Amazon, App Store, Apple, Episodes, Intel, Music, Pandora, Spotify, Tim Cook, Vesper

Episode 59 – Tim Cook’s 5 Years, Intel IDF Announcements

Our News Roundup this week covers the Backchannel article about Apple’s AI efforts; Spotify, Amazon, and Pandora’s attempts to negotiate new rights deals with music labels; and the shutdown of John Gruber’s Vesper note-taking app for iOS (and what it says about the state of the App Store and the app economy more broadly).

Our Question of the Week is “How should we view Tim Cook’s first five years as Apple CEO?” and builds off the blog post Jan did this week with lots of charts comparing Apple at the beginning and end of Tim Cook’s first five years. We talk about how Apple has changed, what Tim Cook has done differently (notably increasing R&D spend), and his biggest successes and failures during his time as CEO. There’s a link to the post in the show notes for today’s episode.

Our third segment is a discussion of Intel’s announcements from its big developer event last week. We talk about the emphasis on specialized silicon and non-traditional devices for Intel, the focus on sensors and their many applications, and the licensing deal with ARM, among other things.

Lastly, we wrap up with a Weekly Pick, which is a personal hygiene recommendation from Aaron.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • The Backchannel article by Steven Levy on Apple’s AI efforts.
  • John Gruber’s post on Vesper shutting down
  • Jan’s post with about 20 charts and analysis on Tim Cook’s first five years as Apple CEO
  • Aaron’s Weekly Pick was an electric toothbrush – specifically, the Oral B Vitality Floss Action model, which you can find on Amazon (affiliate link).

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