Steve Jobs on the iBook Launch: Pricing, Education, and the Web

It was the day the Mac faithful have been waiting for. Apple today unveiled the iBook, the portable version of its wildly successful iMac. Steve Young has more on the debut at Macworld in New York. In a religious revival atmosphere, Steve Jobs preached to the converted on the virtues of the little things in Apple's new portable PC, the iBook. It has a handle. And... So it has something that no other portable on the market has. The iBook is loaded with Internet and other communications features, a wireless upgrade, two of the iMac's five fruity colors, but a $1,600 price tag, $400 more than some analysts expected.

Oh, I see, I get it. It's iMac to go. At a time when Internet service companies are beginning to offer free PCs as a way to lure customers, a $1,600 computer seems to go against the grain. But analysts expect it to do well, but mainly with students. If you look at some of the wild colors on it, that's probably not the kind of thing most people are going to want to carry into their business organization, a tangerine, a notebook with a handle. Computer business is a series of niches, and they've identified the niches and designed products for that. That actually, if you look ahead, is where Apple can go longer term, is they identify other markets and design products for that. On another front, Jobs said Apple's newest QuickTime multimedia software will make it possible for anyone to run a TV station on the Internet. In a jab at Microsoft, he said it's not only free, but also based on open standards.

Companies using it would include ESPN, VH1, and Disney. With Apple stock now priced about four times higher than when he came back to the company, Steve Jobs is no longer, the company is no longer searching outside for a CEO. But for now, Jobs still retains the interim CEO title. Stewart? Steve Young reporting. Thank you, Steve. Apple stock has exploded since the return of Steve Jobs, and the company has beat profit expectation seven quarters in a row. Can the winning streak continue? Joining us now on Moneyline, in our Moneyline Focus, is Apple co-founder and current CEO Steve Jobs. Welcome back. Thank you. The response today was clearly terrific, but we just heard Steve Young report on some concerns about the pricing.

Do you have those concerns? Do you share those concerns? Was that the price that you hoped to launch the computer? Actually, the data is really quite different. If you look at the consumer portable market, the cheapest consumer portables are about $1599, but most of them are about $1799. As an example, IBM's cheapest consumer ThinkPad is $1799. And so actually, since ours is more powerful than any of the Wintel ones and much cooler, and it's priced as cheap as any in the market, we're feeling pretty good. What happened was that most of the flat panel displays used in portables are made in Asia. And when the Asian flu started happening about two and a half years ago, those companies pulled back their investments in new factories.

And so as the demand caught up with supply and has now exceeded supply, the prices on these flat panel displays has been going up. So as an example, IBM has raised the price of their consumer portable twice in the last six months due to higher panel prices. So maybe prices are unfortunately not what they were. Okay, well, we'll see. Seven strong quarters. Since you've been back at Apple, you have cleaned up the bottom line. You have streamlined your product line, had a couple successful launches. What is next? What's the next target for you? Well, it's really simple. We want to make the best computers in the world. And we want to make the best computers for our pro markets, which are our design and publishing and web authoring customers, and for our education market.

I don't know if you know this, but Apple is the largest education supplier in the world, measured in revenues, and for our consumer customers. And we think if we make the best computers in the world and do a really good job, we're going to keep getting new customers. And so far, that's been happening. Are you going to drop the interim title, or are you kind of getting a like that interim CEO title? You know, about a year ago, everybody was really hounding me about this. And I had so much on my plate, so many things to do. And I woke up one morning, and I just thought, you know, this isn't my problem. This is their problem. And I've got enough problems I've taken on, so I just stopped thinking about it. And I probably should think about it one of these days, but I really haven't thought about it since. So you're still interim CEO? I'm still interim CEO, yeah. What about Pixar? Are you worried?

How are you dividing up your time? Are you worried at all about neglecting Pixar? You know, I try to spend about half and half. And it doesn't always go that way, but that's what I try to do. Both companies have excellent senior management teams. And fortunately, I'm not directing the pictures at Pixar. We have the most brilliant director in the business, John Lasseter, who's our senior vice president of creative that oversees that. Now, Pixar's doing great. We have a film coming out this November, Toy Story 2, with our partner Disney. And Tom Hanks and Tim Allen are back, and I think it's going to be good. Good. Steve Jobs, thank you very much for joining us. Congrats on the launch today. Thanks very much. And Moneyline will be right back.