New Demo Videos Show CarPlay in Action as Apple VP Greg Joswiak Attends Ferrari Launch

Following yesterday’s announcement of Apple’s new CarPlay iOS vehicle integration and the release of promotional materials from launch partners Volvo and Mercedes-Benz, more details are arriving today with Apple participating in Ferrari’s launch at the Geneva Motor Show.

Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo and Apple vice president Greg Joswiak at Ferrari booth
As shared by macprime.ch [Google Translate], Apple’s iOS marketing chief Greg Joswiak joined Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo to introduce CarPlay integration with the Ferrari FF. Apple representatives were also on hand to provide demos of CarPlay, with Engadget sharing a video walkthrough of CarPlay’s features.

The first thing we noticed is how speedy everything is. Apps load quickly, and Siri’s contextual algorithms hastily recognized our voice commands and responded appropriately. Apple has also implemented safety features to ensure services do not draw your attention away from the road and push forward its “hands-free” theme. For example, when we sent or received a message from a contact, Siri would only read the message back to us and we never once got the chance to see its contents.

For its part, Mercedes-Benz has released a seven-minute overview video, shared by iFun.de. The video shows how the system can be controlled without directly touching the screen, using a combination of Siri and a physical control knob.

Finally, Jalopnik has a hands-on video of Volvo’s CarPlay implementation. While the video is of fairly poor quality, it does show somewhat better responsiveness than seen in the Ferrari.

Apple has promised new CarPlay-compatible vehicles from a number of manufacturers in 2014, including Ferrari, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo, with a dozen other manufacturers signed on as partners with unspecified launch timeframes.

Belgian Judge May Block Apple Websites Over ‘Misleading’ Warranty Information [Mac Blog]

A Brussels judge may block access to all Apple websites in response to a complaint filed by Federal Public Service (FPS) Economy, reports Belgian newspapers (Via Tech.eu). Apple is accused of misleading consumers about warranty protections available for products purchased from Apple’s retail and online stores.

The complaint, filed last year, claims Apple advertises its one-year warranty and extended AppleCare warranty, but does not inform consumers of their right to a two-year statutory warranty under EU law. In response to this claim, Apple painstakingly outlined the differences between the company’s standard one-year warranty coverage, its AppleCare extended protection plan and the EU’s two-year warranty, but the website comparison was not sufficient for the Belgian regulatory group.

The Brussels investigative judge can order Belgium ISPs to blacklist Apple’s website as Belgian law allows for the regulation of electronic services in cases where consumer protection rights are being violated. Though he has the power to block Apple, the judge is unsure how to proceed as blocking Apple’s website also interferes with critical iOS and OS X services like iTunes and iCloud.

Consumer associations throughout Europe continue to be critical of Apple’s warranty policy in its European stores. The company was fined $1.2 million in Italy over the issue and has faced lawsuits in Germany, Luxembourg, and Portugal.

Apple Announces September Retirement of CFO Peter Oppenheimer

Apple today announced the retirement of Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer will leave Apple in September of this year and will be succeeded by Luca Maestri, Apple’s vice president of Finance and corporate controller. This change in executive leadership comes one day after Goldman Sachs announced that Oppenheimer would be joining the banking firm’s board of directors.

“Peter has served as our CFO for the past decade as Apple’s annual revenue grew from $8 billion to $171 billion and our global footprint expanded dramatically. His guidance, leadership and expertise have been instrumental to Apple’s success, not only as our CFO but also in many areas beyond finance, as he frequently took on additional activities to assist across the company. His contributions and integrity as our CFO create a new benchmark for public company CFOs,” said Tim Cook, Apple CEO. “Peter is also a dear friend I always knew I could count on. Although I am sad to see him leave, I am happy he is taking time for himself and his family. As all of us who know him would have expected, he has created a professional succession plan to ensure Apple doesn’t miss a beat.”

Oppenheimer joined Apple in 1996 as the Senior Director of Finance and Controller and was promoted several times before being appointed as Apple’s Chief Financial Officer in 2004. During his 18 years at Apple, Oppenheimer has served as Senior Vice President and Corporate Controller (2002 to 2004), Vice President and Corporate Controller, Vice President and Controller of Worldwide Sales and Senior Director of Finance and Controller for the Americas.

No Pandora Support on CarPlay, but Apple ‘Continues to Be a Valued Partner’

Pandora confirmed today that Apple’s newly released CarPlay feature does not include integration with Pandora’s popular streaming music service, despite CarPlay offering support for other music services including iTunes Radio, Spotify, Beats Radio, Stitcher Radio for Podcasts, and iHeartRadio.

