You read that right. 

Letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs

Dear Apple Community,

For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.

I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.

As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority.

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

I have given more than my all to Apple for the past 11 years now. I will be the first one to step up and tell our Board of Directors if I can no longer continue to fulfill my duties as Apple’s CEO. I hope the Apple community will support me in my recovery and know that I will always put what is best for Apple first.

So now I’ve said more than I wanted to say, and all that I am going to say, about this.

Steve

That should settle everyone for a while. In response to that letter, Apple’s Board decided to issue a public statement as well:

Statement by Apple’s Board of Directors

It is widely recognized both inside and outside of Apple that Steve Jobs is one of the most talented and effective CEOs in the world.

As we have said before, if there ever comes a day when Steve wants to retire or for other reasons cannot continue to fulfill his duties as Apple’s CEO, you will know it.

Apple is very lucky to have Steve as its leader and CEO, and he deserves our complete and unwavering support during his recuperation. He most certainly has that from Apple and its Board.

This could be the best news I’ve heard all year long (well, it’s just been 5 days since). Steve Jobs is fine and will continue to run Apple. We’re looking forward to a WWDC keynote with Jobs delivering the smoking keynote in full health.

As the momentum builds up for Macworld, we’re seeing more rumours, and more rumours. If you come across any interesting news, articles or rumours, send them along to pr@sa.com or twitter them @smokingapples. 

Macworld: Hoping for a Steve Jobs surprise »
Apple’s December surprise may have lowered expectations for Macworld 2009 in terms of product introductions, but it only raised expectations in terms of Apple’s CEO — because it didn’t rule out the possibility that the rabbit in Schiller’s sleeve next week is … wait for it … Steve Jobs himself, making a cameo appearance just before the curtain falls.

We do sincerely hope that Steve Jobs makes an appearance. After all, one of our team members has made a 6000 mile trip to Macworld, only to find out last minute that Steve Jobs cancelled out on him. 

Enjoying the show, avoiding the flamethrower: life inside Apple »
What’s it like working inside Apple when the MacWorld announcements are made? The man who set up many of its email systems and worked there 17 years explains the inside story of the preparation, the unveiling – and why it’s sometimes best to avoid Steve Jobs.

The best line from this article? ”Just imagine Steve Jobs wandering the hall with a flame thrower in hand, asking random people ‘do you work on MobileMe?’” when talking about the MobileMess fiasco. A recommended read for the Apple fan.

Raising the App Store’s Base Price to $4.99 Would Be a Good Thing »
A somewhat questionable article, but there are some points here. Without a $0.99 pricing, there wouldn’t be any crApps in the store. While you’re there check out the discussions in the comments as well. For what it’s worth, I think this is a one for Apple to figure out. 

Google’s iPhone app has a hidden menu »
Using a two finger swipe gesture in the settings pane, a new menu appears. You can then change the colour scheme of the app. I wonder if Apple knew about this, and whether this is a nice way for developers to smuggle in features Apple wouldn’t otherwise allow!

Screen savers live! »
Dan Frakes does an impressive job collecting all of the awesome screensavers in a Macworld video. The complete list list is also there for videophobes. Highly recommended if you are looking out for the good stuff.

Unlock your iPhone 3G. A crunchgear guide »
Apparently the success rate is around 50/50, so hang in there if it hasn’t been working for you yet. 

TV analyst who predicted Apple would dump Apple TV in 2008 eats crow - again »
A MacDailyNews research article on some idiot who predicted twice that the AppleTV would fail, and has the guts to do it again!

For live updates on what happens in the Apple community, follow us on twitter @smokingapples!

We’re still on the Apple-Macworld topic folks! Everyone seems to be getting their own theories out in the open, and here are a bunch of links for you.

Mad Apple Fans Call For Silent Keynote Revenge »
She wants you to stay silent during the entire Schill-note! It might be possible, but what if he whips out an iTablet?!

How much is Steve Jobs worth to Apple? »
“Steven P. Jobs has turned Apple into a technology powerhouse — twice. But how much is he worth to the company? If one compares the value of Apple’s revenue streams to the company’s market capitalization, nearly $20 billion.”

Apple’s departure leaves a hole in Expo and the community »
Macworld’s Dan Moren talks about how much Apple means to the Macworld Expo. Ah, the good ol’ days. 

MacBundleBox offers 5 mac utilities for $39 »
KavaTunes, Librarian Pro, Alarm Clock Pro, HyperImage, MacCleanse worth $149 at a discounted rate of $39. And the first 1000 buyers get iWallet bundled along. Note: Affiliate link. We’re neutral about the value of this package. 

