PCPro quotes this customer experience:

“Every 50 clicks, my trackpad will stop responding for five to clicks,” reports one poster. “Generally this will resolve itself given a few seconds, and is not directly dependent on number of times the trackpad is clicked while unresponsive.”

According to another blogger an email to Steve Jobs resulted in a call back from Apple. Despite the call back containing little substance it does confirm that Apple is aware of the issue.

Today the situation has been fortified further as reported by Mac Rumors an email coming from Steve Jobs’ email account reveals that a “software fix is coming soon”.

Since the original email (pictured) the original sender has replied to which Steve Jobs replied again:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Steve Jobs
Date: Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 4:04 PM
Subject: Re: Firewire RIP?
To: Xxxxx

-David

The report which first appeared on CNN’s iReport website was swiftly denied by Apple spokesperson Steve Dowling but caused Apple’s stock to hit a 52-week low of $94.

The report by a citizen journalist which appeared on CNN’s iReport detailed that Steve Jobs was rushed to an emergency room after suffering “a major heart attack.”

When Apple was asked for further details this morning Apple spokesperson Steve Dowling told journalists that “The story is not true.”

“Steve Jobs is healthy, was taken by surprise by all the speculation about his health swirling around him after his last public appearance in June, and says while he could ’stand to gain 10 or 15 pounds,’ he’s doing just fine,” Jim Goldman reports for CNBC.

“I agreed not to address the speculation about his health on camera, because Jobs didn’t want to go there. As long as I could ask a passing question about his health off-camera, but on the record after the interview, I’d be satisfied. Apple agreed,” Goldman continued.

In the interview itself Goldman quizzed Jobs on the lack of Mac announcements at the event, Jobs rebutted by explaining that the event was music focused.

Jobs also admitted that customers preferred the older iPod nano and thus reverted to the vertical form factor.

“It was very clear to us that customers preferred the vertical form-factor for their iPods. That was the first- and second-generation,” Jobs said. “The third-generation we went to a squarish design so we could fit in a really high-res screen. And we managed to do both in this [fourth-generation iPod nano].”

During the event company CEO, Steve Jobs introduced, brand new iPod nanos, a revamped iPod touch and iTunes 8.

[Update] A 700MB download is now available to download in Podcast form.

The rumours of an ill Jobs were put to bed after a reporter purportedly received an abrupt phone call from Jobs himself who revealed in detail his health.

Today, analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray stated that he expects Steve Jobs to be on hand at tomorrow’s media event which should boost the confidence of investors and boost the price of shares.

“We are confident that Steve Jobs will be presenting and we anticipate his appearance at the event to be viewed as a positive,” Munster wrote under the heading Steve Jobs’ Appearance Will Be Key in his report to clients on Monday.

“While some investors are concerned that Jobs will not deliver the keynote,” wrote Munster, “we have reason to believe he will. Therefore, we believe his health has improved since the June event, which would be a positive for the stock.”

[Update] John Gruber notes on his blog that Jobs is “just as thin as he was in June”.

Many report the iPhone 2.0 firmware suddenly failing to load non-default apps regardless of their nature, briefly loading them before abruptly jumping back to the home screen.

The bug occurs both with freshly downloaded software and with updates, but is reported as never having a definite fix; although some report successfully deleting and re-downloading apps to regain access, others find the solution either having no effect or gradually decaying over time to where the apps again fail to run. Restoring the iPhone also seldom works.

Jobs replied with a one-line answer:

“This is a known iPhone bug that is being fixed in the next software update in September.”

According to Jobs more than 60 million applications have been downloaded for the iPhone and iPod touch, roughly 2 million per day. Revenue from those 60 million applications was $30 million, 70% went to developers, 30% was kept by Apple.

According to the Wall Street Journal if Apple continues at its current sales pace then the company stands to take in at least $360 million over the year in revenue.

“This thing’s going to crest a half a billion, soon,” Jobs said. “Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this in my career for software,” he added.

Jobs also commented on stories last week that Apple had built an internal “kill-switch” into the iPhone which could allow the company to remotely disable applications.

“Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull,” he said.

Team,

Steve

In the email Jobs reportedly acknowledges many of MobileMe’s flaws and explains how the entire launch could have been handled better, adding that more time and testing was also needed.

