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Posts tagged with "jobs"

Steve Jobs Interview Covering the First Month of the App Store Released by The Wall Street Journal→

One month after the App Store debuted, Nick Wingfield of The Wall Street Journal sat down with Steve Jobs to see how it was going. Today, The Wall Street Journal released a full transcript and audio of the interview on their site. The interview is behind the Journal’s paywall, but it’s worth a read or listen if you have access to it.

At the time of Jobs’ conversation with Wingfield, there were over 1500 apps on the Store, and Jobs estimated around 50 were being added each day. According to Jobs, of the 1500+ apps on the App Store:

27% of them are free, leaving 73% paid. Of the paid apps, over 90% are under $10.

Jobs put the numbers in perspective by comparing them to iTunes downloads:

Users have downloaded over 60 million apps from the App Store in the first 30 days…. That is 30% as big as iTunes for music downloads.

Jobs went on to explain what that meant to developers:

The total revenue has been $30 million in the first 30 days. Developers get 70% of that. Developers get $21 million. Nine of that $21 million is going to the top 10 developers. A lot of small developers are making a lot of money.

What can only be captured by the audio of the interview, is Jobs’ apparently sincere astonishment at the success of the App Store. In retrospect, it’s amusing to hear Jobs speculate that the App Store might someday reach $1 billion in revenue when we know now that it’s paid out a net to developers of $100 billion:

We’re already at a $360 million a year run rate. This thing is going to crest to half a billion soon.

Who knows? Maybe it’ll be a billion dollar marketplace at some point in time. This doesn’t happen very often. A whole new billion dollar market opens up. 360 million in the first 30 days, I’ve never seen anything like this in my career for software.

Although I’m surprised that The Wall Street Journal waited more than two weeks after the 10th anniversary of the App Store to release the interview, I’m glad they did. The interview is full of interesting facts about the early App Store and a unique insight into Steve Jobs’ reaction to the Store’s runaway success. I highly recommend you listen if you can.

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Apple Investing €1.7 billion to Build Data Centers in Ireland and Denmark→

An Apple Press release this morning announced that the company will be investing €1.7 billion (US$1.93 billion) to build and operate two new European data centers. The two data centers, one in County Galway, Ireland and the other in Denmark’s central Jutland, will both be powered by 100 percent renewable energy according to Apple. The two new European data centers are expected to be in operation in 2017 and will be used to power Apple’s various online services including the iTunes Store, App Store, iMessage, Maps and Siri.

“We are grateful for Apple’s continued success in Europe and proud that our investment supports communities across the continent,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “This significant new investment represents Apple’s biggest project in Europe to date. We’re thrilled to be expanding our operations, creating hundreds of local jobs and introducing some of our most advanced green building designs yet.”

In its press release, Apple focuses on how they have continued to support jobs in Europe, claiming that they support over 672,000 jobs in the region and paying out €6.6 billion to European app developers. The press release also makes particular and repeated reference to the fact that these new data centers will be powered by 100 percent renewable energy, one of the key environmental benchmarks the company has been keen to demonstrate in recent years.

“We believe that innovation is about leaving the world better than we found it, and that the time for tackling climate change is now,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environmental Initiatives. “We’re excited to spur green industry growth in Ireland and Denmark and develop energy systems that take advantage of their strong wind resources. Our commitment to environmental responsibility is good for the planet, good for our business and good for the European economy.”

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Macworld’s Review of “Jobs”→

Philip Michaels reviews “Jobs” (opening in US theaters today):

But the script abandons these elements almost as soon as they appear, and the movie makers’ focus returns to marking off spaces on the Steve Jobs biography bingo card. Jobs sitting enraptured during a class about fonts? Check. Jobs tricking Woz out of his share of a bonus for developing Atari’s Breakout? Check. Jobs showing off the “1984” Macintosh commercial in its entirety? Check and mate. “This is like a video Wikipedia entry,” my colleague Armando Rodriguez told me after we finished screening the movie. That’s a harsh but not entirely inaccurate critique.

This is a common critique I’ve read in other reviews of Jobs as well. It would have been great to have something more than a documentary of Steve’s life and mannerisms starring Kutcher. I’ll still watch the movie, but I’m hoping Sorkin’s take will be something different and deeper.

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Apple Hunting For People To Beef Up ‘New Product Security’

Following last week’s news that Apple had lost another iPhone prototype, PC Mag has discovered that Apple is now hiring for two positions that are titled “New Product Security Managers”. Curiously, the positions became available just a day after CNet reported that an iPhone 5 prototype had been lost at a San Francisco bar.

That’s probably somewhat of a coincidence, but it’s clear Apple wants to step up its efforts in safeguarding future products and its intellectual property, describing the new jobs as follows:

The candidate will be responsible for overseeing the protection of, and managing risks to, Apple’s unreleased products and related intellectual property. Position will reside in Cupertino, California and will require up to 30% travel (international and domestic).

