A close review of the events that led to the controversial grant reveals that the backdating emerged from a good-faith, although clumsy, attempt by Apple’s board of directors to reward its star chief executive for resurrecting a moribund company.
The Merc’s story details a series of stock grants given to Jobs by Apple’s board between 1999 and 2003. The grants were often generous (and one was a record breaker) but because of fluctuations in Apple’s stock price, Jobs’ grants were often underwater. Several times, Jobs gave the underwater grants back, and the board gave him new ones.
However, according to the Merc, Jobs sometimes spent weeks negotiating the price of these new options, which affected their value. Jobs held out for the lowest price, and sometimes the board backdated the options to keep their price low.
The upshot is that neither Jobs nor the board were very good at picking the right number of options at the right price. If Jobs had simply kept all his grants, instead of constantly swapping them for new ones, they would be worth considerably more:
… Last year, Jobs handed back to Apple 4.6 million of his restricted shares – worth $295 million – to pay the taxes on them. His remaining restricted shares are now worth about $494 million.
But given the rise in Apple’s stock over the past four years, even that turned out to be a bad deal for the iconic CEO. Had he held on to all of his options, they would be worth about $4 billion right now, even if the 2001 grant had been given the December date.
NEW YORK, April 20 (Reuters) – When Apple sits for contract negotiations with the major record companies over the next month, it will probably seek further concessions from them on selling music without copy-protection software.
Big-box retailer Target is poised to become just the second third-party retailer to market Apple Inc.’s new Apple TV device at its brick-and-mortar retail stores, AppleInsider has learned.
While MP3 players are everywhere, and imitations of an Apple iPod Nano go for about $50 (a two gigabyte model with a larger screen than Apple (Charts, Fortune 500) offers), if you want the genuine article you’ll get fleeced. For an 80 gigabyte black iPod like one Amazon sells for $330, one salesman quotes me a price of about $700. As for PCs, Apple’s presence here is minimal.
You might recall that we raised something of a ruckus in these parts about the BBC’s plans to open up its full archive online — and not let Macs in on the game. There was a petition and hand-wringing, and, yes, even overt weeping. But it paid off. Yesterday, the BBC announced its iPlayer will be re-engineered to work with Macs. This was all reported by…the BBC.
The BBC’s plans for the iPlayer were put on hold earlier this year after its regulators, the BBC Trust, asked the corporation to look at whether the iPlayer should be platform agnostic.
Mr Highfield said Apple’s “proprietary and closed framework for digital rights management gives us headaches,” but, “it is one of our top priorities to re-engineer our proposed BBC iPlayer service to work on Macs”.
Unfortunately, you still need to live in the UK to use the service. And the Windows version will still be first. But you win some, you lose some.
(Image comes from the BBC’s glorious “Look Around You” series. This was from the Your Vision of 2000 segment. This gem is the iTrak: “I believe that in the year 2000 people will want to carry their music collection everywhere they go, and the i-Trak is the answer. An 8 Track cassette player that runs off a large square blue 9V torch battery (enough for 30 minutes of continuous playback) with leather carry strap, making this unit truly portable.” Bless.) BBC NEWS | Technology | BBC to open up archive for trial
Via TUAW
Yep, you knew it was going to happen. News about Monday’s Virginia Tech shooting has officially leaked into every other domain. How do I know? Well, the blogger at Habla Mierda has begun speculation that killer Cho Seung-Hui… might be a Mac user:
I was reading the article and found this line pretty interesting.
Among the materials are 23 QuickTime video files showing Cho talking directly to the camera, Capus said. He does not name anyone specifically, but he talks at length about religion and his hatred of the wealthy.
Quicktime Video? Talking directly to camera?
Let’s check Apple’s site real quick.
