collaboration with Jobs who, more than most CEOs, had strong ideas about press relations and also direct lines to reporters.
This was sometimes a double-edged sword, because she worked for a tech legend who wanted exactly what he wanted when it came to media. But it was clear that both saw the press as extremely important, although largely for the opportunity to repeat and validate what they were saying. Neither suffered fools, and neither had much use for those with tough criticism or opposing views.
But it worked and brilliantly, as Apple has become pretty much the most successful brand on the planet under her tenure. Amazing launches, incredibly tightly held and presenting Apple in the best possible way.
Not impressed anyway with Cotton’s work? Still all foot-stomping pissed off because you did not get any PR love from her? Grow up.
Whether I agreed with her or not over the years, I always respected that Cotton was a person who did it her way. And, judging from Apple’s success, there is no way you can separate her work from contributing in a significant way over the years. That some say the products have shined in spite of her is a canard.
So let’s let her retire with some level of class, no matter how many bare-knuckled bouts were had. Ironically, Cotton leaves just ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where there are likely to be some big announcements that she would have been central to carefully and meticulously rolling out.
No longer. As Cotton told Re/code about leaving Apple: “This is hard for me. Apple is a part of my heart and soul.”
If you believe anything about Cotton, you can most certainly believe that.
via apple - Google News http://ift.tt/1rui31y
Apple Paying Less Than $500 Million for Beats Music Streaming Service - Wall Street Journal
Updated May 30, 2014 12:51 a.m. ET
Apple Inc. AAPL -0.37% Apple Inc. U.S.: Nasdaq $633.00 -2.38 -0.37% May 30, 2014 4:00 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) : 19.82M AFTER HOURS $633.40 +0.40 +0.06% May 30, 2014 7:59 pm Volume (Delayed 15m): 328,063 P/E Ratio 15.04 Market Cap $545.25 Billion Dividend Yield 2.08% Rev. per Employee $2,185,850 05/30/14 Apple's New Finance Chief Maes... 05/30/14 Google's Motorola Mobility to ... 05/30/14 Samsung's Formidable Tablet Ri... More quote details and news » is paying slightly less than $500 million for the Beats Music streaming service, and more than $2.5 billion for Beats Electronics in its $3 billion deal, according to people familiar with the matter.
The breakdown between the two portions of Beats Electronics LLC offers insight into Apple's thinking for the most expensive acquisition in its history.
A person familiar with Beats said its 2013 sales totaled close to $1.3 billion—all from the electronics unit that sells headphones and other audio gear—and the company was profitable. Beats launched its streaming-music service in January.
The valuation of the $10-a-month streaming service, which counts 250,000 paying subscribers, is generous based on its subscriber numbers. Spotify AB, which has 10 million subscribers world-wide, raised $250 million in November at a valuation of $4 billion, or $400 per subscriber. By that measure, Beats would be worth $100 million.
Calculating subscribers' worth "is clearly not how they got there," said Triton Research analyst Rett Wallace.
The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the breakdown of the purchase price was largely an accounting issue, because the two Beats units are backed by different investors.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in an interview Wednesday that growing Beats' existing businesses was "not the reason for doing the deal."
Instead, he said, the deal was about recruiting the right people for Apple, which revolutionized music consumption with the iPod and its iTunes digital-music store but has risked falling behind in newer businesses such as streaming.
Beats, the high-end headphone company founded by music mogul Jimmy Iovine and rap star Dr. Dre, bought the streaming service Mog for about $14 million in 2012 and launched a new version, Beats Music, in January. It will discontinue the Mog service in June.
Some investors, such as billionaire Len Blavatnik, whose holding company Access Industries owns Warner Music Group, had invested only in the music-streaming service. Beats Music's chief executive, Ian Rogers, and its chief creative officer, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, both have stakes in Beats Music but don't own stock in Beats Electronics.
Others are more heavily invested on the electronics side. Carlyle Group spent $500 million last year on an approximate 30% stake in the headphone division, and a 5% stake in the music service, which was reduced after Mr. Blavatnik's group bought in. When Carlyle purchased its stake last year, it valued the entire Beats empire at between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
An Apple takeover of Beats figured into Carlyle's thinking from the onset. As they pondered investing in Beats, Carlyle's deal makers sent a memo to the firm's executives that listed Apple as a potential acquirer of the business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Apple never contacted Spotify during the process of acquiring Beats, according to two people familiar with the matter, suggesting that Apple was more interested in Beats for its brand power and star leadership than in acquiring a generic streaming service. A Spotify spokesman declined to comment.