Jobs wrote that MobileMe’s services should have been rolled out slowly instead of launching it “as a monolithic service”.

“It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” Jobs wrote in an email to employees. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence”.

Additionally Eddy Cue is now heading up the MobileMe team, cue who previously was in charge of the iTunes Store is now in charge of Internet services, including MobileMe, the App Store and the iTunes Store.

“The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services,” Jobs says. “And learn we will. The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year”.

According to Joe Nocera of the New York Times Jobs called him Thursday afternoon and said, “This is Steve Jobs… You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong”.

Jobs went onto explain some details about his recent health issues to Nocera but only on the basis that it was kept off the record.

According to Nocera Jobs’ health problems were more than a “common bug” but weren’t life threatening and the Apple CEO does not have a reoccurrence of cancer.

Last week World of Apple detailed an issue where 1% of MobileMe users were unable to receive mail.

As the issue appears to be ongoing Steve Jobs has reportedly made a request for a blog to be setup detailing the continuing effort to resolve the issues.

An RSS feed of the blog is also available.

According to Alley Insider Jobs billed Apple for $550,000 in expenses in the last three months of 2007, that cost then reportedly dropped to $30,000 in the first few months of 2008 and now an SEC filing reveals that Jobs racked up $102,000 in expenses during the June quarter.

In the past many investors have noted that increased use of Jobs’ private jet means exciting prospects are ahead as the Apple CEO does his dealings around the world face-to-face.

But according to the New York Times, Jobs has confirmed to several people that he is doing well and that after his initial surgery is completely cancer free.

The publication adds that Mr. Jobs has stated to people close to him that he had a surgical procedure this year to address a problem that was contributing to a loss of weight.

Last year Apple had the high profile case against the company dismissed after both the US Securities and Exchange Commission and an internal investigation.

Apple shareholders Kenneth Mahoney and Martin Vogel last week filed a new lawsuit that accuses co-founder Steve Jobs, other executives, and board members with damaging the company’s share value through backdating, causing a 14 percent drop in the company’s stock value during 2006 that wiped out about $7 billion of Apple’s worth on the market in just two weeks.

According to the claim executives dated stocks that weren’t revealed to shareholders and also falsified records.

When talking about Mac OS X Snow Leopard Jobs stated that “Apple would focus principally on technology for the next generation of the industry’s increasingly parallel computer processors.”

“We’ve added over a thousand features to Mac OS X in the last five years,” he said Monday in an interview after his presentation. “We’re going to hit the pause button on new features.”

Apple, he claimed, has made a parallel-programming breakthrough.

Snow Leopard will also tap into the power of powerful GPUs that sit idle most of the time in many modern computers, “Jobs described a new processing standard that Apple is proposing called OpenCL (Open Compute Library) which is intended to refocus graphics processors on standard computing functions.”

“Basically it lets you use graphics processors to do computation,” he said. “It’s way beyond what Nvidia or anyone else has, and it’s really simple.”

Apple and Steve Jobs are currently touting Snow Leopard has featureless but a quick look at the preview pages for both the client and server reveals that this isn’t the whole truth.

The client version of Snow Leopard lists full Microsoft Exchange Support while the server version boasts read and write support for ZFS. Both considerably sought after features that are being added to Snow Leopard.

During the interview Steve Jobs also briefly mentioned PA Semi which Apple acquired back in April, at the time much speculation was thrown around.

“PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods,” he said.

On Tuesday a spokesperson stated to the Wall Street Journal that Steve Jobs has had a “common bug” in recent weeks but felt it more important to take part in WWDC. The spokeswoman added that Jobs is now on the mend with the aid of antibiotics.

According to the Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) Apple plans to use back light unit maker (BLU) Kenmos Technology to help complete a promise Apple made last year to transition all notebooks to LED-lit displays.

Since Steve Jobs’ open letter declaring Apple’s aim to become “greener” the company made LED-lit display standard on the 15-inch MacBook Pro, and an option on the 17-inch MacBook Pro, but in a storming move for the industry introduced the MacBook Air with the brighter and more power efficient LED backlit technology.

Although no official announcement has been made, Apple public relations confirmed to Fortune that Steve Jobs will deliver a keynote address on June 9, the first day of the 2008 World Wide Developers conference.

