One more thing...a $250 discount on iPads for Apple employees

Team,

Thanks to everyone’s hard work, we’re off to a great start in 2012. Last week in New York we launched a groundbreaking initiative for education with iBooks textbooks, and today we reported the strongest quarter in Apple’s history.Please join me tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. in Town Hall. We’ll review our record-setting results and discuss some exciting new things going on at Apple.The meeting will be broadcast live to many sites in Cupertino and other Apple locations. Please check AppleWeb for details.

Tim 

At the Town Hall Meeting held at 10AM yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a new discount standard for employees. It used to be 25% on all kinds of Macs (1 purchase per year; 15% off for friends and relatives up to 3 purchases per year). Now it's a $500 discount on Macs (except Mac minis) and $250 discount on iPads. The new discount can only be used once every 3 years. The amount of discount increased but the number of times you could use it decreased. Was it really that great of a change?

Nothing could have been more exciting when the Town Hall Meeting was first held in a long time by then CEO Steve Jobs in July 2007. It was the day before the iPhone was going to be released on the historic Friday (28th). He announced there that all full-time and part-time Apple employees who'd been working for more than a year (apprx. 20,000 employees) will get a free 8GB iPhone with a retail price of $599. That's basically a $12-million giveaway by the company.


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Here's the message that Steve sent to his employees:

From: Steve Jobs
Date: June 27, 2007 1:47:55 PM PDT
To: [redacted]
Subject: Town Hall Meeting Tomorrow

Team,

We're launching the most revolutionary and exciting product in Apple's history this Friday. And given Apple's legacy of breakthrough products, that's saying a lot.

I'd like to get together and share my thoughts about this amazing moment for our company. So please join me for a company-wide communications meeting tomorrow, Thursday, at 11:00AM in Town Hall.

This meeting will also be broadcast to other Apple campus locations. Please check [redacted] for details.

See you there,

Steve

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How discouraging it must have been for the employees who knew the Town Hall meeting in 2007 to go to the 2012 meeting and hear that they'll only get a $250 discount on iPads. Steve gave away free iPhones in anticipation of great revenue increases in 2007 (which did actually happen), but Tim's announcement came after one of the greatest revenues in history and all he did was give a $250 discount.