Apple shareholders meeting highlights

Apple executives and shareholders gathered on Thursday at the company's Cupertino-based headquarters for this year's shareholders meeting. The main topics were environmental policy, stock-options backdating, Leopard, iPhone, Apple TV. Here's a quick summary:

Environmental policy was one of the first topics of the meeting. Apple recently made a statement regarding its environmental policy, saying it will try to be greener. A Greenpeace rep was present during the meeting and though Jobs confirmed this new strategy, he also criticized the "non-scientific" and "non-factual" way Greenpeace measures how much a company is green.

When asked to provide further details about the stock-options case, Jobs responded by reading the statements published by Apple and the SEC: "Unless you think there's a conspiracy theory involving the SEC, too, I don't know what else to say." he added.

On questions regarding Leopard's delay to October, Jobs said he thinks they have made the right decision and that it will be worth the wait. He also said that the company is very careful on who it hires, as a result, growing the company's engineering resources is quite a challenge and can take years.

As for the iPhone, Apple has aknowledged it hasn't decided yet on if it will open the device's API and let third-party developers create iPhone applications. This statement contradicts what Apple told us in January when it released the iPhone.

Regarding the Apple TV strategy, Jobs was questionned on the possibility Apple allows users to rent content from the device, his answer was neither yes or no: "One never knows."

Overall, the meeting was pretty reassuring for shareholders, especially regarding the stock-options backdating issue. Meanwhile Apple's stock price is climbing significatly this week and reaches all time highs at more than $108.

More reports on Apple's shareholder meetings here and here.