Rupert Murdoch introduces Jobs.
On Apple surpassing Microsoft in market valuation, Jobs says
“It’s surreal, but it doesn’t really mean anything.”This sounds like a scary business model, but Jobs makes it work:
"Apple is a company that doesn’t have the most resources in the world, and they way we’ve succeeded is to bet the right technological horse, to look at technologies that have a future. We try to pick things that are in their springs. And if you choose wisely, you can be quite successful.”
Jobs on the lost(stolen) next generation iPhone prototype:
"To make a wireless product work well, you have to test it. And one of our employees was carrying one and there’s a debate about whether it was left in a bar or stolen….And the person who found it decided to sell it…and it turned out this person plugged it into his roommate’s computer and that roommate called the police. And the police showed up and took this guy’s computers…and the DA is investigating it…and I don’t know where it well end up.”Jobs on the Foxconn suicides:
“Foxconn is not a sweatshop.They’ve got restaurants and swimming pools….For a factory, it’s a pretty nice factory. But this is still very troubling to us.So we send over our own people and some outside folks as well, to look into the issue."
On platform wars:
"we don’t see ourselves in a platform war. We never saw ourselves in a platform war with Microsoft, either…Maybe that’s why we lost. But we never thought of ourselves in a platform war; we just wanted to make good products.”
On Google:
“Well, they’re competing with us.We didn’t go into search.We–they–decided to compete with us and got more and more serious ”
On the purchase of Siri:
“I don’t know if I would describe Siri as a search company. They’re not in the search area…they’re in the AI area. We’re not going into search.”
On the ATT network:
“They’re doing pretty good in some ways and in others they could do better. We meet with them once a quarter. Remember, they deal with way more data traffic than anyone else. And they’re having trouble. But they have the fastest 3G network and they’re improving. I wish they were improving faster….I’m convinced that any other network, had you put the iPhone on it, would have had the same problems.”
On tablets:
"Any tablet that uses a stylus is a failure”What came first. the iPhone or the iPad:
“I’ll tell you a secret. It began with the tablet. I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on with your fingers. I asked our people about it. And six months later, they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He got scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, ‘my God, we can build a phone with this!’ So we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the iPhone.”No wonder Murdoch introduced him:
“I don’t want us to see us descend into a nation of bloggers. I think we need editorial oversight now more than ever. Anything we can do to help newspapers find new ways of expression that will help them get paid, I am all for.” [I think he means private editorial oversight, not government. I hope, anyway. -RW]What Steve Jobs does all day:
“I have one of the best jobs in the world. I get to hang out with some of the most talented, committed people around and together we get to play in this sandbox and build these cool products….Apple is an incredibly collaborative company. You know how many committees we have at Apple? Zero. We’re structured like a start-up. We’re the biggest start-up on the planet. And we all meet once a week to discuss our business…and there’s tremendous teamwork at the top and that filters down to the other employees…and so what I do all day is meet with teams of people and work on ideas and new problems to come up with new products.”
On not letting in slide:
"When this whole thing with Gizmodo happened, I got a lot of advice from people who said you’ve got to just let it slide…you shouldn’t go after a journalist because they bought stolen property and tried to extort you….And I thought about that and I decided that Apple can’t afford to change its core values and simply let it slide….We have the same core values as when we started, and we come into work wanting to do the same thing today that we wanted to do five years ago.”The importance of Apps and iAds:
“People are using apps way more than they are using search. So if you want to make developers more money, you’ve got to get the ads into apps. But the mobile ads we’ve got today rip you out of the app.”
The future of movies:
"The way that we market movies is undergoing a radical shift. It used to be that you spent a fortune on advertising on TV running your trailers. But now you can advertise on the Web….When we went to the music companies, we said 'who is your customer?' And they said, 'Best Buy, Tower'…their distribution partners. But that wasn’t their customer. They needed to recognize who their true customer was….So what changed in the music business was not the back end, but the front end. The way that you market to the consumer….The film industry needs to embrace that. And it needs to let people watch the content they want to watch, when they want to watch it and where they want to watch it.”Why Apple is just a hobby:
"The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go-to-market strategy. The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us… ask Google in a few months. The television industry fundamentally has a subsidized business model that gives everyone a set-top box, and that pretty much undermines innovation in the sector. The only way this is going to change is if you start from scratch, tear up the box, redesign and get it to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it. But right now, there’s no way to do that….The TV is going to lose until there’s a viable go-to-market strategy. That’s the fundamental problem with the industry. It’s not a problem with the technology, it’s a problem with the go-to-market strategy….I’m sure smarter people than us will figure this out, but that’s why we say Apple TV is a hobby."[Quotes taken from the live blog condcuted by All Things Digital]
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I had no idea Jobs was such an elitist: “I don’t want us to see us descend into a nation of bloggers." !!
ReplyDeleteHis comments about the future of movies also applies to the news but he seems blind to that.
I suspect the contradiction has something to do with a financial incentive Jobs sees in Apple's relationship with Murdoch. But I can't see what that is.
Jobs has been phenominally successfull but I agree with RW, this seems like a risky business model and certainly doesn't encourage me to buy Apple stock.