In a statement to MacRumors, Pandora said that although its service was not integrated into CarPlay, Apple “continues to be a valued partner.” The company also suggests that it is continuing to explore opportunities to expand its presence within the car, hinting that it could be working towards integration with CarPlay in the future.

At this time, Pandora is not integrated with Apple CarPlay. As a first mover in the auto space, we continue to broaden our relationships with OEMs while also exploring other opportunities to expand our presence in the car. Apple has been and continues to be a valued partner.

It is unclear why Apple chose to exclude Pandora from CarPlay while supporting other competing services from companies like Beats Music and Spotify, but it may be due to the similarities between iTunes Radio and Pandora’s own service. Both services are station-based, allowing users to create radio stations based on music genres, artists, and specific songs, which are then used to play similar music, making Pandora a direct competitor for iTunes Radio.

Pandora, in addition to mirroring iTunes Radio’s functionality, is also ranked as the most popular music app in the App Store, sitting at the top of the free app charts in that category and the number 22 free app overall. The less popular services from Spotify and Beats Music work differently than Pandora and iTunes Radio, allowing users to search for specific songs, while iHeartRadio acts more like a traditional radio station.

In its statement, Pandora was quick to point out that although it is not included in CarPlay, its service is already integrated with more than 130 different vehicle models and present on several aftermarket stereo devices.

With CarPlay, iOS users with compatible cars will be able to utilize voice and touch commands, along with car controls, to access functions like Maps and various music apps, in addition to making phone calls and sending messages.

CarPlay will debut this week in vehicles from Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo. Apple has also made deals with other car companies for future integration, including BMW, Ford, Honda, Nissan, Kia, Toyota, and more.

Apple Campus 2 Designer Gives Insight Into Planning Process, Talks Scale

Apple’s Campus 2 project, which includes the giant “spaceship”-esque building envisioned by Steve Jobs, has been thoroughly outlined in city plans and models that depict the company’s vision for the space, but in an interview with Architectural Record, Norman Foster, who designed the campus, gives some additional insight and context on the planning process behind the project.

Foster, who is the chairman of Foster + Partners, has led the construction of multiple high-profile buildings, including the massive Hearst Tower in New York and the bean-shaped McLaren Technology Centre that rests on an artificial lake. He helped Jobs design the campus based on Jobs’ love of the Main Quad on the Stanford campus, and his desire to reintroduce native flora to the area.

Foster did a series of case studies, inspired by a London square with a park in the center, which eventually evolved into a perimeter area surrounding a larger outdoor park.

So a series of organic segments in the early studies started to form enclosures, all of which were in turn related to the scale of the Stanford campus. These studies finally morphed into a circular building that would enclose the private space in the middle—essentially a park that would replicate the original California landscape, and parts of it would also recapture the orchards of the past. The car would visually be banished, and tarmac would be replaced by greenery, and car parks by jogging and bicycle trails.

According to Foster, though the building is large, spanning more than a mile around, it’s also compact, much like an airport. To combat the sheer size of the building, its sections have been broken up with cafes, lobbies, and entrances, with each section of the building carefully constructed with social interactions in mind.

Of course, you have got an enormous range of skills in this building—from software programmers, from designers, marketing, retail—but you can move vertically in the building as well as horizontally. The proximity, the adjacencies are very, very carefully considered.

The campus also houses miles of jogging and cycling trails, and Foster says that more than 1,000 bikes will be kept on the site for employees to travel around the campus. Landscaping connections and pathways will also help it to be more easily traversable, and parking will be underground to avoid marring the scenery.

Currently, construction on Apple’s Campus 2 project is well under way, and just a few months after receiving final approval for the campus, Apple has demolished all of the existing buildings on the site, allowing the building portion of the project to begin.

When finished, the campus will house 12,000 Apple employees and will also include a fitness center, a presentation center, and more. Apple hopes to complete the project by 2016.

Microsoft Wants to Expand Xbox Live Capabilties on iOS and Android ‘In a Big Way’

Microsoft has been aiming to entrench its popular Xbox Live service into both the iOS and Android ecosystems for several years, having introduced its first Xbox-compatible app SmartGlass in 2011, along with a few other iOS and Xbox hybrid apps.

SmartGlass, which is also available for the Xbox One, is designed to be a companion app that allows gamers to access and control their Xbox game consoles to browse content and track achievements. The SmartGlass app also allows an iOS device to be used as a remote control and a keyboard for the system.

Microsoft may be aiming to expand Xbox Live on iOS even further, according to a new report from The Verge, which suggests the company wants to poise Xbox Live as an optional replacement for Game Center.

While Microsoft has experimented with achievements on iOS and Android recently, the company is planning to push Xbox Live cross-platform in a big way soon. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that Microsoft is building a platform to extend Xbox Live functionality to iOS and Android games.

