World of Apple

Steve Jobs sat down yesterday with CNBC reporter Jim Goldman, the 7 minute interview covers many subjects. Although Jobs didn’t wish to discuss his health on interview he did talk to Goldman off camera.

“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].”

Apple has posted a QuickTime stream of today’s “Let’s Rock” special event.

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.

After WWDC in June the subject of Steve Jobs’ health was a highly discussed point; at the time many believed that the Apple CEO was ill, causing detrimental effects on the stock price as well as investor confidence.

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”.

In an email to a customer purported to be from Steve Jobs it has been acknowledged that an issue exists where third-party applications repeatedly crash on iPhones.

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.”

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Apple CEO, Steve Jobs has revealed some facts and figures about the App Store which has now been live for one month.

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.

After this mornings report from Ars Technica that Steve Jobs had sent an internal email explaining the issues with MobileMe the site has now published the email in full.

Team,

Steve

According to Ars Technica, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has recently sent out an email to employees admitting the issues with MobileMe saying that the services launch was “not up to Apple standards”.

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”.

After concerns last week over Steve Jobs’ health, the man himself has spoken in private to a well-known reporter stating that his health problems weren’t “life threatening”.

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.

Apple has started a blog detailing the ongoing issues with MobileMe, the company’s replacement for .Mac.

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.

It has been revealed that Steve Jobs has been making use of his Apple funded private jet over the last few months.

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.