Gisteren, donderdag 24 april, vond de jaarlijkse Apple aandeelhoudersvergadering plaats. Elk jaar hopen de volgers van het Apple circus weer dat Steve Jobs, onder druk van de aandeelhouders, informatie loslaat over toekomstige producten. Over een eventuele overname van Universal Music wilde Steve niets zeggen, maar er waren toch enkele andere interessante uitspraken te horen. De details kun je lezen in artikelen van ThinkSecret en Reuters, de hoogtepunten hebben we voor even voor je onder elkaar gezet.

Op de vraag of Apple maandag een online muziekdienst zal aankondigen antwoordde Jobs: “You’d think so if you haven’t been asleep the last two weeks.” Verder over de aangekondigde presentatie van aanstaande maandag: “There have been a lot of rumors in the last few weeks,” Jobs said in response to a shareholder question. “Many of them are not true and some of them are true.”

Over de implementatie van Java3d: Implementing this in Mac OS X centered not around technical issues but licensing issues with Sun. Jobs replied shortly, saying “We are working on it.”

Over de reden dat de Powerbook 17″ zo lang op zich heeft laten wachten: Macworld could not be rescheduled, and the 12″ PowerBook was ready, so a decision was made to announce the 17″ PowerBook even though it wouldn’t be ready for a month. Phil Schiller added that Apple tries to balance the needs of having products available upon announcement, and satisfying requests from customers who desire information to plan future purchases ahead of time.

Naar aanleiding van zorgen over de overname van VirtualPC door Microsoft: Jobs said that Apple’s relationship with Microsoft is good and that Microsoft likes Safari. He also noted that VPC has been moved to the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft and that Microsoft acquired the software not so that it could get VPC itself, but its underlying technology. Jobs said Apple has talked with Microsoft, and Microsoft promises to continue the software. Jobs also suggested that the price might drop since royalties on Windows no longer have to be paid.

Ten slotte zei Jobs over de zwakke economie en de sfeer binnen Apple: Morale at Apple is very high. I have never seen folks at Apple work as hard as they are now. I think we are leading this industry in innovation and hopefully things will start to turn around at some point.”

En dat laatste geeft vertrouwen voor de toekomst!