In Apple’s shareholder meeting held yesterday Senior Vice President of retail Ron Johnson stated that Apple is planning to open up to 25 retail stores in China in the next 24 months.
Worth noting, Apple opened their first store in Beijing, China in July 2008. Apple COO Tim Cook stated at the Goldman Sachs conference that another store will be opening in Shanghai this summer.
Granted China is drowning in cheap knock-offs of name brand products, but China with a population of 1.3 Billion people, represents almost unlimited possibilities.
Bloomberg is reporting on remarks made by Apple CEO Steve Jobs during the company’s shareholder meeting held yesterday regarding Apple’s massive (and growing) cash reserves. Jobs claims these cash reserves will be used for future investments that shareholders will see a better return on compared to simply returning money to shareholders.
Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs said he prefers having cash for investments to paying dividends or doing stock buybacks.
Apple is holding onto cash to take “big, bold” risks, Jobs said at the company’s shareholder meeting today. The company had about $25 billion in cash and short-term investments as of December.
Apple COO Tim Cook earlier this week stated that Apple has looked at acquiring larger companies, but none seemed to fit into the company’s larger strategy. Instead, Apple has opted to buy smaller companies such as Quattro Wireless, and Lala Media, or their technologies and talent.
This falls in line with an earlier report suggesting Apple will be “more aggressive” with company acquisitions in the future.
Lastly, All seven members of Apple’s Board of Directors were re-elected by shareholders.
Apple has announced the winner of their “Countdown to 10 Billion Songs” contest. The winner is Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia who purchased “Guess Things Happen That Way” by Johnny Cash, marking the 10 billionth song downloaded from the iTunes Music store. For this, Sulcer will receive a $10,000 iTunes card.
“We’re grateful to all of our customers for helping us reach this amazing milestone,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “We’re proud that iTunes has become the number one music retailer in the world, and selling 10 billion songs is truly staggering.”
Even more amazingly, as Rolling Store reports, is that Apple CEO Steve Jobs called to inform and congratulate Sulcer on winning the contest.
When Steve Jobs personally called Woodstock, Georgia native Louie Sulcer to tell him he’d won Apple’s iTunes Store 10 Billion Song Sold contest, Sulcer first thought was that he was being pranked. “He called me and said, ‘This is Steve Jobs from Apple.’ I said, ‘Yeah right,’ ” Sulcer tells Rolling Stone. “I have a son that loves to play tricks and he does that every now and then — calls me and imitates somebody.” After three or four times of asking “Come on now, who is this,” Sulcer realized that his caller ID read simply “Apple,” and only then did he believe that he was the winner of the contest and a $10,000 iTunes card.
Apple has published their annual Supplier Responsibility report which outlines Apple’s efforts to promote responsible business practices through it’s suppliers and partners around the world.
Apple requires suppliers to commit to our comprehensive Supplier Code of Conduct as a condition of their contracts with us. We drive compliance with the Code through a rigorous monitoring program, including factory audits, corrective action plans, and verification measures.
Apple highlights the number of audits of it’s suppliers, claiming that they audited 102 facilities in 2009, which is up from 39 audits in 2007. Apple has also trained 133,000 workers, supervisors, and managers on topics like worker’s rights, and management responsibility. Many of these facilities point out the fact that they have been audited only by Apple, which indicates Apple has strict guidelines and tolerances.
Speaking of guidelines, Apple claims to have developed guidelines in seven areas and how these suppliers can meet Apple’s standards of code of conduct.
Apple found in 2009 only 17 instances of something they call “core violations” of it’s code of conduct. The violations involved things like overcharging of agency recruitment fees to employees, hiring underaged workers, falsifying records, and so on. Apple reports that in each instance they worked with the suppliers to resolve any outstanding issues.
In short, it sounds like Apple is getting out in front of this thing much like they did with their environmental initiative. They are trying to make the company look spotless so if you do criticize them, it’s not in one of these “serious” areas.
Here we go again. Apple has released yet another build (Build 10D561) of Mac OS X 10.6.3 to developers. iPhone Canada offers up the release details:
-Compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications
-Performance improvements for 64-bit Logic
-Changes to QuickTime X that increase reliability and improve compatibility and security
-Printing reliability and compatibility with third party printers
-Issues patched that prevented files from copying to Windows shares
-Issues patched with recurring events in iCal when connected to an Exchange server
-Issues patched that prevented files with the “#” or “&” symbols in their names from opening in Rosetta
You may notice that these release notes have changed much since the last couple of seeds. This, coupled with frequent seeding suggests that Apple is preparing to push the update out to the public.
Steve Jobs, Apple Co-founder and CEO turns 55 today. Regardless of what you think of the man, few can say they have started a successful company, then been exiled from it for ten years, and then come back and save the company from ruin. Here’s to wishing Steve better health, and many more years to come.
Just a quick update to a story we brought you earlier. About two weeks ago Apple started their “Countdown to 10 Billion Songs” Contest wherein the person who downloads the 10 Billionth song from the iTunes Music Store, will win a $10,000 iTunes certificate. Well, someone downloaded the 10 billionth song today.
No word yet on who the lucky winner is though.
Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook, answered a few questions at Goldman Sachs Technology & Internet Conference yesterday. He said nothing that really blew the lid off any of Apple future projects, but it did give an insightful look at how Apple does business.
Apple has confirmed the iPad will be using PowerVR SGX graphics. This is the same family of graphics processors already used in the iPhone and iPod touch. This confirmation comes from documentation in Apple’s latest iPad SDK Beta 3 released to developers.
Using OpenGL ES on iPad is identical to using OpenGL ES on other iPhone OS devices. An iPad is a PowerVR SGX device and supports the same basic capabilities as other SGX devices. However, because the processor, memory architecture, and screen dimensions are different for iPad, you should always test your code on an iPad device before shipping to ensure performance meets your requirements.
If there was any doubt, Apple is a big investor and licensee in Imagination Technologies, the company who creates the PowerVR SGX chips. Apple has used these chips through all of the iPhone and iPod touch models to date. The A4 chip that Apple designed for the iPad, will have both an ARM-based processor to power the device, and the PowerVR SGX GPU in a single chip.
Please excuse the mess as we launch a new and improved Mactropolis. Everything you know and love about Mactropolis is still here, we just gave it a snazzy new look. We also have some exciting things down the pipeline. So please, check back often. Mactropolis is only going to get better.
Please, leave a comment and let us know how you feel about the new look and feel of Mactropolis. We can’t wait to hear from you.
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