In excerpts from a Newsweek interview with Steven Levy, Apple CEO Steve Jobs says he’s unconcerned that the iPod might lose its cool factor because it’s too popular. “That’s like saying you don’t want to kiss your lover’s lips because everyone has lips,” Jobs said. “It doesn’t make any sense. We don’t strive to appear cool. We just try to make the best products we can. And if they are cool, well, that’s great.”
Jobs also said he was not impressed by Microsoft’s Zune media player. “I’ve seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever,” Jobs said. “By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left! You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable.”
The Apple CEO also discussed keeping iTunes song prices at 99 cents. “If we go back now and we raise prices—this is what we told the record companies last year—we will be violating that implicit deal,” Jobs said. “Many [users] will say, ‘I knew it all along that the music companies were gonna screw me, and now they’re screwing me.’ And they would never buy anything from iTunes again.”
Finally, when asked if the iPod will always be about the music, Jobs responded: “Who knows? But it’s hard to imagine that music is not the epicenter of the iPod, for a long, long, long, long, long time… Music is so deep within all of us, but it’s easy to go for a day or a week or a month or a year without really listening to music. And the iPod has changed that for tens of millions of people, and that makes me really happy, because I think music is good for the soul.”