Apple Has Big Secret Surprises Coming Next Week – But CEO Tim Cook Won’t Detail
Problem is, Apple CEO Tim Cook won’t say what they are. He told the AllThingD conference tonight that he has never been so amazed as he is by “all the things I cannot talk about today.” In fact, Cook said the notoriously tight-lipped Apple would “double down on secrecy on products”. On the TV front, however, Cook made no secret of his enthusiasm for Steve Jobs’ pledge to change television with Apple TV like iTunes changed music. “We have a good relationship with the content owners,” Cook replied when asked about Apple and the Hollywood studios. “I’ve met with several of them recently; they were talking about what more we could do with them.” (Cook made a point of noting his respect for what Apple board member Bob Iger has accomplished at Disney.) Cook wouldn’t disclose what those discussions with Hollywood were about, except to say, “most people would say that TV is not an area of their life they are completely pleased with.”
The Apple CEO did pivot on the topic to tell AllThingsD co-founders Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the live blogged event in Rancho Palos Verdes that he believes Apple’s success is in creating a great vehicle for consumers to get content. “The consumer loves it because they can get it where they want it, when they want it.” Cook acknowledged that Apple TV hasn’t been a success or a “fifth leg of the stool” to compare with the company’s phone, music, Mac or tablet business but that Apple was in it for the long haul. “This is an area of intense interest for us,” Cook said. “We are going to keep pulling the string and see where this takes us.”
Earlier in the evening, Cook did at least say what wouldn’t be in the offing next week. Talking about merging PC and tablet, Cook said such a combo is “not what’s coming next week.” The Apple CEO, who said he expected tablets like the iPad to outsell PCs soon, compared such a merging to melding a toaster and a fridge. After taking the stage around 6:22 PM, Cook was interviewed in front of a crowd that included News Corp CEO (and Mossberg’s Wall Street Journal boss) Rupert Murdoch and other tech fans and insiders. In the wide ranging discussion, Cook told the crowd of the inspiration and focus he received from Jobs, his desire to see Apple become a more transparent company in terms of environmental and supplier issues, the rise of the mobile apps industry and his hope that the company will manufacture more products in the U.S. “We should do more semiconductor things in the U.S.,” he said. Cook took over as Apple CEO on August 24. Jobs died on October 5.
The AllThingsD conference runs through Thursday.
(Photos: Asa Mathat, AllThingsD.com)
The music business hated how Apple monopolized music online.
Studios won’t allow you to do that, Timmy.
Nonsense. Apple made the music biz richer than they had been for years. And it continues today.
Apple showed the music biz a way to make money online after Napster about killed them.
Apple built a better mousetrap, but by no means have they monopolized the music industry. If anything, independent labels and artists online are reaching more fans than ever, sometimes with Apple’s help, sometimes without.
iTunes made music content king, by removing distribution (when was the last time you went to Tower Records?). They’ll do the same for Hollywood. It’ll be good for content creators, and bad for content distributors.
UltraViolet.
Google it.
pico projector in iphone5 – so says the internet.
Maybe they will follow the Canucks and have a basic service at 26/mo and each additional station will cost you 1.00 per month. Then the Telcos, Studios, and Apple can each divide the dollar earned. Cable companies might want to say a word or two though.
What on God’s green earth have you been smoking that would ever lead you to believe we’d follow in a Canuck’s footsteps?!
I have 500 channels not b/c I watch them, but rather so I can be billed for them, and if I have my neighbors over I can say “Hey, look, I got five hundred f**kin channels here.”
And that’s the way I like it.
And there’s NOTHING more exciting than watching a channel showing Mr. Belvedere or golf 24 hours a day!
Hahahahaha! No kidding! And god forbid we be like the Europeans too and actually protect consumers from outrageous gouging by cell phone companies!
I have 500 channels too, but I don’t need 450 of them.
Hasn’t the FCC been hinting at/ threatening the dropping cable bundling in favor of a la carte?
In actuality Napster saved the music industry. iTunes stole Napster’s technology.
Napster “saved” the music industry? Are you serious? They were allowing people to just rip off music for free. Whether or not iTunes used some of the same technology (and I’m sure there’s debate about that as Steve Jobs was working on a digital Walkman for quite a while) as Napster is irrelevant.
Apple cut the deal to have people pay for it (and they cut themselves in for a slice of the pie, as well.) like them or not, this was the last best option for the music business who didn’t want to believe that they couldn’t control the situation. I have other tech friends who approached a few record labels about an iTunes-like product well before Apple debuted its service and they were turned down…rebuked really. The labels wanted huge $1,000,000+ deposits from them. They were, admittedly, start ups and probably wouldn’t have succeeded because one really did need a company with infrastructure and capital and reputation behind them to succeed at this game.
But, the key was that people paid to buy music again. If there wasn’t a revenue model available, then how exactly were songwriters, artists and labels supposed to earn money?
doesn’t e3 start next week? he’s probably talking about the oft-rumored apple game console.
iPhone 5 around this time or early Fall.
They are going to manufacture in the U.S and give american workers jobs.. Nope, Or maybe pay dividends on their 800 billion in the bank… Nope, Or maybe open up their iPhone platform, stop price fixing, trolling for patents, censorship, nope nope nope. They are going to resurrect Jobs!!!
Great post, Kim. I think I will use these ideas to generate some conversation on Face book as well. Blessings!