MacRumors

Apple today announced that it has filed an amended Form 10-Q with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, correcting errors in the reported vote totals for shareholder-submitted proposals at its most recent annual shareholder meeting.

Last week's filing incorrectly reported the voting percentages for shareholder-submitted proposals because abstentions were counted as "No" votes. Very shortly after the original filing, the company learned that these votes had been incorrectly tallied and an internal investigation confirmed the mistake was due to human error, which Apple regrets. Today's amendment correctly reports the voting results.

The correction affected the outcome of one shareholder-submitted proposal, known as "Say on Pay," which successfully passed with approximately 51.63% of votes cast under corrected counting procedures.

As a result of the corrected vote count, Shareholder Proposal No. 5 Regarding Advisory Vote on Compensation, known as "Say on Pay," was approved with a majority of votes cast. The Compensation Committee of Apple's Board of Directors has been closely following the Say on Pay issue, and anticipates that new laws or regulations will require some form of Say on Pay vote at all public companies in the near future. Even if that does not occur, Apple is committed to implementing an advisory Say on Pay vote next year.

As noted in shareholder materials for the annual meeting, the "Say on Pay" proposal will allow shareholders to cast advisory votes regarding compensation for Apple's senior management at each annual meeting. The referendums would be non-binding, but would allow shareholders a greater voice in communicating with Apple management. Apple had formally opposed the proposal as an ineffective means of offering shareholder input.

Executive compensation has become a popular topic among shareholders throughout the corporate world, with several countries recently passing laws requiring such opportunities for shareholders and the U.S. considering similar legislation.

AppleInsider reports that QuickTime X Player, slated for release as part of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard later this year, will feature integrated uploading of supported video files to YouTube and MobileMe.

In particular, the application will let users take any supported video file and upload it directly to YouTube. Users will be prompted to enter their YouTube username and password, and QuickTime X Player take care of the rest. This includes converting the movie into a file optimized for the video sharing service and then uploading it to the appropriate user account.

Of course, Apple will also offer a similar option for users of its own MobileMe service that will take video files and upload them to a MobileMe Gallery. Both options are reportedly accessible via a new "Share" menu in the QuickTime X Player interface.

The new "Share" menu will reportedly also provide a more prominent location for existing options for export to formats optimized for the iPhone and Apple TV. The report also points out that the change will bring integrated YouTube offerings to all three of Apple's platforms, with a standalone iPhone application available since the device's launch, and YouTube functionality added to the Apple TV in a software update just months after the device's 2007 debut.

Last week, Forbes published the full text of Steve Jobs' deposition to the Securities and Exchange Commission. While a number of stories have been circulating around the internet about Jobs' take on the stock options scandal, perhaps most interesting was Jobs' attitude and state of mind surrounding his return to Apple and the role of Apple CEO.

Back in 1996, after Apple announced that it would purchase NeXT, Steve Jobs returned to Apple as the "interim CEO" while a replacement was sought. Most casual observers felt that Jobs would certainly remain as CEO despite the interim title. Jobs finally dropped the interim title at the 2000 Macworld Expo. TechCrunch provides a good summary of quotes from the deposition about Steve Jobs' thought process during that time and that transitioning to Apple as full-time CEO was not as obvious a decision as one might have suspected:

Q: And did you take on the role then as CEO?
Jobs: Well, no, I did not. I was very concerned that Pixar was a newly public company with shareholders, employees, and I felt that - - to my knowledge there had never been a CEO of two public companies before. So I felt if I took the job, the Pixar shareholders and employees would think I was abandoning them.
Q. Mm-hmm
Jobs. And I decided I just - - that I couldn't do that. So I took the title of interim CEO and agreed to come back for 90 days to help recruit a full-time CEO.

Jobs, of course, was later unable to find a suitable candidate and eventually slid into the position himself.

Jobs also explains that the reason for the stock options was that he felt unappreciated by Apple's board despite the amount of work he put into the company during those years. Jobs, of course, was cleared of wrongdoing with respect to the stock option investigation.

