World of Apple

Jobs and Schmidt shake hands at iPhone launch in January 2007

The increasing rivalry between Apple and Google has been in the spotlight recently and now The New York Times has published a four page report on the ongoing relationship between to the two mammoth corporations.

The article covers many details of the increasing number of spats, starting out by detailing Apple’s suit against HTC which many believe is a wider attack against Google and its Android smartphone operating system.

At the heart of their dispute is a sense of betrayal: Mr. Jobs believes that Google violated the alliance between the companies by producing cellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone. In short, he feels that his former friends at Google picked his pocket.

“We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business,” Mr. Jobs told Apple employees during an all-hands meeting shortly after the public introduction of the iPad in January, according to two employees who were there and heard the presentation. “Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”

The report offers some details of meetings that were described as “fierce” and heated”.

At one particularly heated meeting in 2008 on Google’s campus, Mr. Jobs angrily told Google executives that if they deployed a version of multitouch — the popular iPhone feature that allows users to control their devices with flicks of their fingers — he would sue.

The New York Times also interesting gives some background on the acquisition of AdMob by Google and how Apple had been bidding on the mobile advertising company at the time. Apple later acquired another firm Quattro.

Illustration of Steve Jobs, left, and Eric Schmidt. Credit: Daniel Adel (Courtesy of New York Times)

Last fall, Apple made a formal bid to acquire AdMob, a rapidly growing mobile advertising company, for $600 million. AdMob specializes in developing ads that run inside mobile phone applications, like those on the iPhone.

While Apple conducted due diligence on the deal, AdMob agreed to a 45-day “no shop” provision, a routine clause that prevented the start-up from offering itself for sale to others, according to three people briefed on the negotiations. But after Apple inexplicably let 45 days pass without consummating its offer, Google pounced.

On talking to both Google and Apple employees the New York TImes discovered that the rivalry is “intense” and many believe that a peacemaker is “sorely needed”. Bill Campbell who serves on Apple’s board has said to have been attempting to “smooth over the problems”.

While Mr. Campbell has tried to be a diplomat and smooth over the problems between Mr. Jobs and Mr. Schmidt, the task hasn’t been easy. Mr. Campbell declined to comment for this article, but people briefed on the matter say that throughout last fall, Mr. Jobs and Mr. Schmidt each lobbied Mr. Campbell to sever his connection with the other’s company, at times even giving him ultimatums to do so.

Finally, Mr. Campbell was forced to choose, and according to a person with knowledge of the situation, he dropped his formal responsibilities at Google, although he is still informally mentoring executives there.

Apple yesterday filed a Form-8K with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States to inform investors that the company’s board had unanimously a one time bonus for Apple COO Tim Cook.

Tim Cook who took the place of Steve Jobs during the first half of 2009 was awarded a discretionary bonus of $5,000,000 and 75,000 stocks “in recognition of his outstanding performance in assuming the day-to-day operations of the Company for the period in fiscal 2009″. The recommendation for compensation was put forward by Steve Jobs.

View entire form 8K (PDF).

Steve Jobs at the 2010 Oscars | Photo by Zadi Diaz - http://flic.kr/p/7JgA4C

Today Forbes published its list of world billionaires, crowning a new richest person with Carlos Slim Helu beating Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to the top. This year Steve Jobs ranked 136th on the world rich list with an increased estimated wealth of $5.5 billion up from $3.9 billion in 2009. Jobs also significantly improved his placing moving down from 178th on the 2009 list.

The list of course is only an estimate and upon publication has become quickly outdated, Fortune’s Apple 2.0 blog reminds us that since February 12th 2010 Steve Jobs is $580 million richer on paper. Steve Jobs holds 5.426 million shares in Apple and 138 million shares in Disney.

Apple HQ, 1 Infinite Loop | Photo by Wysz - Flickr

Yesterday afternoon Apple held its annual shareholder meeting at its Cupertino headquarters. This year discussions focused primarily on the company’s financial situation and environmental issues.

At the meeting the shareholders re-elected Jobs and the Apple board of directors. The topic of previous board member Eric Schimdt came up when one shareholder asked if the Google CEO had conducted properly while serving on Apple’s board. Jobs said that “Eric Schmidt conducted himself appropriately and recused himself on matters that might involve conflict”.

Also approved was Ernst and Young as Apple’s public accounting firm for the year 2010.

During the meeting two shareholder proposals were voted down, in-line with board recommendations. The first proposal read as follows, “Shareholders request that the Board of Directors prepare a sustainability report describing corporate strategies regarding climate change, specifically to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address other environmental and social impacts such as toxics, recycling and employee and product safety.”

The board rebutted with, Apple “is already substantially fulfilling—and in many respects exceeding—the request for information in Proposal No. 6″.

On the second opposed and denied proposal was for Apple to amend the bylaws to establish a sustainability committee “to ensure our corporation’s sustained viability”…”responding to changing conditions and knowledge of the natural environment, including but not limited to, natural resource limitations, energy use, waste disposal, and climate change.”

The board opposed the proposal with the following, “[Apple] takes environmental sustainability very seriously, and the Company has made significant progress in reducing the environmental impact of the Company’s operations and products, as described in the Company’s statement in opposition to Proposal No. 6, above. However, the Board does not believe a Board committee dedicated to this issue is necessary”.

After all the proposals were out of the way Steve Jobs, Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer fielded some questions.

One shareholder asked if Jobs has returned to Apple in a limited capacity, the CEO simply replied with “No” adding that while he was out, “Tim took the helm and Apple didn’t miss a beat.”