<snip>
<sigh>
I don’t even know what to make of this. The guy over at Mierda is pretty juvenile about all this — he wouldn’t throw ethnic terms around casually otherwise — but I don’t think he’s suggesting Mac use as playing a role in Cho’s attack. Give it a rest, everyone. Sometimes, people just do horrible things, and we can’t blame an external forces. A few dozen people are dead right now not because of gun control (or lack of it), video games, terrorism, video games, illegal immigration, conservatism or liberalism. They lost their lives because one very mentally ill individual chose to do something incredibly destructive. Habla Mierda. VT Killer probably a Mac User
The record companies are selling more and more music online, but they’re paying scant attention to digital packaging: there’s no good album covers for online music.
That’s the conclusion of Adrian Shaughnessy at Design Observer, who’s spent the last few months researching online alternatives to album art. And unfortunately, there aren’t any.
As downloading threatens to become the main distribution method for recorded music, it is widely believed that the album cover will be replaced by some new online format perhaps animated that will make CD packaging redundant. Well, I might be missing something, but I’ve found nothing in the digital arena that offers a viable alternative to a well-designed CD or vinyl album cover. Instead, I’ve discovered a grim-faced resistance movement amongst dozens of tiny record labels determined to hang onto physical packaging and expressive cover art, no matter what.
CoverFlow in iTunes — which displays a JPEG of the album when a song is playing — is a start. The artwork is static and there’s no lyrics or band bios, but the artwork certainly helps navigate the music collection. It also makes the music feel like a collection, rather than just a bunch of files.
There are signs that the record companies are looking at iTunes and the iPod as a platform for designers to play with.
George White, Warner Music Group’s senior VP of strategy and product development, put together a digital packaging demo for Apple to re-imagine album artwork as more than a JPEG on an iPod.
“We’ve been looking at a few technologies (for digital album art), and have been trying to bring these to Apple, to encourage them to bring that level of experience to the iPod,” says White. “A very simple demonstration that we’ve done takes the Gnarls Barkley liner notes and does a fly-through (using Adobe Flash Lite). You’re actually moving through the lyrics and artwork. It’s sort of like a theme park ride through the album. It’s really, really cool-looking on an iPod.”
(Apple did not respond to questions about whether it’s considering any of Warner Music Group’s suggestions.)
White also pointed to Warner’s Wamo pack, which gave Japanese cell phone users digital albums with ringtones, video, full tracks and artist interviews. Wamo packs aren’t new — they launched overseas a year ago. But White says Warner plans to produce more of these bundles. He also mentioned that while Wamo packs use Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, or SMIL, for their interactive menus, Adobe’s Flash Lite would be a better candidate for “the level of sophistication people expect from Warner Music Group’s artists.”
(Adobe confirmed that Warner’s iPod/Flash Lite demonstrations had taken place, but said that the company “has not announced any joint plans for Flash or Flash Lite to be used in next-generation digital albums.”)
On the off chance that the Coen Bros. talking up the virtues of Final Cut Studio 2 doesn’t have you reaching for your charge card yet, you could try out this testimonial from director Miranda July, who made the truly wonderful “Me and You and Everyone We Know” last year.
If nothing else, this NAB keynote is bringing us plenty of insight into the creative process for a wide range of directors.
I had thought, by now, that Apple would have sued everyone using the word pod in the name of their products. Not so. Shopping at Whole Foods this afternoon, I spotted the Airpod, a high-tech air filter system that goes out of its way to look like an iPod, right down to placing the circular wheel filter at the bottom of the rectangular form.
It’s shameless appropriation of the form. Maybe it’s just bombastic enough for Apple to leave them alone? Click through for a picture of the packaging. It’s like a nano gone wrong.
There’s several new screenshots lighting up the internet that are purportedly taken from a new Leopard build (9A410).
Posted to Hackintosh, MacRumors, Flickr and elsewhere, the screenshots show a new, simple UI that’s darker and sharper than the current — note the corners of windows are no longer rounded. There’s less brushed metal, more soothing grey.
The screenshots on Flickr look much more like the current UI (Tiger) ,except Mail now has a metallic look.
But there’s something fishy about them. The interface is too plain and stripped back.
Many on the MacRumors’ forums think the screens are fake, and one poster on Flickr is sure about it.:
“Fake! Fake! Fake!
I write themes for OSX. And, I can tell you how this was most probably done:
The file Extras.rsrc still kinda works in the betas for 10.5 although, I hope that it will be removed before release.
