CNN Interview (PowerMac G4)
Transcript
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled new iMacs and Power Macs at the Macworld trade show today.
Jobs also showed off an update to iDVD, the software that allows consumers to make DVDs out of home movies.
After the keynote, Jobs updated Wall Street analysts on his plans for the company.
Now, last night, Apple beat the street's earnings expectations but lowered guidance for the current quarter.
And earlier today, I asked Jobs about that forecast and got some rare comments on Microsoft.
Well, I think we're cautious right now.
A lot of people were saying the economy was going to rebound this quarter or next
quarter and most people don't see that anymore.
So we're a little cautious right now.
We'd rather exceed expectations and disappoint.
Wouldn't we all?
Now, you were one of the first people in the industry to come out and say, hey, this
is a cycle.
I've seen it before.
You have seen it before, unlike a lot of your peers.
What are you seeing now?
I know you're not an economist, but you put yourself in that role because you were
You were one of the first to call the cycle back in the fall.
Yeah, I think most people agree it's going to be a continued difficulty in the second half, economically.
Beyond that, do you think?
My headlights don't go out that far.
It's just hard to see.
Who knows?
I know you're going to meet with analysts later on today.
What's the message to Wall Street?
What do they not understand about the Apple story right now that you want them to get?
Well, I think the most important thing that anyone can understand about Apple right now
is our industry is in a difficult situation economically,
like most industries are,
but I think that our industry has maybe been hit harder than some.
And most of the companies in our industry
are laying off thousands of people
and retrenching and restructuring.
And Apple's chosen a different path
to navigate our way through this difficult economic climate.
We're trying to innovate our way out of this.
And so far, things are going pretty well.
We've introduced a tremendous number of new products.
A lot of them have been hit so far this year, including the Titanium PowerBook G4 and our new iBook.
And I think our new PowerMacs are going to be very popular.
We've also introduced some new software.
iTunes, the best digital music software out there.
MacOS10, we're doing a major OS transition to MacOS10, and that's going very well.
And some software called iDVD, which we just introduced a second version of today,
which lets you actually make DVDs on your power Mac
that you can play in ordinary consumer DVD players
and that now they look as good as almost anything you can buy from Hollywood.
You said you're going to take a different course.
Now, Apple leaned out quite a bit in the stewardship before yours.
Are you going to rule out any layoffs in this cycle?
Or is that, you know, you can't make that call, right?
Who knows?
But we haven't had any layoffs and we value our people a lot.
We've got one of the best teams in the world, and everybody's really hard at work, you know, working on some dynamite new products.
In addition to that, we announced a few months ago that we're opening our own retail stores, and we have two of them open.
We've had them open for about eight weeks now, and that's a totally new way to buy a computer.
So it's not just in the products and the software.
It's also in the buying experience, and we're going to roll out 25 of those stores this year across the U.S.
In this uncertain economic climate, are you a little concerned about all the risks that you have in stores?
You've got Apple inventory. You know what that's like.
It's fresh fish sitting there on the shelves.
You've also got consumer electronics inventory.
It's a fickle environment. You're concerned about the cost there?
As you know, Apple is the best in our business at managing inventory.
We've beat Dell for the last four years in terms of inventory management.
So I think we know how to do the operational part of that pretty well.
Well, and we went and recruited Mickey Drexler to our board a few years ago.
He runs the Gap.
He's quite good, and we've built an incredible retail team.
So I think we're feeling pretty good about this.
But the most important thing is if you think it's the right thing to do,
Apple has the staying power to begin new initiatives, even in a downtime,
so that when things turn around, we're that much stronger.
We've got $4.2 billion worth of cash in the bank.
That's a good question.
Got to ask you one more question.
Late last month, an appeals court affirmed a lower court's ruling saying that in its dealings with Apple,
specifically about getting Office developed for the Mac and an exchange put in the browser,
that that was anti-competitive, that they violated the law.
That puts Apple potentially in a position to sue Microsoft for damages.
Are you going to do that?
Yeah, we have no plans to sue anybody.
You know, we have a good relationship with Microsoft right now.
They just showed a new version of Microsoft Office for Mac OS X
that maybe is the best version of Office on any platform.
And we're doing a lot of things with them.
Is that relationship better?
Because you have a stronger hand now.
You have a court document saying,
hey, you can't mess with us like you did before.
You broke the law.
Has that dynamic changed at all?
It's never come up.
No, the relationship's better now
because both sides have put a lot of work into it.
because we both care about the common customers that we have.
And you know, it's interesting, you know who the biggest Mac supporter is at Microsoft?
Bill Gates.
Bill Gates.
Yes, it's Bill Gates.
Yes.
So, I think, you know, we're doing some good work together.
All right, Steve, always a pleasure to talk to you.
Thanks for making time for us today.
Great, thank you.