Apple posted their first TV spot for the new iPad and it focuses on the device’s Retina display. Their tagline: “When a screen becomes this good, it’s simply you and the things you care about.” Check out details on the new iPad HERE.

Quite a few Apple HDTV rumors have been talked about today, although this time it comes from renowned Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who took to the stage at IGNITION: Future of Media conference this morning. According to his predictions, Munster is certain that there will be an Apple TV launching next year. He basically told everyone in the audience that if they were thinking of purchasing a new TV to wait, as it’s going to be amazing. Sounds awesome!

Which computer maker this year introduced three new tablets, a speedy new smartphone, an edgy new global branding campaign, and the launch of an outer space science competition with Google?

If you guessed Apple, HP, or Dell, think again. It’s Lenovo, a computer giant you’ve probably never even heard. The company is focused on the enterprise market–big companies, school systems, government agencies–and China. It’s also determined to become China’s first global consumer brand. “For Those Who Do” is their tagline.

Lenovo also engineered its thinnest and fastest laptop (with a 10-second or less startup time) while producing record financial results and outgrowing the competition for the eighth straight quarter.

Apple, HP, and Dell certainly know Lenovo. Lenovo, led by CEO & Chairman Yang Yuanqing, last quarter it passed Dell to become the world’s second-largest PC-maker. Only HP sells more gear. Lenovo’s third-quarter profit of $144 million is also up 88% from a year ago.

As you may or may not know, apart from stepping down as CEO of Apple – Steve Jobs is currently a very ill man. There are even photos on other websites showing just how ill he looks. We came across some great stories from other business people who have worked with Steve and we would rather show that, so here we go…

Vic Gundotra, Google’s VP of Engineering
One Sunday morning, January 6th, 2008 I was attending religious services when my cell phone vibrated. As discreetly as possible, I checked the phone and noticed that my phone said “Caller ID unknown”. I choose to ignore…The message left was from Steve Jobs. “Vic, can you call me at home? I have something urgent to discuss” it said.

“So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I’ve already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow” said Steve. “I’ve been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I’m not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn’t have the right yellow gradient. It’s just wrong and I’m going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?”

Of course this was okay with me. A few minutes later on that Sunday I received an email from Steve with the subject “Icon Ambulance”. The email directed me to work with Greg Christie to fix the icon.

Since I was 11 years old and fell in love with an Apple II, I have dozens of stories to tell about Apple products…In the end, when I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I’ll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday.

Mark Parker, president and CEO of Nike
We had worked together on a Nike-Apple collaboration called Nike+. So we took what Apple knows and Nike knows, and brought new technology to the market. Anyway, long story short, he said, “Congratulations. It’s great [that you've been named CEO]. You’re going to do a great job.” I said, “Well, do you have any advice?”

He said, “No, no, you’re great.” Then there was a pause. “Well, I do have some advice,” he said. “Nike makes some of the best products in the world–products that you lust after, absolutely beautiful stunning products. But you also make a lot of crap.”

He said, “Just get rid of the crappy stuff, and focus on the good stuff.” And then I expected a little pause and a laugh. But there was a pause, and no laugh at the end.

Allen Paltrow, student at Princeton University, via Tumblr
Growing up I was a huge apple fan-boy (fine, still am.) The first NY apple store in Soho opening was probably the coolest thing that happened to me between the ages 6 and 12. For a while I would spend almost every weekend there. Every year for halloween I was a mac, and I made a habit of shaving the Apple logo into my head to celebrate every OS launch. My neighbor Brooke mentioned that Steve Jobs, busy as he is, always reads email sent to his public address. I think I was around 12, and I sent a very enthusiastic and grammatically incorrect message including a picture of my shaved head. Apparently he forwarded it to the head of Public Relations, Katie, and I got invited to the opening of the 5th Avenue Cube. I can never thank them enough. This was probably the high point of my childhood.

Jonathan Berger, Apple intern, via Blogspot:
Steve got to about his 4th question from the audience [at an Apple Town Hall in 2000] and by this point almost every single intern had their hand up. He gestured in my direction but I could tell he was actually looking at an intern in the row right in front of me. I got a bit aggressive and barged ahead with my question anyway before the other intern could begin. Steve smiled a bit in apology to the intern I had just trampled over but let me continue. I was nervous. “Steve, many years ago you left Apple to start Next. But recently you returned to Apple. Why did you come back to Apple?”

[Jobs answered:] “When I was trying to decide whether to come back to Apple or not I struggled. I talked to a lot of people and got a lot of opinions. And then there I was, late one night, struggling with this and I called up a friend of mine at 2am. I said, ‘Should I come back, should I not?’ and the friend replied, ‘Steve, look. I don’t give a fuck about Apple. Just make up your mind,’ and hung up. And it was in that moment that I realized I truly cared about Apple.”

