Apple Is in TV-Pricing Talks

Apple Sees New Money in Old Media

The Wall Street Journal - With the new tablet device that is debuting next week, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs is betting he can reshape businesses like textbooks, newspapers and television much the way his iPod revamped the music industry—and expand Apple's influence and revenue as a content middleman.
In developing the device, Apple focused on the role the gadget could play in homes and in classrooms, say people familiar with the situation. The company envisions that the tablet can be shared by multiple family members to read news and check email in homes, these people say.

For classrooms, Apple has been exploring electronic-textbook technology, these people add. The people familiar with the matter say Apple has also been looking at how content from newspapers and magazines can be presented differently on the tablet. Other people briefed on the device say the tablet will come with a virtual keyboard.

Apple has recently been in discussions with book, magazine and newspaper publishers about how they can work together. The company has talked with The New York Times Co., Conde Nast Publications Inc. and HarperCollins Publishers and its owner News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal, over content for the tablet, say people familiar with the talks.

New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger declined to comment in an interview Wednesday on its involvement in the new device except to say, "stay tuned."

Apple is also negotiating with television networks such as CBS Corp. and Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, for a monthly TV subscription service, the Journal has reported. Apple is also working with videogame publisher Electronic Arts Inc. to show off the tablet's game capabilities, according to one person familiar with the matter.

Reporters Fight Over Apple's Steve Jobs Coverage

Apple's Jobs Takes Medical Leave

Just a week after reassuring investors and employees about his health, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs disclosed he has a "more complex" medical condition and would take a leave of absence until the end of June.

Mr. Jobs's disclosure, in a letter directed to Apple employees, provided no details about what was ailing him and raised fresh questions about a company that is so closely identified with its co-founder. Apple shares fell 7% in late trading on the news.

Mr. Jobs, 53 years old and a pancreatic-cancer survivor, said he was passing day-to-day management of the Cupertino, Calif., company to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook. Mr. Cook filled in for Mr. Jobs in 2004 when the Apple chief took a leave to battle his cancer.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123196896984882901.html

Apple Drops Copyright Protection on Songs

The New York Times - SAN FRANCISCO — In moves that will help shape the online future of the music business, Apple said Tuesday that it would remove anticopying restrictions on all of the songs in its popular iTunes Store and allow record companies to set a range of prices for them.

Beginning this week, three of the four major music labels — Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group — will begin selling music through iTunes without digital rights management software, or D.R.M., which controls the copying and use of digital files. The fourth, EMI, was already doing so.

In return, Apple, whose dominance in online music sales gives it powerful leverage, agreed to a longstanding demand of the music labels and said it would move away from its insistence on pricing all individual song downloads on iTunes at 99 cents.

Instead, the majority of songs will drop to 69 cents beginning in April, while the biggest hits and newest songs will go for $1.29. Others that are moderately popular will remain at 99 cents.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/companies/07apple.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Apple’s Jobs Explains His Weight Loss

SAN FRANCISCO — Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, sought to put to rest persistent speculation about his health on Monday, disclosing in a public letter that a hormone problem — and not a recurrence of cancer — had contributed to his very visible weight loss over the last year.

Mr. Jobs lamented that his decision not to give his usual keynote address at the annual Macworld Expo this week in San Francisco “set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.”

But Mr. Jobs, 53, said that doctors had recently diagnosed a “hormone imbalance” that was depleting proteins in his body as the cause of his weight loss. The remedy, he said, “is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment.”

Mr. Jobs said he would continue as chief executive while being treated. Investors sent Apple shares up more than 4 percent, to $94.80 on Monday. “That the stock is up on his announcement that he’s sick tells you something,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Brothers. “I think expectations were that it would be worse, that he would have to step down.

Investors punished the stock last month after rumors about Mr. Jobs’s health circulated in the wake of his withdrawal from the Macworld Expo. Apple said at the time that Philip W. Schiller, the company’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing, would deliver the keynote address on Tuesday at the conference, usually a high-profile platform for Mr. Jobs to announce new products.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/technology/companies/06apple.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink