Apple is infamous for maintaining a high level of secrecy before the launch of a new product. In fact, Apple won’t even confirm that a product actually exists until it hosts a press event to unveil the fresh device. But one person didn’t have to wait until an Apple keynote to get his hands on the iPad 2.
President Barack Obama told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in a recent interview that former Apple CEO Steve Jobs personally gave him one of Apple’s second-gen tablets before it was released.
“Steve Jobs actually gave it to me, a little bit early,” the commander in chief said. “Yeah, it was cool. I got it directly from him.”
But just how early is “a little bit early?” NetworkWorld pointed out that Obama hosted a dinner in mid-February with tech big-wigs such as former Google chief Eric Schmidt, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and of course, Jobs.
Meanwhile, Apple on February 23 sent out invitations for a March 2 iPad 2 event, and the tablet went on sale March 11.
Obama has established himself as a bit of an Apple fanboy. During his 2008 campaign, most of his staff used Macs and when he moved into the White House, he was allegedly disappointed to see oodles of old PCs, NetworkWorld said.
AppleInsider noted that the president in December pointed to Jobs as an example of the “American dream.”
“We celebrate somebody like a Steve Jobs, who has created two or three different revolutionary products,” he gushed. “We expect that person to be rich, and that’s a good thing. We want that incentive. That’s part of the free market."
In March, Obama confirmed that he owns and iPad that he has tethered to his BlackBerry. But Apple is expected to announce its next-gen iPhone this afternoon, so with his inside connection with the company, has the president already gotten his hands on the newest iPhone?