Apple's Newest IPhones Fuel Second-Quarter Sales, Profit - Bloomberg

Apple Inc.’s iPhone is reeling in buyers in China, sending quarterly profit up by 33 percent and fueling a surge in growth that led the company to boost its capital-return program by $ 70 billion.

Net income in the period that ended in March was $ 13.6 billion, or $ 2.33 a share, and revenue rose 27 percent to $ 58 billion, the Cupertino, California-based company said in a statement Monday. IPhone sales in greater China outpaced those in the U.S. for the first time, helped by the Chinese New Year celebration, Apple said.

Booming demand for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is putting Apple on pace for its highest annual profit since 2012 — a record — and the company forecast sales in the current period that may exceed analysts’ estimates. That signals enduring demand for the larger-screened smartphones and optimism for the new Apple Watch, the company’s first new gadget under Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook.

“Given the strength of this iPhone cycle, expanded cash distribution, and entry into the first new product category in five years with Apple Watch, we believe Apple remains early in this transformational cycle,” Brian White, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., wrote in a note to investors.

Analysts on average had forecast second-quarter profit of $ 2.16 a share and sales of $ 56 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company’s shares rose 1.3 percent in extended trading, after gaining 1.8 percent to $ 132.65 at the close in New York.

IPhone Growth

IPhone unit sales jumped 40 percent to 61.2 million. That topped analysts’ average prediction for 58.1 million, based on data compiled by Bloomberg. Total revenue from greater China surged 71 percent to $ 16.8 billion.

“The progress we’ve made in China has been remarkable and we continue to make incredible investments in China,” Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said in an interview. “The growth rate in China is significantly higher than most parts of the world.”

IPhone sales in the country probably won’t exceed those in the U.S. every quarter, because of seasonality, he said, “but over the long arc of time, you could certainly draw that conclusion.”

Apple forecast that the momentum will continue in the third quarter, with revenue projected to rise to $ 46 billion to $ 48 billion from $ 37.4 billion a year ago. Gross margins will be 38.5 percent to 39.5 percent, compared with 39.4 percent a year earlier. Analysts on average had predicted revenue would climb 26 percent in the current period to $ 47 billion, with gross margin at 39.5 percent.

Watch Demand

Renewed investor optimism for new products, including the Apple Watch, has helped boost shares to record levels this year. The company’s market value has surged to more than $ 772 billion, making it the world’s largest by that measure.

“The customer response for the Watch has been great,” Maestri said. “We are working very, very hard to catch up from a supply standpoint — keep in mind this is not only a new product but it’s an entirely new category.”

Apple is working to get its Watch supply and demand in balance by the end of the current quarter, he said. The company plans to begin offering the watch in other countries at the end of June, Cook said during a conference call with investors.

Cash and marketable securities increased to $ 193.5 billion at the end of March, Apple said. That’s driving Apple’s increase to its capital return program, which now totals $ 200 billion through March 2017. The plan unveiled Monday includes boosting its share-buyback authorization by $ 50 billion to $ 140 billion, and increasing the company’s dividend by 11 percent.

Higher Dividend

The company will pay a quarterly dividend of 52 cents a share on May 14 to shareholders of record at the close of business May 11. Apple returned more than $ 112 billion to investors from August 2012 to March 2015, the company said.

Apple has also raised the equivalent of more than $ 40 billion in debt in less than two years to help finance dividends and buybacks, letting it return more money to investors without incurring U.S. taxes on foreign profits.

“We expect to fund our capital return program with U.S. cash, future U.S. cash flow generation and borrowing from both domestic and international debt markets,” Maestri said on the conference call with analysts. Apple will reassess its capital program next year at this time, he said.

Future Growth

While Apple has been praised by activist shareholder Carl Icahn for returning cash, he’s been pushing for more. Icahn has argued that Apple is undervalued and should be trading at $ 203 a share, which would give the company a market capitalization of more than $ 1 trillion. His optimism for Apple is driven in part by his expectations for the larger-screened iPhone and new products, including the Watch.

Margins for the watch during this quarter will probably be less than the company’s average for other products, according to Apple.

“In the first quarter of any kind of product you would always have learning and these sorts of things,” Cook told analysts. “We’ve had this with every product we’ve ever done.”

The watch margins are part of the reason why Apple says gross margins will decrease slightly. The company also faces greater challenges from fluctuating currencies, Maestri said. Revenue in the second quarter would’ve increased 33 percent instead of 27 percent, if not for foreign exchange effects, he said.

“It’s going to be more challenging,” he said in an interview. “We’re getting a lot of protection from our hedging program right now but the reality of it is that these hedges expire. At some they get replaced with new hedges at the new levels, so we’re going to feel a bit more pressure.”

IPads, Macs

Another bright spot for Apple was Mac unit sales, which rose 10 percent to 4.56 million, as new products breathed life into the product line. Analysts had predicted 4.7 million Mac unit sales.

IPad shipments dropped 23 percent to 12.6 million, marking the fifth straight quarter of year-over-year declines. Analysts had predicted a 17 percent drop.

With the larger-screened iPhones and new Macs, Apple has seen a cannibalization of iPad sales, Cook said.

“We’ve never worried about that,” he said. Cook remained positive on the device’s future. He noted investments in the product, potential corporate sales and that data in places such as China suggests the market isn’t saturated with iPad owners.

“When precisely it begins to grow again I wouldn’t want to predict, but I strongly believe that it will,” he said.

Technology – Google News

Apple's Newest IPhones Fuel Second-Quarter Sales, Profit - Bloomberg

China iPhone sales boosts Apple; shares up modestly - Reuters

(Reuters) – Apple Inc (AAPL.O) beat Wall Street’s revenue and profit forecasts on Monday as it sold more iPhones in China than the United States for the first time, but the company gave no sales figures for its new Apple Watch.

Apple’s iPhone sales in China soared, increasing its revenue in the country 71 percent to $ 16.8 billion, although that was helped by gift-buying for Chinese New Year.

Chief Executive Tim Cook said that China’s expanding middle class is fueling iPhone sales there, which is the bulk of the company’s sales. The iPhone 6 was launched last autumn in China with a number of carriers.

Wall Street hailed the results but share reaction was muted. Its shares rose 1.6 percent in after-hours trading to $ 134.52.

Apple sold 61.2 million iPhones in the quarter, up 40 percent from the year-ago quarter, but down from the record-breaking holiday quarter. It sold 12.6 million iPads, down 23 percent from a year ago.

Apple’s big screen iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have been popular with customers worldwide, helping the company overtake rival Samsung (005930.KS) in global smartphone sales last quarter.

“A 60 million-plus iPhone number is a home run and will be cheered by the Street as this remains the bread and butter of Apple,” said FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives.

Apple gave no sales figures for its recently released Apple Watch, but did say the current quarter was off to “an exciting start”.

Cook said demand for the watch continued to be greater than supply, as it has been since pre-orders started earlier this month.

“From a demand point of view, it’s hard to gauge when you don’t have product in stores,” said Cook on a conference call with analysts. Apple is only selling the watch online and in select third-party boutiques due to the large number of models and straps for the watch, which could become a logistics nightmare if it offered every permutation of the many varieties at already jam-packed Apple stores.

The most valuable publicly traded U.S. company raised its quarterly dividend 11 percent to 52 cents per share and boosted its share repurchase program to $ 140 billion from $ 90 billion announced last year.

Together, Apple estimated that would mean returning $ 200 billion to shareholders by the end of March 2017. It ended the quarter with $ 193.5 billion in cash and marketable securities, up more than $ 15 billion from the last quarter.

Even so, that was “a bit lower than expectations,” said Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi.

Apple said net income for the fiscal second quarter rose to $ 13.57 billion, or $ 2.33 per share, from $ 10.22 billion, or $ 1.66 per share, a year earlier.

Analysts had expected earnings per share of $ 2.16 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Overall revenue rose to $ 58.01 billion in the second quarter ended March 28, from $ 45.65 billion a year earlier. That beat Wall Street’s expected revenue of $ 56 billion.