WWDC 2008 will run from June 9-12, 2008 and Apple is widely expected to announce the next-generation iPhone.

The Boston Retirement Board issued summonses against Jobs and other Apple directors, and/or officers: William Campbell, Millard Drexler, Arthur Levinson, Jerome York, Gareth Chang, Edgar Wollard, Fred Anderson and Nancy Heinen.

The summons were put in place by the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara and relate to case number 1-08-CV-110403.

The Boston Retirement Board is attempting to prove that Apple wasted more than $105 million on the increased value of backdated stock options. The plaintiffs claim to be basing the suit of new information obtained from confidential records.

A report by FindLaw.com explains that The Boston Retirement Board, “can’t put those details on paper in the new complaint because the court has not ruled yet on how the confidential information should be treated.”

The companies board of directors reportedly agonised over the situation as they struggled to balance moral and business responsibilities, while Jobs appealed for privacy.

After seeking advice from two external lawyers the board decided not to act upon the news and respect Jobs’ wishes.

Steve Jobs was diagnosed with a form of pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumour in October 2003. Jobs was told that the prognosis would be promising if the tumour was surgically removed.

But to the surprise of many, Jobs considered avoiding surgery altogether and attempt “to employ alternative methods to treat his pancreatic cancer, hoping to avoid the operation through a special diet - a course of action that hasn’t been disclosed until now.”

In the end Jobs had surgery on July 31, 2004 at Stanford University Medial Center in Pala Alto. The following day Jobs revealed to Apple employees via email that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

In the discussion with Fortune Jobs notes that his top staff meet every Monday to review the entire previous week at Apple.

“So what we do every Monday is we review the whole business. We look at what we sold the week before. We look at every single product under development, products we’re having trouble with, products where the demand is larger than we can make. All the stuff in development, we review. And we do it every single week. I put out an agenda — 80% is the same as it was the last week, and we just walk down it every single week.”

Mirroring remarks made in Tuesday’s shareholders meeting Jobs explains his confidence that a replacement would easily be found within Apple.

“We’ve got really capable people at Apple. I made Tim [Cook] COO and gave him the Mac division and he’s done brilliantly. I mean, some people say, ‘Oh, God, if [Jobs] got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.’ And, you know, I think it wouldn’t be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple. And the board would have some good choices about who to pick as CEO. My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that’s what I try to do.”

Jobs also justifies his reputation of being demanding; “My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects.”

Over the course of the interview Jobs notes several times that Apple is a software company and succeeds in its products because of this.

“It was a great challenge. Let’s make a great phone that we fall in love with. And we’ve got the technology. We’ve got the miniaturization from the iPod. We’ve got the sophisticated operating system from Mac. Nobody had ever thought about putting operating systems as sophisticated as OS X inside a phone, so that was a real question. We had a big debate inside the company whether we could do that or not. And that was one where I had to adjudicate it and just say, ‘We’re going to do it. Let’s try.’ The smartest software guys were saying they can do it, so let’s give them a shot. And they did.”

“That allows us to innovate at a much faster rate than if we had to wait for Microsoft, like Dell and HP and everybody else does. Because Microsoft has their own timetable, for probably good reasons. I mean Vista took what — seven or eight years? It’s hard to get your new feature that you need for your new hardware if it has to wait eight years. So we can set our own priorities and look at things in a more holistic way from the point of view of the customer. It also means that we can take it and we can make a version of it to fit in the iPhone and the iPod. And, you know, we certainly couldn’t do that if we didn’t own it.”

The Apple CEO also insists that Apple TV is still a hobby for Apple, he also addresses the issue of not quite reaching his self-imposed target.

“And we only have about 600 movies so far ingested on iTunes, but we’ll have thousands later this year. We lowered the price to $229. And we’ll see how it does. Will this resonate and be something that you just can’t live without and love? We’ll see. I think it’s got a shot.”

iPhone Atlas notes that when questioned on the upcoming iPhone SDK Jobs avoided many questions but did say, “You’ll see a lot of apps out there this summer.”

The CEO also noted that the SDK would open the market for gaming developers.

