Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at a Goldman Sachs conference this week. It was a fascinating talk, given after the best financial quarter in Apple’s history — not to mention the best financial quarter of any company’s history. Serenity Caldwell of iMore prepared a transcript of Cook’s remarks. Cook talked about existing Apple products such as the iPhone and iPad, Apple Pay, the upcoming Apple Watch, environmental initiatives, and the future. It’s a worth reading if you are interested in Apple. If you would rather listen than read, Apple has posted an audio recording. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Sharon Bernstein of Reuters reports that the number of stolen iPhones has dropped dramatically as a result of the Find my iPhone feature that lets you kill a stolen iPhone and related technology.
- Tieman Ray of Barron’s reports that last quarter Apple obtained 93% of the profit in the smartphone industry, Samsung got the other 7%, and everyone else lost money.
- Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal discusses styluses and smart pens.
- Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal discusses external lenses that can improve the pictures you take with your iPhone.
- Fowler also reports that you can now designate what happens to your Facebook account after you die by appointing a legacy contact.
- It’s not easy being green. Not only is that the memorable line sung by Kermit the Frog, as well as the title of an excellent article written by a law student back in 1993 for the American Criminal Law Review (ahem), but it is also the theme of this article by Paul Ford about how once you start using the iPhone Messages app to communicate with other iPhone users with blue bubbles, you start to dislike communicating with non-iPhone users with green bubbles.
- Ben Lovejoy of 9to5Mac reviews the ClamCase Pro, an iPad 2 case that makes your iPad look much like a MacBook Air.
- Caitlin McGarry of Macworld reports that JetBlue will start to let you use Apple Pay to pay for purchases on a flight. That’s a great idea because your iPhone is likely to be in your hand during a flight and thus be easier to reach than a wallet or purse.
- And finally, speaking of Apple Pay, American Express is running a fun commercial that shows the history of the AmEx card and ends up with support for Apple Pay.