Jobs chided, answers questions at shareholder meeting

Yeah, we tend to think things like shareholder meetings are as boring as the next guy (well, the next guy who's not a stock broker, anyway), but Steve really took and dished out some heat at yesterday's get together.

On Leopard's delay: "Leopard will be worth the wait. I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If so, then Microsoft would have great products." (Snap!)

On the iPhone: "A few of us have been using the iPhone a lot and if you wanted it back, you would have to pry it from our dead hands."

On iTunes movie rentals: "One never knows."

After being grilled by AFL/CIO on stock backdating: "I actually got my options at a higher price, but I didn't ask the company to reimburse me"

On Anderson's comments: "I've worked with Fred for many years and I think he's an awfully good guy, but I thought his comments were a little wrong."

Despite being lauded by Greenpeace reps for "A Greener Apple", he opined: "I think [Greenpeace] particularly depends too much on principle and not enough on fact. You guys rate people based on what people say their plans are in the distant future, not what they are doing today. I think you put way too much weight on these glorified principles and way too little weight on science and engineering. It would be very helpful if your organization hired a few more engineers and actually entered into dialog with companies to find out what they are really doing and not just listen to all the flowery language when in reality most of them aren't doing anything. That's my opinion."

It ain't easy being Steve.

[Henry @ May 11th 2007 10:38AM]

Ah hah hah! That first one was classic! I wish I could be as witty as old Steve!

And way to stick it to those greenpeace hippies too.

[f00b4r @ May 11th 2007 10:42AM]

Ahahaha.. yeah that was a classic joke.. Oh wait.. no it wasn't!

Not even remotely witty. It was actually a rather tired attempt at cleverness.

[o rly @ May 11th 2007 10:47AM]

What's funnier is Microsoft made $14.40 BILLION from January 1st 2007 - March 31, 2007 mainly due to Vista & more importantly Office. If that's an easy cheque to write, I wouldn't mind having it in my name.

[Henry @ May 11th 2007 10:47AM]

I was being facetious.

[Jonathan Keim @ May 11th 2007 10:46AM]

I've always liked Steve, but he was a big show off this time.

[Yayaja @ May 11th 2007 10:55AM]

Leopard will be worth the wait? Developing great products takes time huh? Yeah about as much time as it takes to incorporate the newest Linux features into the Mac OS and put enough marketing spin on them to make them seem original. And someone like Jobs needn't concern himself with writing checks for these features like Microsoft does, since Linux is open source anyway. (Oh Snap!)

[k0a10 @ May 11th 2007 11:07AM]

The newest Linux features? Virtual desktops have been an X (Unix windowing) feature for a long time (maybe 20 years). For the versioned file system, however, you'd have to look to VMS from the 60s. Oh, but the Mac has a whizzy view on top of it!

(by the way, I'm typing this on a Mac, and glad to see them providing good quality, accessible implementations of these features - it's criminal that no consumer OS has provided easy backup features - but the hype is a bit thick some times).

[andy @ May 11th 2007 11:07AM]

erm, i think you may have that the wrong way around, yes apple chose nextstep as the platform for osx which is based on unix but not linux, apple gives back to the open source community too, look at darwin project

[zargon @ Feb 1st 2008 7:45AM]

No, not linux... BSD!

BSD license is where its at, take all the code you want and then hide behind the license as you make money off of your product.

[zargon @ May 11th 2007 11:35AM]

No, not linux... BSD!

BSD license is where its at, take all the code you want and then hide behind the license as you make money off of your product.

Giving back to the community, Darwin? Please, yet another distro among many. Darwin is vanilla as it comes and provides nothing real tangible to the community. It just gives Apple some PR to try to feed us.

[andy @ May 11th 2007 11:03AM]

Job is getting too cocky

[james @ May 11th 2007 11:33AM]

getting?

[John Doe @ May 12th 2007 12:23AM]

"Job is getting too cocky"

Getting? The man is an outright asshole, and only the fanbois licking his ass think otherwise. The man is full of piss and wind.

[jon.leopold @ May 11th 2007 11:09AM]

Good for him ripping on Greenpeace. They deserve it after their "totally not based on actual facts" report card for the industry.

[Rick @ May 11th 2007 11:19AM]

You guys are so smart with so many well thought-out opinions. Does is hurt to be amongst the rest of us?

