Steve Jobs Spoke and was questioned at the All Things Digital Conference on the subjects of the lost iPhone, Google, Flash and Microsoft.
On the lost iPhone prototype Jobs explained things as best he could: "To make a wireless product work well you have to test it. One of our employees was carrying one, there’s a debate as to whether it was left in a bar or stolen out of his bag. The person who ended up with the phone decided they would try and sell it to somebody so they called Engadget and Gizmodo.? It was the room mate of the finder of the lost phone that called the police according to Jobs. He went onto say to much laughter and applause about the incident: "It’s got theft, it’s got buying stolen property, it’s got extortion, I’m sure there is sex in there somewhere." Jobs also commented on the fact that allot of people had advised him to let the Gizmodo incident slide, he said: "If we change our core values and start letting it slide. I can’t do that, I’d rather quit."
On the Flash/iPhone/iPad debate Jobs said the Following: "Flash looks like a technology that had its day but is really waning. HTML5 looks like the technology that’s really on the ascendency right now. We didn’t start off to have a war with Flash or anything else we just made a technical decision that we weren’t gonna put the energy into getting flash on our platform. We told Adobe if you ever have this thing running fast come back and show us, which they never did, but we think we’re not gonna use it and that was it" He also said the he was tired of Apple getting negative press on the matter, which is why he decided to write his ?Thoughts on Flash? open letter.
When question about relations with Microsoft and Google, Jobs said: "They (Google) decided to compete with us, so they are. Right now, if you look at the smartphone market share Nokia is still number one, RIM is number two, we’re number three, Google is number four and others number five. We definitely compete with each other, we have some Google properties on our phone.? When asked if Apple will remove Google services from the iPhone he said: ?Just because we’re competing with someone doesn’t mean we have to be rude." His thoughts on Apple overtaking Microsoft’s market cap were, "for those of us that have been in the industry a long time it’s surreal, but it doesn’t matter very much." He commented that Apple never saw themselves as in direct competition with Windows platforms and that "maybe that’s why we lost".
On the big publisher he said "One of my beliefs very strongly is that any democracy depends on a free healthy press. I don’t want to see us decend into a nation of bloggers myself. I think we need editorial more than ever right now." Jobs is keen on helping out publishers like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, he?s pushing publishers towards driving down the cost of digital content, make the digital versions profitable by going for volume.
You can watch the interview with Steve Jobs on the All Things Digital Site.
