Apple executives are making the rounds following this month's big iPhone, iPad and Apple TV reveal, with CEO Tim Cook visiting a New York City Apple Store on Monday and Apple Pay head Jennifer Bailey scheduled to attend the upcoming Code/Mobile conference in October.
Cook was spotted at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store with SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, as seen above in pictures posted to Twitter by BuzzFeed's Mat Honan. Cook is in New York City to tape an episode of CBS's "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," set to air on Tuesday.
Cook's appearance came on the heels of another large gathering at the SoHo Apple Store, where Kim, Khloé and Kourtney Kardashian, with sisters Kendall and Kylie Jenner, were on hand to talk mobile apps. The Kardashian clan launched a series of new apps on Monday, one for each reality star, that offers yet another window into their already public lives. Kourtney's app is slated to debut in the near future.
Apple is also looking to promote its Apple Pay payment services arm, with vice president Jennifer Bailey slated to take part in Re/code's upcoming Code/Mobile conference. This year's event, which runs from Oct. 7 through Oct. 8, focuses on mobile payments and the proliferation of smartphone technology in industries like automotive.
Bailey notably took point at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference when she announced Apple Pay support for the UK, the first international market to be granted access to Apple's service.
15 Comments
I like (so far) the new, more media-friendly Apple. They need to get out there and talk about who they are, why they do what they do, and how much doing well by the customer matters to them. As Apple fans and aficionados in a forum like this, we take these things for granted. But most of the world has no clue, often seeing Apple as nothing more than another mega-corp.
Another Kardashian app? I'm wishing the App Store approvers find a way to remove this drivel.
[quote name="anantksundaram" url="/t/188236/tim-cook-visits-nyc-apple-store-apple-pay-chief-jennifer-bailey-to-speak-at-code-mobile#post_2776391"]I like (so far) the new, more media-friendly Apple. They need to get out there and talk about who they are, why they do what they do, and how much doing well by the customer matters to them. As Apple fans and aficionados in a forum like this, we take these things for granted. But most of the world has no clue, often seeing Apple as nothing more than another mega-corp.[/quote] Agreed. Though I would like to see them weave a more compelling narrative. I think often times Apple pundits on blogs and podcasts do a better job of this than Apple does. Take this last Apple event. Tim Cook was hardly onstage at all. They just jumped right into announcing products. All very compelling products but where was the over arching narrative about why these are compelling products and why Apple built them? Some might say it's self evident and completely obvious. But I would still like Tim to take more time putting context around everything being announced. Same with the Watch announcement last year. We got the 'what' but not so much the 'why'. And when I'm talking about context I'm not referring to Tim's typical "Only Apple..." spiel. It's more than that. The most we got last week was Cook saying the iPad was the future of computing. OK, how about expanding on that? How about expanding on the purpose of the new MacBook vs the iPad Pro? Is Apple's vision making iOS powerful enough to eventually replace OS X for all but serious power users? Or do they expect people will own an iPad Pro and a Mac? I'd love to hear the overarching vision from Cook, not people like Ben Thompson or Ben Bajarin trying to guess where Apple is going.
To go along with what I wrote above, this is a great piece from Ben Thompson on Apple needing to evolve from products to platforms. https://stratechery.com/2015/from-products-to-platforms/ I've said before that Tim Cook should hire a SVP to oversee all backend cloud services. I would argue that he should also hire an SVP or VP of platforms reporting directly to him. We've got OS X, iOS and now watchOS and tvOS. I would love to see someone in a role that had broad oversight over all four platforms. Let them handle developer relations and App Store review. Let them be the outside face to the developer community. Let them have the power to implement business model changes if necessary to keep the platforms the #1 place developers want to develop for and it can be a sustainable business. This isn't like the 80s and 90s when Apple was beholden to Microsoft and Adobe. I think the success of the iPad Pro will be determined by the high quality professional software developed for it. Apple has the advantage with what I believe is the future - touch computing. Don't let Microsoft catch up.
I've just thrown up in my mouth a little bit.