- Related Stories
-
Apple's 802.11n accounting conundrum
January 19, 2007 -
Apple earnings: 21 million reasons to love the holidays
January 17, 2007 -
Why can't Apple, Cisco just play nice?
January 11, 2007 -
Cisco sues Apple over use of iPhone trademark
January 10, 2007 -
Apple takes $84 million charge, defends Jobs
December 29, 2006 -
Feds: Expect more stock option cases
September 6, 2006 -
Norwegian watchdog scrutinizes iTunes DRM
August 3, 2006
• Wall Street creamed the company's shares after forward earnings guidance left many investors unimpressed.
• Cisco Systems sued after Apple used the iPhone trademark without receiving prior permission.
• Apple assessed a silly surcharge on some notebook customers that only raised more questions than it answered.
• Norway's consumer watchdog declared iTunes illegal because Apple prevents users from playing downloaded songs on other companies' devices.
At any other tech outfit, this would be cause for prolonged nail biting. But I wouldn't get too concerned at the headlines. After all, this is Apple, the longest-running soap opera this side of Days of Our Lives. The company has weathered worse--a lot worse--and has still emerged in fine fettle.
Apple will make up with Cisco, which has little interest in picking a fight over a trademark it couldn't care much about. Maniac day traders who thought Apple shares would soar straight to 120 with nary a timeout will calm down. Besides, the big institutions still remain bullish on Apple's prospects.
Regarding the surcharge nonsense, even though Apple's corporate public-relations department further botched the situation with a painfully confusing explanation, nobody's going to remember the episode six months hence. As for Norway, which we all love, let's get real: the Norwegians would have far more influence if they declared a smoked-salmon embargo. No nova lox for the morning bagel run? Now that is the sort of prospect that would bring nations to their knees.
Apple's biggest headache concerns the questions surrounding what Steve Jobs did or did not know about the Apple options affair. An internal review discovered irregularities in Apple stock option grants made between 1997 and 2001, including a grant to Jobs. The company is now taking an $84 million charge for misdating more than 6,400 options.
At the same time, a former company attorney reportedly made up minutes of a board meeting that outlined the terms of Jobs' grant at a meeting that never took place.
Apple's board--whose roster includes former U.S. Vice President Al Gore--cleared Jobs of wrongdoing. Press reports say government investigators subsequently interviewed Jobs. It's safe to assume that the conversation extended far beyond his personal views about the future for digital music.
There's no way that anyone outside of the upper corporate echelons of the company knows whether we're talking about a passing tempest or the opening chapter of Apple's version of Watergate.
But ever since this story first came to light last year, Apple and its Wall Street apologists have circled the wagons. They badly want this story to disappear, with understandable reason: other CEOs have been forced to walk the plank simply for the appearance of impropriety. At last count, more than 160 companies (including News.com publisher CNET Networks) were being investigated because of their option-granting policies. If Jobs got forced out, Apple would lose its leader, savior and prophet in one swoop.
Who's next in line? Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook? Marketing boss Phil Schiller? Um, I don't think so. A Jobs resignation would lead to an immediate 25 percent drop in the stock--and that would just be the start of a long time of troubles. Simply put, Apple's future as a company is more tightly bound up with the fortunes of its co-founder than any other company in the computer industry. You take Steve Nash off of the Phoenix Suns, and that squad becomes a .500 basketball team. You remove Steve Jobs from Apple, and you're left with just another company.
So it's not hard to speculate what happens when Apple's survival instinct butts heads with the imperatives of corporate governance. The U.K.'s Financial Times recently ran a column titled "Apple's ethics" (registration required), asking whether Jobs should have been fired by the board for his involvement.
But as long as investigators can't pin Jobs with any criminal activity, Apple won't climb on the horns of that dilemma. Too much is riding on a happy outcome for the board to send its Teflon CEO packing.
Biography
Charles Cooper is CNET News.com's executive editor of commentary.
