Answers From Steve Jobs at Apple's Shareholder Meeting

DECS writes "At today's Apple annual shareholder meeting, a series of proposals were presented for voting after which CEO Steve Jobs answered a series of questions from the audience. Jobs talked about Greenpeace, stock options, the iPhone, Mac OS X Leopard, and .Mac."

LOL

From TFA: "I wish it was just a matter of writing checks. If it was just a matter of spending money, Microsoft would deliver good products." Truer words have never been spoken. Also the oblig: In Soviet Russia, money spends Microsoft!

Re:do something with the cash!

I take it that you didn't read Apple's Annual report 10-K statement back in December. On pg 60:

Research and Development (R&D)

Expenditures for R&D increased 33% or $177 million to $712 million in 2006 compared to $535 million in 2005. The increase was due primarily to an increase in R&D headcount in the current year to support expanded R&D activities, an increase of $46 million in stock-based compensation recognized as R&D expense resulting from the adoption of SFAS No. 123R, and higher overall expenses due to the 14th week added to the first fiscal quarter of 2006 to realign the Company's fiscal quarters with calendar quarters. In addition, during 2005, the Company capitalized approximately $29.7 million of costs associated with the development of Mac OS X Tiger. No software development costs were capitalized during 2006. Further information related to the Company's capitalization of software development costs may be found in Part II, Item 8 of this Form 10-K at Note 1 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements. Despite the increase in expenditures, R&D as a percentage of net sales remained relatively flat in 2006 as compared to 2005 due to the significant increase in revenue. The Company continues to believe that focused investments in R&D are critical to its future growth and competitive position in the marketplace and are directly related to timely development of new and enhanced products that are central to the Company's core business strategy. As such, the Company expects to make further investments in R&D to remain competitive.

On pg 68:

Capital Expenditures

The Company's total capital expenditures were $657 million during 2006, consisting of $200 million for retail store facilities and equipment related to the Company's Retail segment, $263 million for real estate acquisitions for the Company's second corporate campus and for a new data center, and $194 million for corporate infrastructure, including information systems enhancements. The Company currently anticipates it will utilize approximately $675 million for capital expenditures during 2007, including approximately $360 million for expansion of the Company's Retail segment, approximately $50 million for real estate acquisitions including the Company's second corporate campus and its new data center, and approximately $265 million to support normal replacement of existing capital assets and enhancements to general information technology infrastructure.

Stock Repurchase Plan

In July 1999, the Company's Board of Directors authorized a plan for the Company to repurchase up to $500 million of its common stock. This repurchase plan does not obligate the Company to acquire any specific number of shares or acquire shares over any specified period of time. The Company has repurchased a total of 13.1 million shares at a cost of $217 million under this plan and was authorized to repurchase up to an additional $283 million of its common stock as of September 30, 2006.

With that in mind, Apple spent $712 million last year in R&D and they increased spending from the previous year. Also they are using the cash apparently to expand the business by acquiring real estate for new stores while upgrading their infrastructure. And they are buying back stock.

'prompting Jobs to pull an iPhone out of his front

If he pulled it out of his front pocket (Jobs wears jeans), perhaps it's not prone to scratching or easily breakable. Maybe they learned something.

Anyone notice a change in Jobs?

Like he's a new man all of a sudden? I mean yeah he had that cancer scare a year or two back, but like his attitude has changed. Its like he's not the same Jobs who stormed off MSNBC or CNN, or the same Jobs that people stayed away from when getting into elevators, cause you didnt know if you would have a job coming out of it.

He's almost jovial all of a sudden. Its frightening.

Nice of him to finally clear the air on the stock scandal and get the whole facts out there. Knowing the whole story now it really does look like what analysts where saying, a whole lot of nothing. Why the feds think they need to go after Apple of all companies when there a MUCH bigger fish to fry (*cough* hello big oil shutting down refineries for maintenance right after coming off of maintenance cycles to decrease production) who knows.

Also nice of him to again point out how stupid Greenpeace is. I quite enjoyed the maybe you should hire a few engineers so you can understand what the hell your talking about remark.

