Apple's Shareholder Meeting Notes: Leopard, Apple TV, Research

[gnasher729]

They did this when they shipped iPods with windows viruses on them. Instead of just biting the bullet and putting an outright appology, they actually had the gall to blame microsoft for allowing viruses on their systems (when they were the ones spreading the virus in the first place!).

Well, the one spreading the virus in the first place was someone making spot checks of iPods to see if they were working correctly, using a Windows machine to do this, and that PC was infected by a virus and copied the virus to the iPods.

You are quite correct that whoever was responsible for having this PC infected should take a lot of the blame; it is hard to say whether Apple should be blamed for not finding the viruses because the virus was actually added in the process of checking the iPods. You could surely blame them for using Windows anywhere in the process of making iPods - which is what Jobs did.

 

[rahrens]

not so slow

Bash Microsoft all you want for all the holes they have, but they at least get stuff patched quickly. Imagine if they didn't get stuff patched as quickly, and imagine Apple in those shoes...

I think after this last update, when they patched the QT vulnerability found at CanSecWest in TEN DAYS, you can't really cast Apple in the part of being slow to patch vulnerabilities. Perhaps they have been in the past, but their record is improving.

As for M$, I've heard plenty of people complain about them being slow to release patches. Even some rather critical patches have waited for the next release cycle, and there have been others that have waited several before release.

Sorry, but M$ isn't a standard to watch, they're a standard to avoid!

 

[johnee]

As an Apple Inc. shareholder, and part owner of the company, here is how I see it. The Board DOES and SHOULD run the company. Special interest groups should stay home

who the hell do you think is on the board? members of UNICEF?

anyone on a board of a company IS a special interest group.

 

[johnee]

<every post on this thread>

what a delicious divide MR has become from Steve's few words

 

[mags631]

Actually, his claim was correct. I paid $30 for QT Pro 4, only to have the abilities I paid for, such as fullscreen video, removed with Version 5. So, I bought Pro 5 to get those abilities back, and guess what I lost when 6 came out? The ability to play fullscreen video. Guess who decided not to buy QTPro6? Guess what QT6Pro users lost when QTPro7 came along...

Agreed. Apple needs to better differentiate their Basic and Pro features especially if money is involved for Pro... seems like some of the Pro features are, well, Basic.

 

[glennyboiwpg]

i'm not sure I get it...

I'm not sure how we can all sit here and go HAHAHAHA Steve burned M$ HAHAHAHAHA

when steve has delayed 3 huge consumer products (leopard, ilife, iwork) so he can get his iphone out the door on time.

That man loves his stones and glass houses.

It was a mistake delaying leopard... look on the net... your starting to see people ditch OSX for vista.

but thats ok, at least we *might* have a pretty phone in a month from now...

 

[SPUY767]

More developers on a project doesn't always mean faster results--and often means WORSE results. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

My grandfather, Enman, who ironically enough worked at IBM, had a copy of that book, and when I was little, I used to think it was a horror/suspense book called, The Mythical Man-Moth. Mild illiteracy in childhood is quite funny in hindsight.

 

[Diatribe]

I'm glad Apple acknowledge .Mac isn't all that it should be. Hopefully they'll change things around and make it worth the asking price.

( Yes, I have .Mac - but if things don't change, not for much longer ).

That's what I've been telling myself for the last 2 years and every year I keep renewing it.

Edit: But it is sure nice that they acknowledge that it could be a lot better. Let's hope for the best.

 

[Fabio_gsilva]

i'm not sure I get it...

I'm not sure how we can all sit here and go HAHAHAHA Steve burned M$ HAHAHAHAHA

when steve has delayed 3 huge consumer products (leopard, ilife, iwork) so he can get his iphone out the door on time.

That man loves his stones and glass houses.

It was a mistake delaying leopard... look on the net... your starting to see people ditch OSX for vista.

but thats ok, at least we *might* have a pretty phone in a month from now...

Really? I did not read here in macrumors that somebody ditch OSX for Vista. First of all, because that implies a diferent computer choice.

Second, because OSX has all what people can take from vista, and a lot more, it's a lot easyer to use and best of all, it works.

Only a complete dumb would change to Vista after using OSX, and this kind of dumb never was a Apple consumer anyway.

I think that the delay of leopard to deliver the iPhone is a great move, that will push mobile market forwad in terms of product and interface quality, and will bring a lot more people to the Mac.

And, of course, Apple will make a lot of money too.

Remember, Apple don't exist to fulfill your dreans only. It has it's own dreans to work out.

But, if you can't wait, go to Vista. It has the Aero!!! Wow!!!!

 

[KingofAwesome]

I think that's pretty funny... Steve makes a valid point about research being more about people... the consumers. Last time I checked it was free to talk to people. Why would they need a big R&D budget. We are their R&D department and I think Steve's on the right track. If more companies like Microsoft would put the consumer first...maybe they would have better quality products.