See more CNET content tagged:
Steve Jobs,
Apple Computer,
Norway,
Wall Street,
Cisco Systems Inc.
want to Microsoft Bash? Let the Mac user who's company is without wrongdoing throw the first stone.
oh well, at least I can install my copy of Windows on any computer I want. Even ones I build. how's that for "Individual" and "thinking diffrent"???
story to go away is equalled, if not surpassed, by the desire of
the current tech power structure to keep the story alive. After all,
there are some 200 tech companies being investigated for stock
backdating. This pro-MS, pro-"old guard" bias is evident in the
lead of your piece. A casual reader would conclude that only bad
things happened to Apple in January, forgetting that
-- Apple posted record earnings for the most recent quarter,
including its first-ever $1 billion profit.
-- That despite its recent stock dip, most if not all Wall St.
analysts have reemphasized their bullish guidance on Apple
stock.
-- Oh, yes, and Apple unveiled a game-changing phone that has
gotten more publicity than all of the stock stories combined.
Steve Jobs is an arrogant jerk. Many gifted people are. If he's a
crook, he should go to jail. But let's not kid ourselves about who
has a real rooting interest in this case.
It's not the "Apple apologists" ... it's all those tech giants who are
still playing catch-up 30 years on.
Sweden and Finland have already backed Norway's stance, but have yet to take action, and Mr Waterhouse said the campaign was joined yesterday by Germany and France.
"We are satisfied the Federation of German Consumer Organisations and the French UFC Que Choisir are addressing this important issue. It means that iTunes is now being told by more than 100m European consumers to offer them a fair deal," he said."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/4367dfae-ac1a-11db-b011-0000779e2340.html
Why would Apple want to send "Jobs Packing" as your article suggests they might? He's the linchpin keeping that company on the uptrack, stock options issues or no. Do you have some sort of information to backup your claim that the Apple board wants Jobs gone, or was this just a pure "what if" scenario?
Apple will probably continue to prosper even without Jobs, but I don't really care to find out right now. Not while the company is in the middle of transitioning from a niche software and computer maker to a multi-line consumer electronics & entertainment coompany.
Of course if criminal acts have been committed, the conversation changes totally.
Jobs should do the right thing and plan his own succession now, much like Bill Gates did in becoming Chairman while delegating the CEO job to Ballmer (and recently the Chief Software Architect role to Ray Ozzie.)
Doesn't mean Jobs can't still be the religious prophet, messiah, whatever it is Apple fans worship him as.
poison thier rivers to prevent encroachment of competitive
species. Their salmon farms cause a net protien deficit (more
fish must be harvested from the ocean to feed these salmon
than is produced by the salmon themselves)... not to menton the
pollution. The (Wild) Alaskan salmon fishery is, on the other
hand, extremely sustainable.
Anyway back on topic... If you want to suggest a way Norway
could have more impact than shutting down the iTunes Store,
how about suggesting an oil embargo? They are now the country
with the highest per-capita income and highest standard of
living, and it's all come from their oil profits.
earnings guidance left many investors unimpressed.
That should read: Apple stock surged upward on the iPhone
announcement, profit taking kicked in, and now the stock is
right back where it was.
? Cisco Systems sued after Apple used the iPhone trademark
without receiving prior permission.
Ok, I can't fault this one. It is essentially factual without too
much in the way of slanted language. We all know just how
much Cisco cared about the iPhone trademark. If memory
serves Apple registered iphone.com years ago.
? Apple assessed a silly surcharge on some notebook customers
that only raised more questions than it answered.
Sarbanes-Oxley is ridiculous and the charge for upgrading
Apple's laptops is a case in point. If anyone thinks Apple WANTS
to nickel and dime people and that $1.99 per update is
somehow worth all of this bad press, they are CRAZY!
? Norway's consumer watchdog declared iTunes illegal because
Apple prevents users from playing downloaded songs on other
companies' devices.
News Flash! A(nother) European socialist nation doesn't like
capitalism! I know I'm stunned.
So, just to recap: the stock is not "creamed", it is really the
Government's "silly surcharge" not Apple's, and European
socialists (so far Norway, France, and in the future probably
several more) don't like iTunes.
I appreciate that the article goes on to downplay each of the
bullet points, but why hype them up in the first place as if
everyone should be running for cover?
The stock options backdating is an issue, but not a big one. The
tech press is making a much bigger deal about it than it really is.
This just in! Stock options backdating is a widely used practice!
