Apple holds shareholder meeting, Tim Cook presides

I attended and from the get go Mr. Cook said Mr Jobs was not in attendance due to his medical leave.

This was my first ever attendance at an Apple shareholder meeting.

Some fun facts:

They have beautiful framed pictures of their products on the walls.

Town Hall where the meeting is held accommodates about 300 people. And while I was in line more than 30 minutes before the start, it was filled to capacity already, so the rest of us were shunted to an overflow room upstairs.

Security is tight - every bag you bring is searched for 'recording devices' but you can bring your iPhone in, no problem.

They provide snacks and coffee.

The meeting lasted more than an hour and a half.

After the formal portion where you vote on everything, Tim Cook, Phil Schiller and Peter Oppenheimer take questions. There were some interesting ones, but everyone was respectful.

The average age was probably 65 or so. Lots of canes in use.

A visit to the Company Store for parting gifts is a must and so is a visit to BJ'S Brewhouse next door where a lot of Apple employees dine.

Oh and I used Taxi Magic (iPhone app) to get me a ride to the San Jose airport (worked great!)

Since Apple doesn't pay dividends or any other real perks to the shareholders, they're just mostly along for the ride.

The BBC reports Jobs was not in attendance:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/technology-12552655

Pity they don't teach "common sense" in your school.

There's a difference between a "tax" and a "service fee." 30% is not far out of the ordinary for hosting the programs, processing payments, dealing with customer issues re: downloads, authentication, and account management. Sure, for content that is additional, it's on the high end, but it is not a tax, any more than the difference between cooking your own breakfast and driving to the nearest Waffle House is. The developers are getting prime location, paying customers, with credit cards on file. That's a great market that anyone should be excited to gain access to.

The fact that the shareholders see the value in dropping the percentage a bit for subscriptions (since some of the server burden will be on the developer/content provider's shoulders, rather than 100% on Apple's) shows the Board that there is interest from the owners of the company to be a bit more market driven in this regard. They're not advocating doing away with fees, or lowering them for other apps, just for subscription content.

This just in! Person acting in capacity of person in charge of company performs a duty as if he is person in charge of company.

Sidebar: is that signage with the extremely outdated branding actually still used on the Apple campus?

"suggesting that if Apple lowered its 30% cut on content purchased through the iTunes store, newspapers would have an easier go of it."

Really? I'm sure Apple wouldn't have known this if some genius shareholder hadn't pointed it out. In a related story, consumers would better be able to afford Macs if they reduced all prices. Hell, why not just sell them at cost? Who wants to make money, anyway? It's a good thing this isn't a shareholder meeting. Oh wait.