Re:Anyone notice a change in Jobs?

Back in college when I was studying metallugical engineering, I tried to get involved with a couple of those organizations, not greenpeace specifically. But they were insane from the bottom up. I couldn't pass the idological litmus test, which pretty much involve calling day night. It a lot of ways they're the new religion.

Re:Anyone notice a change in Jobs?

Dude--he made $646.6 MILLION dollars last year [com.com] *AND* he probably won't be paying any of it back or going to jail for that back-dating thing [npr.org].

He's walking on sunshine.

Re:Anyone notice a change in Jobs?

Erm.. he's been a billionaire for a long time.. do you really think another 600mil is gonna make him walk on sunshine?

Re:Anyone notice a change in Jobs?

Who needs billions when you can have MILLIONS?

Re:Anyone notice a change in Jobs?

He's never come across as clueless or insensitive to me, just very very focused. I remember in the early days of Apple he walked in to the Bandley 2 computer room (open fishbowl, secured by people knowing not to bother the ops) wearing T-shirt, jeans & sandals and started playing with the switches on one of the front panels of "Junior", the 11/70 we used for development.

Tim Fischer, the op at the time, threw him out. "Do you know who I am?" he said -- Tim responded "I don't care if you're f***ing Steve Jobs, get out of my computer room". Steve left and I believe TIm got a pay rise out of it, although he was a bit shook when he told me.

RSTS-E/Basic Plus -- everything you needed but address space...

Re:Anyone notice a change in Jobs?

Everybody else is focusing on his compensation, but I think it's a lot more - at his level of wealth, money is more an abstract way of keeping score than anything tangible. It's not like you can live in two homes, eat two meals, or sleep in two beds at once.

Instead, consider this. For decades, he's had to live with the internal certainty that he was right, that computers should be designed according to his philosophy, but that that dastardly Bill Gates stole the ideas that Jobs brought to market and proceeded to dominate the computing market. Meanwhile politics at Apple pushed him out, making him sit on the sidelines building NeXT. Years ran into decades of watching somebody who he thought committed the highest crime of having no taste eat the lunch that he believed should have been his.

Now, finally, he's on top of the world. He's brought his vision to the world of portable music, and the world has smiled and said that it is good - and that Microsoft's attempts to enter that market are, well, not so good. The innovative animation studio he nurtured through a vision of the highest quality instead of quantity, has been given the highest compliment possible (in being purchased at a very high price) by Disney, the keepers of the legacy of the oringal wave of animation innovation. On top of that, he's poised to bring that vision to an even larger market.

Love him or hate him, but he's got every reason in the world to be happy. Money's nice, but bringing your vision to fruition and having it succeed, and having the world sit up and take notice - that's priceless. And I think that there's every indication that this is what really drives the man.

Jobs on his salary:

'I make fifty cents just for showing up, and the other 50 cents is based on my performance.' [appleinsider.com]

Re:Can Apple to hire him for less than $7.50/hr?

I thought the CA minimum wage was $7.50 an hour.

The minimum wage applies to hourly workers. Salaried workers are free to negotiate any contract they wish so long as it plays by the other rules.

Re:Jobs on his salary:

He is the highest paid executive in the US, and still manages to get focus on his 1$ salary PR stunt.

Highest paid in 2006. He doesn't have huge stock option grants vesting every year. From the Forbes profile you linked to is very telling:

Total Compensation (2006)
$646.60 mil

5-Year Compensation Total
$650.17 mil

In other words, over 99% of his compensation for the past five years came from last year alone. During that time AAPL went from about $12 to over $100.

Cryptic Jobs

What the hell did he mean by "Service Temporarily Unavailable", and what question was that in response to?

"iPhone out in June"

He says it'll be released on time, but he said the same thing about the Apple TV a few weeks before they announced it would be delayed.

roughlydrafted.com article == blog entry?

I'm not an OS X guy, so I don't follow or know my Mac-related sites. Anyway I follow the link, and I'm reading along, and in the second Greenpeace-related paragraph I encounter:

encouraging user donations to Greenpeace to somehow solve that issue.