Apple said it expected fiscal third-quarter revenue of $ 46 billion to $ 48 billion, in line with analysts’ average forecast of $ 47 billion.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby in San Francisco, Devika Krishna Kumar in Bengaluru and Yasmeen Abutaleb in New York; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Bernard Orr)

Technology – Google News

China iPhone sales boosts Apple; shares up modestly - Reuters

Joss Whedon's doomed struggle: “Age of Ultron” and superhero cinema's ... - Salon

So Joss Whedon, TV cult hero and creator of the Buffyverse, has spent most of the last five years engaged in immensely lucrative struggle with a Marvel Comics mashup franchise. Toward what end, I am genuinely not sure. I have tried to take the question seriously: I went back and watched “The Avengers” again, and now I have seen its sequel, “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” also written and directed by Whedon. It’s a high-spirited, action-packed, overly long adventure movie in which the all-star team of Marvel superheroes takes on a guy called Ultron. OK, he’s not a guy, exactly; he’s one of those ill-fated creations of human genius who redounds upon his creators, after the fashion of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster and HAL 9000 and so on. Anyway, Ultron is deliciously voiced by James Spader, and like every pseudo-demonic villain in this kind of discount-store mythology, he yearns to perfect the human race by exterminating it.

Yeah, we’ve been there and done that, many times over. Such is the essential and insuperable problem of the 21st-century summer tentpole movie – for Hollywood purposes, the first buds of May now count as “summer” – and such is the challenge Whedon has set himself. How much distinctive or idiosyncratic flavoring can an individual writer and director impart to a set of characters as well defined as this assemblage of Marvel superheroes, and to a story that must progress from original sin to existential crisis to redemptive action climax, with very little room for variation? There is honor to this quest, and maybe even a kind of selflessness – if work whose craftsman is paid millions can ever be called selfless. Whedon is trying to meet the expectations of comic-book fans head on, and satisfy them in full, while proving to them and to us that these movies – the fundamental economic basis of the American film industry, at this point — don’t have to be careless and juvenile and entirely bereft of psychological insight and adult emotion.

This may be a perverse response, but I enjoyed “Age of Ultron” more than its predecessor, despite the fact that it’s almost exactly the same thing. This was probably a result of adjusting my expectations: I wasn’t sitting there waiting for Whedon to revolutionize the genre, or to turn an overdetermined comic-book movie into a Noel Coward comedy. He delivers a clean and capable entertainment, with a handful of distinctive flourishes stuck to the margins. Whedon does well with the darker edges of Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark (aka Iron Man), an arrogant tech genius whose degree of repentance for his war-criminal past is always ambiguous. He adds sparkling notes of screwball comedy, and even tragedy, to the incipient romance between Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and Mark Ruffalo’s Dr. Bruce Banner (who, like so many lovable men, has a big, green, ugly side).

---

---

Once we get to the supposedly climactic showdown with Ultron the movie is pretty boring; how many ways are there to threaten the planet with CGI destruction and then CGI-save it? Whedon’s complicated setup, however, offers intriguing hints of subtext. (I could write the same two sentences about almost any superhero movie.) I’m never quite sure how to feel about Hydra, the nemesis organization in the Marvel universe, at least as it appears in Whedon’s movies. Of course Hydra is thoroughly despicable and all, but its old-world, pseudo-aristocratic Nazi steampunk vibe has a romantic allure totally absent from the sanitized, corporate headquarters of the Avengers, who are pretty much the secret police of the capitalist world order.

When the Hydra-engineered mutant twins later to be known as Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch show up (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen, respectively), bearing a well-earned grudge against the Stark empire and the Western and/or American war machine, I was on their side firmly and immediately. They are too awesome not to be coerced or compelled into switching to the Avenger team ultimately, and while I understand why that’s necessary in terms of future sequels and the coherence of Marvelology, I wasn’t happy about it. There is no third way in a comic-book universe, no eccentric path that does not lead you to one or the other Manichaean pole. Resistance is literally futile.

Whether or not Whedon’s extended Marvel career bypass was worth doing – how do we even begin to answer that? “Avengers: Age of Ultron” will probably be the second-biggest Hollywood release of 2015 (after the J.J. Abrams “Star Wars” relaunch), so the answer provided by the Invisible Hand of the market would seem clear enough. But beyond the brutish fact of a worldwide billion-dollar gross, or whatever it may be, lie other facts more difficult to decode. As a cultural and commercial artifact, “Age of Ultron” represents the way that Hollywood’s role in the global economy has been altered or transformed. You could even say that its immense success, or at least the specific character of that success, tells us something about the diminished cultural role of cinema.

This is a gigantic movie, by anyone’s definition. It cost something like $ 250 million to make and should deliver a handsome return on that investment. It has a passel of stars playing archetypal figures: Downey, in what may (or may not) be his final turn in the Iron Man suit, Johansson and Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Chris Evans as Captain America and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, who gets a whole bunch of screen time that doesn’t quite pay off. It will be the No. 1 box-office hit in virtually every country that has movie theaters and diplomatic relations with the United States. People in Iran and Yemen and Somalia and North Korea will watch pirated copies on the Internet if they possibly can.

