Steve Jobs speaks out

As the founder and saviour of Apple, Steve Jobs is seen as a messiah in the technology industry. So his interview with Fortune 500 comes as a fascinating insight into how he has masterminded one of the world's most innovative companies. Here are some snippets.

Steve on consensus:

"So you can't go out and ask people, you know, what's the next big thing. There's a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, "If I'd have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me 'A faster horse.'""

Steve on trends:

"It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That's what we get paid to do."

Steve on consultants:

"We do no market research. We don't hire consultants. The only consultants I've ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway's retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made [when launching Apple's retail stores]. But we never hire consultants, per se. We just want to make great products."

Steve on integration:

"There's no other company that could make a MacBook Air and the reason is that not only do we control the hardware, but we control the operating system. And it is the intimate interaction between the operating system and the hardware that allows us to do that. There is no intimate interaction between Windows and a Dell notebook."

Steve on decisions:

"I'm actually as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done."

Further reading on CNN.com.

Return of the Mac ... Tablet

After it's much publicised canning of the Newton over a decade ago, Apple is looking to launch a tablet version of it's iPod Touch with a larger viewing display for reading, video and image content. It will not be a fully functional OSX as the product will be limited to running a single application at any one time. But it will have WiFi capabilities for access to download and streaming content.

The company has been working closely on a secret project codenamed 'cocktail' with some of the biggest names in music, EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music, Universal Music Group, to produce new content formats for a more immersive experience.

Further reading on Guardian Online and Apple Insider.

Additional speculation on the functional specification and it's viability from PC World.

Spotify for iPhone

Spotify awaits Apple's much criticised vetting process for it's iPhone application. Despite the acceptance of music apps Last.fm, Deezer and Pandora, the outcome is not certain as the process has been highlighted for it's inconsistency. Whether Apple will see it as infringing on the iTunes market will remain to be seen.

Further reading at Guardian Online.

Augmented Reality App for iPhone 3GS

Acrossair has developed a new GPRS application which allows you to view where the nearest London tube stations are by simply pointing the iPhone camera in any direction.

Universal chargers for mobiles by 2012

The mobile (cellular) phone world joined hands today with the announcement that 10 companies including Apple, LG, Motorola, Nokia and Sony Eriksson, have all agreed to use the Micro-USB format by 2012.

This is good news for consumers and environmentalists as the universal chargers will not only reduce thousands of tonnes of electronic wastage from the disposal of obsolete chargers, but be more energy efficient by reducing carbon emissions by 13.6 million tonnes to 21.8 millions tonnes a year.

Manufacturers had been under increasing pressure from the European Commission to create a standardised charger. EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen told German radio station Deutche Welle that there were more than 30 different kinds of chargers in use across the 27 nations of the European Union.

The GMSA, an umbrella association for the industry, estimates the potential of eliminating up to 51,000 tonnes of duplicate chargers.

Read the article at the Guardian Online.