David Sheff, freelance journalist, via Playboy magazine’s 1987 interview:
The Interview was all but complete when I met [Steve] Jobs at a celebrity-filled birthday party for a youngster in New York City. As the evening progressed, I wandered around to discover that Jobs had gone off with the nine-year-old birthday boy to give him the gift he’d brought from California: a Macintosh computer. As I watched, he showed the boy how to sketch with the machine’s graphics program. Two other party guests wandered into the room and looked over Jobs’s shoulder. ‘Hmmm,’ said the first, Andy Warhol. ‘What is this? Look at this, Keith. This is incredible!’ The second guest, Keith Haring, the graffiti artist whose work now commands huge prices, went over. Warhol and Haring asked to take a turn at the Mac, and as I walked away, Warhol had just sat down to manipulate the mouse. ‘My God!’ he was saying, ‘I drew a circle!’ “But more revealing was the scene after the party. Well after the other guests had gone, Jobs stayed to tutor the boy on the fine points of using the Mac. Later, I asked him why he had seemed happier with the boy than with the two famous artists. His answer seemed unrehearsed to me: ‘Older people sit down and ask, “What is it?” but the boy asks, “What can I do with it?”

via @fastcompany

Visionary CEO Steve Jobs has resigned from Apple. In a letter to the board of directors, Jobs wrote, “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know.”

“Unfortunately, that day has come,” he added.

Jobs then suggested that COO Tim Cook be named his successor, although requested that he stay aboard as chairman of the board.

Whether or not his health played a role in his decision to step down is unclear, though likely. In January, Jobs took a medial leave of absence, leaving Cook in charge of day to day operations.

Jobs is largely credited with reviving Apple, taking it from a bankrupt company to the world’s most valuable company in a ilttle over a decade, with the launch of revolutionary products such as the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Whether Apple’s string of successes will continue in a post-Jobs world has been a serious question for investors and consumers alike.

Ending his letter, Jobs concluded on a positive note.

“I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it,” he said. “And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.”

Only a month on the market, and the device that HP said would give Android and Apple a run for their money is already finished. Rumors were confirmed today that HP will discontinue its TouchPad tablet as well its WebOS phones. Reports indicate the company plans to instead focus on software and services, while distancing itself from hardware–HP may spin off its personal-computer business and acquire enterprise software company Autonomy for $10 billion.

In an earnings call following the news, HP CEO Leo Apotheker attempted to explain the chaos surrounding HP’s direction. “[There] is indeed a lot of news, so let me put it in perspective,” he said. “Today is about transforming HP for the future.”

The Personal Systems Group, which oversaw the TouchPad, will now be separated from HP, and possibly sold off, so HP can sharpen its focus on cloud solutions and software.

Recognizing the challenges HP faces, Apotheker lowered the company’s outlook for next quarter. “I’m taking ownership for these decisions,” he said. Apologizing to investors, the HP CEO added, “I feel your pain.”

No doubt a tough earnings call for HP, but the harshest damage may come for company’s brand. Acquiring Palm for $1.2 billion, investing a year to build smartphones and tablets, spending millions of dollars marketing and pushing the products out, only to shut down the TouchPad after a few weeks…

“We are focusing on what needs to be fixed, and what needs to be shut down, and what needs to be separated,” Apotheker said.

In 1977 at 1:12 seconds into a television report Bill Gates says this “There’s a lot of people who are forecasting that there will be software stores just like there are record stores today. And that there’ll be thousands and thousands of those, and I think I have to agree with that.”

Boy was he was right. Mostly all the record stores have gone and there are now thousands of software stores. Absolutely amazing Stuff! See below…

Apple unveiled the completely revamped Final Cut Pro X back at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in April. At the time, the industry’s top-pick film editing software was said to be rebuilt as a 64-bit application using Apple’s Cocoa framework and boasted a multitude of new enhancements. It was scheduled for a June release, and now with only two more weeks left before July, Macotakara.jp suggests the software will land on the Mac App Store starting next week.

The new Final Cut Pro X introduces the tight integration of OpenCL, Quicktime X, Grand Central Dispatch, and Core Graphics and Animation for enhanced performance. Other features include background rendering for improved work flow, Compound Clips, Magnetic Timeline, and Smart Collections. The 64-bit build also means a whole lot more memory beyond 4GB can be thrown at the software for arduous rendering processes.

THe key thing about Final Cut Pro X is the pricing. Instead of only being sold in a $999 bundle with Color, Motion, and Soundtrack Pro, the software and add-ons can now be purchased separately and for less. Final Cut Pro X will now priced at $299. Pricing for the other apps have not been confirmed yet.

Macotakara.jp also predicts that the shipping of third-party Thunderbolt equipped peripherals will coincide with the Final Cut Pro X launch next week.

