14 DAY TRIAL // The company-wide virtual meeting with Steve Jobs is not something that happens very often at Apple, but the CEO wanted to take a moment and talk about Apple's accomplishment with the iPhone, as well as the future of the other Apple product lines. Jobs has been known to mark out significant events to the company, such as when Apple settled the old grudge with Dell by surpassing it in market cap.
The virtual meeting started with Jobs talking about how the iPhone is going to change the marketplace forever. Much like when the first Mac came out and people could look at it and instantly recognize that this was what all computers would look like in the future, the iPhone is the prototype of mobile phones to come. Jobes went on to talk about Macs and how the current models were "the best Macs" ever but that the stuff that would be coming out in the next year would be "off the charts." He also mentioned that in terms of OS X, the people now take care of both Macs and iPhone and also some iPods that are being worked on. This sounds like the iPhone-sans-phone iPods that many are hoping for, and indeed, Jobs was asked if he was not worried that iPhone would cannibalize iPod sales. Jobs simply said that if anyone was going to be eating out of Apple's pie, he would like it to be Apple? not surprising considering that the company killed off the best selling iPod mini by introducing the better selling iPod nano.
Last but not least, Jobs said that as thanks for all the hard work, all full time and part time U.S. Apple employees would be receiving an iPhone at the end of July. The only condition is to have been an Apple employee for over a year. Such a move is not a first for Jobs as last November, Jobs gave all Apple employees a shiny new second generation iPod Shuffle. How unlucky you would have to be if you had been an Apple employee for 11 months.