It appears that despite rumours to the contrary, Apple has no plans to bring Flash to the iPhone.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

As Jobs put it Tuesday during the company’s annual shareholder meeting, Apple’s iPhone, with all its cutting-edge mobile Internet trickery, needs something much better than the current Flash player that Adobe makes for cellphones. The Flash Player option that fits the bill is made for devices like laptops that are larger than the iPhone; as a consequence, it performs too slowly on the iPhone, he said.

Steve Jobs attached this stock performance chart onto his private internal email

“Wow… what a remarkable last few days,” he wrote in an email to employees. “Our stock is being buffeted around by factors a lot larger than ourselves.”

“As you can see, we have outperformed many other blue-chip tech companies, including Google,” he wrote, attaching a stock performance comparison chart for illustration. “I continue to believe that our fundamentals - our remarkable people, our clear and focused strategy, our new product pipeline, our 200+ retail stores, our $18 billion of cash in the bank with no debt, etc., will serve us well in the coming months and years.”

At the end of the email Jobs expressed his confidence that those who remain loyal to their positions in Apple would reap the benefits in the long run.

“I believe that investors who stay with us will be rewarded as the market’s confidence is restored over time,” he wrote. “Hang in there.”

Apple’s stock which hovered around $200 towards the end of 2007 has dropped as low as $130 recently.

Steve Jobs continues to be paid a $1 salary and received no stock options during 2007. The CEO does however own 5.5 million shares in AAPL and is yet to sell any since rejoining Apple in 2007.

Chief Operation Office Tim Cook was paid $700,014 in salary, earned a $700,000 bonus and received $6.943 million in stock awards. With other compensation (a $13,750 401K contribution and $250 iPhone credit), Cook earned $8,357,190 in 2007.

Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer was paid $600,012 in salary, earned a $600,000 bonus and received $4.946 million in stock awards. With other compensation (a $13,750 401K contribution, $250 iPhone credit, and $584,973 reimbursement for tax liabitity), Opppenheimer earned $6,745,345 in 2007.

Senior Vice President of Retail Ron Johnson was paid $600,012 in salary, earned a $600,000 bonus and received $4.946 million in stock awards. With other compensation ($379 iPhone credit), Johnson earned $6,147,001 in 2007.

The final executive officer to be detailed in the report is Tony Fadell, Senior Vice President of the iPod Division who earned $500,009 in salary, received a $500,000 bonus and was awarded $3.706 million in stock. With other compensation ($6,750 in patent bonus, $13,500 in 401K, $379 iPhone credit, $73 iPod credit), Fadell earned $5,355,171 in 2007

Possibly the most interesting point to come out of the interview was the fact that Apple is not in a contentious relationship with China Mobile.

Jobs sat down with David Pogue and John Markoff for half-an-hour, when speaking of the MacBook Air Jobs said;

“I’m going to be the first one in line to buy one of these,”…”I’ve been lusting after this.”

According to the Apple CEO, designers went through around 100 design prototypes to find the right “form.”

He and Jonathan Ive were worried that they’d be unable to “fit the computer into the package that they came up with.”

When talking of Amazon’s Kindle Steve Jobs simpl stated that it was floored due to the fact that people simply don’t read anymore.

It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

On Google Android Jobs stated;

“Having created a phone its a lot harder than it looks,” he said. “We’ll see how good their software is and we’ll see how consumers like it and how quickly it is adopted.”

Finally when talking of Bill Gates and his imminent retirement from Microsoft this Summer Jobs said;

“Bill’s retiring from Microsoft is a big deal.” “It’s a significant event, and I think he should be honored for the contributions he’s made.”

After the Macworld 2008 keynote presentation Steve Jobs showed of the MacBook Air to press and we caught some celebrities on film.

View the gallery

The 4 page article entitled “How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry,” reveals previously unknown details surrounding the development of the iPhone.

Sources disclosed to the publication that up to $150 million was spent of the research and development of the iPhone.

“To make sure the iPhone didn’t generate too much radiation, Apple built models of human heads — complete with goo to simulate brain density — and measured the effects,” wrote Wired’s Fred Vogelstein. “To predict the iPhone’s performance on a network, Apple engineers bought nearly a dozen server-sized radio-frequency simulators for millions of dollars apiece.”

