Steve Jobs on Adobe, Gizmodo and why iPad came before iPhone

There are few companies so tied to the personality of its chief executive as Apple is to Steve Jobs. He makes few public appearances, bar those evangelical product launches, but even by the super-slick standards of Apple's marketing regime the opening interview at the D8 conferenceyesterday was extremely well-timed coming, as it did, six days after Apple's market value drifted past Microsoft to hit £222.1bn.

Steve Jobs explains the development of the iPad

Here's a summary of the main points, as diligently noted by AllThingsD's John Paczkowski:

On the battle with Adobe

Jobs said Apple has to back the right technological horse, and has made previously gambles by ditching the floppy disk and adopting USB. "We didn't set out to have a war over Flash," he said. "We made a technical decision. And it wasn't until the iPad that Adobe raised a stink... Flash has had its day." He wrote the Thoughts on Flash piece because he was tired of Adobe trashing Apple in the press. What if consumers demand Flash? asked Walt Mossberg. "We're just trying to make great products. We don't think Flash makes a great product, so we're leaving it out." He said consumers simply wouldn't buy Apple products if they didn't like them, and that the iPad is currently selling three every second. Video

The Gizmodo 'lost' iPhone 4.0

Recounting the story, Jobs confirmed that an employee was testing a wireless product. "There's a debate about whether it was left in a bar or stolen... and the person who found it decided to sell it… and it turned out this person plugged it into his roommate's computer and that roommate called the police." Video
The 'sweatshop' factory in China

Jobs said: "Foxconn is not a sweatshop. They've got restaurants and swimming pools… For a factory, it's a pretty nice factory." He acknowledged that 15 suicides at the plant is very troubling and said "we send over our own people and some outside folks as well, to look into the issue".

On the battle with Google

Is Apple now engaged in a platform war with Google? "We never saw ourselves in a platform war with Microsoft, either… Maybe that's why we lost." Mossberg pushed him on how the relationship with Google has changed because of mobile. "Well, they're competing with us. We didn't go into search. They decided to compete with us and got more and more serious." Does he feel betrayed? He cut off the questioning: "My sex life is great - how's yours?" Apple is not moving into search, he emphasised. The acquisition of Siri was about AI, not search. And Apple will not be removing Google from the iPhone and iPad. Video But he did acknowledge Apple's move into advertising with iAds, which he said was to try and improve a format that often takes the user outside the app. "People are using apps way more than they are using search, so if you want to make developers more money, you've got to get the ads into apps." Video

iPad came before iPhone

Jobs said any tablet that used a stylus "is a failure" - he wanted a tablet to be created from scratch using a glass touch screen, and that work happened before the idea of a phone. "It began with the tablet. I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on with your fingers. I asked our people about it. And six months later, they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He got scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, 'my God, we can build a phone with this!' So we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the iPhone." Video

What the iPad means for publishing

Jobs stuck up for professional publishers, saying some content providers hadn't priced aggressively enough and that he didn't want "to see us descend into a nation of bloggers". "We need editorial oversight now more than ever. Anything we can do to help newspapers find new ways of expression that will help them get paid, I am all for." The iPad will develop as a tool for content creation, he said, including video editing. He admitted Apple "sometimes makes mistakes" when it comes to the app approval process, but said 95% of apps are approved every week and dismissed some coverage of high-profile app rejections as people seeking their 15 minutes of fame.

Apple's startup culture
Apple has no committees and is structured like a startup, said Jobs. "I have one of the best jobs in the world. I get to hang out with some of the most talented, committed people around and together we get to play in this sandbox and build these cool products... so what I do all day is meet with teams of people and work on ideas and new problems to come up with new products." When asked if his staff will tell him when he's wrong, he replied: "Of course. The best ideas have to win, no matter who has them."

• Also in Apple news...

Apple is reported to be the subject of an investigation by the Texan Attorney General's Office into pricing practices for ebooks, reports theWall Street Journal, specifically with the April launch in the US of the iPad and related iBookstore. The office has requested documents from HarperCollins, amongst others, as part of an investigation understood to be focused on Apple's 'agency' model now adopted by five of the six biggest publishing houses. On the iBookstore, Apple effectively acts as agency by allowing publishers to set their own prices and take 70% of that rate, while sellers receive the remaining 30%