Platform games
Regarding perceived platform wars with Microsoft and Google: "No, we don't see ourselves in a platform war. We never saw ourselves in a platform war with Microsoft, either...Maybe that's why we lost. But we never thought of ourselves in a platform war; we just wanted to make good products."
And Google? "Well, they're competing with us we didn't go into search. We-they-decided to compete with us and got more and more serious. We're not going into search."
The thinking behind the iPhone and iPad: "I'll tell you a secret. It began with the tablet. I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on with your fingers. I asked our people about it. And six months later, they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He got scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, ‘my God, we can build a phone with this!' So we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the iPhone."
Will the iPad save the newspaper industry? "I don't want us to see us descend into a nation of bloggers. I think we need editorial oversight now more than ever. Anything we can do to help newspapers find new ways of expression that will help them get paid, I am all for."
"The transformation of PC to new form factors like the tablet is going to make some people uneasy because the PC has taken us a long ways. The PC is brilliant...and we like to talk about the post-PC era, but it's uncomfortable."
"People are using apps way more than they are using search. So if you want to make developers more money, you've got to get the ads into apps. But the mobile ads we've got today rip you out of the app."
And finally, what about Apple TV? "The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go-to-market strategy. The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box. Ask TiVo, ask Roku, ask us... ask Google in a few months."
