Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Answers From Steve Jobs at Apple's Shareholder Meeting

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu May 10, 2007 09:49 PM
from the clearing-the-air dept.
Technology (Apple) OS X Operating Systems Technology
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."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Apple Delays Leopard to October 545 comments
SuperMog2002 writes "Apple Insider has the sad news that Mac OS X Leopard has been delayed until October. Apparantly software engineers and QA had to be reassigned to the iPhone in order to get it out on time, costing Leopard its release at WWDC. For now the original press release from Apple can be found on the 'Hot News' part of their site, though Apple did not provide a permanent link to the story. 'While Leopard's features will be complete by June, the Cupertino-based company said it cannot deliver the quality release expected by its customers within that time. Apple now plans to show its developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship the software in October.'"
[+] Technology: Why Apple Delayed Leopard for the iPhone 453 comments
Ernest DeFarge writes "Apple recently announced that they've pulled several key programmers from the OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and assigned them to the iPhone in order to get it done on time. In doing so, they delayed Leopard for 4 months. Does that mean that the iPhone is more important to Apple than Mac OS? Or is it just capitalizing on the current state of Apple's fanbase?"
[+] Jobs Responds to Greenpeace FUD 531 comments
EccentricAnomaly writes "Steve Jobs has posted a response on the Apple homepage to the Greenpeace Green My Apple campaign in which he basically makes a case for the Greenpeace campaign being a heaping pile of FUD. On one hand, you could say that Greenpeace shouldn't expect a company that has spent years battling Microsoft to just roll over. On the other, it looks like Apple is agreeing to do most of what Greenpeace has been demanding."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Answers From Steve Jobs at Apple's Shareholder Meeting 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • LOL (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 10 2007, @09:56PM (#19078379)
    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: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Paradise Pete (33184)
        do something please! Any fool can put money in the bank. At least convert it to Euros or something, the dollar is getting weaker!

        What do you think, that they just toss it into a checking account? When a company has "cash" that doesn't mean there are bags of money laying around. Of course it gets invested. And they make a lot of money doing so.

        And your statement about "at least convert it to Euros" is naive. If you really think you can predict currency exchange rates, believe me, you'll be able to afford

      • Re:do something with the cash! (Score:4, Informative)

        by UnknowingFool (672806) on Friday May 11 2007, @09:11AM (#19082319)
        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.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by MECC (8478) *


          Well, it has been going up lately, [lenntech.com] but MS stock outperformed [google.com] it (click the Max zoom in the upper right hand area of the graph). A much better investment might be copper. I read an article years ago by an economic geologist (haven't found a link to it though) in which it was stated that at current known copper reserves, there isn't enough copper to wire the third world to the same extent the industrialized nations are wired (power and communications). Wireless may change that, but the third world still
  • 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.
  • 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? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 10 2007, @10:17PM (#19078495)
      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.
    • 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: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Short Circuit (52384) *

      Knowing the whole story now it really does look like
      Uh, you've heard his side of the story. What other side have you heard, that you might reasonably claim to heard the whole thing?

      It's not that I don't like Jobs and Apple; I'd love to get me some of that pearly fruit, if I had the money. It's just that I don't take what individual people say as the whole story.

      • Re:What other side...? (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Greenpeace's side. We heard from them first. They started this, remember? ("Apple are teh 5uxx0rz! Clean it up already!")

        Then we heard a reply from Apple ("We were already doing that, like 12 years ago, so shaddup.").

        Greenpeace got their response in ("See they changed their policy because of us! We r0x0rz!").

        So we have now heard from both sides.
        And Apple pwned Greenpeace. FTW.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by falcon5768 (629591)
        Well up till now all we have heard is analysts, who have said everything from there was nothing wrong, to its a boodbath and Apple's going under.

        Both the FTC and Apple have been quiet since they where told not to talk about it.

        The fact that Jobs has finally said the nature of the stock options issue, that it dealt with the fact that Apple's stock has been going up and up and within the days time between being awarded and actually getting the stock, its price increased, leads you to believe thats it, the

    • Re:Anyone notice a change in Jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tm2b (42473) on Friday May 11 2007, @01:40PM (#19087787) Journal
      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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by falcon5768 (629591)
        No he was. I worked as a Apple Rep back in 00-02, and my boss used to tell me stories about him. People at Apple really WHERE scared of him when he came back as CEO (rather iCEO at the time) While Im sure he wanted that image to get people at Apple doing their best (since he is a well known perfectionist) you dont get that image by petting kitties and buying ice cream for little kids.

