CEO Steve Jobs bills Apple Inc. for use of his personal jet when he uses it for company business. The expenses appear in each of Apple’s quarterly reports.
Peter Kafka reports for Silicon Alley Insider, “Morgan Stanley analyst Kathryn Huberty thinks that the more Steve flies, the more reason AAPL investors have to be excited about the stock, because that means he’s involved in face-to-face discussions with potential partners.”
“In the last three months of 2007, Steve racked up $550,000 in expenses. That dropped to $30,000 in the first three months of this year. Now it’s back up: He’s billing Apple $102,000 for the June quarter,” Kafka reports.
Full article here.
[Attribution: MacNN. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Sir Gill Bates” for the heads up.]
So, to where is Steve flying? China and/or Russia to setup iPhone carrier deals? Something to do the “mystery product transition?” A worldwide tour of knitting factories in search of new suppliers for iPod Socks?
As for this quarter, we hear that he’s taking MobileMe developers on “skydiving” excursions. Jobs, at 30000 feet, “Parachutes?! I never promised you bozos any parachutes. Now get off my plane.”
“Buy Mac OS X and get a free Macintosh!”
os x for $299?!? this isn’t vista!
By now, everyone here has heard of Dr. Edgar Mitchell’s recent revelation about aliens. This guy is no crackpot, he’s heavy by half a dozen real science Ph.D.s, and walked on the Moon.
So, Apple’s new product: The connection is becoming clear.
I wonder if MobileMe works better from Steve’s iPlane…being up near the cloud and all.
2008 – The year we make contact, and Steve is the man to do it.
It would be fun to be Steve’s pilot…”Gentlemen, we are now 20,000 feet over Redmond…dump the iToilets!”
“It would be fun to be Steve’s pilot”
John Travolta is doing it for free. I think he’s trying to brainwash Steve into that Scientology thing.
10,000 to 1
MW: numbers (uncanny)
He must of taken my advise and started drinking/taking “Boost” again! <GRIN>
Well…I do not believe any of this until the New York Times verifies this. Did you know that Apple tries to raise it’s stock prices by showing profit gains? Well, luckily the New York Times put a stop to that. Until the Times gets to the bottom of this, I would not give this story too much importance.
Just my $0.02
@ HMCIV “Your parachutes will be automatically synced as soon as you exit the plane.”
Note: The “push” technology involved may take up to 15 minutes to deploy. Apple regrets the misunderstanding.
(I am one of those people who aren’t complaining about MobileMe since, after it finally launched, has been working as advertised for me. Read and unread emails on my iPhone and Mail.app are now acting together as they always should have.)
As of 2007, the average operating cost of a GV was 3636.62/hour. With the cost of Jet A going nuts, it’s probably closer to $5K now – so you can try to figure out where Steve went in those 20 hours of flying time.
For reference, see:
http://wjs.corporatejetsales.com:9080/CJS/servlet/com.cjs.JetSearch.CostComp
I think the really funny thing about Steve Jobs’s health is that the one really solid clue as to how one can extend one’s lifetime is to severely restrict calories. That’s why those skinny old men that work their asses off for their entire lives in some third world country hauling wood or rocks still live to be 90+.
Steve Jobs’ “condition” is likely to cause him to live longer than the rest of us.
@ TowerTone
“I’m tellin’ Al…..”
Don’t bother. Al was in the back of the plane all that time, “sitting” with the stewardess!
@HMCIV
That has to be the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time!!
@MobileMe Skydivers
Your parachutes will be automatically synced as soon as you exit the plane.
To HMCIV: “Your parachutes will be automatically synced as soon as you exit the plane.”
Nice! All they need is a push.
Ampar,
They quit calling it ‘push’, didn’t you hear?
Yeah, sometimes it comes to shove.
Speculation about Jobs being sick one day before Apple’s quarterly financials announcement. The SEC needs to investigate.
“Huberty thinks that the more Steve flies, the more reason AAPL investors have to be excited about the stock, because that means he’s involved in face-to-face discussions with potential partners”
That’s probably some of it… but it seems like a bit of a stretch to assume that every time the jet flies on company business, this is what’s happening. How do we know Steve isn’t flying to go check on Apple retail stores, or work with managers in the Austin call center. What if he’s just sending Phil Schiller to convince Virginia Tech it’s time to upgrade their mac super cluster?
You’ve heard about Steve’s ‘elevator chats’ with employees, right?
I think this takes getting fired to a whole new level!
To @BC
D’oh – it IS 10,000 to 1
But Yeowie, now we’re starting to talk about real money
And can see why I’d never be an accountant or bookkeeper
BC