Apple CEO Steve Jobs today sent out a letter to Apple employees:
Team,
Today is a historic day of sorts for our company. When I arrived back at Apple in mid-1997, the company was burdened with $1 billion of debt. Through everyone’s hard work we turned Apple around, paid off the majority of our debt and began to amass a war chest of cash in the bank which has grown to about $4.8 billion! But there was still $300 million of remaining debt, which we decided to hold to maturity.
Today we used $300 million of our cash to pay off this remaining debt.
Apple is now a debt-free company
Why not release a G5 iMac to celebrate?
Awesome
Nice little blurb from him.
*Celebrates*
who says mac fans are single minded?
Okay, celebration over.
Now use about $500,000,000 to advertise Macs so that people wil buy it.
Do Infomerciels, show how the prodcut works.
Do spots on prime time Tv showing the UI.
Sponsor a corporate switch over (200 computers + 10-20 servers)
R&D a Ioffice and get some enterprise software out there.
Buy out a Game Company and bring some games to Mac fast.
All this will bring more ppl to the mac
just my thoughts
Now I wonder who is doing well in the computer business…. Apple or ack! Dell… Hmm Debt free vs. laying off jobs, crappy mp3 player, TV’s now? whats next are most other manufacturers goin to bust into refrigerators?
Steve ought to run for president.
>> Steve ought to run for president.
Or at least father your children.
buy nintendo, buy nintendo!!! we need a gaming unit. they have the best portable player unit and they are struggling against microsnooze and sony. apple should buy them out!!
I’m sure if Steve chose to he could easily be the democratic front runner… and be a wonderful father to rageous’ children at the same time –after all, he IS a proven multi-tasker…
Wait…You mean Apple isn’t beleaguered anymore?
Mike
I wonder how many debts free company are out there??? I bet very few…
No, they still are. That is their tag line:
Apple®
Going out of business since 1984
wonder if that means he can loan me some money to buy a new mac?
Not even Steve can save USA. Bush has collapsed the economy so badly. Goverments debt is huge amount of billions of $’s. Going down fast.
So it is better that Steve does not run for President.
Let Kerry take care of Bush.
Drop the Bush bashing. If you don’t understand economics, you might try to blame him, but he didn’t cause the market to fall.
1. Stock market corrections began Mid 2000, Clinton was still in office.
2. Companies cut back cause the market and their investments shrunk.
3. Companies become unable to hide their losses, and go bankrupt.
4. Companies have less money, and need to lay people off to stay afloat.
5. Many out of jobs, and wont work in another field while the economy recovers.
6. Economy recovers.
7. Companies have more money, pay off debts, and start to hire more people.
8. People have Jobs, and give credit to next president for saving the country.
This is how it works. There are jobs out there, its just to many feel they are better, and wont take a lower paying job till one becomes available in their field of experience. I look in the paper, and there are jobs, heck I found my current job during the recession, and I make more at it than I did at my last place. The positions are there, you just have to be better, faster, and smarter than the competition. No free rides for the slacker in a recession.
First, my congratulations to the entire staff at Apple.
Next, I would be the very last person to give advice on advertising, pricing, and other markets to enter, to such a successful team. Apple seems to be doing very well on their own.
Steve, keep doing what you’re doing, and I’ll be here for you.
I think Steve should take Arnold’s job off him. Then he can have his saint hood.
True I don’t know anything about economics. It is good to cut taxes for the rich people and then take more loan and then spend it to weapons. Big corporations gets more money so that they can invest to china.
Then you can cut more health care and then spend more money to weapons and take more loan and spend it to weapons. Of course you have to remember to build more jails then again you can take more loan for that.
I have to study more American economics to understand this wonderful way of economics. Debt is now what over $2500 billion and military budget increases to $500 billion before year 2010. That is Bush not Clinton who managed to do that.
Steve be a great father? I know its old news but… haven’t you guys watched Pirates of Silicon Valley (or at least read his bio) .. he had a daughter named Lisa and was almost NEVER there to support her when she was a child, plus never wanted to get together with her mother. Sure things have patched up somewhat but in those crucial early years Steve was a deadbeat dad.
With that said, Apple still kicks ass!
Firstly, can we keep personal attacks out of our comments on the Apple ‘scene’: If SPJ never made a mistake, he would be a surprisingly weird individual; everyone has weaknesses or blind-spots, it’s a fact of life.
Secondly, I loath GWB and everything he represents especially his appealing to people’s fear and loathing; however, the current problems of the American economy and – by extension – the global economy have far more to do with the relatively short-term overheating of the Internet ‘new’ economy and a generation of global corporate malfeasance than the relative strengths and weaknesses of GWB.
The ‘new’ economy burst because it became over-pressurised – you cannot change the rules of the economy (from a valuation based on proven past performance to a valuation based on some analyst’s fairy tale vision of the future) simply because you think it’s a good idea. I got out of the stock market when I was sitting in Mountain View reading about the likes of webvan.com and furniture.com, realising that the world had gone spectacularly insane.
Was GWB to blame for that? No – it was the fault of a society who believed you could get something for nothing.
The corporate malfeasance thing is also ‘our’ fault: we expected too much out of companies that were operating in a progressively more fractured global economy; ‘we’ wanted vibrant safety and risk-free growth and ‘we’ believed people who said it was feasible. You cannot ‘con’ someone who isn’t greedy, so what does that say about us.
Now, GWB may have some questionable taste in friends – I would look at Kenneth Lay before I even started throwing stones at Dick Cheney – but how many people looked at Enron [I]in detail[/I] before investing?
And of course the final nail in the coffin: misguided zealots manipulated by crazed psychopaths flying 400mph petrol bombs into tall buildings. Now GWB’s dad may have been partially responsible for arming people like Hussein or bin Laden, but I bet that’s a mistake that America, the UK or anyone else won’t make again in a hurry.
All in all, I’m actually amazed that the global economy isn’t in worse shape!
Most intelligent and unrelated post thus far:
GWB sucks… but not in a good way…
o o o o o
apple should buy a nascar team!!! and an indy team and race like their computers work!!!! theyd never lose!!
Drop the Bush bashing. If you don’t understand economics, you might try to blame him, but he didn’t cause the market to fall.
HTML not working today?
The markets started to go down in the spring of 2000, when it was becoming apparent that Bush would be the Republican candidate. Coincidence? I don’t think so. The markets are always anticipatory, and it was natural to assume that little Bush would wreck the economy with massive borrowing and spending, just as his dad did, if he became president.
What I don’t understand is why Apple doesn’t do internet advertising. It can’t be that expensive, and it’s a natural place for a computer company to advertise. I see Dell and Microsoft ads all over the place, even on web pages with stories about Apple! What’s up with that?
HTML working, never mind.
He may not cause the market to fall, but GWB’s policy does not help at all. Add that to the tax cut that put the US half a trillion in debt, the lies to make war, the environmental destructions, the intrusion to people’s privacy, angering their allies, etc. and your children will pay for your debt and drink polluted water and breath polluted air, have no privacy.
If Americans have any sense (I truly hope they do before it’s too late), they will vote for the Democrats. If not, they deserve to get whatever Bush can do to them.