Last time you checked, you weren't checking for the right thing. Sure, it's free to casually talk to a person yourself, but that's not really research unless your target audience is one person and your research is casual anecdotal evidence.

What they're (most likely) doing is market research and focus groups. That ain't free. Aside from compensating the participants, there are plenty of costs, including interviewers, data analysts, programmers (assuming there is a interviewing system used to collect data), and then the cost of the space the participants are interviewed in, unless they are using a public park.

 

[Maccus Aurelius]

Regarding QT, I'll be annoyed when it's finally replaced by 8, as I now have QT7 Pro. But because of the things I do with the extra functions, like the ability to clip videos to each other ghetto-Final Cut style, I just can't go back to basic. If Apple were to dump the whole buy-upgrade pro stuff I'd be one happy Maccer.

 

[xenotaku]

The idea of renting movies through iTunes/TV is one of the coolest things I have heard about from Apple in a long time. I think with a rental program, all the studios will sign up. And i would buy an tv as well.

 

[Maccus Aurelius]

I agree about the rentals. I'm thinking about an ATV, and I certainly have enough movies ripped into H.264 to keep me busy, not to mention the television shows I download. But with a rental function I'd be so into iTunes. The fact that it links straight to my paypal account makes it so much easier. With a rental plan, people wouldn't have to pay any mind to the gigs of data for higher resolution movies, and with this structure in mind, there would be no need for your computer to be on, since it's feeding straight from the internet, not from your computer.

 

[jellomizer]

I'm hoping to be able to run Windows apps without Windows (a la Rosetta for WinApps).

No I dont think so. Rosetta for PPC to Intel is lot easier then Running Windows stuff.

Rosetta just takes the executables system level calls and converts them to Intell Calls and back. While a lot of the calls are to the OS level and not to the CPU so this makes it rather easy for developers to make Rosetta.

For windows apps it is much different while the CPU Calls are about the same but for the bulk of the action asking windows to draw this or that comunicate with this piece of hardware or that. It is a lot more work and my a lot of degrees of order of magintitude. Look at the Wine project for Linux After decaded of development they are still 10 years behind. Apple Developers may be possible for them to do it but it will be big expensive and a lot of bugs. Not quite what apple likes to produce.

 

[shigzeo]

The main point I'm making is that Steve had no need to bash Microsoft.

However, on the point of Apple's R&D budget... I understand that it may be good for Apple to not hire quite as fast as Microsoft might have, and to be selective. But there's a lot of talent out there, in order for them to continue growing while making quality products, they will need to keep growing their R&D budget at least at the same pace as they are growing as a company.

An example from Mac OS 10. You can't argue with the fact that as more users begin using OS 10, it becomes more of a target, and more security vulnerabilites will be uncovered. Apple will have to adequately man its development team to patch such vulnerabilities quickly.

Bash Microsoft all you want for all the holes they have, but they at least get stuff patched quickly. Imagine if they didn't get stuff patched as quickly, and imagine Apple in those shoes...

got to agree here

 

[frankie1969]

MacIntel needs less R&D than MacPPC

in order for them to continue growing while making quality products, they will need to keep growing their R&D budget at least at the same pace as they are growing as a company.

One thing Steve should have mentioned is that by switching to Intel, they get a free ride on a whole lot of hardware R&D that previously had to be done inhouse. Instead of designing their own motherboards, bridges, etc, Apple can just drop in Centrino, etc, and they're good to go.

 

[NuDarwin]

It ships with videoplayer that is crippled.

my point is that quicktime is more than a player. i could care less to be able to view videos full-screen. it's the underlying technologies that I bought; i.e. conversion. sometimes, quicktime is better than compressor or qmaster for a specific task.

i suppose what i am trying to say is that if all you ever see of quicktime is the player, then why pay the $29?

also, in reference to qt pro expiring when a new version comes out, I've never had a problem.

 

[theheadguy]

The idea of renting movies through iTunes/TV is one of the coolest things I have heard about from Apple in a long time. I think with a rental program, all the studios will sign up. And i would buy an tv as well.

It was just be darn cool, period! : D

 

[Deimo]

Just to put this R&D issue to bed, here's the cold, hard facts from Apple's annual filings with the SEC:

2006: $712 Million, 33.0% increase
2005: $535 Million, 8.9% increase
2004: $491 Million, 4.2% increase
2003: $471 Million, 5.6% increase
2002: $446 Million, 3.7% increase
2001: $430 Million, 13.1% increase
2000: $380 Million, 21.0% increase
1999: $314 Million, 3.6% increase
1998: $303 Million

So the numbers are not just increasing EVERY YEAR for the past 8 years, the last 2 years have seen a tremendous increase in overall expenditures. It's just that revenues are increasing at an even faster rate. Apple is doing the right thing, as it's not like the staffing levels in 2001 when the switch from Classic to X was going on would need to be much different from the engineering required to add new features to the OS.