In the Wednesday interview, Mr. Cook said Beats Music is a better service than Spotify and Pandora Media because it uses humans to help pick which songs to stream. Other services mostly rely on computer algorithms, he noted.
"It's not all about zeros and ones," Mr. Cook said.
Horace Dediu, founder of Asymco, an independent analysis firm focused on the mobile industry, said Apple may have paid more than other potential acquirers for Beats because of the strategic value to the company. "To reposition the iTunes music empire for the future, that's easily worth $3 billion," he said.
Apple's entrance into subscription streaming comes as Amazon.com Inc. prepares to launch its own music-streaming service, possibly as soon as next month. Amazon has signed deals with Warner Music Group and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment that will allow Amazon Prime customers to stream some older music on demand, according to people familiar with the matter. The offerings won't include the record companies' new releases, those people said, only a limited catalog of songs more than six months old. Amazon raised the price of its Prime membership to $99 from $79 in March.
Write to Hannah Karp at hannah.karp@wsj.com, Ryan Dezember at ryan.dezember@wsj.com and Alistair Barr at alistair.barr@wsj.com
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What to expect at the 2014 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference - CBS News
Apple will kick off WWDC on June 2. Apple
Apple, always a notoriously secretive company, has kept the rumor mill going on overdrive for months about what may be in store at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, which runs June 2-6 in San Francisco.
Ahead of the conference, Apple put at least one big rumor to rest by announcing its plans to acquire Beats Electronics, the headphone and music streaming company, for $3 billion. Which of these other possible plans will pan out?
The next iPhone
First reported a few weeks after the iPhones 5S and 5C became available last fall, the next iPhone is most likely to have a larger screen. The iPhone 6 -- or whatever the next reiteration of the popular smartphone is called -- may be available with 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch screens, according to a February report by the South China Morning Post. Further evidence that larger screen sizes were in the works could be seen in internal reports, which were revealed as part of Apple's legal battle with Samsung.
"Smart Home" Technology
Apple is reportedly getting ready to launch a "smart home" system that will allow users to control their home's lights, security system, and other connected appliances via their Apple device. Last November the tech giant filed patents for a system that did not require manual input to control -- it would be based on location awareness. So the air conditioning could automatically turn on as you headed home from work, and the lights would turn themselves on when you arrived.
iOS Update
Another of the more credible rumors is an update for iOS, which many expect to have a revamped Maps app and Siri personal assistant, with Shazam integration. iTunes Radio, launched last year, may be getting its own app, instead of being bundled into the Music app. Another rumor would be the launch of a "Healthbook" app that would keep track of vital statistics, sleeping patterns, nutrition habits, physical activity and more.
A long-awaited feature for iOS 8 for iPad might be coming for diehard multitaskers: split-screen multitasking. Citing unnamed sources, 9to5Mac reported that Apple was planning to match Microsoft Surface's multitasking "snap" feature, which allows users to view multiple apps on a single screen. However, sales reports have shown that the multitasking feature did not send users flocking to buy the Surface, which snagged only 2.1 percent of the worldwide market share in 2013.
OSX Update
Following an iOS update, it is likely that an OSX update is going to be announced as well. Last year, the Apple desktop operating system underwent deeper integration with iOS, with iCloud Keychain for storing passwords across all Apple devices; Calendar update with continuous scrolling; and other familiar iOS apps, such as Maps, iMessages and iBooks. It is unknown whether the update will be free to download, as Mavericks was, or what new features OSX will have.
Apple TV
News could be unveiled at WWDC about Apple TV. Although probably not the iTV that many users have been wishing for, while at the CODE Conference this week, Apple SVP Eddy Cue said that Apple TV will continue to evolve as the company seeks to improve today's TV experience, reported TechCrunch. Early reports have given hints as what Cue meant by that. An FCC filing by Comcast and Time Warner in April mentions "development of an Apple set-top box." Earlier reports also suggest that Apple was working on a content partnership with Time Warner -- and now presumably Comcast -- as the streaming device added apps such as Hulu Plus, HBO Go, Watch ESPN, and Major League Soccer in 2013.
Wearable Tech
Multiple reports have hinted that a wearable -- or "iWatch," as it is commonly known -- might finally be on the horizon for Apple. Patent filings, according to AppleInsider, show plans for environmental sensors that could check the outside temperature, pressure and humidity. Earlier reports by Chinese analysts claim that the iPhone 6 could come with its own barometer to detect other factors including temperature, humidity, and air pressure.
