Mikey Campbell
Apple CEO Tim Cook and environment and government affairs chief Lisa Jackson joined other tech industry titans at President Barack Obama's head table for Friday night's White House dinner in honor of visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping. Cook is also expected to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this weekend.
A photo snapped by the Associated Press shows Cook and Jackson heading into the event, where they reportedly sat with President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, President Xi Jinping, Madame Peng, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Others at the table included Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger, DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg and philanthropist David Rubenstein, according to West Wing Reports' Paul Brandus.
Friday's dinner capped off President Xi's two-day visit to Washington. Earlier in the day, the two heads of state held a joint press conference to openly discuss a variety of topics including trade agreements, military relations and, important to U.S. tech companies, cybersecurity.
President Xi already met with America's tech bigwigs in Seattle on Wednesday, where he delivered a policy speech and took part in a roundtable to discuss economic and cybersecurity issues. A recent scourge of Chinese hacks against U.S. interests has caused concern for industry heads, making corporate espionage a key pivot point for ongoing government talks.
As it applies to Apple, China's stance on data protection leaves much to be desired. The company is reticent to store data on Chinese servers due to potentially dangerous state laws that could force Apple to one day hand over sensitive files.
Complications stemming from Apple's complex relationship with China were seen this week when developers in that country inadvertently downloaded a modified malware-infused version of Xcode called XcodeGhost, subsequently uploading malicious apps to the iOS App Store. Because it was hosted on U.S. servers, Xcode was slow to download in China, prompting developers to turn to faster unofficial versions hosted on cloud storage servers run by Baidu. Apple has since promised to host copies of Xcode in China.
In related news, Cook is slated to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this weekend to discuss how the company might benefit his country's economy, reports The Wall Street Journal. Modi will also sit down with executives from Microsoft, Google, Adobe, Cisco, Qualcomm and other tech firms.
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38 Comments
Since Xcode will be hosted on China-based servers how high are the odds that at some point the Chinese government will demand the source code? I think odds are high and getting higher.
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Oh God that's a funny picture!! Tim is a very cute person. I've noticed this watching him on stage lately. But what does this mean for Giggle? I heard this was even more bad news for them in China.
[SIZE=3]Last I heard, Google was outside arguing with security that they left their invite in their other tux...[/SIZE]
Tim is spending too much time rubbing elbows with politicians, fashion moguls, celebrities, and trying to be an activist for every wrong in the world. In the meantime I am getting buggy software on all of my devices and laptops that seems to be launched before they are prime-time. If Steve was here he would fire some people, throw some chairs and turn a few tables over...and get it right. Yes, I'm an old codger who is stuck in the past, though I do have an iPhone 6+, an Apple Watch plus the iPad Air 2a...in addition to my MBPros. I just want the damn things to work without having to do all the work-arounds. Enjoy your dinner Tim with all of the phony elitists!
Tim was likely there because China's hacking of the world's computers was a big part of the discussions.
The very recent China hack of Apple's App development was a prime example.
We are after China for being one of the biggest computer spying countries in the world.
So it's all about improving your computer use !
What's your Apple SW problem; my iOS8 iPhone and MacOS X Mav 10.9 are running perfectly.