Steve Jobs’ emails, from lawsuits and leaks

James, Our proposal does set the upper limit for ebook retail pricing based on the hardcover price of each book. The reason we are doing this is that, with our experience selling a lot of content online, we simply don't think the ebook market can be successful with pricing higher than $12.99 or $14.99. Heck, Amazon is selling these books at $9.99, and who knows, maybe they are right and we will fail even at $12.99. But we're willing to try at the prices we've proposed. We are not willing to try at higher prices because we are pretty sure we'll all fail. As I see it, HC has the following choices: 1. Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream ebooks market at $12.99 and $14.99. 2. Keep going with Amazon at $9.99. You will make a bit more money in the short term, but in the medium term Amazon will tell you they will be paying you 70% of $9.99. They have shareholders too.

Bruce, Adobe is recruiting from Apple. They have hired one person already and are calling lots more. I have a standing policy with our recruiters that we don't recruit from Adobe. It seems you have a different policy. One of us must change our policy. Please let me know who. Steve

Here's my current cut. Steve 1. 2011 Strategy - SJ - who are we? - headcount, average age, ... - VP count, senior promotions in last year - percent new membership at this meeting

Eric, I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this. Thanks, Steve

Bill, The Microsoft / Apple relationship seems to be progressing well. Working on Office 98 with Ben Waldman and his team has been especially productive. We are investing a lot of our marketing dollars to push Office 98 and I think it will pay off for both of our companies. There is one thing that threatens to be quite divisive, and that is the Microsoft NetShow team's recent behavior. They are really going out of their way to say that they intend to kill QuickTime, and are being quite threatening and rude about it. Apple will need to recirocate in kind if this behavior keeps up. For example, we have already decided that we will not allow NetShow to be bundled with IE 4.0 on Macintosh. I think we both want our relationship to broaden to encompass many areas, such as productivity apps, browsers, java, object models, etc. Invariably there will be a few areas where we don't agree and compete. My very strong opinion is that our overall relationship will be much healthier if we each behave with restraint towards each other in these few competitive areas. For example, you don't hear Apple trashing Windows, do you? If you did, you might feel the same way we now feel hearing the NetShow group trashing QuickTime. We intend to fight and win with QuickTime, and I hope this honest and proper effort doesn't meet with down and dirty tactics and tough rhetoric from the NetShow group – it could really tarnish our entire, budding relationship. Best, Steve