Posts tagged with "steve jobs"

Steve Jobs Confirms iTunes Extras and iTunes LP “Coming” to Apple TV

Apple introduced iTunes Extras and LPs together with iTunes 9 in September 2009, but they never really took off. With a recent email reply to a MacRumors reader, though, Steve Jobs confirmed support for the two features is coming to the 2nd gen Apple TV, which being based on iOS doesn’t support Extras and LP out of the box.

Q: I’ve been a massive fan of the original Apple TV since it launched, in fact I have 2 of my own and have bought a fair few as gifts over the years. So as soon as the new Apple TV was released I bought one. Overall it’s a fantastic update for me as I always stream from my Mac mini anyway. But here’s the kicker - Where are iTunes Extras and iTunes LP gone? I’ve purposely been buying content with those features just for my Apple TVs. And now the features are unusable on my new box?! Is there an update coming to fix this?

A: Coming.

Sent from my iPhone.

Apple is expected to release a firmware update for the Apple TV to bring full support for AirPlay, and that would be the right time to bring iTunes LP and Extra compatibility back as well. The update could drop as early as next week, but when it comes to Jobs’ emails you never know if he’s joking or not. As MacRumors also speculates, iTunes LPs would make perfect sense on the iPad, with a larger screen capable of really enriching the experience of music albums and videos. Personally, I think that’d be the only way I could ever buy an iTunes LP.

Steve Jobs: USB 3.0 Not Happening on Macs “At This Time”

9to5mac reports of a new email from Steve Jobs to a user who asked whether Apple would integrate USB 3.0 on Macs in the near future. Jobs, as you may guess, said no. But it wasn’t his usual “nope”:

We don’t see USB 3 taking off at this time. No support from Intel, for example.

So according to Jobso, it’s not that USB 3.0 is never happening. “Not at this time”, and lack of Intel support is mentioned as an example for their decision to exclude USB 3.0 on current Macs.

Can you believe Jobs’ words, though?

Steve Jobs Is “Back to the Jet”

Steve Jobs is back in the air. Well not the Air (which apparently is doing great), but literally in the air with his private jet. Taking a look at Apple’s 10K form for fiscal year 2010, Fortune noticed a $93,000 reimbursement to Steve Jobs for private jet expenses in Q4 2010, namely fuel and pilot salaries.

Private jet expenses accounted to only $12,000 in Q3. Clearly Steve traveled a lot during the last quarter, and we can only speculate about the people he met and the deals he closed.

Read more

Steve Jobs Was “Furious” Over Microsoft’s Bungie Acquisition

For those of you not familiar with the videogame industry: the blockbuster series Halo for Xbox and Xbox 360 is developed by Bungie, a company Microsoft acquired in 2000 to make Halo: Combat Evolved a launch title for the original Xbox. In 2007, Bungie became a privately held company; then earlier this year Bungie announced a 10-year publishing deal with industry giant Activision Blizzard.

According to a report published by Develop,  Steve Jobs was literally “furious” when Microsoft announced they had acquired Bungie in 2000, and called Steve Ballmer as soon as he learned about the deal. Read more

So This Would Be Steve Jobs’ Business Card in 1979

Business cards used to be simpler, and even Steve Jobs used to have one. This comes straight from the 1979 archives, discovered by a couple of techies somewhere in California.

Mozilla Labs director and tech-enthusiast Pascal Finette photographed Jobs’ groovy card after a colleague brought it into the office. According to Finette, Apple still uses the phone number seen on the card, but don’t give it a ring thinking you’ll get a direct line to Steve.

I can confirm that number is still active, but it’s definitely not Steve’s number anymore. As Finette also reports (but you can’t notice by the photo), Steve wanted an embossed Apple logo in the business cards.

“Integration” As A New Way To Define iOS

In case you missed it, Steve Jobs made a surprise appearance at today’s Apple Q4 earnings call. What he had to say about 7-inch tablets, Android, Nokia, RIM and Apple’s philosophy is all over the internet. You can read a full transcript here.

Reading between the lines, what strikes me is the focus Steve put on the word “integrated”. The iOS platform is integrated, Android is fragmented. With the iPhone, you get an integrated device. You don’t have to mess with hundreds of different devices running multiple versions and variations of the Android OS. But that’s not really the point, we get Steve’s thoughts on Android. Tweetdeck’s developers get them even more.

What interests me is the use of the term “integrated” as a new way of defining iOS, and thus the devices is runs on, against competitors. By definition, to integrate means to “combine two or more elements so that they become a whole”. So it’s clear that, in Jobs’ mind, Apple deeply integrated the hardware with the software to create a new, reliable, user-friendly experience. Read more

Complete Transcript Of Today’s Steve Jobs Statements→

Complete Transcript Of Today’s Steve Jobs Statements

This one pretty much sums it all up:

Nokia makes $50 handsets, and we don’t know how to make a great smartphone for $50. We’re not smart enough to have figured that one out yet, but believe me I’ll let you know when we do. And so our goal is to make really breakthrough great products, make the best products in every industry that we compete in, and to drive the cost down while constantly making the products better at the same time. That’s what we did with iPod. We updated our products many times every year with better functionality, often times at same price and sometimes at a lower price. And it was the relentless improvement at in some cases a lower price, that was able to beat our competition and yield the market share that it did.

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