To some extent, the presence of a well-respected and high-integrity auteur like Whedon mitigates the ambivalent atmosphere of calculation, condescension and cynicism that surrounds so many nine-figure Hollywood productions. The “Avengers” franchise is more than a huge cash grab aimed at the collective Id of the world’s 17-to-24-year-old males. It’s mythic; it’s “ambitious.” No one involved needs to apologize to their artsy friends, or to feel that the renovated hillside mansions and terraced swimming pools and BMW 6 Series convertibles of Los Angeles County were paid for with slightly dirty money, the way they might after a Michael Bay movie.

But this is a big movie whose cultural ripple effects are very small. Much of the anticipation for “Age of Ultron” is meta-anticipation – how big will the opening weekend be? – and I feel no coming groundswell of media thinkpieces or social-media debates or doctoral dissertations in embryo. I don’t dispute that lots of people around the world will flock to see this movie, and I imagine most of them will have fun. I had fun myself, except for the whole thing about realizing that I was not-so-secretly rooting for Hydra and basically concluding that the Avengers are a fascist front group disguised by so many ideological switchbacks that we lose track of their core identity.

No doubt there are circles where every detail of Whedon’s augmentation to the Marvel canon, or his heretical departures therefrom, will be earnestly discussed. But for most people there isn’t that much to talk about, after you’ve seen “Age of Ultron,” except how cool it was and which jokes maybe fell a little flat and whether giving Renner’s character all that oxygen felt more like a dutiful setup for the next chapter than anything else. The text of the film, if you’ll forgive the phrase – its story and its themes and its succession of scenes – is deliberately unsurprising and largely irrelevant. We’re a long way from the kind of Zeitgeist-engorged Hollywood spectacle that appears to distill or refract a larger cultural moment, the way that Tim Burton’s 1989 “Batman” or Sam Raimi’s post-9/11 “Spider-Man” or Christopher Nolan’s first and second “Dark Knight” films did. This movie is fine, honestly. I rather liked it

Even Joss Whedon, an undoubted pop-culture genius, cannot create that kind of significance from whole cloth, at least not after two dozen or more generally similar superhero movies have worn out the cultural resonance of the form. It would be foolish for me to sit here in a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and proclaim that the era of the comic-book movie is coming to an end. That’s not happening anytime soon (and anyway I threw that jacket away). It might be accurate to say instead that superhero cinema has reached a decadent plateau, a long-term steady state of self-nourishing bigness and reverberant meaninglessness. Whedon moves on from the Marvel empire not as its Augustus or its Spartacus, but more like one of the later, non-terrible Christian emperors who won some battles, made some reforms and convinced everybody that the glory of Rome would endure forever. Was it worth doing? That depends on what you think of Rome.

Entertainment – Google News

Joss Whedon's doomed struggle: “Age of Ultron” and superhero cinema's ... - Salon

'Call of Duty: Black Ops III' and the lasting genius of 'the best ever video game ... - Washington Post

By Justin Wm. Moyer April 27 at 1:58 AM

The newly released “Call of Duty: Black Ops III” trailer has everything a good war movie does: Blood and guts; a leather-voiced soldier asking rhetorical questions; content that may be inappropriate for children; the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black,” faux gunshots popping in time to Charlie Watts’s snare drum. Squint, and the whole thing looks like “Full Metal Jacket” or “Apocalypse Now.”

“How far can we push technology,” intones the narrator, “before it starts pushing back?” (Elon Musk definitely needs an answer to this question.)

Activision Blizzard has been pushing the “Call of Duty” franchise for more than a decade now. And, despite a legal imbroglio and the ever-changing technological landscape, “COD,” valued in the billions, has survived — thanks to the games’ immersive quality. For, as great as digital dinosaurs like “Pac Man” and “The Legend of Zelda” were, they never made players really think they were there.

“Part of the brilliance of the Call of Duty series and its Medal of Honor precursor was their ability to convey a believable reality through a cinematic filter,” IGN wrote in 2009. “Scripted events made it so players would experience a dramatic view of the action every time. The game was still largely linear, but it was able to fool players into feeling like they were a part of a war.”

