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Stevenote is a colloquial term for keynote speeches given by Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple, at events such as the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Macworld Expo, and Apple Expo. Because most Apple product releases were first shown to the public at these keynotes, "Stevenotes" caused substantial swings in Apple's stock price.
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Jobs's final Stevenote was delivered on June 6, 2011, when he announced iCloud (Apple's cloud computing service). OS X Lion and iOS 5 were also announced on the same day. It was his last public appearance before his resignation as CEO on August 24 and death on October 5 of that year.
History
In late 1996 Apple purchased NeXT, and Jobs returned to Apple after an 11-year hiatus following his forced resignation from the company in 1985. In mid-1997, he delivered a keynote address, with a detailed report on the company's status, featuring a satellite appearance by Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. Jobs announced a partnership with Microsoft with several key agreements which, according to him, would benefit Apple and allow it to recover from the prolonged decline of the early and mid-1990s. Two major announcements were made during the keynote: the next release of Microsoft Office (Office 98) would be developed for the Macintosh, and Microsoft's Internet Explorer would be the default web browser on Macintosh computers. Despite heckling from the audience, Jobs explained why the partnership was favorable to Apple:
The era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over, as far as I'm concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy, and this is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry to get healthy and prosper again.
Jobs later gave keynote addresses at trade expositions and conferences at least once a year, in which he announced updates to Apple products or demonstrated new products and services. Nearly every product upgrade or announcement in the next 13 years was made during a Stevenote. Among products so-announced were the original iMac all-in-one desktop computer in 1998, the clamshell iBook in 1999, the Mac OS X operating system in 2000, the iPod music player in 2001, the iPhone smartphone in 2007, and the iPad tablet in 2010.
Product introductions
Notable keynotes after Jobs' death:
"One more thing..."
A typical Stevenote began with Jobs presenting sales figures for Apple products and a review of products released during the past few months. He then presented one or more new products. Reminiscent of Peter Falk's Columbo, he typically feigned some concluding remarks, turned as if to leave the stage and turned back, saying "But there's one more thing".
Some "One more thing..." segments featured: