News tagged ‘president’

Yesterday we reported that Apple senior vice president for retail Ron Johnson left Apple and took CEO position at J.C. Penney. And Apple has been still looking for his successor. Cult of Mac now claims that Steve Cano has been promoted to the position of senior vice president for retail.

Apple’s new retail boss boss isn’t just some suit, though. He’s one of the first retail employees Apple ever hired, a California surfer dude who has climbed from the sales floor to the very top rung of Apple management.

According to our source, Apple is replacing Johnson with his long-time lieutenant, Steve Cano.

Cano began his career at Apple ten years ago as manager of the Palo Alto retail store, then he open the SoHo store in New York City, last seven years he worked on Apple's international retail efforts.

But Apple denies appointment of Cano. The company has said that the search for a replacement for Ron Johnson continues.

The legal conflict over copycat of mobile devices between Samsung and Apple continue to escalate in different countries and now Samsung requests testimonies from Apple’s designers working on iPhone, including senior vice president Jonathan Ive. Also Samsung wants to receive source code of iPhone 4S and details of agreements between Apple and Australian carriers.

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In June, Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, announce his transition to J.C. Penney as CEO of department store chain. Yesterday Apple removed Johnson from the list of senior executives.

After working as a key merchandising executive at Target for 15 years, Johnson was personally lured away by Apple's Steve Jobs in 2000. Having joined Apple, he became responsible for the launch and strong growth of Apple's retail store segment.

The international component of Apple's retail business will be the most crucial element going forward. The company already announced that it intends to open forty new retail stores during fiscal 2012, with 75% of those locations coming outside of the United States.

Johnson also pioneered the successful "Genius Bar" concept that has become a staple of Apple's stores - a concept that Jobs himself was initially against.

Apple has not announced Johnson's successor yet. It is believed that Johnson’s position will be taken be the current Apple vice president for retail Jerry McDougal, who served under Johnson for over ten years. But Apple seems to be still looking for the best possible candidate. After Johnson’s announcement about his departure, Apple started "actively recruiting" for a new retail chief and in August the company took its search abroad in hopes of finding a replacement.

The New York Times has published Steve Jobs’s biological sister, novelist  Mona Simpson’s eulogy. She shared her eulogy for her passed away brother, offering an intimate look at the last moments before he died, including his surprising last words.

"Even as a feminist, my whole life I’d been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I’d thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother," she wrote.

Jobs and Mona didn’t know each other until they were both adults. In 1985 a lawyer contacted Simpson to inform her about her brother, but he refused to call his name.

"When I met Steve, he was a guy my age in jeans, Arab- or Jewish-looking and handsomer than Omar Sharif," she wrote.

Jobs and Simpson had a long walk. Jobs said that he was in computer business and was working on something “insanely beautiful" at that moment. Jobs wasn't ashamed of working hard even if "the results were failures." After his resignation from Apple, he was disappointed, especially when he wasn't invited to a meeting of 500 Silicon Valley leaders with the then U.S. president.

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Sources close to Microsoft revealed that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer allegedly blocked its former data center manager Kevin Timmons from joining Apple after reportedly being hired by the company in April to oversee iCloud operations. Microsoft even threatened legal action against Apple.

Timmons is said to offer Apple a plan to lower the operating cost of its existing data centers. Apple agreed to hire him, but Ballmer asked him to stay at Microsoft. Then a rumored call from Ballmer threatening legal action ended Timmons' would-be deal.

Earlier this year it was reported that Timmons had been hired by Apple in April and was thought to have been tapped to oversee Apple's iCloud at the company's North Carolina data center. But on October 12, when the service rolled out,  this position was occupied by  Scott Noteboom, Yahoo's former vice president of data center engineering. Timmons is said to take job as the new CTO of CyrusOne.

A couple of days ago, we already posted some quotation from the forthcoming Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. The other interesting thing, we have recently known, related to Jony Ive, Apple design chief. The book claims that Steve Jobs grated Ive nearly complete freedom to do as he sees fit.

He [Steve Jobs] called Jonathan Ive, Apple's design chief, his "spiritual partner" at Apple. He told Isaacson that Ive had "more operation power" at Apple than anyone besides Jobs himself - that there's no one at the company who can tell Ive what to do. That, says Jobs, is "the way I set it up."

Ive, Apple's Senior Vice President for Industrial Design, has been at Apple for nearly twenty years, the last fifteen of those as design chief. Ive's team is said to operate out of a secretive high-tech lab on Apple's campus where he is given ultimate flexibility in his work.  Such freedom in works obviously helps to guard against a watering-down effect that could occur if his designs were subject to the approval of and revision by others in the company.

Computerworld reports that the Taiwanese company Catcher Technology has had to shut down a factory in due to complaints of a "strange odor" coming from the building. The company manufactures 60% of uni-body aluminum casings for Apple's notebook line. Apple obtains the other 40% of its case supply from Foxconn. Catcher Technology admitted that the shutdown would affect Apple notebook supplies.

"Shipments to our customers will inevitably be affected. We already asked them to make adjustments to their (casings) procurement," Catcher President Allen Horng told a news conference.

There is no information when the plant will resume full operations.