The “first-person shooter” — the genre of video games in which “Call of Duty” is the standout — have been around at least since Nintendo’s “Duck Hunt.” But such primitive attempts to transport gamers never really got them out of their bedrooms, rec rooms or basements. Something more than great graphics, a compelling story and dazzling explosions — choice — may be what led gamers polled by Guinness World Records last year to declare the game the best video game series in history, beating out legends such as “Super Mario Bros.” and “Grand Theft Auto.”

“This Call of Duty campaign is all about choice,” said Mark Lamia of Treyarch, which developed the game, as Engadget reported. Lamia said “Black Ops III” is better than any of its precursors: “Your investment in your character is going to mean something more than it ever has before in any Call of Duty game.”

This image released by Activision shows a scene from “Call of Duty: Black Ops 3,” the third installment in Treyarch’s military shooter saga, scheduled for release Nov. 6. (Activision via AP)

Indeed, character investment is what “Call of Duty” has been about all along. In the years after the release of “Saving Private Ryan” (1998), there was no shortage of World War II-themed videogames. But designers Vincent Zampella and Jason West took their virtual D-Day to another level even in a game they designed for an Activision rival before “Call of Duty.”

“Up to that point, game designers had instructed players on what to do using blinking arrows or on-screen text, which was an inelegant but effective way to keep players from walking into walls or getting lost in spaceships,” Vanity Fair wrote last year. “But in their rendition of the Allied invasion of Normandy, West’s team introduced a storytelling innovation: they put the game’s instructions in the mouths of commanding officers, making Allied Assault feel more like a movie than a game.”

The innovation helped lead to a blockbuster hit for Activision when “Call of Duty” was released in 2003. This was a blockbuster way bigger than actual movie blockbusters. The last six “Lord of the Rings” films, for example, have grossed more than $ 1.5 billion. But the value of the “COD” franchise was put at $ 3 billion — in 2009.

Money didn’t buy happiness for “Call of Duty’s” creators. Zampella and West thought they could make more nuanced games more suited to the age of terrorism, but were fired from Activision in 2010, setting off a round of suits and countersuits.

“Well, Activision wanted us to make another World War II game,” West said. “So that’d be an example of when we pushed for something creatively. And now they have billions of dollars they didn’t have before.” (Litigation was settled in 2012 after Zampella and West accepted a settlement from Activision “thought to be in the tens of millions of dollars,” as Vanity Fair reported.)

But lawsuits couldn’t stop this cultural juggernaut. Activision soldiered on with “Call of Duty,” releasing a swarm of new installments in the franchise. Developers even work on different future versions simultaneously. These are games so powerful Manuel Noriega, who appeared in “Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” sued, saying “COD” had damaged his reputation. (“This court concludes that Noriega’s right of publicity is outweighed by defendants’ First Amendment right to free expression,” Judge William H. Fahey of the Los Angeles Superior Court ruled last year.)

[Humankind has now spent more time playing “Call of Duty” than it has existed on Earth]

“Black Ops III” promises to be even more immersive. Among other innovations: customizable weapons, the removal of sprint limitations, thrust-assisted jump, power-sliding, wall-running and even swimming. For players designing their own protagonists, even gender is up for grabs — an option welcome in the age of Gamergate, an ongoing war about misogyny in gaming.

“It’s not just a female head on a male body,” Lamia said. “It’s a different set of animations for the entire game.”

“Black Ops III” will launch on Nov. 6.

Justin Moyer is a reporter for The Washington Post’s Morning Mix. Follow him on Twitter:

Technology – Google News

'Call of Duty: Black Ops III' and the lasting genius of 'the best ever video game ... - Washington Post

At correspondents' dinner, Obama jabs at media, candidates and himself - Washington Post

President Obama poked fun at GOP presidential candidates, Koch brothers and others at the 2015 White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday. (AP)

By Paul Farhi April 25 at 11:55 PM

President Obama took a few humorous shots at the 2016 presidential field and at the news media — and a few at his own image — in his annual comic turn at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

“I am determined to make the most of every moment I have left” of his second term, the president quipped in a line that drew laughter and a few startled reactions. “My advisers asked, ‘Mr. President, do you have a bucket list. And I said, ‘Well, I have something that rhymes with bucket list.’ ”

The annual celebrity-politico meet-up at the Washington Hilton drew the powerful, the famous and the just plain well-connected to a corner of town Saturday night for an evening of gags and glamour. The black-tie Hollywood-on-the-Potomac party featured fewer big-name stars this year, but more than enough to create the one-of-a-kind mash-up of actors, senators, Supreme Court justices, business types — and, of course, the president and first lady.