USA Today revives rumors that Apple is considering bringing the iPhone to Verizon's network as early as 2010. According to "people familiar with the matter," high-level discussions were initiated between Apple and Verizon a few months ago and are continuing. AT&T is presently the exclusive carrier for Apple's iPhone, but that exclusivity expires in 2010.

This is just the latest in a series of reports that Apple may open the iPhone up to other U.S. carriers. AT&T has been said to be working on trying to extend their exclusivity into 2011. It's no wonder, since AT&T's most recent financial results showed that they had 1.6 million activations of the iPhone 3G in the 1st quarter of 2009 and 40% of those customers were new to AT&T. If Verizon were to also offer the iPhone, it would likely reduce the number of customers switching to AT&T.

USA Today speculates that even if Apple did open the iPhone up to Verizon, it would likely also remain available to AT&T customers.

First posted over at TouchArcade.com, a YouTube video depicts what could be World of Warcraft running on the iPhone.

World of Warcraft is an incredibly popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) with over 11 million subscribers.

While there have been sketchy rumors in the past that this game could find its way to the iPhone, the video seems believable as it shows the game running within the Vollee client application. Vollee is a company that develops software to allow mobile 3G phones to play CPU intensive PC applications over the network. Their first demonstration in 2008 showed Second Life on a mobile device. The software works by essentially streaming video of the game rather than rendering it by the handset itself:

The companys VolleeX engine adapts applications for screen size and key layout, and then streams the original application to mobile devices. Vollees interactive video streaming platform optimizes compression to minimize bandwidth requirements and also leverages the 3G mobile networks in such a way that gamers can easily and smoothly navigate virtual worlds. Vollees technology is also extensible to fast paced, high quality video games previously impossible on mobile.

Vollee has also previously announced upcoming iPhone support as well as a partnership with ActivisionBlizzard which would make this client a distinct possibility. The company, however, has been rather quiet lately and their website is currently not resolving.

AppleInsider reports on one new feature that has been found in the latest Snow Leopard developer seeds: screen recording.

Similar in many ways to a feature long offered by Ambrosia Software through its Snapz Pro X utility, the option will allow users to capture in motion video their Mac's screen -- essentially video screenshots.

Such a feature will be particularly useful for software developers and educators, as it will simplify the process of creating video tutorials, software demonstrations, and anything else best captured in live motion as opposed to still shots.

The feature does step on the toes of some 3rd party developers (Snapz Pro, Screenflow) who have been offering a similar feature set as commercial applications.

Apple has been continuing to seed Mac OS X Snow Leopard builds to developers. The latest build (10A335) was delivered just yesterday. Early reports of that build indicate it's become even more stable and "polished" but no other new features have been noted.

Arstechnica reports that Apple has been ordered to pay $19 million to Opti Inc. for patent infringement on a technology called "predictive snooping":

The patent -- its full name is "Predictive snooping of cache memory for master-initiated accesses" -- describes a method to more efficiently transfer data among the CPU, memory, and "other devices." The patent was issued to Opti in June of 2002, and the company filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple in January of 2007.

Apple, of course, has been the target of many patent infringement lawsuits. Many lawsuits, however, never come to fruition. The most recent high profile lawsuit comes from Elan who who claims Apple has infringed on their multi-touch technologies. It may be years before we hear the conclusion of that claim.

We tend to avoid reporting on all lawsuit claims, instead holding out for the ones that actually seem to stick.

AppleInsider reports that Apple has seeded a new version of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to developers. The documentation for the new version, termed Build 10A335, reportedly does not carry notice of any significant changes since the last developer seed (Build 10A314) at the beginning of the month, although several known bugs are mentioned.

The Cupertino-based company reportedly made no mention of any significant changes in Thursday's beta but continued encouraging developers to start working on and testing any 64-bit kernel extensions that their third-party products will require under Snow Leopard.

Apple did list a handful of bugs affecting build 10A335, people familiar with the matter say. Among them were crashes in QuickTime X player, application crashes under Rosetta, problems with Migration Assistant and odd errors being spit out by the new version of Disk Utility.

There are no reports of visible changes since the previous developer build at this early stage, but thorough explorations of the new build are no doubt currently underway.

