Apple, Microsoft, and a Partnership Between Them

Jason Perlow argues that Apple and Microsoft go together like “a burger and fries” and should enter into a partnership.

Microsoft’s Azure and 365 are the keys to Apple’s future products and services being able to fulfill their highest potential. In particular, Microsoft’s investments around AI and Machine Learning in the cloud would make the difference between Siri remaining the industry’s biggest not-so-intelligent agent joke — and becoming the very smartest in the industry. But only if the companies committed to building a single intelligent agent together.

I don’t necessarily agree, but then again Apple’s partnership with IBM surprised me.

Apple Brings Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in for Employee Talk

Apple brought Twitter cofounder and current CEO Jack Dorsey in for a talk with some Apple employees. We don’t yet know specifically what he talked about, but I thought it was an interesting development. We do know that he was speaking to folks in Phil Schiller’s marketing team, according to Bloomberg.

While the address itself didn’t point to a new partnership between Dorsey’s companies and Apple, it was indicative of their bond and existing collaboration. Apple promoted Twitter as an iOS app coming to the Mac this fall, and the social media service is deeply integrated into both the iPhone and iPad. Apple was also among the first retailers to sell Square’s now-common credit-card reader.

Apple Releases List of iCloud Contributors

Apple has released a list of the third-party software that it has used to make and run iCloud.

The software itself ranges from fonts used in the service to functions such as Javascript libraries, including Google’s Closure Library and the jQuery Foundation’s separate one. While Apple does not disclose which precise elements it uses from these libraries, Google’s one is intended for functions ranging from animation and user interface controls to server communication and text editing.