In his relatively brief comic turn, Obama likened Hillary Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign to Americans’ lingering uncertainty about the economy. “I had a friend making millions of dollars a year,” he said. “Now she’s living in a van in Iowa.”

He tweaked himself and Republicans for inviting Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress while the United States is negotiating a nuclear treaty with Iran: “I’m so old John Boehner has invited Netanyahu to speak at my funeral.”

[Full transcript of President Obama’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner toast]

Turning to the media — which usually takes its lumps at the annual dinner — Obama noted that Cecily Strong, the evening’s entertainer, impersonates a CNN anchor on “Saturday Night Live.”

“Which is surprising,” he said, “because the only people impersonating journalists on CNN are the journalists on CNN.”

He added that this winter’s polar vortex produced “so many record lows that they renamed it MSNBC” — the cable network that has struggled lately in the ratings.

Turning serious, Obama paid tribute to journalists Stephen Sotloff and James Foley, who were kidnapped and executed by Islamic State militants, and to Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who was “imprisoned for doing nothing more than writing about the hopes and fears of the Iranian people. I have told him that we will not rest until we bring him home safe and sound to his family.”

[Obama says he will not rest until Post reporter in Iran is freed]

In her remarks, Strong took aim at some of the same targets as Obama — the media, the candidates and Congress. Of the latter, she said: “It feels so weird being up here. I’m only a comedian, so I won’t tell you [politicians] how to do your job. That would be like you guys telling me what to do with my body.”

As for the Secret Service: “I don’t want to be too hard on those guys. They’re the only law enforcement agency that will get in trouble if a black man gets shot.”

The Washington Hilton lobby began filling with the beautiful and powerful — as well as a few actual White House correspondents — hours before the dinner, creating a logjam that pushed the event a half-hour off schedule before the 2,600 guests even sat down for dinner.

[Full recap of the 2015 White House correspondents’ dinner]

The dinner, which began in 1921 as a modest affair for 50 correspondents (long before the commander-in-chief began attending) has metastasized into a weekend-long extravaganza, with media-sponsored parties before, after and even during the dinner.

The dinner and its preliminaries were telecast live by Fox News, MSNBC and CNN, in addition to C-SPAN. The cable news networks largely put aside breaking news events in Nepal (site of a devastating earthquake) and Baltimore (site of an unruly demonstration against the local police force) to provide live coverage of red-


carpet arrivals and the dinner itself.

Crowds gathered outside the hotel to catch a glimpse of the Hollywood figures who’ve adorned the proceedings in increasing numbers for the past 20 years. But the star wattage appeared to be dimmed somewhat this year.

[A light turnout of Hollywood glitz at White House correspondents’ parties]

The dinner was heavy with actors from programs set in and about Washington, such as “House of Cards,” “Veep,” “Scandal” and “Homeland.”

Hence the contingent from “Madam Secretary,” a fake secretary of state, Tea Leoni, working the room alongside Madeleine K. Albright, a real-life former secretary of state. The two had talked about a wide variety of topics, Albright said, but on this night she was “explaining Washington” to her. Her particular advice to the actress: “Keep your eyes open.”

Among others in attendance: New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichick, mogul Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), Broadway star Idina Menzel, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, actress Ashley Judd, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley (D), MSNBC host Al Sharpton, and ice skaters Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski. Jane Fonda attended, too, with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

The star attraction, as always, was the president, whose presence on the dinner’s dais all but guarantees a capacity crowd each year. President Obama’s comic stylings were followed this year by “Saturday Night Live” cast member Cecily Strong, one of only four women to be the featured entertainer in the event’s 94-year history. (Their comedy routines occurred too late for this edition.)

This year, the celebrities were even able to watch the celebrities; at the Thomson Reuters pre-dinner reception, a giant screen loomed over guests that live-streamed the red-carpet arrivals. The Bloomberg News party had its own studio inside the party. At the Yahoo-ABC party, Katie Couric schmoozed with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Chris Wallace, a Fox News host. Roland Foster, a former congressional staffer, dove in for a selfie with Scalia. “You’re awesome!” Foster told him.