The entire story began after the failed partnership with Motorola, the ROKR handset was the first iPod and phone convergence but was branded a disaster, at this point, Apple CEO Steve Jobs knew what was required.

Jobs reportedly met with Cingular in February of 2005 to discuss a Motorola-free partnership, during the meeting Jobs laid out three key points to Cingular chief, Stan Sigman.

- Apple had the technology to build something truly revolutionary, “light-years ahead of anything else.”
- Apple was prepared to consider an exclusive arrangement to get that deal done.
- But Apple was also prepared to buy wireless minutes wholesale and become a de facto carrier itself.

Jobs was reportedly confident of his promises as Apple hardware engineers had spent over two years working on touchscreen technology for a tablet PC and had convinced him that they could build a similar interface for a phone.

Through the entire process the highest level of secrecy was being kept with the project being known as P2, P1 reportedly being another iPod phone project.

The article continues to write about how hardware and software engineers never met, most not knowing what they were working on. “Whenever Apple executives traveled to Cingular, they registered as employees of Infineon, the company Apple was using to make the phone’s transmitter,” Wired claims.

In January 2007, Jobs announced the iPhone at Macworld, only 30 or so of the most senior people on the project had seen it.

Fortune supports their claim by attributing Jobs’ deep influence on the computing, music and retail industries as well as Hollywood.

The report reveals the company’s concerns over new suppliers, component supply concerns, major retail expansion and rising rewards for executives.

The report goes into detail about Apple’s record-breaking year as well as warning that CEO Steve Jobs may see his annual compensation rise.

“Because Mr Jobs’s continued leadership is critical to Apple, the Compensation Committee is considering additional compensation arrangements for him,” the filing states.

Jobs’ private jet worth $46 million

Jobs is famously paid a $1 salary but Apple also pays for the maintenance and running costs of his private Gulfstream Jet which was gifted to him in 1999. Apple paid out $776,000 in maintenance on the jet in the financial year, up from $202,000 in 2006 and down on the $1.1 million spent in 2005.

Also of note, Steve Jobs did not received a free iPhone from the company unlike every other Apple employee, the chief did receive an iPod but it is unknown whether it was a gift or reward.

Steve Jobs remains Apple’s second largest share holder with 5.5 million shares, the report states that Jobs has never sold any of them.

Jobs took advantage of a 30,000 share grant provided to him shortly after his return in 1997, but appeared to only do so as the grant expiry date was approaching. The surge in Apple’s share numbers and stock value since the options were granted a decade ago gave the executive 120,000 new shares worth more than $14.6 million.

At the end of Apple’s fiscal 2007 year it had opened a total of 197 Apple Retail Stores across the US, UK, Canada, Japan and Italy.

Apple’s employee base also shot up by around 4,000 employees; jumping from 17,787 to 21,600, most of the new hires in the retail operation.

The company’s hold on the flash memory market remains strong, the report reveals. Apple paid its flash suppliers a $1.25bn advance in 2006, but as of 29 September 2007, just $208m of the advance had been spent - despite the growing demand for flash.

Apple generated $24b in revenue for 2007, returning $3.5bn in net profit. It generated $19.3bn in revenue and $2bn in profit in 2006.

The report also confirms the company invested $782 million in research and development and $467 million on advertising during the 2007 financial year.

Jobs is keen to defend the drop in price in his letter but sees the need to take care of early adopters:

even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week. Stay tuned.

• Refreshed iPod shuffle
• New iPod nano
• New iPod classic
• Introducing iPod touch
• Price drop for iPhone
• iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store
• iTunes now with iPhone ringtone support
• Apple and Starbucks partnership
• iPod Hi-Fi discontinued

iPod touch

Apple has also posted a few further prices of interest:

• iPod nano advert
• iPod nano Gallery
• iPod touch Guided Tour Video
• iPod touch gallery
• iPod classic gallery

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced the inductees for the 2007 California Hall of Fame last night.

Jobs joins a growing list of inductees including former governor and supreme court chief justice Earl Warren, photographer Ansel Adams, comedian Milton Berle, winemaker Robert Mondavi and actresses Rita Moreno and Elizabeth Taylor.

The induction ceremony for the California Hall of Fame will take place on December 5 at the California Museum in Sacramento.