My BullshitDetectorReadingOpinion(submission) returns a mild buzz. Next line:

After attempting to take credit for Apple's announcements (referring to the G.P. rep)

sends me off on a bit of surfing of roughlydrafted.com, and googling of same said, which leads me to the conclusion that roughlydrafted.com is Daniel Eran's pulpit. Some of the 'articles' are fine and interesting, but that's not my point.

A few weeks back someone defined the difference between digg and /. as that the former is a blog aggregator+comments and the latter is a news aggregator+comments.This captures the difference for me, and makes me wonder about the submission a bit.

I suppose this is why we have arguments on /. as to whether bloggers are journalists http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/ 07/0428225 [slashdot.org].

I do admit that Mr. Eran is pretty up-front with his bias, so you know where he stands while you're reading him.

Re:roughlydrafted.com article == blog entry?

RoughlyDrafted.com is pro-Apple. However, the lines that got your BS-detector buzzing are false positive. They are not BS. Google News around and you'll find out that Greenpeace indeed took credit for Apple's announcement. Not only did they take credit, they lied about what the credit was for. What Jobs said was Apple would change their policy regarding communicating their existing plans and achievements. Greenpeace pretended that Apple would change their plans to be greener and took credit for it. Greenpeace is a bunch of scums who capitalize on people's concern for the environment. Avoid Greenpeace, help other environmental groups.

Greenpeace

I think Greenpeace's Science - particularly with respect to greenhouse effect solutions is muddled - like the scientists don't have steering control. It would be cool if some one who's a expert and who's used to dealing with politicians (i.e who posesses a stron persona) examined exactly where they are headed and corrected that for them as it destroys their cause.

forget about being "slightly better"

I don't know about Apple's overall corporate standing in terms of environment, and I don't think it matters that much. The fact is: computers are bad for the environment. The best thing you can do for the environment may be not to buy a new computer at all and keep using the old one. And the worst thing for the environment may ultimately be... the power hungry software upgrades that induce people to buy new hardware.

As for Apple, I wish they'd replace their styrofoam packaging with something recycled and biodegradable. Apple's packaging is like a throwback to the 70's.

Re:forget about being "slightly better"

As for Apple, I wish they'd replace their styrofoam packaging with something recycled and biodegradable. Apple's packaging is like a throwback to the 70's. Yes and no... I agree, I'd rather see recycled cardboard cartons, but what they use is certainly not a throwback to the 70s... The boxes are only just big enough to fit the item into, and the styrofoam they use usually has large holes cut in it to reduce consumption and weight. Bob

Re:forget about being "slightly better"

How does it reduce consumption to cut a large hole into something which was already produced?

Let's see, what's more likely... produce large, solid block of styrofoam on assembly line, run it through another line to cut all the holes in it.

OR

Create the styrofoam in special molds so "the holes" are there from the beginning.

Jesus I can't believe this has to be explained

Every time this guys talks to someone from Apple

They get their iPhone out

"Loooook... shiiinyyyy...." *waves in face*

Did he talk about...

the iRack and the iRan?

Greenpeace is useless

We have a word for people acting very much like Greenpeace in Argentina: Piqueteros [wikipedia.org]
While they arise some good valid points and concerns, they do not bring any solution to the table.

Let us now praise Apple propaganda

From TFA:

Jobs' (sic) Challenges Greenpeace Incompetence.

Those comments didn't stop Greenpeace representatives from using the meeting as an opportunity to advertise the groups (sic) anti-Apple campaign.

God, I love that kind of hyperbole. You can practically smell the fear and obedience coiling off it, the fumes as it were blinding the writer to the placement of apostrophes.

Sure, fanboyism pretty much selects for monochromatic points of view. The point is always to circle the wagons and defend the ideal (not to mention the stock). Criticism can rarely be brooked; you'll notice the same about more than a few churches and political parties.