        As it was not long after he told me some of the stories, he and 700 other people in the Education branch of Apple where fir

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

      Maybe Mr. Jobs only "works" 10 minutes a year or so...

      • Re:Jobs on his salary: (Score:4, Informative)

        by dr.badass (25287) on Friday May 11 2007, @08:12AM (#19081609) Homepage
        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.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by GaryPatterson (852699)
        He may be a marketing genius, but he's also brought Apple from insignificance to centre-stage prominence, and the share prices reflect that.

        I argue that all executives above a certain level should be on $1/year salary, with other money coming in based purely on performance. If the alternative (the current state) is huge bonuses on top of already huge salaries when the company is tanking and workers are getting shafted, then it'd be an improvement. It should also make executives focus on longer term success

  • Cryptic Jobs (Score:4, Funny)

    by asifyoucare (302582) on Thursday May 10 2007, @10:20PM (#19078513)
    What the hell did he mean by "Service Temporarily Unavailable", and what question was that in response to?

  • "iPhone out in June" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vertigoCiel (1070374) on Thursday May 10 2007, @11:01PM (#19078797)
    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.
    • The Apple TV box has nowhere near the same amount of demand as the iPhone or leopard, if he delayed both that would be very bad considering he moved devs from Leopard to the iPhone team..

  • 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 week

    • Re:roughlydrafted.com article == blog entry? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2007, @12:45AM (#19079401)
      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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by base2_celtic (56328)

      Eran is in a tough position. He has a fervent dislike of biased journalism. He also has a known interest in (and love of) many Apple products. This makes it difficult for him to write on these topics, and still appear detatched.

      He's passionate, certainly. Angry at some Microsoft shills? Obviously. Biased? No, I don't think so. The reason I think that way is because of the way he puts his influences and beliefs up front. He doesn't hide them. He doesn't pretend they exist. He references constantly, and prov

      • Obviously. Biased? No, I don't think so. The reason I think that way is because of the way he puts his influences and beliefs up front.

        Sorry? He's not biased because he admits to his bias upfront?

        You're a moron.
        • I completely agree with your post apart from the sentence

          Hes a complete and utter Apple shill,
          I find it hard to believe that Apple would pay someone to write a blog as stupid & irritating as Roughly Drafted. Their money's better spent on more subtle shillery.
    • Daniel Eran was busted spamming digg [googlepages.com] and consquently banned.

      Not only is that site biased, but it attempts to push its bias onto other sites. I think it's a real pity that Slashdot accepts submissions from there.
    • Even though campaigning like this is often viewed as obnoxious and the author of the article sure seemed to think so, it's motivated several big companies to clean up their act.

      Case in point, Ikea, which is nowadays greener and more ethical than any number of small furniture retailers, even the mom-and-pop operations that probably sell the worst kind of child labour produced rainforest wood furniture there is.

      This due to being vocal about the problems by that company and now it turns out that if you want to
  • 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" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nanosquid (1074949) on Friday May 11 2007, @01:58AM (#19079743)
    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" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by beelsebob (529313) on Friday May 11 2007, @04:56AM (#19080513)
      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" (Score:4, Insightful)

          by That's Unpossible! (722232) on Friday May 11 2007, @12:08PM (#19085929)
          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
  • They get their iPhone out

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

  • Did he talk about... (Score:3, Funny)

    by djones101 (1021277) on Friday May 11 2007, @06:58AM (#19081025)
    the iRack and the iRan?

    • Re:Green Mfg (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hardburn (141468) <[ten.evac-supmuw] [ta] [nrubdrah]> on Thursday May 10 2007, @10:58PM (#19078767)

      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 (Score:4, Insightful)

          by porcupine8 (816071) on Friday May 11 2007, @09:32AM (#19082691) Journal
          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 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ktappe (747125) on Thursday May 10 2007, @11:52PM (#19079101)
      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 (Score:5, Insightful)

          by LKM (227954) on Friday May 11 2007, @06:11AM (#19080815) Homepage

          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 (Score:4, Insightful)

                by LKM (227954) on Friday May 11 2007, @02:01PM (#19088123) Homepage
                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:We Love You Steve! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gnasher719 (869701) on Friday May 11 2007, @05:55AM (#19080741)
        '' 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.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.