A couple of days ago a pretty awesome meeting happened between Apple shareholders and Apple’s board of directors. It was an annual shareholders meeting which is normally pretty routine- the CEO, Tim Cook, fills everyone in on the progress of the company and everyone talks about the general outlook for the foreseeable future.
This one, however, played out a little differently. This time, a representative from the National Center for Public Policy Research or NCPPR (a conservative think tank) asked the company to disclose the costs of its sustainability programs, such as solar energy facilities, and how they affected their profits. He then said that Apple should be cutting climate change programs in order to focus on profits above everything else.
Mr Cook did not like that, he didn’t like it one, itty, bit.
He said that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues.
“When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader.
Finally, Cook looked at the questioner and said “if you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.”
The shareholders, thank god, agreed with him. Apple is a company that rates social measures, innovation and advances in technology above all else, and that would be how it will remain.
Following the meeting, the NCPPR and the man behind the questions from them, a Justin Danhof, released an a press release that is heavily critical of Cook, saying that shareholder value is destroyed in favor of efforts to combat climate change in particular.
“Here’s the bottom line: Apple is as obsessed with the theory of so-called climate change as its board member Al Gore is,” Danhof said. “After today’s meeting, investors can be certain that Apple is wasting untold amounts of shareholder money to combat so-called climate change.”
Well, we wish we were shareholders in Apple, and we would be really proud of ourselves if we were. Well done, Mr Cook, Well done, Apple Shareholders. Proud ‘a you.
We’re not crying, it’s just been raining on our face.
iMessage is an awesome way to send free text, photo, and video messages to friends who are using iOS 5 and above. Read receipts allow your friends to see whether you’ve viewed their message or not.
Now, we’re all good people around here, right, but sometimes there are circumstances when you don’t really want people to know if or when you read their messages.
If you don’t want your friends notified of when you have read their messages, go to Settings >Messages > Send Read Receipts > Off.
Hand up who listens to music in bed at night? Hand up who sometimes falls asleep then wakes in a heart attack of terror 2 hours later when your playlist hits onto your awesome screamer metal songs? It might not be a problem for all of us, but boy, for some of us, it can be a little…
Well now you can stop freaking out boys and girls, cos you know what? We got you! Use a timer to help you shut down the music before the heavy metal comes on.
Clock >Timer > When Timer Ends. Scroll down and tap Stop Playing. Then, set a timer (say 30 mins) and tap Start. Now you can play music as you fall asleep and it will be turned off according to the timer.
The iWatch! Could it finally be on it’s way onto our super deserving wrists? Well, we think so. We’re almost as sure as we can really ever really be with an Apple product release, especially a completely new product release. Here’s a bunch of stuff we think we know about the iWatch.
Way, way back in 2008, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak confirmed to the Telegraph that “Apple’s future could lie in an ‘iWatch’.”
Then, in the midst of a thousand iWatch rumors, Apple trademarked ‘iWatch’ in Japan, Mexico, Russia and a number of other countries.
Tim Cook has said this about wearable tech:
“I think the wrist is interesting. I’m wearing this (Nike Fuelband) on my wrist…it’s somewhat natural. But as I said before, I think for something to work here, you first have to convince people it’s so incredible that they want to wear it.”
So we know it’s coming, and we know it’s going to be incredible, which is pretty exciting.
The iWatch is rumored to be out this year. Definitely, probably, this year. We think it will be if not announced, at least hinted at during the WWDC in June, and if not, definitely revealed in the Fall, and released later in the year or early 2015.
The idea is that the iWatch will feature a small number of already established products combined into one, similar to the original iPhone when it came out.
It is said to be standalone with the option to be used in combination with your iPhone. It will most likely include watch, (duh) as well as fitness, health and phone functionality. Siri is a possibility, as is FaceTime capabilities, and maps, if not full iOS 8 functionality.
Fitness and health tech accessories were one of the big new industry product sectors at this year’s CES conference in Vegas. Many believe that it’s where the future of wearable tech lies.
Apple have recently made a bucketload of new roles rumored to be centered on the creation of the iWatch. Some of these are a little vague, others are quite telling. These include:
Sleep analysis experts who hold “several patents for integrating mobile devices with fitness equipment”
Biometric scientists.
Ben Shaffer (previously innovation leader at Nike) and Jay Blahnik, a health and fitness instructor who consulted on the Fuelband for Nike.
Sleep research expert Roy J.E.M Raymann, a scientist from Philips Research last month. Raymann’s experience includes extensive research into non-pharmacological methods of altering sleep quality and in wearable sensors and miniaturization of sensors related to tracking sleep and alertness activity.
Nancy Dougherty was hired as a hardware engineer in late 2013. Previously she worked with technology-based medical products with Proteus Digital Health. Her work there included a health metric-reading wearable patch and ingestible, Bluetooth-connected smart pills for monitoring dosages and scheduling. Most recently, Dougherty worked as a hardware lead for Sano Intelligence, whose tagline reads ‘the API for the bloodstream,’ working on a wearable sensor system.
Apple recently advertised for an Exercise Physiologist to oversee cardiovascular fitness and energy expenditure tests at its main headquarters campus.
The ad read: Design and run user studies related to cardiovascular fitness & energy expenditure, including calories burned, metabolic rate, aerobic fitness level measurement/tracking and other key physiological measurements.
Michael O’Reilly, M.D. was recently added to the Apple team. Previously he was the Chief Medical Officer of pulse oximetry (measuring the amount of oxygen in the blood) for Masimo.
In the fashion line, Former Yves Saint Laurent CEO Paul Deneve, below, was hired last year to work under Tim Cook on a “special project”, and Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, joined Apple in a newly created position last year, as a senior vice president and member of their executive team.
Pretty promising stuff, right? So what else do we know?
A supply chain source indicated to Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Brian White in early October that it may also serve to integrate with home automation systems, allowing users to control heating and cooling, lights, and audio/video systems right from their wrists.
The design will come from the delightful brain of one Jony Ive (and his no doubt delightful team).
It is expected to have a 1.5-inch display, it will more than likely have a battery life longer than one day (Hi Galaxy gear!) and no one is brave enough yet to guess at a price.
What about competition? There are already a few smart watches, coming from the likes of Samsung with the Galaxy Gear (1& 2), the Pebble, the Sony smart watch 2 and now Google who has confirmed to the Financial Times after filing a patent that they are indeed manufacturing a smart watch, possibly for release this year.
Apple will be looking to blow them all out of the water, obviously. This means that it has to be innovative in the same way that shocked the world with the original iPhone, and that all the components such as battery life, synchronization with other tech, wearability and functionality will have to be perfect.
So, no pressure, Apple. Also: hurry up, cos we really, really want one.
Got iOS 7? Yeah? Want to know a Safari feature not many people know about? Yeah? Yeah?
Here you go: In Safari on iOS 7 devices you have the option to search within a page for a specific word!
Start typing the word you’re looking for into the URL bar at the top of the page. The results will show you the google search results first but if you scroll down it will show you “On This Page” and let you jump through the mentions of that page.
Apple, Cool Features, iPhone | iPhone-Antidote | 
March 13, 2014 4:04 pm | 
Comments (0) 
Subscribe