[Yaya @ May 11th 2007 11:30AM]

It does hurt, buy only when one of you, while driving your Chevy Suburban, drinking coffee, eating a burger, checking your hair in the mirror, smoking a cigarette and trying to find the your favorite Christina Aguilera song on your ipod all at the same time runs one of us over, driving our smart little Hondas (and drinking Green Tea).

[Rick @ May 11th 2007 11:49AM]

Interesting assumptions. I'm surprised you see anyone looking down your nose like that.

[billstevenson @ May 11th 2007 11:30AM]

BEGIN ENGADGET COMMENT
[Pseudo intellectual comment to make it look like I read the article here]

[link to my weblog here, which is why I posted the comment]
END ENGADGET COMMENT

[tundraboy @ May 11th 2007 11:31AM]

Ooh, Ow! Touche, that jab on Greenpeace really hit home.
I'm no Greenpeace hater though. I think they are great when it comes to calling attention to threatened species and habitat.

But they hurt their credibility with the 'Green My Apple' campaign. And outifts like Greenpeace, credibility is their only currency and if they throw that away then they lose their effectiveness.

And the sad thing is, given Jobs' own background and personal philosophy, if they approached him differently they could have signed him on as a partner. Instead they chose to antagonize him with a sensationalist, fact-bending, publicity-seeking stunt.

But Greenpeace couldn't help themselves, can they? Well, that's the nature of all true-believer types.

[andy @ May 11th 2007 2:19PM]

I don't hate Greenpeace either, but Jobs nailed them to a T.

Why worry about what people SAY they're going to do (and never do), when you can look at what people ARE doing and praise/deride them based on that?

Green living is going to come in one fell swoop. It's about IMPROVING what we're doing now. Just look at ALL industries and economies, it's about evolution of the industry and practices, not about MASSIVE, un-tested, un-regulated changes in the fundamental business. No one will do that, but they will change one little thing at a time.

[Matt @ May 12th 2007 10:45PM]

Apple's engineers take a lot of open-source projects that aren't quite ready for inclusion in a mainstream OS, improve them, and give back as much code as possible. KHTML is a great example of a framework that's been massively improved, and as a result, Apple, Nokia, and other companies have reaped the benefits.

There's a whole list of projects on Apple's public source website. I suggest you check it out before you dismiss Apple's contributions to Open Source.

http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html

[zargon @ May 13th 2007 12:58PM]

I know full well about Apple's opensource page and like I said... Apple has given back nothing real tangible to the community.

[Jim @ May 11th 2007 11:40AM]

Jobs is an ass. If Apple were to disappear tomorrow, what we we really be losing? A bunch of iPods. .Mac Pages?

[Tim @ May 11th 2007 11:48AM]

Jim, you could say the same about every other company... so I guess my question is.. if you don't like Jobs, why did you even bother reading the article?

[Jim @ May 11th 2007 12:11PM]

Because I love to see Jobs acting like child and taking immature potshots at Microsoft. It only helps reinforce was a baby he is. And it's because of his attitude that Mac market share will always be low. My point was that Apple contribution to the computing world have been very slim in the past 10 years. Hopefully, you don't me to explain that to you either.

[BandB @ May 11th 2007 1:04PM]

a more interesting observation would be if Apple never exhisted. Comman and Conquer 2 style

and isn't it just as childish to bask in someone else's childishness.

[Killian @ May 11th 2007 4:21PM]

we would have... even worse (is that possible?) microsoft products, as they would have no one to copy/compete against

[Jim @ May 11th 2007 10:38PM]

@BandB

I'm not "basking" in Jobs immaturity. I'm stunned and appalled by it. Sorry if that wasn't quite clear to you. Cheers.

[Jim @ May 11th 2007 10:39PM]

@Killian

"we would have... even worse (is that possible?) microsoft products, as they would have no one to copy/compete against"

Wow, very original line of thought. Let's see, Leopard's Mail.app has a to-do list....innovative.

[Tim @ May 14th 2007 8:37AM]

Can anyone just up and use this name? Then what was the point in me bothering to register the name "Tim"? If I had known there was no name checking I would've used something a bit more elaborate...

[Camperton @ May 11th 2007 12:06PM]

Jobs may be an a-hole but he is an a-hole with a vision for his company and he is right 88 percent of the time.

by the way I have been using Vista for the last week... is this some kind of sick joke? It's like xp with a skin on it. Sad.

