Despite declining Mac quality and market share Steve Jobs cronies on the Apple board vote excessive compensation to Mr. Billionaire Steve Jobs.

A 1000% increase sounds like a lot but what was his pay? If he went from $1 to $10 then no biggie. If he's being paid $1.85Mil, the median listed above then it's still no big whoop IMO. Stock options also complicate the issue. Say he got $5Mil over the last year but it was mostly from cashing stock he earned over the last 5 years then his yearly salary is still not unreasonable.

It's a subject rife with grandstanding and smears but with few hard numbers to work with. More importantly there seems to be no way to compare one CEO with another with regular Joe worker out there. Compensation packages are so varied that quite often we aren't dealing with comparable packages.

Is Apple Making money; Yes. Has SJ been doing a good job; Yes. Is SJ milking the company of needed funds (Think Ken Lay); Not that I have seen. Therefore in my mind it seems like he's being paid reasonably.

Whoa! Declining mac quality?

SERIOUSLY? My G5 is the best computer I've ever had. HANDS DOWN!

You're nuts.

Anyway, if his median pay at apple jumped a 100 percent at Apple, doesn't that mean he's now making $2 / year? is this article talking about Apple or Pixar. Could somebody clarify?

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mahuti wrote:
Whoa! Declining mac quality?

SERIOUSLY? My G5 is the best computer I've ever had. HANDS DOWN!

You have to remember that RC likes to make stuff up, or take a few spot examples and extrapolate them to an entire product line, so has no factual basis for his claims about Apple quality. As pointed out previously, once he gets to the point where they offer statistics courses in school, he'll learn.

For some real data, check out PC Magazine's (yes, PC Magazine, a PC-oriented publication) latest Reader Satisfaction Survey, where Apple received the highest rating of any PC line. Check the facts at:

PC Magazine Reader Satisfaction Survey

This starkly illustrates recent article I read which said that, for the most part, corporations are having a great year, but because of the perception that the economy is still stagnant, they use that as an excuse to cut staff and trim salaries (except for their OWN).

Much as I love Apple and admire Steve's contributions, the disparity between the compensation of the highest and lowest paid workers (particularly in US companies) continues to grow obscenely out of proportion. These greedy people lay off workers, outsource jobs, receive huge tax breaks and STILL give themselves big raises (or less obvious stock options), all the while moaning that "times are tough" during your annual review. Yeah, it pisses me off, but at least Jobs seems to work harder than most of them for his money.

-Ken P

PS: And please ... PLEASE don't feed the troll. Sheeesh... you should all know better by now!

Jobs is making 1000% more and Apple is outsourcing jobs to other countries, just like every other big corporation!

So you can love Apple all you want, love SJobs, love the iPod, but what is happening to the Mac.

Apple has sold approximately 500,000 G5s out of 25 million Mac installed user base. That is 2%. Where are the 64 bit native applications, yes they are coming, but when?

Maybe someone could take these numbers and put a positve spin on it for me and help me to be optimistic like like you all....

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pyxl8 wrote:
...the disparity between the compensation of the highest and lowest paid workers (particularly in US companies) continues to grow obscenely out of proportion...

That I would agree with. When the Walton family is as wealthy as they are and Wallmart workers are using public assistance for medical coverage there is something seriously wrong.

Steve Jobs' salary is quite excessive, but checkout this Barry Diller guy. His total compensation was 2.4% of IAC's entire revenue, and an embarrassing 60% of net income. This is for a guy who lead his company to a greater than 90% drop in earnings.

Stevie "got by" on 0.8% of revenue, 35% of net income. Still piggish.

For comparison: Last year, Michael Eskew, CEO of UPS, took home, combining salary and exercised options, less than one-hundreth of a percent of revenue, or about one-tenth of a percent of earnings. Of course, Eskew had to make do with only $3 million.

As an Apple stockholder, I'm OK with Steve Jobs' compensation, in light of the fact that they are increasing revenue, income and unit shipments, and coming out with a consistent stream of innovative products.

Although increased overall market share would be nice, it is not a core metric to me as a stockholder, as long as they maintain their above-average market share in the verticals that they are successful in.

And yes, I've done quite well with my Apple holdings, so am talking from the voice of experience. But I'm no zealot, for my computer-related stocks, I also have some shares of Microsoft and Intel, just to play all angles.

What really ticks me off are the companies that are losing money but giving big handouts to their top brass, mostly due to the brilliant business move of laying off thousands of employees. Meanwhile, quality and service suffers.

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RealityCheck wrote:
Despite declining Mac quality and market share Steve Jobs cronies on the Apple board vote excessive compensation to Mr. Billionaire Steve Jobs.

Actually, Apple's share in its primary market - PCs costing $1,000+ is actually on the rise.

Rising market share, continuing and regular growth in revenues, earnings, earnings per share and net tangible assets indicates excellent corporate management and amazing vision for the future, considering Apple's dominance of the emerging digital music player market.

Over the past five-year period AAPL has outperformed the major market indexes and shareholders continue to enjoy growing wealth.

Why shouldn't Steve Jobs be well rewarded for a job well done?