Defending the $8.5 billion Microsoft paid for Skype, investor Ben Horowitz suggests Google and Apple have had no impact on Skype’s success. It’s the service that Skype provides itself, rather than serious competition. That’s what lead Horowitz’s firm and a group of others to fund Skype with $2 billion just two years ago, despite heavy criticism. In other words, he’s celebrating a $6.5 billion “I told ya so” profit.

He notes that the $50 million his young firm Andreessen Horowitz forked over was one of the first checks written from its initial $300 million pool (far from a small share of the $2 billion that AH, Silver Lake Partners, and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board put together). His stance on the success of this investment decision is firm:

While consistent with our stage-agnostic strategy, it was a very big deal very early on in the fund. To make matters more exciting, other investors and writers broadly criticized the deal. Joe Nocera of the New York Times wrote: ‘Many people on Wall Street–and a number of telecommunications experts I spoke to this week–were stunned by the price Skype sold for, and not just because we’re in the middle of a recession.’ That controversy ended this morning.

Skype sold for more than four times the 2009 price.

Skype’s use and new user growth has accelerated, peaking at 500,000 new registered users PER DAY, and 209 billion voice and video minutes being consumed on Skype in 2010. Wow!

Then Apple built “video calling right into the iPhone” and made FaceTime the “default offering” for iPhone users. This had no impact on Skype’s 50 million users. I can say that’s true, as I have an iPhone and have NEVER used FactTime, but I have used Skype.

Both Apple and Google have formidable cash funds to invest in their own video and audio tools – so really Microsoft needed a system like this to pitch against its big rivals.

Will Apple switch chips again, and embrace ARM CPUs on its Macs instead of Intel silicon? It very well might, because it could mean your MacBook lasts pretty much all day on a charge. Now that would be a good thing for sure!

The extremely successful British entrepreneur shares advice on staying inspired while executing on new ideas.

Q: How do you maintain your motivation to generate new ideas and execute them?

A: My motivations have changed a lot over the past 40 years. In retrospect, it’s clear this has been a long-term process, and I acquired new motivations over time.

I am not sure anyone could have predicted my career arc, except perhaps my parents. I was not a promising student, probably because of undiagnosed dyslexia. But my parents did not see my trouble learning as a limitation. Rather, they helped me find my strengths by teaching me to constantly look for new challenges. Achievements in sports and early business ventures such as a Christmas tree farm taught me to be inquisitive, and rely on persistence and creativity when problems came up.

I was partly driven by a desire to prove myself when I started Student magazine at 16. My friends and I wanted to give our generation a voice in the issues of the day, especially the Vietnam War.

We started the magazine because of our convictions, and we loved it. It didn’t matter that we were working out of a basement in West London, with no financial backing. We just threw everything we had into the venture and secured advertisers and interviews. It was hard work, but also fun and exciting and, above all, a project we felt strongly about.

That sense of fun, enjoyment and purpose underpinned our expansion to selling records and then establishing record stores. Our next move, into the recording business, was no different. My love of music and concern for people behind that music ensured I was never short of motivation — just sometimes short of cash!

The U.K.’s recession of the late 1970s coincided with a slowdown in our record sales and a lack of hits. We had created a close community at Virgin, and I wanted the people I worked with to enjoy their jobs. I was also deeply concerned about job security. We were running at a loss, and I had to decide whether to consolidate our stores and rein back the recording business, or follow my instincts and invest in new artists.

Hoping to expand our way out of financial problems, I bought two nightclubs and invested more money in our record business. Its managing director, Simon Draper, was a great talent, so I backed him to create the U.K.’s largest independent label.

Our resulting success in the music business saved the day. The strength of the brand meant that we looked beyond music for business opportunities, and my motivations broadened again. With our old and new businesses, we were developing a community of customers, so my goals now included Virgin’s becoming one of the world’s most respected brands.

The different motivations meant setting up businesses Virgin employees were passionate about, trying to shake up markets and win the trust of potential customers. We often succeeded as we targeted leading companies in sectors where we felt the customer was no longer well served. In quick succession we moved into airlines, trains, drinks, financial services, health clubs and hotels.

Over the past decade, my motivation has broadened to large-scale philanthropic endeavors. This led to the creation of Virgin Unite, which was instrumental in establishing The Elders, the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship and the Carbon War Room — all exciting tools in the fight against poverty, illness and catastrophic climate change.

I am constantly challenging my team with new ideas, innovations or ventures I would like set up — in double-quick time. My original inquisitiveness and desire to seek out new challenges also can be seen in our Virgin Galactic space adventure. Following the inauguration of the Spaceport runway in New Mexico in October, my dream of space tourism is getting closer. A big project for 2011 will be getting our underwater exploration business up and running. Drawing on the late Steve Fossett’s work, we are keen to chart the deep-sea trenches.

You may wonder if such adventures are appropriate for a man my age — 60 — which brings me to my last motivational rule: “Screw it, let’s do it!”

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