[Jim @ May 11th 2007 12:13PM]

Ouch, another cheap shot at Vista. Wow, that was easy.

[crescentdavid @ May 11th 2007 12:11PM]

Yeah. Greenpeace sucks. Yeah. Vista is XP with a skin. Yeah. I'm an iDiot. I worship a corporation. That's right. A corporation. And nobody, I mean, NOBODY, can tell me my corporation isn't BETTER in every way that ANY other corporation out there. That's why Greenpeace, which gave kudos to OTHER companies but not my beloved CORPORATION, sux.

Sincerely,

unbiased tea/coolaid drinker

P.S. Apple RULEZ!

[Greenline @ May 11th 2007 1:44PM]

Amen, speak it my brotha! (or sista!)

[tundraboy @ May 11th 2007 12:32PM]

Re Vista cheap shot.

But it's true. Vista is like the revived Chevy Malibu.
Fancy new exterior but under the hood is a 35 year old iron-block pushrod V6 engine.

[daliminator2000 @ May 11th 2007 3:57PM]

Aaactually, I'd say that's an incorrect analogy. Vista has a lot going on under the hood that the average end-user doesn't see.

[caleb @ May 11th 2007 12:40PM]

I usually stay away from these cat fights, but I just thought I'd interject to simply say this:
My friend used to use Macs way back in the day (OS 7-8ish)and I used to tease the hell out of him. I called them Speak & Spells. I finally talked him into converting to Windows around 1998-1999. But that was then and this is now. Now I think I have to admit that I am a Fanboy. It took about 5 years of stray glances at OS X. Sneaking a peak here and there. Trying not to get caught. What sold me was a combination of the UI, the BSD back end, and the one think Linux, which I was running at the time, could never give me. Major application support. Now that I've crossed over, I see these arguments and I think, "Why bother?" I know how great a Mac is for me. As long as Apple is doing well enough to keep supporting and improving my platform of choice, I'll be happy. And as long as their profits continue to exceed those of any other PC manufacturer I don't think that will be a problem. I don't care if everyone uses it. Their market share is irrelevant to me. My friend still don't get it though. "I thought you didn't like Macs?"

[Pierce @ May 11th 2007 1:03PM]

"A shareholder from Vancouver, British Columbia asked why an Apple Store has not come to his city yet. “Patience is a virtue and your patience will be rewarded soon,” said Ron Johnson, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Retail."

THANK GOD. We've been waiting for bloody ages.

[Eric Aitala @ May 11th 2007 1:39PM]

eh...

[mike @ May 11th 2007 3:18PM]

He can say what he wants about Greenpeace because he has Global Warming Boi (Gore) has his back.
--

He can talk because Apple is doing really important things in this area.
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/

His frustration was that Apple wasn't getting credit for what they were doing (woo.. deja vu) and other companies were getting cred for what they said they would do.. which is worthless.

[mike @ May 11th 2007 3:27PM]

Global Warming Boi (Gore) has his back.
--

Okay now I'm just being a prick, but let this be a lesson to all the other geeks out there.

Saying an inside joke that only you get (as demonstrated by the fact that... he had to explain it) is hurting.
Rule of thumb. Geeks do it all the time.

[blademonkey @ May 11th 2007 3:30PM]

"On Leopard's delay: "Leopard will be worth the wait. I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If so, then Microsoft would have great products." (Snap!)"

That's a funny comment considering that Microsoft helped save apple in the late 1990s by investing 150 Million in them. I guess writing checks can make dicks even bigger.

[plaidpjs @ May 11th 2007 4:38PM]

Okay, I was gonna stay out of this one... but, sometimes you read "stupid shiite" like this and HAVE to just say, "smack-you very much!"

Microsoft did not, out of the goodness of their hearts invest in poor little old Apple to keep them afloat. The $150 million cash injhection was a PAYOFF!!! Microsoft, on the verge of facing serious anti-competition and anti-monopoly inquiries, wanted a long nagging court battle to go away before they lost and lost their shirts at the same time.

You know, that little fact that they ripped off every aspect of the Mac OS to make Windows. Now, choose to look at that anyway you want, but it doesn't avert the truth. Microsoft paid to have Apple back off on the their copyright infringement litigation.

