Steve Jobs Presentation

Jobs presented the concept of the new campus yesterday at Cupertino City Hall. It seems a little odd that that he would be the one in front of the city council. My hunch is that there might be a little push back for approval of this project. The appearance of Steve Jobs at the meeting will very likely help the approval of this. Jobs seemed rather nervous at the start of his pitch. This is obviously a project that means a lot to Steve Jobs. He took the opportunity to tell a nice story of reaching out to Bill Hewlett (yes, of Hewlett-Packard) and Mr. Hewlett gave the teenage Steve Jobs a summer job.

Jobs also took the opportunity to throw a subtle dig in towards the current HP. I quote: “…as Hewlett Packard has been shrinking lately, they decided to sell that property, and we bought it.”.

Jobs states that they are using their retail experience to build the structure. He claims they “know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use”.

They are converting this piece of land that is covered with structures and asphalt.  The intention is to move parking underground and create a space that is 80% landscaping rather than the 20% landscaping that it is now.

The building will include an energy center that will provide the primary source of power (cleaner and cheaper) and then will use the grid as their backup.

Jobs discusses that they put on presentations and that they have to go to San Francisco to do them.  They will include an auditorium in this complex.  I would have to assume that this would mean that Apple’s future conferences and presentations will happen on their own campus.  This will surely peek the interest of the tourism board in Cupertino.  5,000 developers at the WWDC probably provide a nice bump for any municipality.  Keep in mind, 5,000 is where they cap it. They sell out nearly instantly and could expand this.  Apple holds a number of events each year.

The video below is about 20 minutes long, but it is much more fascinating than the public access town board meetings that you might normally see.   Jobs must have had his iPhone in his pocket because there is some feedback that comes in at around the 5:08 mark.  I know this sound all too well.  I thought it was just my iPhone after being dropped 42 times.

Apple's futuristic campus

I was discussing Apple’s cash hoard with a colleague the other day.  With around $80 billion in cash and marketables, they are able to spend money on projects like this.  It is hard to question Jobs’ vision. Look what they beautiful Pixar campus puts out. Hit, after hit, after hit.

During the Q&A jobs addressed a few points.

Apple is the largest taxpayer in Cupertino and would like to remain that way. He insinuated that Apple could leave Cupertino if this was not approved.  It wasn’t a threat, but he made it clear that the biggest taxpayer in town could leave.

Apple has 20 biodiesel buses running currently to help move their employees.  Affluent employees who make Cupertino their personal home.

One council member mentioned free WiFi from Apple for the people of Cupertino. In classic jobs form he threw it back stating that he is a simpleton and feels that we pay taxes and the City should do those things. That is why we pay taxes. He stated that if we could get out of paying taxes, he would be glad to provide free WiFi. “I think we bring a lot more than free WiFi”.

One of the members was a 35 year HP employee.  This project certainly hits home with him and he would like to see this former HP space put to use.

Employees at infinite loop will remain at that location.

Timeline for this building would be as follows. Breaking ground in 2012 an completion in 2015.

During the meeting, the fact that there is not an Apple store in the Cupertino community.  Jobs mentioned that the location simply doesn’t have the traffic.  You have got to love the way Jobs answers questions that he doesn’t really feel are worthy of a thorough response.

With the applause at the end of the meeting, I felt like I was watching a presentation at a conference.  A lot of fans in that room, and rightfully so.

Apple's Cupertino Campus

Apple Data Center, NC

The most popular notion of what the data center’s intended use will be is a cloud music service from Apple. This seems to make sense.  As Sun (remember them) said many years ago (year 2000, I think), the Internet is the computer!  Why do we have to go to the trouble of downloading to listen to our music, or podcasts?  Can we have an internet (cloud) based drive that held all of our media (music,movies,podcasts,pictures)?  Sure we can.  The most difficult part comes from the bottleneck created by a lack of sufficient bandwidth.  Once there is sufficient bandwidth, there will be fewer reasons to have local storage.  Nothing will ever go wrong with my connection, right?  (Amazon EC2, PSN Network).

As of today, Apple has reportedly hammered out deals with three of the four major record labels.  This might have been a little more difficult had it not been for Amazon and Google paving the way with the Amazon Cloud Drive / Cloud Player and the Google Music Player

In any case, this data center is being viewed as another can’t wait to see event from Apple.  With deals in place between Apple and the major labels, I have to believe that they are about ready to announce the purpose.  Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) is happening June 6 through June 10 (2011) and this is generally a time when Apple rolls something fresh out.  There probably isn’t an iPhone 5 in the cards.  An iPhone 4s is more likely the case. A cloud initiative at the same event would make this another blockbuster.