© 2014 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Apple Paying Less Than $500 Million for Beats Music Streaming Service - Wall Street Journal
Updated May 30, 2014 12:51 a.m. ET
Apple Inc. AAPL -0.37% Apple Inc. U.S.: Nasdaq $633.00 -2.38 -0.37% May 30, 2014 4:00 pm Volume (Delayed 15m) : 19.82M AFTER HOURS $633.40 +0.40 +0.06% May 30, 2014 7:59 pm Volume (Delayed 15m): 328,063 P/E Ratio 15.04 Market Cap $545.25 Billion Dividend Yield 2.08% Rev. per Employee $2,185,850 05/30/14 Apple's New Finance Chief Maes... 05/30/14 Google's Motorola Mobility to ... 05/30/14 Samsung's Formidable Tablet Ri... More quote details and news » is paying slightly less than $500 million for the Beats Music streaming service, and more than $2.5 billion for Beats Electronics in its $3 billion deal, according to people familiar with the matter.
The breakdown between the two portions of Beats Electronics LLC offers insight into Apple's thinking for the most expensive acquisition in its history.
A person familiar with Beats said its 2013 sales totaled close to $1.3 billion—all from the electronics unit that sells headphones and other audio gear—and the company was profitable. Beats launched its streaming-music service in January.
The valuation of the $10-a-month streaming service, which counts 250,000 paying subscribers, is generous based on its subscriber numbers. Spotify AB, which has 10 million subscribers world-wide, raised $250 million in November at a valuation of $4 billion, or $400 per subscriber. By that measure, Beats would be worth $100 million.
Calculating subscribers' worth "is clearly not how they got there," said Triton Research analyst Rett Wallace.
The people familiar with the matter cautioned that the breakdown of the purchase price was largely an accounting issue, because the two Beats units are backed by different investors.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in an interview Wednesday that growing Beats' existing businesses was "not the reason for doing the deal."
Instead, he said, the deal was about recruiting the right people for Apple, which revolutionized music consumption with the iPod and its iTunes digital-music store but has risked falling behind in newer businesses such as streaming.
Beats, the high-end headphone company founded by music mogul Jimmy Iovine and rap star Dr. Dre, bought the streaming service Mog for about $14 million in 2012 and launched a new version, Beats Music, in January. It will discontinue the Mog service in June.
Some investors, such as billionaire Len Blavatnik, whose holding company Access Industries owns Warner Music Group, had invested only in the music-streaming service. Beats Music's chief executive, Ian Rogers, and its chief creative officer, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, both have stakes in Beats Music but don't own stock in Beats Electronics.
Others are more heavily invested on the electronics side. Carlyle Group spent $500 million last year on an approximate 30% stake in the headphone division, and a 5% stake in the music service, which was reduced after Mr. Blavatnik's group bought in. When Carlyle purchased its stake last year, it valued the entire Beats empire at between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
An Apple takeover of Beats figured into Carlyle's thinking from the onset. As they pondered investing in Beats, Carlyle's deal makers sent a memo to the firm's executives that listed Apple as a potential acquirer of the business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Apple never contacted Spotify during the process of acquiring Beats, according to two people familiar with the matter, suggesting that Apple was more interested in Beats for its brand power and star leadership than in acquiring a generic streaming service. A Spotify spokesman declined to comment.
In the Wednesday interview, Mr. Cook said Beats Music is a better service than Spotify and Pandora Media because it uses humans to help pick which songs to stream. Other services mostly rely on computer algorithms, he noted.
"It's not all about zeros and ones," Mr. Cook said.
Horace Dediu, founder of Asymco, an independent analysis firm focused on the mobile industry, said Apple may have paid more than other potential acquirers for Beats because of the strategic value to the company. "To reposition the iTunes music empire for the future, that's easily worth $3 billion," he said.
Apple's entrance into subscription streaming comes as Amazon.com Inc. prepares to launch its own music-streaming service, possibly as soon as next month. Amazon has signed deals with Warner Music Group and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment that will allow Amazon Prime customers to stream some older music on demand, according to people familiar with the matter. The offerings won't include the record companies' new releases, those people said, only a limited catalog of songs more than six months old. Amazon raised the price of its Prime membership to $99 from $79 in March.
