President

Six 'President' stories October 2011 - February 2014

President Obama uses iPad to take class videos during school visit [Videos]

Ben Lovejoy Feb 5 2014 - 4:52 am PT

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHWcl12eQrs]

President Obama, who has been seen on several occasions carrying an iPad, used one to take class videos during a visit to an Adelphi school to promote the ConnectED program.

The program, designed to bring high-speed Internet to 99 percent of schools within five years, is being supported by Apple, which is donating $100M worth of iPads and other equipment.

Obama has also been seen using a Mac (with a Presidential seal covering the logo), but says he is not allowed to use an iPhone for security reasons.

Samsung fails to obtain Presidential veto from Obama for Apple/ITC import ban case

Jordan Kahn Oct 8 2013 - 8:08 am PT

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Samsung-Gavel

With a U.S. import ban previously issued by the ITC set to lock out certain Samsung devices at midnight last night, Bloomberg reports that the company has failed to obtain a veto from President Barack Obama:

The Korean company had argued that the ban should be overturned on public policy grounds, especially since a similar order it won against Apple was vetoed by the administration in August. Samsung can now seek a delay in the ban from a U.S. appeals court that will consider the entire case on legal grounds.

“After carefully weighing policy considerations, including the impact on consumers and competition, advice from agencies, and information from interested parties, I have decided to allow” the import ban to proceed, Obama’s designee, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, said in a statement today.

In August, the US International Trade Commission ruled in favor of Apple and issued a sales ban on certain infringing Samsung devices in a long-running case that stemmed from a countersuit originally filed by Apple back in 2011. The news came shortly after the Obama administration’s decision to veto an ITC import ban on certain iPhone and iPad models that Samsung won in a separate case. Like Apple, Samsung was going to attempt to get a veto on the decision by the US President, the only person with the power to overturn ITC import bans.
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President Obama meets with Tim Cook, other execs over government surveillance

Mark Gurman Aug 8 2013 - 9:53 pm PT

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U.S. President Barack Obama met with Apple CEO Tim Cook and other technology company executives today to discuss government surveillance, according to a report from Politico. Earlier this week, according to the report, the President and his staff began holding confidential meetings about surveillance tactics and topics such as the recent NSA-related controversies with company executives and other members of pertinent organizations.

Those invited were mostly senior executives, including Cook, Stephenson and Cerf, as well as representatives of groups like the Center for Democracy and Technology and Gigi Sohn, the leader of Public Knowledge, according to three sources familiar with the meeting. Each declined comment for this story.

The report names AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and former Google Vice President Vint Serf as the other technology community members involved in the meetings. Serf recently was appointed by President Obama to the National Science Board, and Serf is also known as a pioneer of the internet…

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President Obama calls Apple CEO Tim Cook and other CEOs to discuss fiscal cliff and economic growth

Jordan Kahn Nov 19 2012 - 6:51 am PT

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CNN reported a White House official confirmed President Barack Obama spoke with CEOs of four Fortune 500 companies over the weekend to “discuss the so-called fiscal cliff and economic growth.” The discussions with the select group of CEOs follow a larger meeting of a dozen American companies at the White House last week. One of the four CEOs invited to join the discussions was Apple’s Tim Cook.

According to the White House, the conversations were part of the President’s “outreach on the need to find a balanced deficit-reduction solution that protects the middle class and continues to move our economy forward.”

The official said Obama spoke with the CEOs of four Fortune 500 companies over the weekend after gathering a dozen CEOs of other major American companies at the White House on Wednesday

The other CEOs included in the discussions were Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Costco’s Craig Jelinek, and Jim McNerney of Boeing.
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Apple’s manufacturing jobs in China comes up in US presidential debates, both candidates give their opinion [Video]

Seth Weintraub Oct 16 2012 - 7:53 pm PT

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEpCrcMF5Ps&start=5400]

One of the last questions in the debate concerned how to bring Apple’s manufacturing jobs ‘back’ to the United States.

Mitt Romney went first and said China is stealing intellectual property, designs, cheating on currency, hacking into computers, and isn’t playing fair to U.S. workers: “We can compete with anyone in the world as long as the playing field is level.”

Obama went second and said the U.S. doesn’t necessarily want the low-skill, low-wage jobs and education and skills will bring higher-paying jobs home: “There are some jobs that are not going to come back. […] I want high-wage, high-skill jobs. That’s why we have to invest in advanced manufacturing […] make sure that we have the best science and research in the world.”

And the President should know: Steve Jobs told Obama in February 2011, according to Walter Isaacson, “If you could educate these [30,000] engineers, we could move more manufacturing plants here.”

The New York Times dived deep on this and probably has better answers than either politician.

[UPDATED with full transcript below]

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Jobs to Obama: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency” because the US can’t build factories

Seth Weintraub Oct 20 2011 - 5:22 pm PT

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The Huffington Post pulls some words that Steve Jobs had for president Obama from Isaacson’s Steve Jobs bio. On the meeting, Jobs insisted that Obama himself ask for a personal invitation. They met in the Westin Airport hotel in San Francisco. It sounds like like Jobs is more of a Conservative than “hippy Liberal” in his incredibly blunt words to President Obama:

“You’re headed for a one-term presidency,” he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where “regulations and unnecessary costs” make it difficult for them.

Jobs also criticized America’s education system, saying it was “crippled by union work rules,” noted Isaacson. “Until the teachers’ unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform.” Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.

That said, Jobs was still willing to help Obama’s re-election campaign…

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