Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. For the full list, click here.
Have a Look at Tim Cook’s Time As Apple CEO
Following Tim Cook's announcement that is gay, here is a look back at the many successes of the Apple CEO.
You Can Be Fired in 29 States For Doing What Tim Cook Did Today
Congressional inaction has resulted in a patchwork of state legislation that’s left big gaps across the country where being LGBT can be cause for termination
On Thursday, Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook confirmed what had long been believed: he is a gay man.
In coming out in Bloomberg Businessweek, Cook wrote, “Of course, I’ve had the good fortune to work at a company that loves creativity and innovation and knows it can only flourish when you embrace people’s differences. Not everyone is so lucky.”
That last statement is accurate, not just because of the prejudice that gay individuals face in their personal lives, but because of the lack of protections against the discrimination of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in the workplace.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, in 29 states workers can still be fired for saying exactly what Cook wrote Thursday. They include:
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
West Virginia
Wyoming
Congress has failed to pass federal legislation that bans discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation and transgender identity outright. But politicians in Washington have introduced legislation known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act for two decades. And, for two decades, it has failed to pass.
Congressional inaction has resulted in a patchwork of state legislation that’s left big gaps across the country where being LGBT can be cause for termination.
“When I talk about hot topics, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is front and center. The President and The White House are making incremental steps to move us in that direction because there is no federal protection,” says Selisse Berry, founder and chief executive officer of nonprofit advocacy organization Out & Equal.
In June, President Obama signed an executive order banning workplace discrimination based on employees’ sexual orientation and gender identity among federal contractors. In September, the EEOC filed its first lawsuits on behalf of transgender employees under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The business community in the U.S. is also doing its part to combat LBGT discrimination. Company by company, businesses have put sexual orientation and gender identify protections into their codes of conduct. “That way, people can come out at work and not be worried about being fired,” Berry says.
“Ninety-one percent of Fortune 500 companies include sex orientation protections. Seventeen years ago, it was 5%. People weren’t really talking it,” she says. Today, 61% of Fortune 500 companies include protection against gender identity bias.
The situation overseas, however, is significantly different. “There are 17 countries where [LGBT people] can be married,” Berry notes, “but 75 where we can be imprisoned or killed as LGBT people.”
Biz, LGBT Leaders Congratulate Apple CEO Tim Cook On Coming Out As Gay
Here’s what rights groups and other powerful people had to say about the Apple CEO’s announcement
Earlier today, Apple CEO Tim Cook published an essay in Bloomberg BusinessWeek publicly acknowledging for the first time that he’s gay. In so doing, he not only confirmed something that had been long assumed, he also became the only openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Naturally, the essay brought out a number of reactions from people in the business world, the media and politics, plus more than a few activist groups. Here are some of the major responses.
Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella, via Twitter:
The National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce:
The National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, the business voice of the LGBT community, commends Tim Cook for his moving and heartfelt coming out essay. While his story and success are unique, we are proud to say we hear about similar journeys every day from the LGBT Americans, including those who are part of NGLCC. Our goal is to expand economic opportunities and advancements for LGBT people. Tim’s words today will help us in that mission. They also serve as an opening of the door for other LGBT CEOs and senior executives to move forward in knowing there is a safe place for them in the business world.
StartOut, a group supporting LGBT entrepreneurs, CEO Gene Falk:
While there have been substantial gains for the community in representation and visibility in politics, entertainment, journalism and now even sports, in too many places the corporate closet continues to flourish, and there are virtually no role models in the senior ranks of the business community. Today that changed. Tim’s leadership of Apple has not been, and will not be, defined by his being out. It will only be enhanced because now he’s empowered to lead without hiding.
Anthony Watson, CIO of Nike and GLAAD Board of Directors, via Twitter:
Phillip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide at Apple, via Twitter:
Jason Collins, first openly gay active NBA player, via Twitter:
Barney Frank, the first Congressman to voluntarily come out as gay, speaking on CNBC:
“When the man who has been the leader for several years with great success of one of the most important … businesses in America, says, ‘Oh by the way, you know those people about whom you have these negative feelings, well I’m one of them.’ That does such an enormous amount to diminish the negative feelings. I am very grateful for him doing it.”
Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin:
Tim Cook’s announcement today will save countless lives. He has always been a role model, but today millions across the globe will draw inspiration from a different aspect of his life. Tim Cook is proof that LGBT young people can dream as big as their minds will allow them to, whether they want to be doctors, a U.S. Senator, or even CEO of the world’s biggest brand.
Arthur D. Levinson, chairman of Apple’s Board:
Tim has our wholehearted support and admiration in making this courageous personal statement. His decision to speak out will help advance the cause of equality and inclusion far beyond the business world. On behalf of the board and our entire company, we are incredibly proud to have Tim leading Apple.
John Legere, CEO of T-Mobile, via Twitter:
6 Things to Know About Apple CEO Tim Cook
After he came out as gay Wednesday morning
+ READ ARTICLEWhen Tim Cook took the helm at Apple in 2011, many saw the Alabama native and former company chief operating officer as a somewhat boring Steve Jobs stand-in. Wall Street worried whether Apple could continue its remarkable growth under a new boss, while Apple fans wondered if they could expect the same astronomical advancements in consumer technology they’d grown to love.
In the intervening three years, Cook has impressed doubters with new products like the Apple Watch and the iPad Air, and wowed shareholders as Apple’s stock price continues to rise (a six-month hiccup in 2012-2013 aside).
We’ve learned things about Cook’s personality and life, too. He’s not the terrifying, volatile firecracker that Jobs was. But the instinctively private Cook has gradually revealed a more personal side as he’s accrued successes. Cook’s most personal revelation came Wednesday, with his formal acknowledgment that he is gay, an oft-rumored fact that the Apple chief had never publicly confirmed.
In the spirit of getting familiar with the CEO of one of the world’s most iconic companies, here are 6 things to know about Tim Cook:
He’s a working-class kid from the Deep South
Cook grew up in southern Alabama near the Gulf Coast, and worked at a paper mill in the state and an aluminum plant in Virginia. His father was a shipyard worker. Cook earned his degree in industrial engineering from Auburn University in his native Alabama.
He wakes up at 3:45 every morning
By all accounts, Cook is a dogged worker. He told TIME in 2012 that he wakes up every morning before 4 a.m., spends an hour on email, then goes to the gym, then Starbucks, then heads to work.
He’s a keen manager
Cook got his start managing Apple’s complex supply chains, closing warehouses and instead employing contract manufacturers. He pushed hard for stable supplies of product parts. “You kind of want to manage it like you’re in the dairy business,” he has said. “If it gets past its freshness date, you have a problem.” Cook is also able to coordinate fluidly with Apple’s different departments. After Jobs’ death, he broke down structural walls between design and software engineering segments, Bloomberg Businessweek reported last month.
He’s outdoorsy
Though Cook doesn’t often chatter about his hobbies (“I’ve tried to maintain a basic level of privacy,” he says), Cook enjoys hiking and cycling. He included a shot of Yosemite National Park on his Twitter page, and he’s reportedly an avid cycler as well as a self-admitted “fitness nut” — a reason, perhaps, that Apple’s upcoming Apple Watch is being marketed towards the fitness-obsessed.
His sexuality hasn’t gotten in the way at Apple
Being gay has never been a problem for Cook at Apple, he said in his column for Businessweek. “Plenty of colleagues at Apple know I’m gay, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference in the way they treat me,” said Cook. “Of course, I’ve had the good fortune to work at a company that loves creativity and innovation and knows it can only flourish when you embrace people’s differences.”
He’s a listener
Unlike his predecessor, Cook’s managerial style is markedly collaborative. When a group of investors visited Apple’s campus in 2012, Cook did what would have been unlikely for Jobs: he showed up, listened to his CFO’s presentation, and answered questions. Cook has showed that for the first time in years, not only Apple employees have the CEO’s ear, but investors do, too.
These Are the 6 Curse Words You Can Say in British Advertising
And how they compare to U.S. rules
A United Kingdom advertising authority recently gave the country’s businesses a refresher on which words are kosher to use in advertisements.
The Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP) updated its guidelines this month on offensive language in non-broadcast ads, but the CAP emphasizes that its recommendation on language “does not constitute legal advice.”
Here’s what’s been given the OK in the U.K.:
- “Bloody,” “shag,” “slag,” “piss,” “pee,” and “balls” are acceptable when targeted appropriately
- Subtle word play like “Give a fork about your pork”
Here’s what hasn’t:
- “Fu—k” and “cu—t” should generally not be used in marketing communications as they are very likely to offend
- Double entendres suggesting offensive concepts are unacceptable, and banned examples include “Poker in the front . . . Liquor in the rear” and “The Sofa King — Where the Prices are Sofa King Low!”
The only set-in-stone rule is that “advertisements should contain nothing that is likely to cause serious or widespread offense,” and that compliance with the code is judged on context, according to the U.K. Advertising Standards Authority, which administers CAP’s guidelines. As a result, ads banned for offensive content are mostly done so after they’ve aired.
Stateside, it’s a similar story but without specific recommendations. Broadcast advertisements are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which bars obscene, indecent and profane content. Profanity is defined as “language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance,” according to the FCC’s guidelines. Like in the U.K., the FCC welcomes public complaints, but offensive ads are removed only after complaints.
That doesn’t meant that U.S. advertisers aren’t allowed to flirt with language that may be somewhat profane, though. Advertisers are now using more daring language as a means to attract younger audiences, according to the New York Times. Here are two ads that just made the cut:
Fun stuff!
Apple CEO Tim Cook Is ‘Proud to Be Gay’
The tech executive's first public acknowledgement
+ READ ARTICLEThe CEO of Apple announced he’s gay Thursday, in an essay that puts him among the highest-profile publicly out business leaders in the world.
“I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me,” Tim Cook, who took the reins of the world’s most valuable company from the late co-founder Steve Jobs, writes in Bloomberg Businessweek.
The highly private Cook has never publicly acknowledged his sexuality, though it was widely rumored outside the company, and he writes that colleagues at Apple already knew.
“I don’t consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I’ve benefited from the sacrifice of others,” Cook wrote. “So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.”
Read next: The Best Way to “Come Out” to Coworkers and Bosses
Go Inside an American Steel Mill
Nucor Corp. is the largest steelmaker in the United States, manufacturing some 20 million tons of steel each year to supply steel for skyscrapers, bridges, cars, and appliances. TIME visited Nucor's mill in Crawfordsville, Ind., one of the company's 24 steelmaking facilities
Cheap natural gas is giving manufacturer Nucor a shot at reversing the long decline in American steelmaking
On the day after christmas 2013, John Ferriola received a FedEx package containing a dozen metal pellets, each about the size of a blueberry and the color of charcoal. They had been refined with natural gas at a temperature one fifth that of the surface of the sun. To most, the contents of the box would have looked like a heap of rubbish. To Ferriola, CEO of Nucor Corp., the tiny pellets represent a huge bet for the biggest steelmaker left in the U.S.
The technology may also help rekindle American steel manufacturing. Nearly a third of U.S. steelmaking jobs have disappeared over the past 15 years as the industry has boomed in China and other emerging economies. The lone …
Mail-order Snack Maker Takes to the Skies
NatureBox is thinking about delivery methods for its healthy snacks beyond the usual subscription service
NatureBox is refusing to be boxed in as just another e-commerce company.
This Saturday, the subscription snack box provider will begin to stock snacks that will be offered to passengers on American Airlines international flights to and from Latin America and Europe. The company’s snacks will be included in a breakfast box that’s offered to all passengers flying economy class for those American Airlines flights, so the pact is a reoccurring revenue stream for the year-long deal that could have an even longer runway if successful.
NatureBox co-founder and Chief Executive Gautam Gupta told Fortune the pact was important for the NatureBox to prove its brand can live “online as well as offline.”
“We see this as the first of many [partnerships] over the next several years,” Gupta said.
