There is something reassuring about Apple holding its annual developers conference this week, even if it will be held online only. The conference is 95% nerdfest—legit technical sessions on how Apple’s hardware and software work—with a smidge of major or not-so-major product announcements sprinkled in. The main events are like fish food heaped into the aquarium for the many species that feed off the Apple ecosystem. The balance constitutes red meat for the public and its enabler, the news media.
As Aaron has summarized, one of the expected news events at WWDC is Apple’s intention to dump Intel, the supplier for 15 years of semiconductors for its Macintosh computers. This is tremendously important for the tech world and an almost non-event for consumers. It was a similarly big deal a decade and a half ago, when Apple cut loose an IBM-Motorola consortium in favor of Intel. Then, however, the iPhone didn’t exist, and Macs were Apple’s main business. Today, laptops and desktops comprise just under 10% of Apple sales. What’s under the hood is a bit of snooze if you’re not in the chip business.
That said, computers are still a product line for Apple. Last year it experienced modest growth, compared with a 14% decline in iPhone sales. Apple’s plan to make computer chips of its own design will help it strengthen a slow-growth, cash-cow product.
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Two funny descriptions of Big Tech from my weekend reading:
- In a marvelous, funny, trenchant, shows-why-we-miss-him-badly interview, Jon Stewart calls the YouTube and Facebook approach to media “an information-laundering perpetual-radicalization machine.”
- Kevin Roose, writing in the New York Times, on the irony of the leaders of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter voicing support for the Black Lives Matter movement while their platforms host racist filth that undermines the cause: “It’s as if the heads of McDonald’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell all got together to fight obesity by donating to a vegan food co-op, rather than by lowering their calorie counts.”
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If you were to assemble the people who could help you truly understand health care and how it’s affected businesses today, who would you pick? Here are a few on Fortune’s list:
- The CEOs and presidents of health-care giants Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Novartis, Aetna
- Co-discoverer of CRISPR-Cas9 Dr. Jennifer Doudna
- Dean of Stanford Medicine Dr. Lloyd Minor
- Chief medical officers from IBM, Verily, Google Health
- Healthcare venture capitalists like Sue Siegel
- Thrive Global CEO Arianna Huffington
- CEO of REFORM Alliance Van Jones
- NBA Commissioner Adam Silver
Hear from them and more at Fortune Brainstorm Health, our virtual health-care conference on July 7-8. As a newsletter subscriber, you’re invited to use this code—BSH20GUEST—and get half off.
Adam Lashinsky
@adamlashinsky
adam.lashinsky@fortune.com
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