A 99-cent application by the name of 'Baby Shaker' appeared briefly in the App Store yesterday, but was quickly removed by Apple after an uproar from users who found it to be inappropriate and offensive. The simple application displayed a crying baby on the screen with the instruction being that users should listen to the crying for as long as possible before shaking the iPhone to make the baby stop.

The Associated Press reports that Apple issued a statement apologizing for approving the application and stating that its approval had been an error.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said Thursday that the game was "deeply offensive" and said it should not have been approved for sale. "We sincerely apologize for this mistake," Kerris said in a statement.

The incident has put Apple's approval process in the spotlight again. Though in the past, Apple has been criticized for being too restrictive with publishable content in the App Store. They have previously rejected a number of apps from the App Store for a variety of reasons. SF Gate suggests that the incident may even make Apple become more conservative about App approvals in the future.

NVidia and Nero announced yesterday that a recent update to the Nero Movie it software application for Windows reduces video encoding time by up to five times by utilizing NVIDIA's CUDA architecture. They specifically describe the encoding of HD video for an iPod going from "hours to mere minutes" when the application is used in conjunction with a supported NVIDIA graphics card.

CUDA is NVIDIA's parallel computing architecture that harnesses the power of their graphics card GPUs. This allows developers to leverage the parallel processing power that is otherwise being unused within these graphics cards.

By using CUDA technology to tap the massively parallel processing power of NVIDIA GPUs, Nero Move it converts videos in a fraction of the usual time, reducing the length of time to perform such tasks as customizing an HD video for an iPod, from hours to mere minutes.

While the announcement is not directly related to Apple, the harnessing of this GPU power is the cornerstone of OpenCL which will be featured in Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

OpenCL is an open standard that was established in collaboration with AMD, Intel and NVIDIA and was ratified in December. Apple is expected to release Mac OS X Snow Leopard later this year, and we should hear more details at WWDC in June.

In a patent application filed in November 2007 and released today, Apple reveals that it is researching methods for providing customized audio control for Internet browser content. The research is targeting the inability for a single system volume setting to address multiple simultaneous audio-generating applications, a common inconvenience for computer users. For example, a user may have audio content playing in the background through iTunes and may wish to mute only browser-based audio content coming from websites.

When using a web browser application (e.g., Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari), audio sources (e.g., websites) will often provide audio signals (e.g., music, noises) which may or may not be welcomed by the user. While operating system desktops often provide audio controls (e.g., volume controls), such audio controls adjust all audio signals playing on the host device, including desirable audio signals such as music the user desires to play from their music library while browsing the Web. Accordingly, if desktop audio controls are used, then desirable audio signals, as well as undesirable audio signals, will be adjusted together which may not be the intent of the user.

The patent application describes a browser-based system for adjusting the volume of Web-generated content and offers a system for remembering the user's preferences for future encounters with the audio content from those sources, identified by URL or domain.

The application also describes an implementation of the invention in which the differing preferences can be activated depending on whether audio is already playing on the system. For example, audio from websites could be muted if audio content is currently being played from a media player application such as iTunes, but audible if iTunes was inactive. Another implementation offers a server-based preference system, which would allow user audio preferences to be shared across devices for which such control is desired.

Apple's front page is now announcing that the App Store has reached one billion downloads. For the past two weeks, Apple has been running a 1 Billion App Countdown promotion, offering a package of Apple prizes valued at over $13,000 for the "entry (either through an app download or through the non-purchase online entry) sent immediately following the download of the 999,999,999th app." The competition is now closed, and the winner will be publicly announced in the near future.

A number of Apple pages, including the main apple.com page, countdown promotion page, iPod+iTunes page, iTunes Store, and App Store have been displaying counters reflecting the approaching milestone.

Apple revealed yesterday that they had sold 37 million iPhones and iPod Touches. The latest App Store application count is over 35,000.

Update: Apple has announced that 13-year old Connor Mulcahey of Weston, Connecticut is the contest winner.

As usual, Apple executives were questioned about the possibility of an Apple netbook during today's financial results conference call. The issue has been raised a number of times but continues to be a hot topic given the fact that inexpensive netbooks seems to be boosting PC manufacturers' unit sales numbers.

