Steve Jobs was interviewed on a myriad of questions at All Things D, including iPhone carriers, the stolen iPhone, and cloud-based media syncing. Here are his responses.
iPhone Carriers in the U.S.
Jobs was questioned about the possibility of the iPhone coming to other carriers in the U.S. and AT&T’s poor network service. Walt Mossberg is conducting this part of the interview:
Walt: Would there be advantages to having two [carriers] in the US?
Steve: There might be.
Walt: In the near future?
Steve: You know I can’t comment on that.
Jobs goes on to say that AT&T’s network should improve by the end of the summer:
Q: Steve, we love our iPhones… but our concern is that we can’t make a phone call on it. Is someone working on that?
A: Well, we’re talking about it. You can bet we’re doing everything we know how to do.
Q: Can we expect something soon?
A: I’m told that a lot of places are getting better certainly by the end of this summer.
Kara: And if they don’t get better?
Steve: Then they won’t.
It’s difficult to read between the lines with these comments, but, to me, it felt like a Verizon iPhone is on the way, just not anytime soon.
Steve Jobs was also asked about the stolen iPhone prototype. Apple’s not going to let this “slide”
Steve: You know, when this whole thing with Gizmodo happened, I got advice from people who said ‘you gotta just let it slide, you shouldn’t go after a journalist just because they bought stolen property and tried to extort you.’ And I thought deeply about this, and I concluded the worst thing that could happen is if we change our core values and let it slide. I can’t do that. I’d rather quit.
So, it sounds like Gizmodo is in trouble.
Cloud-based media content syncing was also discussed. Specifically, Jobs notes that content publishers are warming up to the idea that their main customers are individual people and not record stores and movie theaters.
“You want to share your content that you bought amongst your various devices. You can do that today with a wire. You can’t do that without a wire. We need to work harder on that. We need to do better. Anytime soon? We’re working on it.”
It sounds like Apple is leveraging Lala media (I’m guessing) to make this a reality. I still don’t know if we should expect this this fall at Apple’s annual music event, or not. Right now, I’m guessing “not.”
Lastly, Jobs said that the iPad is an “uncomfortable” transition into a post-PC era of computing.
“The transformation of the PC to new form factors like the tablet is going to make some people uneasy because the PC has taken us a long ways,” Jobs said. “The PC is brilliant.. and we like to talk about the post-PC era, but it’s uncomfortable.”
I take it that we should expect a rapidly changing computer landscape in the next decade.
[Update] They have now posted video clips from the interview.
[Update 2]The full interview has now been posted.
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