NatureBox’s core business is a subscription service, which sends five snack packs to an individual customer per month. But the company is thinking about delivery methods beyond the subscription service. Earlier this year, it started selling its snacks to corporate clients and has landed more than 200 customers, including Twitter and Square. The corporate business has resulted in 20%-30% growth month-over-month since it debuted, so NatureBox is encouraged by its early efforts to go beyond direct-to-consumer delivery.
NatureBox says it is seeing strong interest from retailers that could one day stock its products. The company, which sells jalapeño cashers, wholewheat blueberry fig bars and other healthy goodies that have fewer than 200 calories per serving, stays on top of food trends by leveraging data it gathers from the subscription service via customer feedback. It can quickly determine when a new flavor is a hit, or perhaps needs to be reworked if it doesn’t take off. The data can be helpful as NatureBox mulls opportunities to sell its brand outside the delivery business.
Still, the direct-to-consumer business model is a key to NatureBox’s success. NatureBox is expecting to ship 3 million of its snack packages this year, up from 1 million in 2013.
Gupta said the American Airlines pact puts NatureBox “in the hands of consumers that haven’t heard about us and gives them an opportunity to try our product.” He said NatureBox is just beginning to make a name for itself in the snacks aisle.
And there is a lot of room for the startup to grow. U.S. consumers — in particular Generation X, Millennials, and today’s teens and kids — are snacking more between and even at traditional meal time. Research firm NPD Group believes snack foods eaten at main meals will grow about 5% to 86.4 billion earnings in 2018.
NatureBox isn’t the only direct-to-consumer e-commerce company that is refusing to rely solely on a subscription business. Kiwi Crate, a company that sends monthly do-it-yourself kits meant for kids, is now stocking its items in over 1,700 Target stores. And like NatureBox’s Gupta, Kiwi Crate CEO Sandra Oh Lin has said she’s thinking about how she can expand her company’s brand to the retail channel.
“One of our challenges is getting Kiwi Crate into more hands and allowing the product to market itself,” Oh Lin said. “The retail channel helps address this.”
Everything You Need to Know About the Apple MacBook Pro Lawsuit
MacBook owners, fed up with a persistent defect, have filed a class action lawsuit against Apple
Lawyers representing frustrated Apple MacBook owners filed a class action complaint Tuesday, alleging the company failed to address a glaring defect in some 2011-era MacBooks that causes screens to blur, show nothing at all or, in worst case scenarios, short circuit the entire system.
More than 23,000 unhappy customers have signed a petition to have their MacBooks repaired or replaced, banding together on Facebook and Twitter to share descriptions and screenshots of the defect. Apple has attempted fixes in many cases, but some MacBook owners say they haven’t held up. One unhappy customer even created a brilliantly cheeky riff on an Apple commercial touting a MacBook that clearly was on the fritz.
The complaints may raise a few questions for the wider MacBook-owning community, such as…
What exactly went haywire here?
The lawsuit traces the defect to an AMD high-performance graphic card that was soldered into place using a lead-free substance. The solder may be environmentally-friendly, but it also risks cracking and fraying at high temperatures and eventually sprouting “tin hairs” that, according to the legal complaint, could lead to deteriorating graphics and short circuit the system.
Is my MacBook at risk?
Maybe. 23,000 petitioners may sound like a large number, but keep it in perspective: The issue only affects owners of some 2011-era MacBook Pro units. Apple sold more than 16.7 million laptops in 2011, according to MacWorld. May the odds ever be in your favor.
Still, how do I spot the defect?
The graphical distortions range from mild…
to wild…
In general, the lawsuit paints the same broad course of deterioration: “Graphics become distorted, followed by software shutdowns, system freezes and, eventually, total system failure.” The timing varies from user to user. Some experienced system failure within days of their purchase, others noticed a steady deterioration over the course of months.
Is there a fix?
Here lies the heart of the lawsuit. Apple has offered to resolve the defect through software patches or replacements to the logic board, but customers allege that the repairs failed to solve the problems and only piled on added expenses for customers who weren’t covered by a warranty.
Can I join the lawsuit?
The Washington, D.C.-based law firm behind the complaint, Whitfield Bryson & Mason, has created an online questionnaire for anyone who suspects their MacBook is subject to the defect. The lawsuit presses for reimbursement for affected customers as as well as damages.