Apple executive Tim Cook replied to the questions with a similar response as in the past. Cook said that when he looks at the existing netbook market, he sees cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware and very small screens. While Apple is still looking at the space, they have no interest in putting the Mac brand on these types of devices. Cook notes that if they do find a way to deliver an innovative product that makes a real contribution, Apple will pursue it.

Despite Cook's denials, rumors have persisted that Apple has been ramping up a 10" Netbook with a possible touch screen. As Cook details, it seems unlikely that if Apple does enter the market, that a Mac netbook would resemble many of the existing low-cost devices currently available.

Apple's Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer provided some insights behind Apple's iPhone strategy today during the Q2 financial results conference call.

When specifically asked about Apple's long term exclusivity with AT&T, Apple responded that they are very happy with AT&T and feel they have done a very good job promoting the iPhone. Despite some recent hope that Apple might expand the iPhone to other networks, Apple said that they have no plans to change the AT&T exclusivity at this time. Also mentioned was the fact that Verizon currently uses the CDMA network which is incompatible with the current iPhone. Apple stated they wanted the iPhone to be a global hardware device which requires the use of the GSM standard. This may confirm claims by Verizon's CEO that Apple may have never intended to launch a CDMA (Verizon) iPhone. This situation may change when Verizon upgrades their networks.

Another interesting statistic revealed was the total number of iPhones and iPod Touches has now reached 37 million units. Apple had sold 30 million as of December 2008.

Finally, Apple reiterated that they no plans to leave a "price umbrella" for competitors to sneak in. What this ultimately means remains unclear, though some had originally felt this could mean Apple will introduce lower priced models ("nano"). Apple also reiterated the importance of the App Store and their software-focused approach to the iPhone platform.

Apple today announced financial results for the second quarter of fiscal 2009. Apple posted revenue of $8.16 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.21 billion, or $1.33 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $7.51 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 36.4 percent, compared to 32.9 percent in the year-ago quarter, and international sales accounted for 46 percent of the quarter's revenue. The numbers represent the best March Quarter revenue and earnings in Apple history.

Using non-GAAP data, which eliminates subscription-based accounting for the iPhone and Apple TV, Apple would have had $9.06 billion revenue and $1.66 billion of net income.

Apple shipped 2.22 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, a unit decline of 3 percent over the year-ago quarter. The company also sold 11.01 million Pods during the quarter, representing 3 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone unit sales reached 3.79 million, up 123 percent from the year-ago-quarter.

"We are extremely pleased to report the best non-holiday quarter revenue and earnings in our history," said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO. "Apple's financial condition remains very robust, with almost $29 billion in cash and marketable securities on our balance sheet."

Apple's guidance for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 includes expected revenue of $7.7 billion to $7.9 billion and earnings per diluted share of $0.95 to $1.00.

Apple will provide live streaming of its Q2 2009 financial results conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story with coverage of the conference call highlights.Conference Call Highlights

- Oppenheimer: results exceeded our expectations and very pleased given this economy.
- Mac: for March quarter, sold 2.2 million Macs. 3% decline from year-ago quarter. Difficult to compare since MacBook Air launched last year which boosted sales.
- Very confident in Mac sales
- Music: 3% over year ago quarter. Very strong sales of iPod Touch.
- Customers and reviews responded favorably to new iPod shuffle
- Very pleased with iPod marketshare. Over 70% in U.S. (per NPD)
- Year over year iPod sales growth in a number of international markets
- iTunes Store: strong quarter. A number of changes in iTunes stores: DRM free titles.
- App Store: over 35,000 applications compared to 15,000 as of last conference call. Within hours of reaching 1 billionth download.
- Software is the key ingredient for a great mobile experience.
- Very excited about the prospect of more compelling apps with the iPhone 3.0 OS
- Expanding iPhone's geographic reach. 81 countries.
- March 17th - provided a preview of iPhone 3.0 to developers.
- iPhone 3.0 release will include over 100 features for customers and 1000 new APIs for developers. Very enthusiastic developer response
- Delayed the reporting of revenue of iPhones sold after March 17th until 3.0 ships.
- Commodity prices were significantly lower than expected. sales of higher margin products were better than planned.
- June Quarter outlook: forcasting the current economic environment is challenging. Expect $7.7-7.9 billion in revenue.
- Very pleased with the record March quarter results. Extremely enthusiastic about iPhone 3.0 launch this summer. Very excited about other products in pipeline.