AT&T and Verizon, are you ready??

Apple must move to fix this quickly and answer any questions regarding the service as it stood before this drop.  Read the details below.

Bottom line: If you use your iPhone with your corporate e-mail, do not upgrade your software yet.

Apple betrays the iPhone’s business hopes by InfoWorld: Yahoo! Tech .

Apple

Google Chrome OS vs. Windows Operating System

Google confirmed their operating system that has been discussed quite a bit in the past.  In fact, it is something that become obvious to Bob and Scott some time ago:

Google OS PC is Here
The Google PC is Coming

This Google Chrome OS news was confirmed late last night on the Official Google Blog.

This certainly changes the game in the PC world.  What a time to jump in.  Microsoft is coming with Windows 7 and netbook style PC’s are all the rage.  Google’s OS is taking aim at that.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

This is a bit different than my earlier speculation that this would be running with Android as the base OS.  In fact, it is essentially the Network Computer that Larry Ellison claimed was the future way back in the mid 1990′s.  Scott McNealy was on board with the network PC talk about the same time.  Google might just have the timing to make it happen.

In 1995, you couldn’t use the web as your platform.  The apps weren’t there and you didn’t have the ability to be productive with a network PC only.  A local set of apps were an absolute must.

If Google can do this right and ensure an open platform for developers to latch on to (wait, I think I heard facebook say that), then they could create an entirely new ecosystem the way that Apple did around the iPhone.  Create a platform, a marketplace, a user base and development will come.  Plug in your app, give up your 30% and you are in business.

How will a company like Facebook react to this.  They had a similar idea to make Facebook a platform and not just a ‘website’.  Guess what, the Twitter distraction might just turn Facebook into the next MySpace.  The bold plan to create Facebook as a platform is being lost in favor of an eyeball grab.  The worst thing for any company finding that Twitter is distracting them and stealing their user base is the fact that the founders of Twitter don’t need to be bought out. They have been there and done that.

I expect some interesting fallout from the Google OS.  If the OS takes hold, here is what I will watch for:

• What happens with Firefox?
  Gobbled up by Google was my feeling in the past.  Maybe not anymore.  Would MSFT gobble up Firefox? Perhaps
• How does Facebook react?
  Have the abandoned the Facebook as a platform to replace Windows?
• How do the PC manufacturers handle this?
  Can they jump on board without a backlash coming from Redmond?
• What does Apple do?
  Is there a reaction needed from Apple?  They continue to grow share from folks that realize that their phone was that far ahead of everyone else, so let’s buy their computer.  ”Besides, I like their ads” I say “was” to the phone being that far ahead. The Palm Pre is the mobile OS that has finally mounted a challenge to the iPhone in terms of quality.

We have been starved for a catalyst in Tech.  Could this be it?  I doubt it, but it will be a fun game to watch.

Apple

It feels like I have sommething new and I don’t need a new phone yet.  At lease AT&T grabbed some sales that they might not have had otherwise.  They relented and allowed a hardware upgrade price of $199 rather than $399 for a big chunk of users.  That probably didn’t benefit AT&T nearly as much as it benefited Apple.

Thanks for the free 3.0 upgrade Apple.  I’ll get my phone when I get around to it.

via Apple profit beats expectations on iPhones, iPods.

In a world of falling stocks, Apple just continues to steam ahead. Not only has this quarter been impressive, others have been too!

I own 5 shares of AAPL right now.  Not sure why I only own 5 shares of AAPL.  They have weathered the economic storm as well as anyone.

Apple Earnings

Skype has arrived for the iPhone and iPod touch.

• Learn more

I put it through a couple of test calls and it performed well.   My main desire is to utilize the text chat client.  When using Skype on a desktop, that is the function that I utilize most often.

Rumor has it that Ebay is readying Skype for a spin off or sale.  This, along with the support of the SIP protocol announced this week, should be a nice user base generator for the company.  You never know, maybe Ebay is going to recoup some of the $2.6+ billion that they shelled out for the company a few years back.

BTW: Support for the SIP protocol will allow Skype to be used on PBX systems.  This will be a revenue generator for the company.  We procured an additional phone number recently and were disappointed to find that we could not use Skype with the hardware we had in place.  Support for SIP would allow us to do that.