Apple CEO Tim Cook has once again given Apple employees time off for Thanksgiving week. Cook’s email:
It’s been an exciting summer. For the first time, we’ve launched two new iPhone product lines. iOS 7 was created from a deep collaboration between our design and engineering teams, bringing to our customers a stunning new user interface and amazing new features. We unveiled OS X Mavericks and the most powerful Mac ever. The App Store celebrated a new milestone – 50 billion downloads. And we continued to express our love for music with iTunes Radio and the iTunes Festival.
I had the opportunity to visit a few of our stores during the iPhone launch. There is no better place to see and feel why Apple is special. The best products on Earth. Energy. Enthusiasm. The best customers in the world. Passionate team members focused on enriching people’s lives. Innovative products that serve humanity’s deepest values and highest aspirations.
And I am proud to tell you that Apple is also a force for good in our world beyond our products. Whether it’s improving working conditions or the environment, standing up for human rights, helping eliminate AIDS, or reinventing education, Apple is making a substantial contribution to society.
None of this would have been possible without you. Our most important resource is not our money, our intellectual property, or any capital asset. Our most important resource – our soul – is our people.
I realize many of you worked tirelessly to bring us this far. I know it required great personal sacrifice.
In recognition of your incredible efforts and achievements, I’m happy to announce that we’re extending the Thanksgiving holiday this year. We will shut down with pay on November 25, 26, and 27 so our teams can have the whole week off. Retail, AppleCare and a few other teams will need to work that week so we can continue to serve our customers, but will receive the same number of days off at an alternate time. Please check with your manager for details. Our international teams will schedule the vacation days at a time that is best suited for their specific country.
I hope you find the extra time restful and relaxing. You deserve it. Details will be available on AppleWeb soon.
I am exceedingly proud of all of you. I am in awe of what you’ve accomplished and couldn’t be more excited about the future. Enjoy the time away!
Congratulations Apple!.
There’s a misspelling though…. Ahem, where it reads “with pay” should read “without pay”. We are sorry for the error. Thank you.
Wordy, yes, but nice move Tim.
And including Apple retail is classy.
Well, retail is not getting Black Friday off. Just a date at some other time.
True but only the US has Black Friday. Allowing time off to be scheduled on alternate days and by extending this to global retail is what makes this classy.
Funny thing about Black Friday. Its name derives from an old belief that the post-Thanksgiving weekend was the time when most retail enterprises went from deficit performance (in the red) for the year into profitable performance (in the black). Apple doesn’t even know what deficit territory is. Black Friday is just another sunny day for Apple.
There’s a world of difference between the bull bellicose but comatose Ballmer and gentile enthusiastic competent Cook. Uncle Fester was always such a false bluff and bluster clodhopper with zero social skills that everyone saw through. Tim simply carries out the task quietly but carries a big stick.
And if you read between the lines this says that everything that will be introduced the Fall is ready to go.
What about the innovation?!?!? OMG!! Fire Tim Cook!! I know, I’m an investor!!!
Many have also been getting Thanksgiving week off for years; of course, without pay.
Smoke’em if you got’em.
Thank them for what? Botching iOS 7 to the max? What a terrible eyesore undeserving of Apple’s well known proclivities for stringent quality control. There are so many things wrong with it I don’t even know where to begin. An absolute abomination of an OS; worse than Android, worse than WP8. Bottom of the pile stuff from the Apple designers.
Who did they employ to design iOS 7? Pee Wee Herman? You know he’s a convicted paedophile right?
FECK OFF, I am not keen on ios7 either but your hatred is over the top, in fact why don’t you trawl android low class forums, go away from here
Pee Wee Herman is not a convicted pedophile.
C’mon, guys. Sarcasm.
Slander is not sarcasm.
iOS will only improve over time. Just look at the difference between OS X Jaguar and OS X Mavericks. It’s incredibly difficult pushing out a new OS perfectly with its initial release. We’re already up to version 7.0.2. There will be many updates to follow, making it better and better as we go along. Add to this the fact that it’s very easy to install the updates on Apple’s iDevices, things are destined to only improve and get better over time.
Btw I am waiting for the release of osx mavericks for my MacBook Pro i5
Cool; thanks for letting us know.
Kudo’s to Tim Cook. It nice to be appreciated and recognized. It will boost moral amongst the workers, which is good for Apple and the workers.
In September 1620, a small ship called the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, carrying 102 passengers—an assortment of religious separatists seeking a new home where they could FREELY PRACTICE THEIR FAITH and other individuals lured by the promise of prosperity and land ownership in the New World.
In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s “first Thanksgiving”—although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time—the festival lasted for three days.
Contrast Tim’s sincere and honest letter to Apple with Steve Ballmer’s last spoken address to his fetid troops at Microsoft. We hear very similar words. But one speaker means it from his heart, and the other is a really poor liar who’s great at crocodile tears dripping away to a sappy soundtrack.
I find the difference quite shocking. What are words really worth these days? Anyone can say anything, make any grandiose claim, paint themselves all shiny and smiley while at the same time, their little Rome is burning down. Such is Microsoft.
Thank you Apple for being real, honest, trustworthy and fun.