The individual will collaborate with other security managers by contributing to, and managing execution of, strategic initiatives set forth by Director, Global Security.

That ‘Director of Global Security’ is David Rice, a former NSA vulnerability analyst and author of ‘Geekonomics’, a book that discused “the astonishing lack of consumer protection in the software market and how this impacts economic and national security”. He was hired by Apple back in January of this year, after Apple also hired Window Snyder as Apple’s senior security product manager in March of 2010.

[PC Mag via CNet]

Tim Cook, Apple CEO

Yesterday afternoon brought the big news that Steve Jobs had resigned from the position of Apple CEO (he is now Chairman of Apple’s Board), along with that came the news that Tim Cook will now permanently take over as Apple CEO. Cook had been acting CEO since January this year when Jobs went on medical leave – Cook now has to step up and officially lead Apple, which recently became the most valuable company in the world.

But unlike Jobs who is known to a sizeable proportion of general society and has quite a reputation, Cook is fairly unknown. As Cook today begins his first official day as the CEO of Apple we’ve written this post to give you, our readers, a little bit of background of Tim Cook and what he is like. Be sure to jump the break to read our succinct biography of him along with some fascinating additional reading and videos.

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Former Apple VP Shares Thoughts on Steve Jobs→

Former Apple VP Shares Thoughts on Steve Jobs

Former senior vice president at Apple Jay Elliot shares some details and thoughts about Steve Jobs’ “modus operandi” in a recent article at Forbes. That’s an interesting read that, overall, seems to confirm what most people think about Jobs’ way of leading Apple to success:

Rare among corporate leaders, Steve has never made decisions based on a concern for market reaction. He simply is not influenced by whether investors and market analysts will think he’s doing the right thing. But the financial community has come to have confidence in him: his track record for making the right decisions is hard to argue with.

Now Steve is following the same frustrating modus operandi about the question of who will take over the helm of Apple should be be forced to step down for health reasons. Everyone who has ever worked closely with Steve knows that, for him, relinquishing control over any aspect of the company or its products is — well, difficult, to put it politely.

The key point, however, is this:

Over the years, Steve has generated a nearly uncanny ability to recognize talent and to recruit almost everyone he has ever set his eye on. The result is a team that inspires confidence for the future.

Many people still think Steve Jobs does everything at Apple from coding to design to marketing and app development, but they don’t understand Apple as a company is “simply” a well-oiled and functioning machine made of talented people.

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Steve Jobs Almost Received An Honourary Knighthood

A former British MP has revealed to The Telegraph that Steve Jobs was close to being offered a knighthood in 2009 for his services to technology. According to the former MP, the proposal for his knighthood was blocked because Jobs had previously refused to speak at a British political event.

The former senior British MP told The Telegraph that he had nominated Steve Jobs for knighthood and that despite reaching the final stages of approval, was inevitably refused by Downing Street. He claims that they explained the refusal was based on Jobs’ refusal to attend an annual Labor conference, just his appearance at the event would have been a big political win for Gordon Brown.

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Apple’s Succession Proposal? Rejected

At Apple’s shareholders meeting today in the company’s Town Hall auditorium, a proposal to reveal Apple’s succession plan was rejected. For many months now, speculation has arisen that Apple should reveal its succession plans for Steve Jobs’ retirement (which, you know, is going to happen eventually) – but the company always refused to give out details, that are likely already in place, fearing repercussions in the management sphere with names of executives to succeed Jobs going public.

Apple COO Tim Cook took the stage today to introduce the board of directors, whose seven members – including Jobs – were reelected.

The most controversial shareholder proposal – that Apple adopt a detailed succession plan – was introduced about 20 minutes later. According to the representative of the Central Laborers’ Pension Fund who introduced it, Proposal No. 5 did not require the company to name names, she said, so management’s fears about the proposal were unfounded.

Apple has a succession plan for when Steve Jobs will leave, but they don’t want anyone to know just yet.

Shazam’s Music Sourcers Add Jobs To Music Industry, Give Music Lovers Their Ultimate Job

Shazam the popular music-identifying app on mobile phones is giving some music aficionados their ultimate job, listening to new music all day as a ‘music sourcer’. The New York Times spoke to one such person working for Shazam, Charles Slomovitz whose job requires him to hunt down new music and artists to ensure Shazam’s music-identifying engine can identify song that its users may hear.

Shazam has grown to a user base of over 100 million users who ping the service 3 million times a day, and Andrew Fisher, Shazam’s chief executive says that “when people use a service like Shazam, they expect it to work all the time”. As a result Mr. Slomovitz and others around the world who find new music are vital to ensure the accuracy of Shazam, which is available in over 200 countries. Similarly Pandora has also created new jobs in the music industry with its so called ‘musicologists’ who analyze songs on the basis of numerous characteristics to give users the ability to find similar music.

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