First Look: Songbird »
Chris Breen takes a good look at Songbird, the open source iTunes do-it-all, and whether it is right for you. 

Rescuecom names Apple most reliable for second year in a row »
Rescuecom, a national chain of IT support service centers, has released the results of its third annual computer reliability report, putting Apple in the top spot for the second year in a row.

New Metal Gear Confirmed for iPhone and iTouch »
Today Konami confirmed today via their teaser site that the next Metal Gear Solid game will be coming to the iPhone and iTouch early next year. Talk about all the great apps showing up on the App Store!

Going by the poll it seems like most people are on board with the daily news digest, so I guess we’re good to go! The post is put together by the entire SA team, but hey, whoever writes the first link gets his name up there!

The day’s news revolves largely around Apple, and Macworld, and Steve Jobs, and Phil Schiller. Of course, be sure to check out our own little writeup on this event. 

Conversations around the Apple-Macworld issue.

Opinion: Why Steve Jobs’ Health Is None Of Our Business »
Giles Turnbill is of the opinion that Jobs’ health is a private matter. I agree.  

IDG: Macworld Expo still on for 2010, even without Apple »
The guys who organise Macworld must be shit scared right now. Still, they’re putting up a brave face. Macworld 2010 is on, they say.

Macworld: Apple at Expo: What went wrong? »
Jason Snell has done an amazing writeup on Apple’s Macworld announcement. Recommended read.  

10 reasons why Apple pulled out of Macworld Expo…. »
Amidst all the fun and jokes, DonMC at My Own Reality has done a good analysis of the why Apple pulled out of Macworld. My favourite? That Macworld affects holiday sales. Which it definitely does.  

In Other News…

Walmart iPhone on sale the 28th for a lot more than $99 »
Here’s something we all knew was coming. Apple dropping their prices down to $99 for an iPhone? Not happening, no way. Engadget finally gets the details that the price will be a little higher than $99, more like $197.  

Why the Mac Mini is the best Mac on the market »
Don Reisinger at CNET, using his own contorted logic, declares that the Mac mini is the best mac out there. Not that I’m saying the mini is not a good Mac, but best Mac is stretching it a bit.

Perian 1.1.3 »
The quicktime codec plugin Perian has been updated and features a whole lot of bug fixes. Recommended download. Free.

When I woke up this morning I was totally hit by the news that I read right here on Smoking Apples. Usually that never happens since I’m always aware of what gets published, so in a way it was a double blow. After reading through it a couple of times, and getting a little perspective, here’s what can be said about this shocking announcement.

This announcement has just as much to do about Jobs’ health, as it does about Apple pulling out of public tradeshows. Why else would he have Phil Schiller give the keynote? Announcing the last ever Macworld Keynote would be something to add to his legacy. Of course, Jobs’ health is his private matter, so I hope we can leave it at that and wish him the best of health. 

But wait, there’s no reason to panic. Apple will still be awesome even if Jobs isn’t going to deliver keynotes, ever. Sure we don’t have our regular dose of RDF to keep us out of perspective, but we’ll survive. After all, Apple engineers will still able to churn out those lovely white aluminium products. (Okay I admit it, Schiller’s presentation is lame, and doesn’t do justice to those lovely aluminium products.) Hopefully, Schiller doing the keynote will be a one time occurrence, just to show us what the world will look like without Steve Jobs. 

Jim Goldman at CNBC on the other hand believes that this is all politics, and nothing to do with Jobs’ pancreas.

I can tell you that sources inside the company tell me that Jobs’ decision was more about politics than his pancreas. Sources tell me that if Jobs for some reason was unable to perform any of his responsibilities as CEO because of health reasons, which would include the Macworld keynote, I should “rest assured that the board would let me know.”

A lot of companies are pulling out of CES and instead having their own special events. Gives them more attention and is more suited to their product timeline. Sounds good to me. But Macworld? Isn’t that like all about Apple? The most talked about Apple event of all time – known to many a macboy as Christmas – and they want to cancel it? Nevertheless, I’ll choose to believe Goldman, especially his last statement, “Steve Jobs is fine. It’s Macworld the expo that’s on its last legs.”

Meanwhile Paul Kent, the guy behind Macworld Expo defends his case: 

Macworld Conference & Expo has thrived for 25 years due to the strong support of tens of thousands of people in the Mac community worldwide who use Macworld as a way to find great products, partake in professional development training and cultivate their personal and professional networks.