Back in December of 2012, Microsoft experimented with an iOS game that provided gamers with Xbox Live achievements for reaching in-game milestones. The company plans to expand on this concept, making it easier for iOS and Android developers to incorporate Microsoft’s framework into games on their respective platforms.

Microsoft already offers tools that allow Xbox Live functionality to be integrated into games, but to access them developers are required to be certified through Microsoft, which is a significant barrier to entry.

According to job listings found by The Verge, Microsoft is currently assembling a team that will create an “open-source, lightweight, extensible and scalable” framework that spans multiple platforms including the Windows Store, Windows Phone, iOS, and Android. Such a system, with fewer restrictions, could make it easier to integrate Xbox Live into apps and games.

Apple and Google both have proprietary game progress tracking in the form of Game Center and Google Play Games, but Microsoft appears to be aiming to get Xbox Live on all platforms, leading to a unified achievement system that would work with multiple systems.

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer Joins Board of Directors at Goldman Sachs [Mac Blog]

Goldman Sachs Group today announced that Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer will join the banking firm’s board of directors, effective immediately.

Oppenheimer will become the board’s 13th director and will serve on the firm’s Audit, Risk, Compensation and Corporate Governance, Nominating and Public Responsibilities committees.

“Peter’s 25 years of broad experience across important industries will add a valuable perspective to our Board of Directors,” said Lloyd C. Blankfein, Chairman and CEO. “We appreciate his willingness to serve as a director and look forward to benefitting from his judgment and counsel.”

Oppenheimer joined Apple in 1996 as the Senior Director of Finance and Controller and was promoted several times before being appointed as Apple’s Chief Financial Officer in 2004. Besides serving on the board at Goldman Sachs, Oppenheimer also is a board member for the California Polytechnic State University Foundation and Sacred Heart Schools in Atherton, California.

Oppenheimer isn’t the only Apple executive to serve on the board of directors at another company. Apple CEO Tim Cook is a member of the board at Nike, while senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue serves on Ferrari’s Board of Directors, a role he undertook in November 2012.

Apple Targeted ‘CarPlay’ Trademark Protection Beginning in May 2013 [iOS Blog]

As part of Apple’s announcement earlier today regarding the launch of its new iOS vehicle integration at the Geneva International Motor Show, the company revealed that it has rebranded the feature from “iOS in the Car” to “CarPlay”.

Curious about whether Apple had previously sought to protect the CarPlay name with a trademark application, MacRumors has investigated the situation and determined that Apple appears to have registered a shell company by the name of Carplay Enterprises LLC on November 14, 2013.

Delaware corporate registration for Carplay Enterprises
The company has no obvious link to Apple aside from the fact that it is headquartered at 1209 Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware, where other Apple-related companies have also been listed. The building is, however, essentially a mail stop that serves as the headquarters for hundreds of thousands of companies seeking to take advantage of Delaware’s business-friendly laws.

Its occupants, on paper, include giants like American Airlines, Apple, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Cargill, Coca-Cola, Ford, General Electric, Google, JPMorgan Chase, and Wal-Mart. These companies do business across the nation and around the world. Here at 1209 North Orange, they simply have a dropbox.

Less than a week after its formation, Carplay Enterprises began filing for trademarks on the “CarPlay” name, with applications in Australia, Norway, and a number of other countries coming on November 19 and the United States and several more countries following a day later. Apple’s U.S. application seeks protection in three classes: Computers (including handheld devices, peripherals, and software), GPS navigation, and Computer programming.

The U.S. application lists as contact information a Gmail address and an attorney by the name of Robert Friedman who has no obvious connection to Apple, while the signatory on the application is listed as “not provided”, suggesting that Apple was working quite hard to cover its tracks. Prior to the introduction of the iPad, Apple was discovered to have filed for a trademark on the name “iSlate” under a different shell company, with one giveaway being that the application was signed by an Apple employee.

U.S. trademark filing for “CarPlay”
Apple’s apparent efforts to protect the CarPlay name extend back even further, however, as the November trademark applications all cite a May 20, 2013 application in Trinidad & Tobago as priority. Apple commonly uses Caribbean countries such as Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica to establish trademark priority, taking advantage of filing systems that receive little attention and are difficult to search.

Apple introduced “iOS in the Car” at its Worldwide Developers Conference in early June, but it remains unclear whether that name was simply a placeholder with Apple intending all along to launch the feature as “CarPlay” once relevant trademark applications had been made throughout the world. Alternatively, Apple may have been considering several possibilities for the name and filed the application in Trinidad & Tobago to preserve that option before moving forward with the CarPlay name late in the year.