Other areas of interest mention include Jobs’ view on Apple’s financial situation. A present shareholder asked if Apple would use it’s current $40 billion cash and short-term investments to pay dividends, Jobs refuted saying that Apple is holding cash to take “big, bold” risks.

Jobs said that China is a market with lots of promise and said that Apple would open 25 retail stores in the near future.

Related: Apple’s 2010 Proxy statement.

Steve Jobs presents the MacBook Air at Macworld 2008 | © World of Apple 2008

The New York Times is reporting that Steve Jobs will participate with an author in writing an authorised biography of the Apple CEO’s life.

According to the report the book is still in early stages on planning but Jobs has invited author Walter Isaacson to tour his childhood home. Isaacson is a former managing director of Time magazine and is currently working at the Aspen Institute. Isaacson has two best-selling biographies “Einstein: His Life and Universe” and “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.” Both published by Simon & Schuster.

People familiar with the plans say that the book will cover Jobs’ entire life from youth through to his years at Apple.

Both Isaacson and Job’s closest assistant Katie Cotton declined to comment to the New York Times.

Steve Jobs presents at Macworld 2008 | © World of Apple 2008

Following last weeks iPad announcement, Steve Jobs held an internal Apple town hall meeting with employees later in the week to field questions on a number of subjects.

Mac Rumors, Wired and Daring Fireball have all individual reported on separate subjects of the meeting, with some sources disputing others.

Two of the big topics during the meet were Google and Adobe. On Google Jobs said that Apple did not enter the search business but Google did enter the phone business and they want to kill the iPhone. Jobs said, “This Don’t be evil [Google mantra] is a load of crap”.

On Adobe and in particular Apple’s lack of inclusion of flash in the iPhone and iPad, “Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.”

Jobs also spoke about how Apple will deliver aggressive software updates to the iPhone and that the next iPhone hardware revision would be “A+”.

Although not yet even on sale the Apple CEO said that the iPad was one of the most important products he has been involved with, alongside the iPhone and Mac. Adding that new Macs released in 2010 will bring Apple “to the next level.” But still downplayed any implementation of Blu-ray, until “sales really start to take off”.

Finally Jobs spoke of Apple’s Lala acquisition in which he says that those employees have been brought into the iTunes team.

The New York Times’ David Pogue has posted a brief interview that he had with Apple CEO Steve Jobs following yesterdays special event.

The question of many peoples lips was the lack of video camera on the iPod touch, when Pogue put this question to Jobs he replied:

“Originally, we weren’t exactly sure how to market the Touch. Was it an iPhone without the phone? Was it a pocket computer? What happened was, what customers told us was, they started to see it as a game machine,” he said. “We started to market it that way, and it just took off. And now what we really see is it’s the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw. So what we were focused on is just reducing the price to $199. We don’t need to add new stuff. We need to get the price down where everyone can afford it.”

Pogue also asked why the camera equipped nano can’t snap still photos:

the sensors you need to record video are extremely thin these days—thin enough to fit into the wafer-thin Nano. But the ones with enough resolution for stills, especially with autofocus (like the sensor in the iPhone), are much too thick to cram into a player that’s only .02 inches thick.

After expression his doubts over e-readers in the past Jobs then answered a question about Amazon’s Kindle book reader:

“I’m sure there will always be dedicated devices, and they may have a few advantages in doing just one thing,” he said. “But I think the general-purpose devices will win the day. Because I think people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device.”

Finally Pogue asked how Jobs was doing and wondered if any products had been affected at Apple due to his leave:

“There are some things that I’m focusing a lot of attention on right now—to polish,” he said. “No, I don’t think we’re going to miss a beat. We have some really good stuff coming up.”

“I probably need to gain about 30 pounds, but I feel really good. I’m eating like crazy. A lot of ice cream,”

Since his return to Apple in late June, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is said to have been entirely focussed on the heavily rumoured Apple touchscreen tablet. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the CEO has been involved with the tablet since before his medical leave.

The report quotes sources saying that Jobs scrapped the tablet twice in the past years, once due to the poor battery life and a second time due to lack of internal storage.

WSJ suggests that Jobs’ sudden scrutiny on the project has been “jarring” for some employees “who had grown accustomed to a level of freedom over strategy and products while the CEO was on leave”.

Strangely the report also includes a quote from Jobs himself, certainly a rare score. The quote which comes from email simply reads; “much of your information is incorrect”.

None of the sources quoted in the report were able to offers specifics on the tablet or when it is likely to be available.

It has finally been officially confirmed that Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs has returned to work after a six month medical leave. It was already speculated that Jobs has returned to work last week but an official comment from Apple PR has now confirmed it.

“Steve is back to work,” said Steve Dowling, a spokesman at the Cupertino, California-based company. Jobs is at Apple a few days a week and working from home the rest of the time, he said. “We are very glad to have him back.”

The Loop is also reporting that Jobs was spotted around campus and is said to be still looking thin but have “more color in his face and looked happy.”

Following rumours that Steve Jobs had received a liver transplant several months ago the hospital who performed the operation has come out into the open.

James D. Eason, M.D., program director at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute and chief of transplantation confirmed today, with the patient’s permission, that Steve Jobs received a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in partnership with the University of Tennessee in Memphis.

Steve Jobs is said to be recovering well and evidence suggests that the CEO has returned to work this week.

He received a liver transplant because he was the patient with the highest MELD score (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) of his blood type and, therefore, the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available. Mr. Jobs is now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis.