Her speech comes a day after Apple announced updates to the Mac and the HomePod smart speaker.
Michelle Obama spoke at Apple's developer's conference in San Jose on Tuesday, but unless you were one of the select group of conference attendees approved by the company, it wasn't easy to find out what the former First Lady had to say.
Apple closed Obama's speech to members of the press, many of which are on location in San Jose to cover the company's big annual conference. A Business Insider reporter who had queued up to attend the speech was pulled out of line by company representatives. A Reuters reporter told Business Insider he wasn't even allowed into the building where Obama was speaking.
The event also was not live streamed by Apple, in contrast to the company's two-hour web broadcast of product announcements and presentations on Monday. Some developers in the audience live tweeted the event and live-streamed it using their phones.
Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced Obama and helped moderate the discussion along with Lisa Jackson, Apple's Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives and the former director of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama, according to some of the tweets from developers in the audience.
Neither Apple nor representatives for Obama immediately responded to requests for comment. Obama's representatives also didn't immediately say whether she was paid for the speech.
Apple typically bars the press from attending most sessions of its developer conference other than the main keynote on the first day, since the subsequent sessions usually focus on getting programmers up to speed on the new and sometimes hidden features of its operating systems. But it's unusual for Apple to have a major public figure like Obama, whose comments are presumably related to issues of public interest rather than tech features, give a presentation at the conference.
Obama's speech came on the second day of Apple's WWDC event. During the company's main presentation on Monday, Apple representatives unveiled a new smart speaker called the HomePod, refreshed Mac computers and updates to the company's iOS and MacOS operating systems.
Her speech comes a day after Apple announced updates to the Mac and the HomePod smart speaker. Read Full Story
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