SAN FRANCISCO: Steve Jobs re-emerged from his latest medical leave Monday to show off Apple Inc.'s latest innovations and sustain the hope that he eventually will return to dream up more ways to reshape technology.
The highlight, as usual, came at the end of Jobs' presentation. He was onstage for less than 30 minutes during a nearly two-hour event that primarily featured his subordinates.
Ever the showman, the Apple CEO announced that the company had struck licensing agreements with all the major recording labels on a new music synching system.
It will allow people to put all the songs they have ever bought from the company's iTunes store on up to 10 devices at no additional charge. Apple is offering to do the same thing with all books and applications previously purchased through its online stores.
All future iTunes purchases also will be automatically sent to all the devices, too. None of the transfers will require devices to be plugged into a single computer. It will automatically happen over wireless connections.
"Keeping all those devices in sync is driving us crazy," Jobs said. Jobs' keynote address at a conference for application developers marked his first onstage appearance since he unveiled the second version of Apple's tablet computer, the iPad, three months ago.
It comes five months after Jobs went on his third medical leave of absence in the past seven years to deal with an unspecified medical issue. He has previously survived pancreatic cancer and undergone a liver transplant.
Unlike during a six-month leave in 2009, Jobs, 56, hasn't said when he is coming back to work. The uncertainty makes his every appearance even more of a spectacle because people don't know if it will be the last time they will see one of the world's most influential CEOs and cultural taste-makers. Looking as frail as he did in his last appearance in March, Jobs didn't discuss his health Monday.
That wasn't unusual; he has consistently treated his health as a personal matter and insisted that Apple's board remain mum, too, much to the frustration of some shareholders who believe they deserve to know more about the condition of the man whose vision drives a company with a $312 billion market value. That's about $300 billion more than when Jobs, Apple's co-founder, became the company's CEO in 1997.
The highlight, as usual, came at the end of Jobs' presentation. He was onstage for less than 30 minutes during a nearly two-hour event that primarily featured his subordinates.
Ever the showman, the Apple CEO announced that the company had struck licensing agreements with all the major recording labels on a new music synching system.
It will allow people to put all the songs they have ever bought from the company's iTunes store on up to 10 devices at no additional charge. Apple is offering to do the same thing with all books and applications previously purchased through its online stores.
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| Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces iCloud during a keynote address to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. |
All future iTunes purchases also will be automatically sent to all the devices, too. None of the transfers will require devices to be plugged into a single computer. It will automatically happen over wireless connections.
"Keeping all those devices in sync is driving us crazy," Jobs said. Jobs' keynote address at a conference for application developers marked his first onstage appearance since he unveiled the second version of Apple's tablet computer, the iPad, three months ago.
It comes five months after Jobs went on his third medical leave of absence in the past seven years to deal with an unspecified medical issue. He has previously survived pancreatic cancer and undergone a liver transplant.
Unlike during a six-month leave in 2009, Jobs, 56, hasn't said when he is coming back to work. The uncertainty makes his every appearance even more of a spectacle because people don't know if it will be the last time they will see one of the world's most influential CEOs and cultural taste-makers. Looking as frail as he did in his last appearance in March, Jobs didn't discuss his health Monday.
That wasn't unusual; he has consistently treated his health as a personal matter and insisted that Apple's board remain mum, too, much to the frustration of some shareholders who believe they deserve to know more about the condition of the man whose vision drives a company with a $312 billion market value. That's about $300 billion more than when Jobs, Apple's co-founder, became the company's CEO in 1997.
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