Q/A:

Q: What is your outlook in pricing and component supply in next quarter.
A: We believe that most of the excess inventory was consumed so while we still see the component environment to be favorable, but expect prices to increase during the next quarter. Don't expect to see the same level of reductions we previously saw.

Q: Can you talk about the Mac business? How the new Macs are doing? And ASPs (average sales price)?
A: After we did the desktop launch, we shipped a higher mix of desktops before the transition and that helped the overall ASP down. The Pro products were weaker than in the year ago quarter. We believe that's mainly economic related. In addition, education in the U.S. contracted by about 11% year-over-year -- a result of the states not having the tax revenues for the quarter. Hope to see rebound this year. So, yes, ASPs did decline, desktops were a piece of it. Refreshing all the desktops in a single day really helped us drive more sales in March. The notebook business we did have an ASP decline which was reflective of a push towards the lower end price ($999) Macbooks. As a result, we see the consumer is holding up much better than Pros and Education.

Q: New thoughts on the Netbook at this point?
A: For us it's about doing great products. When I'm looking at what's sold in the Netbook market, I see cramped keyboards, junky hardware, very small screen, bad software. Not a consumer experience that we would put the Mac brand on. As it exists today, we're not interested in nor would it be something customers would be interested in the long term. We are looking at the space. For those who want a small computer that does browsing/email, they might want an iPhone or iPod Touch. If we find a way to deliver an innovative product that really makes a contribution, we'll do that. We have some interesting ideas. The product pipeline is fantastic for the Mac. We've historically exceeded the market rate of growth, especially given this economy is an extraordinary achievement. These netbook sales are propping up the unit numbers for the industry. We are very pleased with our performance.

Q: Any mix of paid and free downloads in the App Store?
A: We don't disclose the free vs paid numbers. We are just hours away from our billionth download and couldn't be happier. One of the keys behind the iPod this quarter despite the economic environment was that the iPod touch doubled year over year. The sum of iPhone and iPod Touch is 37 million units now.

Q: Why maintain exclusivity with AT&T?
A: We view AT&T as a very good partner, the best wireless provider in the U.S. Very happy to do business with them. They have done a good job with the iPhone. We have no plans to change it. Technically, Verizon is on CDMA. We decided to focus on one phone for the entire world, which means you have to go down the GSM route. CDMA doesn't have a life after a certain point in time.

Q: Update on Steve Jobs?
A: We look forward to Steve returning to Apple at the end of June.

Q: Do you care about your market share in the U.S.? And given the lower sales prices, does that change your opinion about Mac pricing?
A: On a worldwide basis, IDC projected that the market contracted by 7% worldwide. On a reported basis, we contracted by 3%. But on a sell through basis we were essentially flat. U.S. was our weakest/largest market but in the U.S. a larger percentage is educational so is subject to recent budget constraints. So, I think that's one reason by the U.S. is disproportionately affected. We saw less Pro Macs being sold in the U.S. compared to other markets which we also attribute to the economy. Do I care, of course, but cycles come and go. We are about making the best computers in the world, not the most. We believe that if we do that over the long term, we will gain marketshare.

Q: Comments about iPhone adoption?
A: We have a plan that keeps us leaders in the iPhone space. We'll make sure we don't leave a price umbrella for people.

Q: Any steps in making it easier for the Apps to be discovered?
A: We're doing a number of things. We include easy to find top 50 and 100 apps both paid for and free. We have them associated in various genres and we are expanding those. So I think the team is making it easy to discover. Games are quite popular. That's one of the reasons why the iPod touch has been such a success.

Q: Competitive landscape for smartphones?
A: Difficult to comment on products that aren't shipping. So nothing I can say about the Pre. We think we're in a great position with a combination of the App Store and the billion app downloads. We think we're years ahead, and we see this product through a "software platform lens". The power of the device and ecosystem is enormous.

End of conference.