Apple CEO Steve Jobs is speaking with The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg at the D5 conference today.
Some excerpts John Paczkowski report for AllThingsD:
• Walt to Jobs: When you changed your name to Apple Inc., people wondered if Apple was exiting the personal computer business. Is it? Jobs says no and stresses Apple’s commitment to the PC business, touts Apple’s forthcoming Leopard operating system.
• Jobs says Apple is on track to ship iPhone in late June as planned. Walt: Like the last day of June? Jobs: (Laughs) Yeah, probably.
• Walt: Any undisclosed iPhone features you’d like to share with us today? Jobs: (Smiles) No.
• Jobs: The iPhone is the best iPod we’ve ever made.
• Apple TV: “The other thing you can do is buy TV shows.” Jobs pulls up a clip from “The Office.” He says sending stuff from your computer to the Apple TV isn’t the main deal here. “Wouldn’t it be great if you could see YouTube on your TV?” Apple will be offering a free software upgrade come June that will allow Apple TV users to view YouTube videos on their televisions.
• Walt: How many copies of iTunes are out there? Jobs: Lots. Several times more than the number of iPods. Walt notes that that makes it one of the most ubiquitous pieces of software out there–and it’s predominantly on Windows machines. “That makes Apple one of the biggest developers of Windows software around,” Walt observes. Jobs: “That’s right. … It’s like offering glasses of ice water to people in hell.”
• From the Q&A: All indications appear that the iPhone is closed, we’d love to develop apps… Jobs: This is an important tradeoff between security and openness. We want both. We’re working through a way… we’ll find a way to let 3rd parties write apps and still preserve security on the iPhone. But until we find that way we can’t compromise the security of the phone.
• Jobs on iPhone and network speed: Interesting thing, it automatically switches to WiFi automatically… But if you’re in a place and you want to join a WiFi network you haven’t joined before it prompts you. But it’s EVERYWHERE. There’s like 10x more WiFi out there than I ever thought there was. WiFi is faster than any 3G, and EDGE is very fast too.
• Jobs on his health: I’m still vertical! (laughter) I’m feeling great, thanks.
• Jobs on AAC vs. MP3: We chose AAC because it’s a much better encoder… We don’t own it. Anyone can license it… We’re not trying to keep anyone out, we’re just trying to use a superior audio technology.
Much more via AllThingsD here and also via Engadget here.
UPDATE: 9:29pm EDT: The Steve Jobs interview is now available:
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “gaufre” for the heads up.]