But this time out... Heh. Even measured against most ecstatic fanboyism, the headline takes honors: it's like something from the old Pravda, where the writers would whip out the superlatives whenever some gasbag was sober long enough to wheeze up a few words at a podium. Premier Brezhnev Challenges West's Mendacity and Corruption, etc. (But never the subhead: Later, impregnates terrified farmer's daughter in limousine behind silo.) True believers are always ready to fall to the knee praising the official line. What's amusing though perhaps also a little sad is how much alike, finally, in their rabidness are the commie and the capitalist stooge when the knee is bent!

The simple rebuttal to Jobs' snark is that it doesn't require an engineer to see that Apple pollutes, pollutes extravagantly, and has been exposed as such behind its veil of carefully manufactured, commodified hip. That's the issue--not whether Greenpeace has been overly generous to other companies. Greenpeace's failings aren't transmuted into Apple strengths. If they were, Jobs would have laughed off rather than acquiesced to the reform campaign.

I'm pleased to see Apple cleaning up its act. A shame it can't do so less bitterly, or without its choirs bugling hysterically when it finally acts on a long overdue responsibility. And how petty of Premier Jobs to act sore because the Greenpeace campaign has rung a bell with many of the company's consumers.

What did he expect? After years of assiduously professing to be "different" and, by attachment to certain cultural icons who appeared in the ads, "better," Apple's consumers have come to expect that might mean something larger than, say, the difference between the Finder and Windows Explorer. Such are the perils of corporate identity. And such is the price of courting liberals, Steve: in order to stay in their good graces, you actually have to practice some liberalism from time to time.

Re:Green Mfg

Great idea. Hold up Dell and HP for what they plan to do, while villifying Apple for already doing those things years ago.

The environment is an incredibly important issue that doesn't deserve the nitwits at Greenpeace.

Re:Green Mfg

I put Greenpeace in the same category as PeTA - pushing their respective movements backwards, because they make everyone think that anyone who cares about the environment (or animals) is as batshit insane as they are. Spending more money on publicity for their crackpot campaigns than on actually helping anyone. Preaching to their little mostly-teenaged choir, not noticing that the masses are backing away slowly, not only from them but from other legitimate groups that just happen to share a few surface features but actually do a lot of good.

Re:/. has been

The reality is that Apple and Google are the companies making the innovative, neat new products these days that we're having fun playing with. You can either accept that and have fun with the rest of us or be grumpy and effectively yell "hey you kids, get out of my yard!" I feel sorry for you if you continue to choose the latter course of action.

Missing the Innovation

Innovative? Uh, let's see - (...) iPhone - not really fair since it isn't out yet, but from what we've heard ... Edge, limited to 4 or 8 GB required storage, touch screen only, mediocre camera. Innovative - not at all (see HTC, Samsung, etc).

You're obviously utterly missing what's innovative about Apple's stuff. It's not that they have the latest and greatest tech (they often do, but it's not important). The innovative stuff is how they design the user interaction.

You can get pretty phones from LG. They do more and cost less than the iPhone. The problem is that the UI sucks.

Usability is not subjective

I hope you're not working in any position where you design user interfaces - although I guess that, unfortunately, many people who do design UIs think like you do. You're wrong, of course. Usability is not subjective. It's measurable.

I'm not entirely sure you actually mean to say that usability is subjective. You're right when you say that different interfaces make different use cases simple. And yes, there will be cases where other phones are easier to use than the iPhone. But given Apple's track record, I expect the iPhone to be one of the - if not the - easiest to use phones on average.

Re:Enough Mac shit on the front page smashnuts

Yeah, fo' rizzle, G.

It's all about the Linux up in my 'hood. Crackersville, New England, holla!

Re:We Love You Steve!

'' on the environment - no need announce environmental goals as other computer manufacturers are doing because iJobs himself thinks that doing so accomplishes nothing. ''

And that is so obviously correct, I don't know why you mention it at all.

Reducing waste helps. Announcing a goal to reduce waste doesn't help.

What is better in your opinion: Removing PVC from packaging (Apple twelve years ago) or announcing the goal to remove PVC from packaging in the next two years (HP) ? I know what's better in my opinion, and unfortunately we also know what is better according to Greenpeace.