Flash! You take your accounting charge and move on! It's
probably not a great practice to continue. Film at 11.
soap opera in the computer industry. I mean, the story of Apple
should be available on the iTunes Music Store, in the TV Shows
section.
All will most likely be forgotten within six months. Steve Jobs
has given his take on the backdating situation and I believe him.
Besides that, it can only be pure speculation on anyone's part.
Some ex-C-level people may however get in serious trouble.
Nobody wants to really see Steve Jobs leave, even competitors in
the industry because he is so gifted at changing the game and
opening new market opportunities for everyone. He is the king,
not of invention, but of innovation, no doubt.
Dont we believe in justice, and dont we really think that Mr.Steve Jobs even though he is an avatar of God for Apple, committed a fraud. It sounds ridiculous that Steve Jobs got the options backdated and he is Cleared of "any" wrongdoing.
There is lack of accountability so prevelant that people think they should be exempted given their rock-star status.
This is one more example of lack of accountability and the sorry state of corporate governance. I thought we all learned the lessons from Enron.
small factor. They have enough cash on hand so that they
wouldn't have to sell a single copy of Vista or Office and still be
able to continue as is for 5 to 8 years. As much as you'd like
them to they aren't going anywhere any time soon.
What's funny is that if Apple was in the toilet there is a much
better chance MS would be broken up and you'd see real change
in the market. However, with the continued strength and growth
of Apple MSFT is in *less* danger of a significant market altering
event then they have been in almost 10 years. A happy Apple is
one of the best strategic assest for MSFT around. Irony is a b*tch
ain't it?
This is an old (and slow) link, but I think it says it all: http://www.macdirectory.com/newmd/mac/pages/REVIEWS/jobs/
as a technicality he did not understand, pay the fine, apologize ,
and stay in the job.
Actually I think Rove has had the prosecutor changed to go
aggresively after embarrasing Al Gore if posssible.
http://www.google.com/search?
client=safari&rls=en&q=backdating+options
+microsoft&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
If Apple's FairPlay is under fire in norway...all other forms of
DRM should be also. This is a non-issue. The iPod plays plenty
of different standard formats. You never have to buy one song
from iTunes & apparently most people don't. It's pretty easy to
strip the DRM.
This is more disturbing:
On Friday the ECIS described Vista as ?the first step in
Microsoft?s strategy to extend its market dominance to the
Internet.? Microsoft?s XAML markup language inside Vista was
designed to replace HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), an
industry standard used for publishing material online, it claimed.
XAML is designed to be dependent on Windows, and therefore
not interoperable with other systems, ECIS said.
In addition, Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 will introduce the
Open XML file format called OOXML in a move to replace the
ODF industry standard.
?Unlike the ODF file format which operates on multiple vendor
platforms, Microsoft?s OOXML today only runs seamlessly on the
Microsoft Office platform,? ECIS said.
?With XAML and OOXML Microsoft seeks to impose its own
Windows-dependent standards and displace existing open
cross-platform standards which has wide industry acceptance,
permit open competition and promote competition-driven
innovation,? said Thomas Vinje, a partner at law firm Clifford
Chance and legal advisor to ECIS.
?The end result will be the continued absence of any real
consumer choice, years of waiting for Microsoft to improve ? or
even debug ? its monopoly products, and of course, high
prices,? he added.
30 years from now is SJ going to roll out in his Apple nuclear powered robotic legs and do a flip and tell everyone, "JUST ONE MORE THING", the Apple hearing aid inegrated wearable personal computer !!!
- You Fools - You would be left with Ballmer and Gates!
-
by nmehta0
January 27, 2007 9:08 AM PST
- I am simply amazed at the silly comments by people on this site.
-
Reply to this comment
View
reply
-
-
See all 74 Comments >>Do you really want to send Apple to Jail for greed and wrong
doing? What wrong doing are you talking about? Remember
that Jobs has taken $1 for salary for years. What does Larry
Ellison take home? Mark Hurd? The crowd at Dell? Think for a
minute before you write silly posts.
Now lets come to the products themselves. Please take a close
look at what Microsoft produces, even with their latest Genius
OS - VISTA? Have compared it to Tiger, let alone Leopard?
You've got to be kidding. There are few true inventors left in the
consumer PC business. Jobs is one of them. Lets leave him
alone.
Nimish