The ongoing trade war between the United States and China has so far avoided Apple products. That could eventually change if the conflict continues, however. In doing so, we might be paying up to 10 percent more for gadgets like Apple Watches.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been assured by the Trump Administration that there won't be tariffs placed on iPhones. The news comes just days after the United States put tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese products. Despite this, Apple's still worried about the eroding relationship between the U.S. and its largest trading partner.
Apple CEO Tim Cook and other technology leaders met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House today to share their views on how the federal government could improve its public services and use technology to reduce government spending.
According to Recode, Cook told Trump that coding should be a requirement in schools.
Cook said the same thing when Apple debuted the Swift Playgrounds app, saying that “We believe coding should be a required language in all schools.”
Cook also suggested that the White House modernize the US government's IT systems.
“The US should have the most modern government in the world. Today it doesn’t,” Cook said. The White House released a video of the meeting. Here's what Cook said in full (edited for clarity):
The United States should have the most modern government in the world, but today it doesn’t. It’s great to see the effort that Jared is putting in working on things that will pay back in five and ten and twenty years.
The government should be focused on its citizens and the services of the government should be measured on how pleased the citizens are with receiving those services.
That basic premise is not how it’s done today.
I would really encourage you to ask the cabinet how they’re measuring their parts of government and what they’re doing to serve the citizens that they’re meant to serve.
Unrelated, I think coding should be a requirement in every public school. We have a huge deficit in the skills that we need today versus the skills that are there. We are trying to do our part or, hopefully, more than our part in doing that.
But I think leadership from government is also key.
And here's the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKUU9VavTjE
Trump said the government could save up to $1 trillion over 10 years by updating its information technology systems, which should help cut costs and improve public services.
“Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of the federal government’s technology that will deliver dramatically better services for citizens,” Trump said. “Government needs to catch up with the technology revolution. We’re going to change that with the help of great American businesses like the people assembled.”
He called for a “sweeping transformation” of the government's outdated computer systems.
Amazon's Bezos added that the government should make more use of commercially available technologies and Palantir CEO Alex Karp suggested tapping into big data in order to catch and prevent fraudulent federal spending.
Trump's remarks are available on the White House website.
https://twitter.com/BouchardAnthony/status/877196743070429184
By the way, we're running a caption contest for that photo top of post.
Image: Carlos Barria/Reuters
Of course you can, it's Twitter.
Axios reporter Mike Allen wrote on Thursday that he learned from White House officials that the key to forcing a more disciplined President Trump is limiting his screen time. “In Trump's case, it's curtailing his time watching TV and banging out tweets on his iPhone,” he wrote.
Here's an excerpt from the report:
Trump himself has been pushing staff to give him more free time. But staff does everything it can to load up his schedule to keep him from getting worked up watching cable coverage, which often precipitates his tweets. It has worked well overseas so far.
During last year's campaign, Trump tweeted from an Android device.
After The New York Times described Trump's Galaxy S3 phone as an “old, unsecured” device posing a hacking risk because it had not received a security update since 2015, Trump switched to an iPhone this summer.
In terms of security and software updates, iPhone has a distinct advantage over Android.
iOS software updates are immediately available across all supported devices in the wild because carriers don't get to vet them.
iPhone is also a better pick than older Android devices in terms of security.
In a recent Q&A on Apple's internal info web service, Tim Cook explained to employees why he met with President-elect Donald Trump last week. Cook was one of many executives that participated in a high-profile roundtable with Trump to discuss a variety of tech-related issues.
The meeting inspired a lot of negative reactions from folks in and around Silicon Valley, who felt like it was hypocritical of the tech leaders to meet with Trump, given their public condemnations of his comments and actions. But Cook explains that open communication is important.
Following Apple's record-setting holiday quarter, its stock still dropped eight percent in after-hours trading because the 51 million iPhones sold missed Wall Street consensus by a few million units. American businessman Donald Trump took to Twitter to express his dissatisfaction with Apple losing its vision and momentum, going on a rant over Apple's "dumb refusal" to give iPhones bigger screens.
Samsung's sizes are "much better", Trump said and stressed he sold his Apple stock because iPhones are still four inches. I'm sure Tim Cook immediately called for an emergency meeting with his lieutenants, fearing the wrath of Mr. Trump...