Anyway, Installer based themes (though out of favor in 10.4) still work by replacing Extras.rsrc among other files.
Someone swapped out the normal Extras.rsrc and took some screen shots. Since most of the guts of 10.5 do not depend upon Extras.rsrc anymore, I am confident that 10.5 would run with a 10.4 Extras file for now.
Note that you do not see any signs of resolution independence! That is what would break this fake theme (since res independence calls to images not stored in Extras.rsrc).”
Apple faithful, I sense a disturbance in the force. I feel … fear. Worry. Anger. Faithful, put aside these negative feelings. The OS is fine. The iPhone is fine. Everything is fine. We are taking a little extra time, that’s all. I’m sure you’re receiving taunts from your Windows-loving friends talking about “OS X Leper.” I’ve been taunted too. Bill Gates just called and offered to send over a team to help us port Vista features into Leopard.
Faithful, do not lose heart. I’ve chosen the photo above to help you re-hypnotize yourselves. Look directly into my eyes, not around the eyes, but into the eyes. Now think of products. Glossy white products that cost too much money and make you feel superior to other people. Feel better? Good. Me too.
Wilkes University Wilkes-Barre, PA, is about to become one of the first colleges to make a complete switch from Windows PCs to new Intel Macs. Over the next three years, Wilkes will become an all-Mac campus — a $1.4 million switch involving 1,700 computers. The reason? To save money. The college will buy fewer machines and expects to spend less on support.
Scott Byers, vice president for finance and general counsel at Wilkes, answered a few questions by email, explaining the reason for the switch and the reaction from students and staff.
“Students seem to like the change and recognize Apple as an innovator in technology,” he said. “This generation of students has a great affinity for the Apple brand.”
Whose idea was it to switch to Macs?“¨The idea was generated as we solicited bids for our annual technology refresh program. Every three years we replenish all 1,700 computers on campus. Apple introduced us to their Intel-based Macs and we saw it as an opportunity to provide Apple and Windows operating systems in one machine for the campus community. The benefits to the end user were obvious. Students and faculty could choose the platform they needed and wanted based on their individual computing needs. We also saw an opportunity to reduce the number of machines on campus and therefore create more efficient use of computer labs. We soon realized the question wasn’t ‘why make the switch,’ but ‘why not?’
Was there any resistance?ҬWe are an institution whose mission is to establish personal relationships so we worked closely with our faculty and staff to make sure we had a general consensus in moving forward with Apple.
Your stated reason was to save money. Were there any other advantages or disadvantages?ҬBeing more efficient was a desire but we felt it had many other advantages;
1) Allowed the user to choose the desired operating system
2) offered the potential to enhance teaching and learning using Apple’s iLife software
3) created a standard base that our IT department could work with consistently rather than Dells, Gateways, HP and Apples
4) reduced the number of units necessary for campus and the number of units requiring potential service and replacement.
What was the reaction to the news like from staff and students?ӬStudents seem to like the change and recognize Apple as an innovator in technology. This generation of students has a great affinity for the Apple brand. Staff have embraced the change as well. We anticipate additional support from the campus community by providing training on the educational benefits of Apple software.
A couple of years ago, universities and schools were switching away from Macs. Do you think we’ll see more switch back?“¨I think so. Apple has made inroads in the personal computer market with an operating system that one could argue is superior to Windows. The switcher approach allows campuses to access both platforms from one unit. Again, I would pose the question why wouldn’t a campus make the switch? The visual, user-friendly nature of Apple-based programs, along with iTunes and other lifestyle programs, has aligned well with the current and incoming generation of college students.
Any additional comments?
I’d like to add that Wilkes has long been a leading provider of graduate education for teachers. We offer master’s degree and certificate programs in classroom technology and instructional technology. At the core of those programs is an emphasis on computer skills and also leadership skills so teachers can implement crucial technology upgrades in their respective schools.
Our partnership with Apple will be a vital part of providing cutting-edge, quality education in the way of instructional technology for today’s teachers.