The president’s annual comedy routine was months in the making, with input from top writers from “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report” and “Saturday Night Live,” among others.

Roxanne Roberts and Jessica Contrera contributed to this report.

Paul Farhi is The Washington Post’s media reporter.

Continue reading

Entertainment – Google News

At correspondents' dinner, Obama jabs at media, candidates and himself - Washington Post

Demi Moore Is Seeking $75 Million for Her Central Park West Penthouse - New York Times

Continue reading the main story Slide Show

Slide Show|10 Photos

Exclusive | The San Remo

Exclusive | The San Remo

CreditTony Cenicola/The New York Times

Enter neighborhood, city, zip or address

Select minimum price Min Price100,000150,000200,000250,000300,000350,000400,000450,000500,000550,000600,000650,000700,000750,000800,000850,000900,000950,0001 Million1.1 Million1.2 Million1.3 Million1.4 Million1.5 Million1.75 Million2 Million2.25 Million2.50 Million3 Million3.5 Million4 Million4.5 Million5 Million7.5 Million10 Million20 Million30 Million40 Million50 Million

Select maximum price Max Price100,000150,000200,000250,000300,000350,000400,000450,000500,000550,000600,000650,000700,000750,000800,000850,000900,000950,0001 Million1.1 Million1.2 Million1.3 Million1.4 Million1.5 Million1.75 Million2 Million2.25 Million2.50 Million3 Million3.5 Million4 Million4.5 Million5 Million7.5 Million10 Million20 Million30 Million40 Million50 Million

Select minimum price Min Price5001,0001,1001,2001,3001,4001,5001,6001,7001,8001,9002,0002,1002,2002,3002,4002,5002,6002,7002,8002,9003,0003,1003,2003,3003,4003,5003,6003,7003,8003,9004,0004,5005,0005,5006,0006,5007,0007,5008,0008,5009,00010,00015,00020,00025,00030,00040,00050,000

Select maximum price Max Price5001,0001,1001,2001,3001,4001,5001,6001,7001,8001,9002,0002,1002,2002,3002,4002,5002,6002,7002,8002,9003,0003,1003,2003,3003,4003,5003,6003,7003,8003,9004,0004,5005,0005,5006,0006,5007,0007,5008,0008,5009,00010,00015,00020,00025,00030,00040,00050,000

Select number of bedrooms Any BedsStudio+1+ Beds2+ Beds3+ Beds4+ Beds5+ Beds
Select number of bedrooms Any Baths1+ Baths2+ Baths3+ Baths4+ Baths

Submit Your Listing

The triplex south tower penthouse widely considered the crown jewel of the San Remo, the twin-peaked Emery Roth masterwork and city landmark on Central Park West, is poised to enter the market for the first time in 25 years. The asking price for the residence, PH26C, along with a two-bedroom two-bath lobby level maisonette, No. 1H, included in the sale, is $ 75 million, an amount that, if met, would set a record for an Upper West Side co-op and shatter the in-house record of $ 26.4 million achieved at the San Remo last year.

The seller is the actress Demi Moore, who bought the penthouse with her former husband Bruce Willis from the “Saturday Night Fever” producer Robert Stigwood in 1990 and also acquired the residential maisonette.

The monthly maintenance charge for the penthouse, which has about 7,000 square feet of interior living space and 1,500 square feet of wraparound terraces with panoramic park, river and cityscape vistas from the 28th floor, is $ 17,912.85; the monthly maintenance for the maisonette is $ 3,273.

The San Remo, at 145-146 Central Park West between 74th and 75th Streets, was designed in 1929 by Roth, who is well known for gracious interior floor plans, swirling staircases, intricate moldings and basket-weave tile baths. The building, with its terra-cotta embellishments, twin terrazzo and marble lobbies, and distinctive twin towers culminating in Renaissance-style Corinthian temples crowned by 22-foot-high copper lanterns, opened in 1930.

The San Remo underwent a co-op conversion in 1972, and although Madonna was rejected by the board, other boldface residents through the years have included Dustin Hoffman, Diane Keaton, Steven Spielberg and, of course, Ms. Moore and Mr. Willis, who were smitten by the south tower.

“We looked at everything on the park, Fifth Avenue, Central Park South and Central Park West, and there was just nothing like it,” Ms. Moore said in an email. “The location, architecture and history of the San Remo were on a completely different level.”

