Apple's CEO has a background of redirecting attention

Feb 5, 2008 14:03 GMT  ·  By

A recent New York Times interview with Apple's CEO, Mr. Steve Jobs, has revealed a somewhat surprising (and exciting) possibility that the Cupertino-based corporation is developing an eBook reader of their own, much like Amazon's Kindle and Google's Android. Although Jobs said no such thing during his interview, sources on the Internet indicate that the Apple boss is trying to misdirect attention away from what Apple is really cooking in its kitchen.

"Steve Jobs, mercurial CEO of Apple Inc., recently gave an interview to the NY Times. In the interview Jobs shared his thoughts on a number of things including Google's Android and Amazon's Kindle e-book reader. When talking about the Kindle, Jobs came out and announced that Apple was busy working on a competitor to the Kindle," writes extremetech.com.

Reading the whole interview without knowing what clues to pay attention to doesn't leave any strange impressions that Apple might be developing something new. However, one quote in particular was found most interesting by the aforementioned website.

The NY Times notes that Jobs "had a wide range of observations on the industry," at the time the interview took place, "including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading."

Jobs' intriguing comment:... "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore," he said. "Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

Here lies the first clue that Steve Jobs is trying to mislead people as far as the company's current projects are concerned. ExtremeTech points out to two similar moments in Jobs' career, which saw him deny both Apple's creating the iPhone and video on iPod.

An e-book (for electronic book: also ebook) is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Using it, a writer or publisher can choose from many file formats for production. Text can be searched automatically, and cross-referenced using hyperlinks, making e-books an excellent choice of format for works that benefit from search and cross-reference capabilities (dictionaries, reference works etc).