Apple TV is just a glorified Mac mini most likely running Leopard's front row interface, so that would be part of the OS X team.

The iPod has its own group, but would anyone really be surprised if the new version coming out later on this year is running a derivative of OS X just like the iPhone?

The point is, Apple is being very smart with their resources, and has been dramatically expanding their head-count while maintaining the efficiencies in production that allowed them to produce the amazing products we know and love today.

 

[qtip919]

"I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check," said Jobs. If that were the case, Microsoft would have some great products."

That is a great line.

hmmm, lets count the ways in which this is the most idiotic statement of all time.

actually, lets just count the dollars...

you people act like the world is forced to run Microsoft products. Here's a newsflash genius: Microsoft makes an incrediblly large array of software products, many of which are clearly the superior to any competing product. Here's an example: Exchange server. Their email server runs circles around any product. I dare you to find a billion dollar *business application* product with such phenomenal engineering anywhere within apple.

 

[asterizk]

my point is that quicktime is more than a player. i could care less to be able to view videos full-screen. it's the underlying technologies that I bought; i.e. conversion. sometimes, quicktime is better than compressor or qmaster for a specific task.

i suppose what i am trying to say is that if all you ever see of quicktime is the player, then why pay the $29?

also, in reference to qt pro expiring when a new version comes out, I've never had a problem.

I only cited full-screen video because I think it's a feature everyone would know. I also lost the ability to convert video between formats, copy and paste video together, trim clips... You know, everything that comes with Pro and has since version 4 (and I would point out, was free before this).

What do you mean when you say you've never had a problem with your registration expiring? Mine did between 4 and 5, and between 5 and 6. You never had it expire between major versions?

 

[twoodcc]

lookin forward to all the new stuff that is up apple's sleeves

 

[A is jump]

The Intel MacBook may be easy to upgrade. The AL PowerBook was relatively easy to upgrade the hard drive & optical drive. since the AL PPC PowerBook & Intel AL MacBook Pro, that can easilly turn into an easy computer damage proposition. Lack of inovation, more control over the End User, aka you & me. Like you I have an Intel Mac Pro. If you really look at it i would be willing to wager you that it is really just an Intel motherboard with FW800 added. All of the other items are standard on most Intel motherboards used in the Windows World. Look at your PCIexpress buss. Only 26 lanes on the Intel Mac Pro. Remember, the G5 PPC PowerMac has 32 lanes. Why would they go backwards from 32 to 26 unless they were just purchasing someone else's design. The Intel Mac Pro is a nice machine. But what could the PPC G5 PowerMac be with a couple more years of development. If Apple would only innovate again then maybe the Mac products that we like could be even greater than most of us believe them to be.

Bill the TaxMan

you're right bill... in a couple more years, they may have finally figured out how to put a G5 in a laptop... that would have been some real inovation! assuming it actually fit in a notebook the size of a macbook.. and had decent battery life... and ran at speeds equivlent to intel's mobile chips.

don't bring up that PPC junk. I'm sure that if the PPC platform had recieved greater acceptence and more funding, it could have done great things... but as it is Apple did what had to be done... can you imagine them still selling Powerbook G4s?

 

[pnyc]

Really looking forward to all the new stuff.

 

[A is jump]

I agree with SA on this one. IMHO Apple is not really an innovative technology company, but instead are more of an American Sony.

They seem to take existing technology and design simple, elegant, stylish products that are extremely functional for the average & pro consumer.
That in itself is a creative, difficult process but it isn't really innovative in terms of completely new technolgy.

I don't think you're giving Apple enough Credit.

"Completely new technology"?? how often do you think that really comes up in the computer and consumer electronics market?

was the ipod not rather innovative? the click wheel was not a new concept, but it was a innovative method of navagating an MP3 player.
is the implementation of multi-touch on the iphone and potentially many other apple products not innovative?
was the magsafe connector for the notebooks not innovative?
I thought the mighty mouse was pretty sweet. not new technology but inovative implementation of established technology.

lets be honest... when apple released their first computer? computers were not new technology. they'd been around for 40 years in form, and hundreds of years in concept.
Apple was again innovative in their means of interface.

innovation does not require "completely new technology".
to introduce a new method of doing something is innovative.
before the iphone... I did not know of one phone that had a touch screen with such functionality.
what about the ability to check your messages in the order you care to? is that not an innovative way to check your messages via cellphone?
nobody was doing it before the iphone.

was the newton really all that innovative? didnt they have stuff like that in science fiction movies for years? star trek, quantum leap?