Today senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing in Apple Philip Schiller said that iPhone 4S sales topped 4 million units during opening weekend surpassing the 1.7 million units sold during last year’s debut weekend. Also he said:

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Apple has posted a press release where confirmed that had received more than one million pre-orders of the iPhone 4S in the first 24 hours of availability. In the first 12 hours of the iPhone 4S availability AT&T reported that had received 200,000 pre-orders, Sprit, which also offering the iPhone 4S, said that they were very pleased with initial demand. This is the new record for Apple. The iPhone 4 saw 600,000 pre-orders in 24 hours last year.

Apple today announced pre-orders of its iPhone® 4S have topped one million in a single day, surpassing the previous single day pre-order record of 600,000 held by iPhone 4. iPhone 4S is the most amazing iPhone yet, packed with incredible new features including Apple’s dual-core A5 chip for blazing fast performance and stunning graphics; an all new camera with advanced optics; full 1080p HD resolution video recording; and Siri™, an intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking.

“We are blown away with the incredible customer response to iPhone 4S,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The first day pre-orders for iPhone 4S have been the most for any new product that Apple has ever launched and we are thrilled that customers love iPhone 4S as much as we do.

Steve Jobs passed away, leaving us his brilliant ideas and legacy. He literally created his own chapter of the IT industry history. Following his death, a number of simple people have extended their sincere condolences and the most powerful and influential people in the world have commented on his passing, among them Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Disney President Bob Iger, and U.S. President Barack Obama.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates

"I’m truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs’ death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work…

The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely."

Disney President Bob Iger

"Steve Jobs was a great friend as well as a trusted advisor. His legacy will extend far beyond the products he created or the businesses he built. It will be the millions of people he inspired, the lives he changed, and the culture he defined…

With his passing the world has lost a rare original, Disney has lost a member of our family, and I have lost a great friend..."

U.S. President Barack Obama

Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.

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Apple yesterday announced iPhone 4S  and seems to prepare the name “iPhone 5” for 4G LTE model of the smartphone that may be released next spring. Analyst Will Strauss, president of wireless chip market research firm Forward Concepts, has tried to explain why Apple showed off an iPhone 4S and not the rumored "iPhone 5" on Tuesday.

"They're saving iPhone 5 for the LTE version and that won't be out until next spring. There's no way they could come out with LTE now," he suggested.

Apple may need an LTE baseband chip that, according to Anand Shimpi of AnandTech, will arrive early next year, so first iPhones powered by it likely to arrive in the second quarter of 2012.

"While I don't like participating in the rumor garbage, if I were to guess at the release date of the rumored iPhone 5 I'd say early Q3 2012," he added.

But Apple is not in hurry. The company shows interest in LTE, but not going to implement LTE technology in the next iPhone as soon as possible. Quoting Apple executive Tim Cook, the reason is what that “LTE chipsets force a lot of design compromises with the handset, and some of those we are just not willing to make".

There are lots of benefits, when you're a president. One of them - you get Apple gadgets before everyone else does.

In an interview ABC's George Stephanopoulos, President Obama reveals that Steve Jobs gave him an iPad 'a little bit early', reports the National Journal.

“Steve Jobs actually gave it to me, a little bit early. Yeah, it was cool. I got it directly from him.”

Research firm Gartner has published sales forecasts for the tablet market, stating that a lack of momentum from competitors will allow iPad to be absolute leader during the holiday shopping season. Looking further ahead, Gartner predicts that Apple will maintain more than 50 percent share of this market segment through 2014 even as Research in Motion’s QNX and Microsoft's Windows 8 platforms are expected to build up some momentum. Research vice president at Gartner Carolina Milanesi explains:

“This is because Apple delivers a superior and unified user experience across its hardware, software and services. Unless competitors can respond with a similar approach, challenges to Apple’s position will be minimal. Apple had the foresight to create this market and in doing that planned for it as far as component supplies such as memory and screen”.

Gartner has lowered its estimates for sales of Android tablets in 2011 by 28% over second quarter’s projections, noting very weak adoption due to its interface issues, high prices and limited app availability.

The company expects that Android will see growth as Google releases its next-generation Android’s "Ice Cream Sandwich" and addresses fragmentation across the Android ecosystem. However, according to Gartner's sales forecasts, Android tablets will not catch up the iPad by the end of projection period of 2015.

Recently in an interview on State of the Union of CNN channel, Jim Hoffa, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union President, claimed that Apple is unpatriotic as it outsources manufacturing in other countries.

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MacRumors reports that Apple is shipping its new 27-inch Thunderbolt Display to its retail stores and resellers this week. Early online customer orders are expected to begin shipping on September 15. Apple unveiled this 27-inch LED display in July. The display is the first display that can boast about of the new Thunderbolt I/O technology. The display requires a Mac with a Thunderbolt I/O port. Such Thunderbolt compatibility allows the displays to act as a docking station using a single Thunderbolt cable.

“The Apple Thunderbolt Display is the ultimate docking station for your Mac notebook,” Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, said when the display was first unveiled. "With just one cable, users can dock with their new display and connect to high performance peripherals, network connections and audio devices.”

The Thunderbolt Display features a built-in FaceTime HD camera, 2.1 speaker system, three USB ports, one Firewire 800 port, one Gigabit Ethernet port, and a second Thunderbolt port to enable daisy chaining, a 16:9 edge-to-edge glass design with an ultra-wide 178 degree viewing angle.