The annual shareholders' meeting has come and gone, and Steve Jobs' primary message still seems to be "just wait." (Seems like we've all been hearing that forever.) But given that the shareholders voted Jobs to remain on the board, they appear willing to wait a bit longer. CNET has a pretty complete encapsulation of the proceedings.

One nice point is that Steve Jobs once again stressed that Apple would indeed be returning to the consumer market later this year, though he had no details to back that up. (We have heard rumors about a G3 All-in-one for the home starting this fall, and of course there's the mystery Columbus machine hovering tantalizingly on the horizon.) Also, he raised the issue of the recently-deceased Newton project, and mentioned that offers to buy the technology have all been for too little money, though Apple is toying with the idea of licensing the Newton technology to third parties. Interestingly, he mentioned that Apple itself is "considering" reviving Newton technology in some unknown capacity.

One of the biggest areas of concern for the shareholders is apparently Apple's continued lack of a permanent CEO, despite the commendable performance that Jobs has turned in while acting in his "interim" role. Jobs' response to the issue is that "some people worry about the word 'interim,' but they weren't worried about the last CEO, and he wasn't interim." We're not entirely sure what that means... presumably we should have worried about Gil, but didn't just because he was a permanent CEO? We're not sure about any of you guys, but we were concerned about ol' Gil-- he just never seemed like Apple material, y'know? Still, we'd have liked a more thorough reassurement on Steve's part, instead of a "you trusted him, you should trust me." As far as we're concerned, Steve is the permanent CEO; it's just never going to be announced. After all, board member Ed Woolard confirms that there is no "active" search underway for a replacement.

And of course the other biggish news that came out of the shareholders' meeting was that Apple and Intuit plan a joint announcement next week to address Intuit's commitment (or lack thereof) to the Macintosh platform. Apparently all the dust that was kicked up following Intuit's decision to halt Mac Quicken development has gotten people's attention. A Bloomberg News article addresses the possible flip-flop.

The press had a field day with the irony inherent in Intuit's recent decision-- given the fact that Intuit's CEO Bill Campbell is an Apple board member. Campbell was present at the shareholders' meeting, where Steve Jobs announced that he and Campbell had "discussed" Intuit's decision, and the result is the announcement of a "joint partnership" sometime next week. "We'll show a commitment to the Mac platform," says Campbell.

We'd sure love to have been privy to that "discussion" between Bill and Steve. (Suppose anything got thrown?) But we're glad to hear that Intuit may be returning to the Mac fold, by hook or by crook-- and we're especially glad to hear Jobs admit that Apple's been less than diligent about maintaining their relationship with Intuit. If Apple finally realizes that it needs to improve its relationships with developers in order to prevent software "defection" and the resulting market share shrinkage, they may have a good shot at building a solid foundation for a real platform comeback.