We are committed to serve their interests at the Moscone Center, January 4-8, 2010.

That would have been fine, except John Gruber has pulled out a quote from Daring Fireball in 2002, “A Macworld Expo without Apple is like an airport without any airlines. The duty-free shop isn’t going to keep the lights turned on.”

At the end of the day, will we see some awesome new Apple gadgetry? Will Snow Leopard be just as awesome as was promised when Jobs was on stage? Will we see someone from Apple announce in September 2009, that “this is the best iPod lineup ever!”? A definite yes to all of them. Hopefully, a definite yes.

Meanwhile, let’s enjoy our Christmas, as if it were our last (ignorance is bliss, they say). New Mac minis anyone? Voice out your thoughts and comments.

Apple has just released the following press release stating that the 2009 Macworld will be their last:

CUPERTINO, California—December 16, 2008—Apple® today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Apple has used the Macworld convention to announce new products such as the iPhone and showing off OSX Leopard. Will we see a lack of new products coming out from now on? Share your thoughts, sad as they may be, in the comments. 

Over at livemint.com, Priyanka Mehra and Shauvik Ghosh have a story on how and why the iPhone failed to take off in India, and boy, a truer article I’ve never read! Apple either doesn’t understand the Indian market at all or just doesn’t care about it. They’ve never really paid any attention to their flailing Mac business out here or tried to make the iPod as much of a household name as it is in the USA. Now that it’s a mobile phone we’re talking about, they’re finding it difficult to gain a foothold in the country with the fastest growing cellphone industry in the world. And it serves them right.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Apple’s products—everything from the hardware design to the tiniest level of software minutia to the integration between their various products is incredibly well thought out and implemented. However, when it comes to aggressively pricing and marketing their products, the only country they seem to give a damn about is the United States.

How else can one explain the lack of the Apple Online Store, the iTunes Store (one that actually sells music and movies like it’s supposed to), or even a single Apple Retail Store? How can one explain the huge disparity in the prices of all Apple products out here when compared to their USA counterparts? How can one explain the complete lack of any advertisement directly from Apple in any form in the second most populous country in the world?

Apple doesn’t care about the Indian market and it has now come to bite them in the, er, posterior end. At least this one time, I’m glad to see Apple not being a success and people not taking a liking to an Apple product. And the fact that it makes my iPhone unique is only a small part of that. What makes me glad, primarily, is the hope that they will perhaps start taking India a little more seriously now.

What Apple needs to do now is get off the proverbial high horse and face the music. They need to realise that when their CEO climbs up onstage at one of the most high profile technology events of the year and declares that the iPhone will be priced at $199 or less all over the world, their world map had better include India as well.

Furthermore, it’s high time Apple came to terms with the fact that you aren’t really in the cellphone business until you’ve managed to infiltrate the school and college campuses of India. And for that to happen, they need to add the capability to forward text messages pronto. We also need video recording, Bluetooth (that actually works), and copy-paste, but these can be dealt with later. But if you want your product to be in the hands of the millions of teenage prepaid SIM card users out here, it better be able to pass on that not-quite-so-funny joke they just received to everyone on their contact list.

Of course, it is entirely possible that Apple still plans to keep things the way they are currently and is happy with their slice of the Indian market pie, no matter how small it may be. If that is the case, well, it’s just more bad news for us Indians. But something tells me that’s not the case anymore. I do not think that a man like Steve Jobs and a company like Apple would be foolish enough to willingly allow Nokia easy access to the pockets of the millions of smartphone users out here. Sooner or later, Apple will get serious about India. It’s just a matter of time.

Watch this space for updates.

As awesome as the buttonless glass Multi-touch trackpads on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros may be, they’re plagued by a serious drawback—they randomly ignore left clicks whenever it strikes their fancy. Apparently, it’s quite a widespread issue and a significant number of users have been complaining about it on Apple centric discussion forums everywhere.

One of the affected users, however, decided to go one step further and send an email directly to the captain of the ship, Steve Jobs, at his publicly known email address. As he details on his blog, he later got a call from an Apple representative who assured him that it was a known issue and that they were looking into it, although he couldn’t offer any temporary fix in the meanwhile.

The person in question (I really wish he’d taken the time to at least identify himself on his blog) then enquired about the looseness of the hinge on the new MacBook Pro, which causes the lid to fall shut when the notebook is raised from the rear end, and the Apple guy told him that this was how the hinge was designed this time round and that it wasn’t a flaw.