Now as for the rest of you asking what big of a difference the computing world would be without Apple, particularly in the last 10 years, well, let's review, working roughly backward in time:

- no facility to access TV or MP content over the web

- no legal facility to buy music off the web... also, another claimed flop by most of the Windows world when it was announced

- no HDD based PMPs or, at the very least, ones that are still only in their infancy and relegated to a niche market... recalling the fact that when Apple released the first iPod, no one believed it would be a product that sold because in the infinite wisdomm of the Windows world, no one wanted the things

- little to no integration of cameras into computers... yes, that's right, Apple put them in their laptops first and showed that there was a section of the market that considered that a valuable feature and followed that up by bringing the same system to their desktops

- little to no integration of bluetooth in computers in general... once again, Apple saw the viability of the technology long before other PC makers

- no Firewire or major move to digital video for the average consumer... this is an Apple technology after all

- little to no forward progress in bringing digital entertainment creation to the masses... iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand have all been widely acclaimed applications that have led to the virtual verbatim copying of their features and interfaces by Microsoft (the quality of those copies, of course, are subject to interpretation - mine is, they aren't very good).

- little to no integration of Lucent's infant technology 802.11, thus no Wi-Fi movement of the modern day... it was Apple that proved it's viability in consumer computer systems 3 years before it was ever an option in a mainstream PC, let alone in a PC as a standard feature

- no WYSIWYG, no typography

- no GUI... let us remember, while not strictly an Apple advance, Xerox was ready to scrap the project altogether and warehouse its results before Apple showed up to buy it and then adapt it to consumer computing

- no mouse... again, a technology that was going to be scrapped because no one accept Apple saw the potential of the device

- an infant peronal computing marketplace... Apple was a major piece of bringing that market into existence and was the early sustainer of keeping it alive and viable

But, I'm biased... I believe in looking at fact and I'm an Apple fan-boi.

Ciao!

[Jeff Foster @ May 11th 2007 3:50PM]

interesting article... i think Jobs may be a bit cocky but has just about every right to be. who doesn't like an underdog story?

The comments on this article, though, sheesh... what a bunch of pissy little babies (on both sides of the fence.) why get so worked up over nonsense? - get a hobby.

[Travis @ May 11th 2007 4:18PM]

Whatever Steve...just hurry and release the damn iPhone.

[o rly @ May 11th 2007 7:08PM]

Hello plaidpjs,

Your post is full of lies and inaccuracies, it's sad, especially when you took the time to write so much. There's not much fact there, and your post reeks of someone who has been drinking Steve Jobs' kool-aid for so long, they've lost all sense of "truthiness."

[plaidpjs @ May 12th 2007 1:55PM]

LOL....

Show me the lies and inaccuracies. Prove what you say. Everything in that post is fact, the only exception being where the respective markets and technologies would be today without Apple doing what they did.

So, stfu or actually prove me wrong. Simply claiming I am means nothing.

[Deezee @ May 11th 2007 6:40PM]

I really think if Steve Jobs stepped down, I could get into the whole mac thing. Apple makes some cool products, but I cant stand Steve Jobs. He's way too cocky and arrogant. I refuse to support that guy and be part of the drones that follow his every command. Bleh.

[AJacobson @ May 12th 2007 6:15AM]

I don't get why so many people not using Apple are constantly bashing Apple/Jobs for just being Apple/Jobs.

I used to radiate hate to Microsoft when I was using it because it affected me negatively on a daily basis from DOS 3.3 to WIN XP SP2. One of the reasons to make me switch to OS X in 2004 was that I never heard of any discontent Apple users, being not pissed by your computer was a concept that I didn't understand at that time.

Immediately after switching to Apple I stopped hating Microsoft because it didn't affect me any more. So why can anyone hate Apple or its management when you neither use it, nor does its tiny market-share affect you? Jealousy of the happiness of others?

There is so much anger in Windows-Users, I wonder where that comes from.

AJ

[o rly @ May 12th 2007 7:30AM]

I've taken your post, respectively replaced a few words, and you have the same argument for Zune users.

"I don't get why so many people not using the Zune are constantly bashing Microsoft/Zune for just being Microsoft/Zune.

So why can anyone hate Microsofot or its Zune when you neither use it, nor does its tiny market-share affect you? Jealousy of the happiness of others?

There is so much anger in Apple/iPod-Users, I wonder where that comes from."

See what I did there? It goes both ways. For examples of what I'm talking about, look at the comments in http://www.engadget.com/search/?q=zune posts.