Apple’s Jobs: “Butterflies” and more jabs at Google

The media and industry analysts gathered at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, on Thursday got a heavy dose of commentary from CEO Steve Jobs on a range of subjects, representing probably his biggest mouthful in a single setting since returning from medical leave last summer.

In a session that lasted more than 90-minutes, including Q&A with reporters, a clearly energized Jobs expounded on the iPhone’s new system software, his nerves ahead of the iPad launch, Apple’s new role as a peddler of mobile advertising, and of course Google, the company’s nemesis du jour.

Jobs announced Apple new iAd platform, which thrusts the company into a small but fast-growing market where Google also has designs. But Jobs made clear that his company had no plans to become a “worldwide ad agency,” and he acknowledged that Apple was indeed pursuing AdMob when Google swooped in to buy the mobile ad firm:

“Listen, we don’t now much about this advertising stuff. We’re learning. We tried to buy a company called AdMob, which is the biggest in mobile advertising, and Google came in and snatched them from us because they didn’t want us to have them. And we bought another much smaller but really good company called Quattro and they’re teaching us and we’re learning as fast we can about mobile advertising.”

On Google’s Android mobile platform, which some praise for being more accessible and open to a wider range of applications, where Apple’s iPhone platform is closed and regulated:

“There’s a porn store for Android that you can go to, and it’s got nothing but porn apps for your Android phone. And you can download them, and your kids can download them, and your kids’ friends can download them on their phones. And that’s just not the place where we want to go.”

On the iPad launch:

“Even though we’ve been using these internally for some time, and working on it for a few years, you still have butterflies in your stomach,” he said. “You never really know until you get it in customers’ hands and they tell you what they think.”

“We think this is a profound game-changer and we think when people look back some number of years from now they will see this as a major advance in the history of personal computational devices. And what’s been really great for me is how quickly people have got it.”