Ms. Moore and Mr. Willis, who were married from 1987 to 2000 and have three children, installed bold new windows in every room; not counting bathrooms and nooks and crannies, the penthouse has 14 rooms. They renovated the interiors of both units in a Southwestern Mission motif dominated by cherry wood. Even the pocket doors that separate the gallery from the 36-by-22-foot living room are custom made in the Mission style. The living room has three exposures, more than 20 feet of park frontage overlooking the boat pond, and a wood-and-ceramic tile fireplace.

Photo

Demi Moore Credit Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

On the southeast corner, a 14-by-20-foot library has the original plaster rosette molding and bas reliefs in the ceiling. Described as a potential sixth bedroom, the room has an original Roth en-suite bath. (The maisonette retains both original baths.) The south-facing 24-by-17-foot dining room has an enormous crystal chandelier surrounded by circular molding; the kitchen, with views north to the George Washington Bridge, has a stone center island, double Sub-Zero refrigerator and a Viking range.

The media room on the 28th floor has 16-foot ceilings and access, through glass doors, to the terraces. On the mezzanine level above the media room are a sleeping loft, full bath and kitchenette. The wraparound terraces are bluestone; the 20-by-23-foot main terrace faces west.

Adam D. Modlin, the president of the Modlin Group, is handling the listing for Ms. Moore, who chose not to complete an ambitious master suite renovation and has not occupied the penthouse for several years. “I’m spending the majority of my time in my other homes, and this apartment is too magnificent not to be lived in full time,” she said of her decision to part with it.

To determine the listing price, Mr. Modlin factored in recent co-op sales at 960 Fifth Avenue, 834 Fifth and 740 Park, all of which traded in the neighborhood of $ 70 million and above. “Compared with the other iconic private perches on the perimeter of Central Park, there just isn’t anything quite like this penthouse,” he said. “It is the grandest residence in the south tower, the one that sits above all the others, a mansion in the clouds, and it is the largest intact park-facing residence at the San Remo with private outdoor space.”

Only one neighbor shares a similar perch, but he is a tower away in his own separate, and definitely smaller, parallel universe: The owner of the San Remo’s north tower penthouse is Bono, the frontman for the Irish band U2.

For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.

A version of this article appears in print on April 19, 2015, on page RE2 of the New York edition with the headline: The Crown-Jewel Tower.

Loading…

Spotlight – Google News

Demi Moore Is Seeking $75 Million for Her Central Park West Penthouse - New York Times

Facebook promised an Apple Watch app last month, but it's still missing - Mashable

What’s This?

Apple CEO Tim Cook shows off the Facebook app for the Apple Watch in March.

Image: Apple via screenshot

By Adario Strange2015-04-25 19:28:45 UTC

Back in March, Apple gave the world a close look at its first wearable, weeks before the device officially debuted in stores.

Developers worked quickly to equip the Apple Watch with everything from an official Twitter app, to an eBay app and even a Chipotle app, but one app previewed on stage during the March event remains missing: Facebook.

See also: Why Apple is obsessed with gold: It’s all about Asia

At the time, Apple prominently displayed the social network’s app.

“You can connect to social media,” CEO Tim Cook said, as a large image of a Facebook logo-emblazoned app flashed on the display behind him. The screenshot of the Apple Watch Facebook app showed an example of a photo-tag notification, and an option to dismiss it.

But more than a month later, as consumers are finally getting their hands on the watch, Facebook’s app is nowhere to be found. And this doesn’t seem to be a mere oversight, as apps for ESPN and CNN — both presented along with Facebook’s in March — are currently available in the Apple Watch app store.

“We’re excited for the launch of the Apple Watch,” a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable when asked about the app. “We have nothing to announce today, but we’re always evaluating new platforms to build the best Facebook experience for people.”

The missing app did not go unnoticed by new Apple Watch owners, who tweeted their surprise at the device’s lack of Facebook functionality.

Some may speculate that the omission is due to industry politics, but the fact that Facebook’s own Instagram app is already available in the Apple Watch store should eliminate these concerns. And, based on the March event app screenshot from Apple, it’s likely that the app is still in the works.

Additional reporting by Karissa Bell

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Topics: Apple, Apple Watch , Apps and Software, Dev & Design, Facebook, Gadgets, instagram, Mobile, Tech, tim cook

Technology – Google News

Facebook promised an Apple Watch app last month, but it's still missing - Mashable