News tagged ‘job’
CNN Interviewed Current iPad Assembler About Working Conditions At Foxconn
After The New York Times reported on the working condition of major Apple’s contract manufacturer Foxconn in China, other publications have been conducting their own investigations to find out more information. Today, CNN
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Google reportedly hired away Apple senior director for 'secret project'
VentureBeat claims to have learned that Google has managed to hire away Simon Prakash, Apple's senior director of product integrity, to work on a "secret project". Report author Dean Takahashi called the new hire "historic" for Google, as Prakash is reportedly the most senior person that Google has recruited away from Apple.
At Google Prakash will work on a "secret project" that may be led by co-founder Sergei Brin who is in charge of a number of clandestine research and development projects, including an "X" lab that works on speculative technology.
Foxconn Ramps Up iPhone Production And Hires Thousands Of New Employees In China
In late December, reports indicated that Foxconn was planning a significant expansion of its iPhone production capacity in Zhengzhou, China. Reportedly, the company invested $1.1 billion and was working with the Chinese government to hire 100,000 employees to the facility.
Before he died, Steve Jobs kept a letter from Bill Gates by his bed
In a new interview Microsoft founder Bill Gates told that he wrote a letter to Steve Jobs before his death and the letter was so important for Steve that he even kept it at his bedside. Gates spoke this week with students at a school in South London, where he acknowledged that Jobs had said critical things about him in the past, but before Jobs passed away they had settled all difficulties.
"There was no peace to make. We were not at war," Gates said. "We made great products, and competition was always a positive thing."
In fact, Gates said he received a phone call from Jobs's wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, about negative comments her husband had made to biographer Walter Isaacson, in which he called Gates a "basically unimaginative person who "has never invented anything." Gates said Jobs's wife told him that Isaacson's book didn't "paint a picture of the mutual respect" the two had for one another.
Steve Jobs asked Google to stop poaching Apple workers
A court filing that is a part of a civil suit involving the employment practices of seven major tech firms was unveiled on last Friday. It includes an email, which late Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs sent to former Google chief Eric Schmidt. Jobs asked Schmidt to end poaching Apple’s workers.
The March, 2007 email specifically asked Google to put a stop to its active recruitment of an unnamed Apple engineer, and alluded to halting worker poaching in general, reports Reuters.
"I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this," Jobs wrote in his email to Schmidt, who was on Apple's board of directors at the time.
Apple Employees Will Receive $250 Off iPads And $500 Off Macs
Among the various topics discussed by Tim Cook during yesterday’s Town Hass session with Apple employees, he revealed some new perks for employees. Cook announced that company’s employees would receive 250$ discounts on Mac purchases and $500 discounts on iPad purchases.
Steve Jobs Expressed Interest In Light Field Cameras From Lytro
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NYTimes: Why Apple builds its products in China
The NY published an absolutely fascinating article, explaining why Apple builds almost all of its stuff in China. The short of it is that companies like Apple simply cannot manufacture products in the United States. The cost is not the reason, however. Years ago, the Chinese government subsidized building cities of factories that can hire 3,000 workers to live in a dorm in a day —or 8,700 Industrial Engineers in two weeks (it would take 9 months in the U.S.).
The most interesting tale might have been the last minute decision to make the iPhones display glass:
In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket.
Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who attended the meeting. He then pulled his keys from his jeans.
Apple's digital textbooks with iBooks 2 were 'vision' of Steve Jobs
Speaking with Peter Kafka of All Things D, McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw said Apple's newly unveiled textbook initiative for the iPad with iBooks 2 was a project spearheaded by the late Steve Jobs before his death. He met with Jobs last June about the project and discussed their goals. "He (Jobs) should be here. He probably is (in spirit)," McGraw said. "This was his vision, this was his idea, and it all had to do with the iPad."
McGraw-Hill is one of the first publishers already on board with Apple's new e-textbooks for iBooks 2, seeing Apple's new iBooks 2 platform as a way for textbooks to evolve and improve education. The CEO said he's been interested in the iPad as a learning tool since Apple first launched the device in 2010.
Scott Forstall Profiled as Apple's 'CEO-in-Waiting'
Fortune's Adam Lashinsky has written a new book entitled Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired -- and Secretive -- Company Really Works. The book is an unauthorized look at the inner workings of Apple.
Fortune offers one tidbit from the book today, profiling Senior Vice President for iOS Software Scott Forstall as Apple's current "CEO-in-waiting". Last October BusinessWeek also suggest that Forstall could be next Apple's CEO, portraying him as an aggressively ambitious "mini-Steve".