Write to Hannah Karp at hannah.karp@wsj.com, Ryan Dezember at ryan.dezember@wsj.com and Alistair Barr at alistair.barr@wsj.com
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Today Is Katie Cotton's Last Day at Apple - Re/code
Today, Katie Cotton, perhaps the most powerful communications exec in tech, is retiring from Apple after 18 years.
As Code/red columnist John Paczkowski noted in reporting the departure earlier this month, the VP of worldwide corporate communications at Apple “helped steward the announcement of some of tech’s most transformative products” and “played a key role in shaping the mystique and exclusivity surrounding the Apple brand.”
This is true, largely under company co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs and, after he died two years ago, with current CEO Tim Cook; she was in control of how the tech giant rolled out everything from the iMac to the iPad. In this job, she has been tough, relentless and someone who most definitely and definitively put the interests of Apple and its business at the forefront of her communications strategy.
Sometimes that has been very controversial — largely around accusations that she lied during the protracted illness of co-founder and CEO Jobs, an issue over which she threw a pretty big cloak in what was an unusual and difficult situation. So, too, the options backdating scandal, another event where Cotton played very hard.
These and other less heated times sometimes resulted in less than copacetic encounters with some in the press, especially those who did not get the kind of access they wanted from a iconic company that has been at the center of a lot of the digital landscape over the past two decades.
Full disclosure: Both Walt Mossberg and I have always had a good relationship with Cotton, and Apple’s top leaders, most notably Jobs, have appeared at our events to talk about where Apple was headed. That includes this past week, with this Code Conference interview with Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine about the Beats deal.
This was obviously a beneficial thing for us over the years, but much terrific content and solid news were typically the result.
Still, despite what many of her detractors have written since the news of her departure came, I was never “scared” of her, any more than I fear any of the other hard-charging PR and communications execs I have encountered over the many years I have covered tech.
Was she aggressive? Sure. (So is Facebook’s Elliot Schrage.)
Did she sometimes ice our reporters out, ignore calls or reply with newsless answers? Sometimes. (Please meet Yahoo PR for much of my time covering it over the last two decades, especially under the current administration, which has not return any of my calls in years.)
Did she try her hardest to showcase Apple and its products in a way that benefited it? Yep. (Paging Andreessen Horowitz’s Margit Wennmachers!)
Was she vocal when she did not like something we did? And how. (So are Microsoft’s Frank Shaw and Google’s Rachel Whetstone, both of whom can throw a pretty decent uppercut when they are not happy with something we have written.)
So what?
That kind of hard driving is part and parcel to the business, even if she was harder driving and, because of that, more successful than most. As she once told me when we talked about her outsize reputation in the tech press: “I am not here to make friends with reporters, I am here to put a light on and sell Apple products.”
It was no surprise that some used the opportunity of her exit to drag out their complaints in the kind of strange rage that has been — at least to my mind — oddly emotional and sometimes full of vitriol that would never be directed at a man who was similarly strong.
Consider the various words used to describe her: “Queen of Evil,” “wicked witch,” “cold and distant,” “frigid supremacy,” “queen bee” and, perhaps most obviously misogynistic, “dominatrix.” One time, horror of horrors, she hung up in anger on one reporter, who later took to the comments section of one recent story about her Apple departure and used astonishingly inappropriate words to describe anyone with whom she got along.
I only dwell on this because it’s both sad and disturbing that it’s still okay to talk about a high-ranking woman in this way and make it seem as if it was a cogent and valid commentary on her performance as a professional executive.
Recently, the same has been true around the firing of New York Times editor Jill Abramson, who was called “pushy” and “brusque.”
Get in line on this one — I can’t tell you how often I get called such things and much worse. In fact, after I wrote a piece about Abramson’s ouster, I got a plethora of emails from strong women who almost continually are on the receiving end of the same kind of thing at their workplace.
Guess what — most of us ladies have somehow managed to deal with it without having to throw back similar gutter invective.
To my mind — and you can accuse me of being in some fictional tank for Apple all you like — Cotton was a strong and unwavering proponent for the company and did that using techniques that she felt were best for the company and its charismatic leader, Jobs.
In fact, this is a very important point. We often forget she worked for most of her career for him, and this is also how he wanted the communications around Apple to be. Cotton was in close collaboration with Jobs who, more than most CEOs, had strong ideas about press relations and also direct lines to reporters.
