According to people familiar with how the process works, Apple Cook has an assistant whose job it is to read the mail, forward some to him for personal attention, and share others to a group distribution list of executives on the relevant teams. They forward the letters to their reports, and so on down the chain. Many of these "Dear Tim" letters are ultimately passed around by rank-and-file employees, according to one current and two former employees.
The letters have had a particularly large impact on Apple's health team.
The HomePod is, without question, the best-sounding piece of audio equipment I’ve ever owned. I’ve never had speakers that make music sound so clear, bright, full, expansive, and rich, almost like it was being performed right in front of me.
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Perhaps as importantly, HomePod has me listening to more music and appreciating it in new ways.
The San Francisco-based company wants to become the go-to place for games in the car. With three Zynga and Rocket Games alumnus founding the company, it makes sense that they are working with the latest trend in tech: speech recognition.
CEO Niko Vuori told me out of their South of Market apartment-turned-office, "The car is a place for interaction and entertainment." Drivetime is targeting the millions of commuters between the ages of 30 and 60 who sit in their cars for an average of one hour a day. Power users include a lot of Uber and Lyft drivers and truckers who spend more time in the car than the average commuter.
“At the very least, people need to know what they’re buying and, to the extent that they can, have a sense of what the risk entails,” said Lindsey Barrett, a teaching fellow and staff attorney at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Public Representation. “That’s an incredibly difficult ask for consumers in this day and age. But [this] seems like a pretty basic kernel of information that they’d need to know.”
It’s difficult to stay fully informed not just because companies sometimes fail to disclose what technology their products contain, but also because the technology can be reworked very quickly. Microphones meant to pick up on glass breaking can also be used to record human voices. Cameras can be turned on. Devices can be recalibrated for new uses, and the data they collect can be used in ways that aren’t what customers signed up for.
Are we bringing back letter-writing campaigns?
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Thanks for reading.