Apple to Launch 'Garageband for e-books' on Thursday
This week, on Thursday, January 19, Apple plans to hold its education-related media event. Last week Apple sent out invitations for the event with a tagline stated that the company would make an "education announcement in the Big Apple." The multiple reports are claiming that the company could announce an initiative to help textbook makers produce interactive ebooks for the iPad, with some sources calling the initiative "Garageband for e-books."
ArsTechnica reported on Monday that its sources are claiming that Apple will release a simple app that makes e-book publishing as easy as recording a song in GarageBand. Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis, who worked on education projects at Apple before leaving to focus on interactive e-books, also confirms the rumors, because he dosn't believe that Apple would start releasing content to replace, for example, textbooks, the company is likely to provide content production tools, similar to its own Logic or Final Cut Pro software.
Rare photo pictures young, rebellious Steve Jobs flipping IBM the bird
Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original members of the Macintosh team published the photo to his Google+ page on Thursday in memoriam of the late Apple co-founder and his rebellious spirit. The photo captured nearly 30 years ago shows a shaggy-haired Steve Jobs, clad in blue jeans and a leather jacket, expressing his affection for then rival IBM. In the early days of Apple, IBM was largely considered the company’s biggest competitor and enemy of sorts.
In memoriam for Steve Jobs as 2011 draws to a close, here’s one more rare photo that illustrates his rebellious spirit. In December 1983, a few weeks before the Mac launch, we made a quick trip to New York City to meet with Newsweek, who was considering doing a cover story on the Mac. The photo was taken spontaneously as we walked around Manhattan by Jean Pigozzi, a wild French jet setter who was hanging out with us at the time. Somehow I ended up with a copy of it. My editor begged me to include it in my book, but I was too timid to ask for permission, especially since IBM was still making CPUs for Apple at the time.
Hidden Stanford archive houses largest collection of historical Apple materials
In late 1990s, when Apple had some financial hardships the company elected to turn over its trove of materials to Stanford University's Silicon Valley Archives. Apple had been collecting the materials with the intention of forming its own company museum. The materials include "hundreds of box" requiring more than 600 feet of shelf space and has early photos of a young Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, blueprints for the first Apple computer, user manuals, magazine ads, TV commercials, company t-shirts and drafts of Jobs' speeches.
The university hopes its efforts will ultimately help historians, entrepreneurs and policymakers understand how a startup launched in a Silicon Valley garage by two college dropouts grew into the world's largest company.
Apple design chief Jonathan Ive awarded knighthood
The BBC reported on Friday that Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice president of industrial design, has been named a Knight Commander of the British Empire in the U.K.'s 2012 New Year Honours list for "services to design and enterprise”. In 2005 he was awarded the title of Commander of the British Empire. Ive responded that he was "both humbled and sincerely grateful" by the commendation.
"I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making," he said. "I discovered at an early age that all I've ever wanted to do is design."
Ive’s father was the first who inspired him to study design. Ive went on to study Industrial Design at Newcastle Polytechnic University. It was there that he first realized the potential of designing on the Mac.
"I discovered the Mac and felt I had a connection with the people who were making this product," he said. "I suddenly understood what a company was, or was supposed to be."
After graduating, Ive worked at the U.K. design agency Apple cooperated with. Then the company noted his talent and offered him a full-time position. During his 19 years at Apple, Ive and Steve Jobs became close friends and even "spiritual partners", according to Jobs' biography. While Jobs and Ive were close friends, Ive did admit to Isaacson that he felt Jobs had stolen some of his ideas.
"[Jobs] will go through a process of looking at my ideas and say, 'That's no good. That's not very good. I like that one,'" Ive told Isaacson in an interview. "And later I will be sitting in the audience and he will be talking about it as if it was his idea. I pay maniacal attention to where an idea comes from, and I even keep notebooks filled with my ideas. So it hurts when he takes credit for one of my designs."
Apple could collect $10 for every Android device sold
Kevin Rivette, managing partner at intellectual property firm 3LP Advisors LLC, said in an interview with Bloomberg that if Apple were to abandon its lawsuits against Android smartphone manufacturers and instead negotiate licensing fees for its patented technology, Apple could collect $10 for each Android device sold. But as far as we know Apple is not interested in licensing Apple's patented technology to Android manufacturers. Steve Jobs called the Android products as the “stolen” ones and wanted “to go thermonuclear war” against Android.
"A scorched-earth strategy is bad news because it doesn't optimize the value of their patents -- because people will get around them," Rivette told Bloomberg.
"It's like a dam. Using their patents to keep rivals out is like putting rocks in a stream. The stream is going to find a way around. Wouldn't it be better to direct where the water goes?"
Such approach makes mobile devices manufacturers to modify their infringing products and work around Apple's intellectual property. For example, earlier this month, the U.S. International Trade Commission found that HTC was in violation of an Apple patent related to "Data Detectors," but only a day later HTC said it was testing new devices that work around Apple's patent.