News tagged ‘Pixar’

The Disney Legends award to be presented to Steve Jobs at the Disney D23 conference, was accepted yesterday on the event by Pixar CCO John Lasseter.

It will be recalled that The Disney Legends program grants special awards to people who have made an extraordinary and integral contribution to the growth and development of The Walt Disney Company. The award is presented each year on a special event.

Have a look at the video presenting Lasseter acceptance speech during the ceremony.

Steve Jobs is getting the 2013 Disney Legends Award. It will take place on D13 Expo, a memorable three-day-long event. This Disney tradition goes back the year 1987, when Walt Disney Company established this Award.

Steve Jobs changed the world of consumer electronics as the founder of Apple, and was known throughout the world for his visionary attitude and penchant for innovation. He was an early investor and chief executive of Pixar, and became the Walt Disney Company’s largest shareholder overnight when it acquired Pixar Animation Studios in 2006. That same year, he joined the Disney board of directors, and remained a valuable sounding board and advisor to the company until his passing in 2011.

According to Bob Iger, Disney Chair and CEO, the Disney Legend Award is the highest honor for those, who “push the limits of innovation and creativity.”

A court filing that is a part of a civil suit involving the employment practices of seven major tech firms was unveiled on last Friday. It includes an email, which late Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs sent to former Google chief Eric Schmidt. Jobs asked Schmidt to end poaching Apple’s workers.

The March, 2007 email specifically asked Google to put a stop to its active recruitment of an unnamed Apple engineer, and alluded to halting worker poaching in general, reports Reuters.

"I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this," Jobs wrote in his email to Schmidt, who was on Apple's board of directors at the time.

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After Steve Jobs’ death, speculations arose on what would be done with his huge estate, estimated in $7 billion. The majority of his wealth is represented by the 138 million shares of the Walt Disney Co. that were placed in trust. Jobs acquired shares in 2006 having sold Pixar to the company for $7.4 billion. Tax experts suggest that Job’s family should sell all Apple and Disney share to avoid higher taxes. According to Bloomberg, the family could save $867 million in capital gains taxes.

Noteworthy, placing shares in a trust is also a method to avoid higher taxed, though it’s not clear what type of trust was set up in this case. According to Bloomberg, Jobs moved his assets into trusts toward the end of his life.

Now the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell, will manage a $4.6 billion trust. Some experts expect her to use a portion of the trust for charity and philanthropic work, as she is an active participant in the non-profit sector.

Earlier this week, Disney Chairman and Chief Executive Bob Iger received more than $84,000 in stock for joining Apple's board of directors. According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Iger received 75 shares of common stock and 142 restricted shares that will vest in February of 2012. It amounts $84,376 in cash.

This week Apple announced that Iger became member of Apple’s board of directors. He will serve on the company's audit committee. His compensation for joining Apple's board is comparable to what others who joined received in the past. For example, Andrea Jung, who joint Apple’s board in 2008, received 77 shares of common stocks.

Iger’s relationships with Apple have quite long history. In 2006 he was responsible for acquisition of Pixar. Moreover, he is a Disney CEO. He was one of the first people who expressed condolences to Jobs’ family after he passed away. "With his passing the world has lost a rare original, Disney has lost a member of our family, and I have lost a great friend," Iger said.

Earlier this month we reported that Sony Pictures had acquired rights to the recently-released Steve Jobs’ authorized biography by Walter Isaacson. As the company is planning to adapt the story  for the big screen, Sony suggest that the best person for writing screenplay would be Aaron Sorkin, who had successfully transitioned the story of Facebook to film The Social Network. He also gained fame for his work on A Few Good Men, The West Wing, and most recently Moneyball with Brad Pitt.

Sony is moving forward with a Steve Jobs movie based on Isaacson's book. And one of the writers being courted by producers to pen his story, according to a person who was briefed on the project but not authorized to speak about it publicly, is Aaron Sorkin, Hollywood's chronicler-in-chief of the complicated visionary. Sony and a Sorkin representative declined to comment on the writer's potential involvement.

Noteworthy, Jobs tried to hired Sorkin to write a film for Pixar, bur he declined his proposal, giving the following explanation:

The truth is I don’t know how to tell those stories. I have a young kid who loves Pixar movies and she’ll turn cartwheels if I tell her I’m writing one and I don’t want to disappoint her by writing the only bad movie in the history of Pixar.

The LA Times provides some new details about "Apple University", an internal project at Apple, designed to provide successful future for the company without Steve Jobs. First information about the project appeared in May, when Steve Jobs hired dean of Yale School of Management Joel Podolny, who  was personally influenced by Steve Jobs and Apple and even described writing his first computer program on an Apple II. Podolny runs an internal group of business professors and Harvard veterans to prepare employees for life at Apple after Jobs.

"Steve was looking to his legacy. The idea was to take what is unique about Apple and create a forum that can impart that DNA to future generations of Apple employees," said a former Apple executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve his relationship with the company. "No other company has a university charged with probing so deeply into the roots of what makes the company so successful."

Jobs reportedly personally oversaw the creation of courses and believed that he was responsible for Apple’s future success. He even identified specific tenets for the company such as accountability, attention to detail, perfectionism, simplicity, and secrecy. Pixar, the Job’s another successful company, is believed to use the same corporate University model.

Forbes released its annual list of the world’s billionaires this week. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs was ranked at number 110 with a net worth $8.3 billion. Jobs' net worth also ranks 34th among billionaires in the United States. Last year he was placed at 136th place with $5.5 billion.

Insanely creative Apple chief transforms a multibillion-dollar industry every few years. First, personal computers with Apple II, Macintosh; then film with Pixar; music (iTunes), mobile (iPhone). Now iPad is treated as messiah tablet, savior for publishing industry. Apple still sells computers, but twice as much revenue now comes from music distribution and hand-held devices. Shot past long-time rival Microsoft as world's most valuable tech company in May. Shares of Apple surged more than 80% over the last year. Still, the majority of Job's fortune comes from Disney; as largest shareholder he owns about $4.4 billion of stock.

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This week Time magazine has published its annual "Person of the Year" issue with Mark Zuckerberg posted on its cover. Apple's CEO didn't receive that title though it was named among "People Who Mattered":

"With each passing year Steve Jobs and his sleek Apple products not only succeed in impressing the techiest of tech addicts, they also manage to create a whole new batch of gadget enthusiasts.

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Yesterday Wired magazine had finally released its iPad edition.  Chief editor Chris Anderson told that the magazine now uses new publishing technology created by Adobe that allows using the same tools for creating both digital and print versions of the edition.  He also admires the version created for iPad:

"It has all of the visual impact of paper, enhanced by interactive elements like video and animated graphics. We can offer you a history of Mars landings that lets you explore the red planet yourself. We can take you inside Trent Reznor's recording studio and let you listen to snippets of his work in progress. And we can show you exactly how Pixar rafted each frame of its new movie, Toy Story 3."

To create a digital version compatible with iPad (which doesn't support Flash), Adobe had to recreate it in Objective-C, The Wall Street Journal explains. Rebuilt edition has all the features of the initial version. Though the edition looks great, there are still many other features, such as search functions and social connectivity, to be added in the future issues.

Wired publisher Conde Nast also owns other magazines, but the company noted it will not create special iPad edition for them.

iPad version of Wired is available here for $4.99. It is a June issue; next issues will be available as a part of library included in application. The subscription will become allegedly available this autumn.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs attended the Oscars. No surprise, Jobs previously was CEO of Pixar Animation Studios and is now a member of the Walt Disney Company's Board of Directors.

Here are several pictures taken with Steve on the red carpet:

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