Steve Jobs - page 37

So Apple’s had one HELL of a first quarter, haven’t they? With tax day nearly upon us, I thought it might be a good idea to look back at how well Apple is answering the issues that I thought were important late in December of last year, especially now that the AppleTV is out in the market and the iPhone has set the world on fire with its hype flames. Or something. So click through — we’ll laugh, we’ll cry, and we’ll learn something about forecasting. Here, again, are the 10 Questions Apple Must Answer in 2007 — and how well they’re responding.

Technorati Tags: apple, speculation, Steve Jobs

It’s good to be the king, isn’t it Steve? Especially when standing next to Damon Albarn, lead singer of The Good, The Bad and the Queen. Damn. Steve is relishing this DRM-free breakthrough with EMI:

“We are going to give iTunes customers a choice–the current versions of our songs for the same 99 cent price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 30 cents more,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year.”

Hear that, other record companies? They’re Steve’s footsteps — you’re all prey. His smug grin is coming for you.

Pic by Jeffrey Sharp 

Fake Steve Jobs is a hero. While the real Steve is locked away running Apple and guiding breakthroughs like the iPhone, Fake Steve, who invented the friggin’ iPod, is giving revealing interviews to media organizations.

Finally, in a new interview with Engadget, Fake Steve really opens up:

I was really into NeXT, whatever happened with that?

Well, we had some issues around pricing. Like, we figured out what the product should cost, and then we multiplied that by four and set our prices that way. Turns out we were over-overpricing. When I returned to Apple we figured out how to overprice correctly. About 50% more than the reasonable price is about what people are wiling to pay to get a product that makes them cooler than everyone else. So now instedad of over-overpricing, we’re just overpricing. And as our results indicate, it’s working.

That’s why they pay this man the big bucks.

The Wall Street Journal says Jobs is joining EMI to announce the company is completely abondoning DRM copy protection, just as Steve Jobs urged in an open letter in February.

Others concur, including:
Guardian’s Online Blog

Arstechnica

Bloomberg

Image courtesy of Seeking Alpha

Steve Jobs will go onstage at a special EMI press conference in London on Monday, sparking speculation that iTunes will finally sell Beatles songs.

Reports the BBC:

Beatles and iTunes talk growing Steve Jobs launches the iPhone Steve jobs teased fans with a Beatles song at the iPhone launch EMI is to hold a media event on Monday with Apple boss Steve Jobs as special guest, prompting speculation that Beatles songs will finally go online.

…

In an invite to media sent out on Sunday, EMI said it was announcing an “exciting new digital offering”.

There will also be a “special live performance” at the London event by an unnamed artist or band.

I guess Steve Jobs is chuckling to himself having fooled everyone today.

At Macworld in January, Jobs suggested Apple might do something special on April 1 – its 30th birthday.

Knowing that announcements of announcements stoke the fires of speculation, Jobs got everyone expecting something special from Apple — but the April Fool’s joke is to do nothing at all.

I know I’ve just spent the last three hours surfing the web for a special surpise announcement, like a new $666 Apple Uno (a kit-built computer), or a lightning “everything must got for one dollar” sale at the local Apple store.

“Ha, ha– fooled you!” Jobs is saying to himself.

Bastard.

Yesterday BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow rightly called out Apple’s hypocritical “state-sponsored piracy” response to France’s new law against vendor lock-in.

One of the big reasons the iPod took off is because of Napster and other file-sharing services. People suddenly had huge collections of digital music on their computers, but no easy way to take it with them when they left the house.

Now it appears Steve Jobs himself once agreed with the thinking behind the French law, which is to protecting consumers’ right to move content they buy from one device to another.

In a 2002 interview with the Wall Street Journal, reprinted in part at Macworld, Jobs said:

“If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own.”

Compare that to what French lawmakers had to say this week:

“The consumer must be able to listen to the music they have bought on no matter what platform,” Martin Rogard, an adviser at the French Culture Ministry, told the Financial Times.

Image courtesy of wpc-fr.net.

(Via SiliconBeat)

The first public screening of Pixar’s Cars was at the ShoWest conference in Las Vegas this week. Directed by Toy Story genius John Lasseter, the film is due this summer.

Writer Joseph L. Kleiman has the first review. He writes:

“Equal parts humor – there’s references to everything from the anti-establishment disobedience of the 1960’s to newer pop culture standards like “The Fast and the Furious” – and tenderness, the packed house openly combined laughter with tears. During a very touching scene about how the Interstate Highway system decimated towns along Route 66, there was barely a dry eye in the house. You heard me right. Looking around, I could see grown men sobbing (though I’m a bit modest to admit to anything myself). The scene was reminiscent and on a par with the scene where Jessie is thrown away in “Toy Story 2.”

(Via Kottke’s Remaindered links)

Now you can create your very own Steve Jobs keynote, thanks to a soundboard with 50 of the great man’s utterings.

Made by a Japanese website, the soundboard includes gems like:

“But there is one more thing.”

“We think video is the wrong place.”

“Do you have an iPod?”

“It scrolls like butter.”

“We have this rotating Apple sign on the top, which is popular in Tokyo.”

Unfortunately, the site is slow and may be having server problems. It doesn’t appear to be loading the entire soundboard. I get only 6 phrases, including a very tinny and disappointing, “Hi, I’m Steve.”