Moral of the story: If you’re having clicking issues with the trackpad on your new unibody MacBook or MacBook Pro, be patient because there might be a fix on the horizon. If, however, you just can’t get that darned lid to stay upright, a little scotch tape and a couple of small sticks just might get the job done.

[Via AppleInsider]

Apple has spoken out about the changes it has made to MobileMe since its rocky (to put it politely) launch. I don’t know why this wasn’t posted in the largely useless MobileMe News page but I can’t complain. Something tells me this bit of text was written by Steve Jobs himself. 

Apple is always working to improve MobileMe. Since MobileMe is primarily a server-side, or “cloud”-based, service, the MobileMe team can make improvements and push updates to MobileMe without any action being required of MobileMe customers. Since server-side updates are a bit more innocuous than a standard software update to Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows, it’s easy not to notice that updates are occurring. Usually the only hint of these updates is that things just “work better”.

The article then lists out a whole bunch of changes, including nitty-gritty details like “provides a “loading” graphic to indicate that messages are still being loaded instead of a blank page”.

A lot of attention has been given to localisation of the service. A lot of users were complaining about calendar dates being inconsistent across the service and during the last two weeks I have noticed that this problem has been solved. 

If you haven’t already, check out our article on making the best of MobileMe. And if you have any problems or queries, don’t hesitate to shout out in the comments.

The financial meltdown in the USA seems to be having no significant effect on Apple. Despite the worldwide credit crunch, it managed to sell more products than ever before and laughed all the way to bank with record revenue earnings. Apple posted revenues of $7.9 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.14 billion. It sold 6.9 million iPhones, over 2.6 million Macintosh computers, and over 11 million iPods in the last quarter. “Some remarkable things are happening at Apple,” said Steve jobs, Apple’s CEO, in a rare conference call appearance. He said:

“Apple just reported one of the best quarters in its history, with a spectacular performance by the iPhone—we sold more phones than RIM. We don’t yet know how this economic downturn will affect Apple. But we’re armed with the strongest product line in our history, the most talented employees and the best customers in our industry. And $25 billion of cash safely in the bank with zero debt. We may get buffeted around by the waves a little bit, but we’ll be fine and stronger than ever when the waters calm.”

For the company’s fourth fiscal quarter, which ended on September 27 this year, Apple reported revenues of $7.9 billion, which was $1.7 billion higher than the $6.2 billion figure in the same quarter last year. Net income was $1.14 billion with earnings per diluted share of $1.26. Analysts had been expecting revenues of $8 billion and earnings per diluted share of $1.11.

Buoyed by the strong earnings, investors shored up to buy AAPL on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Apple’s stock prices were up by $9.91 or 11%. Even AT&T benefited from the strong iPhone sales and its stock price rose by 85 cents or 3.3%.

Apple Outsells RIM; 6.9m iPhones off the shelves

Apple has sold 6.9 million iPhone 3Gs in the last quarter. Compare that number with the total first generation iPhones sold—6.1 million! Apple has already achieved its stated goal of selling ten million iPhones three months ahead of schedule.

What does the 6.9 million number signify? Two things: (1) Apple is now the world’s third largest mobile phone supplier in terms of revenue, trailing behind Nokia and Samsung; and (2) They outsold RIM’s entire range of BlackBerry phones. RIM sold 6.1 million phones compared to the 6.9 million iPhones. “RIM is a good company that makes good products and so it is surprising that after only 15 months in the market, we could outsell them in any quarter,” remarked Steve Jobs.

The Mac, iTunes Store, and iPod sales have also been strong. The company sold over 2.6 million Macs with a 21% year-over-year growth for Mac sales, beating the average industry growth by a comfortable margin. They sold over 11 million iPods, setting a new record for a non-holiday quarter. The iTunes Store now has over 65 million registered customers and an impressive catalog of over 8.5 million music titles. A stunning grand total of 200 million applications have been downloaded from the App Store already, within just 102 days of its launch!

“We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk”

At the end of conference call, in the QnA session, Steve Jobs remarked that Apple wouldn’t be making a cheap notebook primarily for surfing the Internet anytime soon. “Our DNA will not allow us to ship that,” he remarked. He said that Apple would rather cater to the large number of customers who would like to and can afford to buy their products instead of going after the extremely price conscious buyer. While he was tight lipped about any upcoming products, Steve Jobs remarked that the Apple TV and the digital living room market would remain as much of a “hobby” in 2009 as it is now, specially given the current economic condition. He also noted that the strong sales was because of the fact that Apple has strong products, talented employees, and the smartest and most product aware customers. Doesn’t that just make your heart swell with pride!