He mapped out a strategy to rescue the failing merger on a whiteboard in 2003
Jobs reviewing an early version of OS X. Photo: Brent Schlender
After a long meeting with Steve Jobs last year about what the iPad would mean for publishers, Fortune's technology editor Stephanie Mehta -- known to her colleagues as "Stephanie Telephony" when she covered telecommunications -- remarked that Jobs was a surprisingly astute student of other people's businesses, including hers.
Case in point: A story Brent Schlender, who covered Jobs for 25 years, tells in the current issue of Fortune about a similar meeting seven years earlier:
John Huey, who is now Time Inc.'s editor-in-chief, joined me at Apple (AAPL) headquarters in Cupertino in 2003, not for a story interview but instead to get Jobs' advice on how he would clean up our struggling parent company, then known as AOL Time Warner. Steve looked at us incredulously and muttered something about what a waste of time it was to look in the rearview mirror. He then proceeded to spend the next 20 minutes methodically explaining in excruciating detail why AOL's business model of being a dial-up Internet service was a complete mismatch and had served only to slow down Time Warner's build-out of its much more promising broadband business. Then he waxed acerbic about why AOL's "postcard production values" for its online content were so "hopelessly last-century."
"Well, I guess that means you don't think it could be fixed," Huey said. To which Jobs replied, "I didn't say that. I know how you could fix it. I'm just not interested." Then, inexplicably, he went to the whiteboard and spent 15 more minutes mapping out a strategy right off the top of his head to turn AOL into something more like a media company. (That's more or less the course AOL (AOL) eventually followed, albeit with mixed success, after being spun out of Time Warner (TWX) several years later.)
"That's how I'd do it," he concluded, snapping the cap back on the dry marker with a flourish. "But like I said, I'm not interested."
The anecdote is part Steve Jobs and Me, in which Schlender reminisces about his unusually close relationship with his subject (Jobs invited Schlender's children to his house for a Toy Story pre-screening and visited Schlender twice in the hospital when he nearly died from a freak infection). It's a lovely piece of writing, and it's available online here.
Some of the most draconian restrictions in its App Store subscription rules have been lifted
Source: Le Monde
Last February, when Apple (AAPL) announced the rules by which publishers and other content providers could offer subscriptions through its App Store, Steve Jobs made them sound like the most reasonable thing in the world.
"Our philosophy is simple," he wrote. "When Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 9, 2011 11:05 AM ET
Tells Ad Age that the rush to put magazines on tablets is "sheer insanity and insecurity and fear"
Images: Apple Inc., Gawker
Jann Wenner, who has done his share of celebrity interviews for Rolling Stone (Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama, etc.), knows how to give a good one, and his Q&A in the current issue of Ad Age is a doozy.
As it happens, he spends much of it talking Apple MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 31, 2011 7:22 AM ET
Perhaps Apple's magazine subscription rules weren't as one-sided as publishers feared
Source: Apple Inc.
If you were subscribing to the online edition of, say, Wired, Vanity Fair or the New Yorker on the iTunes store, and you were faced with the pop-up window at right, would you opt-in and click "Allow"?
Most major magazine publishers, when shown this screen by Apple (AAPL) representatives, blanched. Each of them knew full well the kind MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 12, 2011 6:49 AM ET
Even as big publishers strike deals to put content on the iPad, a small ebookseller bites the dust
Source: BeamItDown Software
In an bitter letter to users, BeamItDown Software's Philip Huber makes no bones about whom he blames for the fate of his company and its iFlowReader app, both of which will cease operations on May 31.
"The crux of the matter is that Apple is now requiring us, as well as MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 11, 2011 7:41 AM ET
Apple and Time Inc. struck a deal, and the per-issue price fell from $4.99 overnight
Here's a window into the economics of magazine publishing.
Monday's Wall Street Journal reports that Time Inc. (TWX) and Apple (AAPL) have reached an agreement to allow subscribers of Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated to get digital versions of their magazines on the iPad for free.
The deal breaks an impasse that dates back to high-level meetings Steve MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 2, 2011 7:28 AM ET
Bloomberg Businessweek joins Maxim, Elle and Popular Science on the iTunes Store
The iTunes magazine subscription list grew by 33% Monday when Bloomberg L.P. agreed to Steve Jobs' terms and began offering subscriptions to the iPad version of Bloomberg Businessweek on the iTunes store.
That makes four magazine publishers willing to give Cupertino 30% of each subscription sold and take the risk that they will never know who bought it.
In return, the MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Apr 11, 2011 7:35 AM ET
The subscription model Apple announced today is unlikely to please anyone
Image: News Corp.
There was a rumor in the Time Life building last week that Apple (AAPL) -- which had been in a stand-off with the publishing industry for nearly a year -- had "blinked" and was about to cut a deal favorable to the publishers.
It was not to be. When Apple announced its new App Store subscription service MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 15, 2011 10:28 AM ET
Zinio's digital revenues have grown 350% since last April. Will Apple put a stop to that?
When we wrote a few weeks ago about the signal failure of Apple's iPad to halt the magazine industry's downward spiral (See Why digital newsstands stink), we had forgotten about Zinio.
Zinio, which has been giving publishers a venue to sell their wares online for nearly a decade, is the exception to all the rules of MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jan 24, 2011 12:57 PM ET
A sister publication sets the week of Jan. 17 for the tablet-only newspaper's debut
Murdoch. Credit: World Economic Forum
The most-talked about daily newspaper this year -- indeed, the only newspaper that seems to be generating any buzz -- is The Daily, the semi-secret iPad publication being assembled with an all-star cast of editors on the 26th floor of the News Corp.'s (NWS) Manhattan skyscraper for Australian-born press baron Rupert Murdoch.
When MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 17, 2010 11:06 AM ETEvery morning, discover the companies, deals and trends in tech that are moving markets and making headlines. SUBSCRIBE
Receive Fortune's newsletter on all the deals that matter, from Wall Street to Sand Hill Road. SUBSCRIBE
Covering the digital giants of Silicon Valley and beyond, an in-depth look at enterprise companies, and the startups disrupting them. Written by Michal Lev-Ram and emailed twice weekly. SUBSCRIBE
Anne Fisher answers career-related questions and offers helpful advice for business professionals. SUBSCRIBE
| Company | Price | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America Corp... | 7.95 | -0.16 | -1.97% |
| Microsoft Corp | 31.27 | -0.17 | -0.54% |
| Ford Motor Co | 12.28 | -0.25 | -2.00% |
| General Electric Co | 19.39 | 0.17 | 0.88% |
| Citigroup Inc | 32.36 | -1.00 | -3.00% |
| Index | Last | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dow | 12,938.67 | -27.02 | -0.21% |
| Nasdaq | 2,933.17 | -15.40 | -0.52% |
| S&P 500 | 1,357.66 | -4.55 | -0.33% |
| Treasuries | 2.00 | -0.04 | -1.96% |
.