This was sometimes a double-edged sword, because she worked for a tech legend who wanted exactly what he wanted when it came to media. But it was clear that both saw the press as extremely important, although largely for the opportunity to repeat and validate what they were saying. Neither suffered fools, and neither had much use for those with tough criticism or opposing views.
But it worked and brilliantly, as Apple has become pretty much the most successful brand on the planet under her tenure. Amazing launches, incredibly tightly held and presenting Apple in the best possible way.
Not impressed anyway with Cotton’s work? Still all foot-stomping pissed off because you did not get any PR love from her? Grow up.
Whether I agreed with her or not over the years, I always respected that Cotton was a person who did it her way. And, judging from Apple’s success, there is no way you can separate her work from contributing in a significant way over the years. That some say the products have shined in spite of her is a canard.
So let’s let her retire with some level of class, no matter how many bare-knuckled bouts were had. Ironically, Cotton leaves just ahead of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where there are likely to be some big announcements that she would have been central to carefully and meticulously rolling out.
No longer. As Cotton told Re/code about leaving Apple: “This is hard for me. Apple is a part of my heart and soul.”
If you believe anything about Cotton, you can most certainly believe that.
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What to expect at the 2014 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference - CBS News
Apple will kick off WWDC on June 2. Apple
Apple, always a notoriously secretive company, has kept the rumor mill going on overdrive for months about what may be in store at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference, which runs June 2-6 in San Francisco.
Ahead of the conference, Apple put at least one big rumor to rest by announcing its plans to acquire Beats Electronics, the headphone and music streaming company, for $3 billion. Which of these other possible plans will pan out?
The next iPhone
First reported a few weeks after the iPhones 5S and 5C became available last fall, the next iPhone is most likely to have a larger screen. The iPhone 6 -- or whatever the next reiteration of the popular smartphone is called -- may be available with 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch screens, according to a February report by the South China Morning Post. Further evidence that larger screen sizes were in the works could be seen in internal reports, which were revealed as part of Apple's legal battle with Samsung.
"Smart Home" Technology
Apple is reportedly getting ready to launch a "smart home" system that will allow users to control their home's lights, security system, and other connected appliances via their Apple device. Last November the tech giant filed patents for a system that did not require manual input to control -- it would be based on location awareness. So the air conditioning could automatically turn on as you headed home from work, and the lights would turn themselves on when you arrived.
iOS Update
Another of the more credible rumors is an update for iOS, which many expect to have a revamped Maps app and Siri personal assistant, with Shazam integration. iTunes Radio, launched last year, may be getting its own app, instead of being bundled into the Music app. Another rumor would be the launch of a "Healthbook" app that would keep track of vital statistics, sleeping patterns, nutrition habits, physical activity and more.
A long-awaited feature for iOS 8 for iPad might be coming for diehard multitaskers: split-screen multitasking. Citing unnamed sources, 9to5Mac reported that Apple was planning to match Microsoft Surface's multitasking "snap" feature, which allows users to view multiple apps on a single screen. However, sales reports have shown that the multitasking feature did not send users flocking to buy the Surface, which snagged only 2.1 percent of the worldwide market share in 2013.
OSX Update
Following an iOS update, it is likely that an OSX update is going to be announced as well. Last year, the Apple desktop operating system underwent deeper integration with iOS, with iCloud Keychain for storing passwords across all Apple devices; Calendar update with continuous scrolling; and other familiar iOS apps, such as Maps, iMessages and iBooks. It is unknown whether the update will be free to download, as Mavericks was, or what new features OSX will have.
Apple TV
News could be unveiled at WWDC about Apple TV. Although probably not the iTV that many users have been wishing for, while at the CODE Conference this week, Apple SVP Eddy Cue said that Apple TV will continue to evolve as the company seeks to improve today's TV experience, reported TechCrunch. Early reports have given hints as what Cue meant by that. An FCC filing by Comcast and Time Warner in April mentions "development of an Apple set-top box." Earlier reports also suggest that Apple was working on a content partnership with Time Warner -- and now presumably Comcast -- as the streaming device added apps such as Hulu Plus, HBO Go, Watch ESPN, and Major League Soccer in 2013.
Wearable Tech
Multiple reports have hinted that a wearable -- or "iWatch," as it is commonly known -- might finally be on the horizon for Apple. Patent filings, according to AppleInsider, show plans for environmental sensors that could check the outside temperature, pressure and humidity. Earlier reports by Chinese analysts claim that the iPhone 6 could come with its own barometer to detect other factors including temperature, humidity, and air pressure.
© 2014 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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