Questions for Microsoft as It Nears a Crossroad

Justin Lane/European Pressphoto AgencySteven A. Ballmer, chief of Microsoft and a friend of the company’s chairman, Bill Gates, said he would retire in the next year.

Microsoft’s plan, announced Friday, to replace Steven A. Ballmer as its chief executive does not exactly follow — at least to people outside the company — the way they draft these things in business school.

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Steven Sinofsky
Left Microsoft last year amid friction and is seen as unlikely to return.

But Mr. Ballmer and Microsoft’s board have been considering the possibility of his retirement for some time. Still, because of Mr. Ballmer’s larger-than-life personality, the board’s reluctance to push back and the company’s recent product and financial problems, finding a new chief executive for Microsoft was never going to resemble a cut-and-dry, business-school case study, according to people with knowledge of the company.

“No one is an obvious candidate,” said Michael A. Cusumano, a professor of business and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies strategy in the computer software industry. “All the really interesting people who were in the company over the last dozen years who might have been have left. I also find it hard to imagine they could bring an outsider in. Microsoft is known for having quite a lot of powerful groups within the company and they make life very difficult for anyone who tries to oversee them.”

Succession planning is a delicate issue for many companies, particularly one like Microsoft, where Mr. Ballmer has been a senior employee since 1980 and chief executive since 2000, and his longtime friend, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s co-founder, remains chairman.

“Particularly for a person like Ballmer, who really is one of the founders, leaving is almost like death, so it’s extremely difficult to have an orderly process,” said Joseph L. Bower, a professor at the Harvard Business School. “It requires a very grown-up relationship between the chief executive and his board.”

Industry insiders almost immediately began to place bets on which executives inside and outside Microsoft — and even outside the technology industry — could be tapped. The decision will go a long way to determining whether Microsoft will successfully transition to tech’s future of mobile computing and computing in a virtual cloud of data-storage devices.

But at the moment, at least, the betting cards are virtually empty.

Even though Mr. Ballmer had indicated he was going to retire when the youngest of his children went to college, which was in about two more years, “I think people thought Ballmer would maybe die with his boots on in that role,” Mr. Cusumano added.

Developing a succession plan is one of a board’s chief responsibilities, but only half of companies actively groom executives, according to a 2010 study by Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance and Heidrick & Struggles, the executive search firm that is leading Microsoft’s search. Boards spend only an average two hours a year on succession planning, the study found.

“When you have such strong personalities as Gates and Ballmer, is the board really proactive with them, or is it more of a caretaker board?” said David Larcker, director of corporate governance research at Stanford University’s business school, who worked on the study.

Though it might not be obvious outside the boardroom, Microsoft’s directors have been planning the transition, according to a person briefed on the board’s meetings who was not authorized to speak about them publicly.

Discussions have been happening for a decade, the person said, and intensified in 2010. Several months ago, Mr. Ballmer suggested to the board that it was time to begin a formal succession process, the person said, and told directors on Wednesday that he would announce his retirement.

Mr. Ballmer and the board have discussed the attributes they want in the next chief executive and have been appraising internal and external executives who might be candidates. Over the last 18 to 24 months, Mr. Ballmer has personally met with several outside executives, including people outside the tech industry with experience transforming very large companies, according to the person knowledgeable about the board’s work.

Nick Wingfield contributed reporting.

Bits Blog: Senate Panel Questions Apple on Corporate Taxes

Jason Reed/Reuters Timothy D. Cook being questioned at Tuesday’s congressional hearing.

In his statement to the Senate panel, Mr. Cook made several questionable assertions. Here are some examples:

1) “We don’t rely on tax gimmicks.” The precise definition of the word “gimmick” may be debatable, but Apple’s use of two Irish entities, which it claims are stateless (and help it sidestep $10 billion per year in taxes, according to the Congressional report) would seem to qualify.

2) “We don’t move its intellectual property into offshore tax havens.” Apple’s intellectual property is held by its Irish subsidiary, Apple Operations International, which has no employees or physical presence in Ireland, has received $30 billion in income since 2009 and paid no income tax to any government for the past five years, according to Congressional investigators. Ireland is not on the official list of tax havens compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, but it is offshore and Apple’s special deal with the country allowed the company to enjoy rates lower than some companies that shelter income in the Caribbean. What’s more, Apple’s unique agreement hinges on its ability to take advantage of a wrinkle in Irish tax law that allows it to avoid Irish taxes by holding a fraction of its ownership in a shell company called Baldwin Holdings Ltd. in the British Virgin Islands.

3) “We don’t stash money on some Caribbean island.” While perhaps true, this is not necessarily a strong defense. The tens of billions of dollars that Apple does not pay taxes on because they are classified as “permanently invested offshore” are actually held in New York banks. They are managed by Braeburn Capital, a subsidiary Apple opened in Reno, Nev., to avoid some state taxes in California and other states.

4) “These foreign earnings are taxed in the jurisdiction where they are earned.” Apple booked more than $74 billion in sales from dozens of countries around the world to its subsidiary Apple Sales International over the last four years. Although the subsidiary is based in Ireland, Apple accountants and corporate executives contend that, for tax purposes, it is not a resident of any country.

– David Kocieniewski

— David Kocieniewski

Lawmakers Pose Questions on Google Glass

The letter, addressed to Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, outlined eight questions for Google and asked for a response by June 14.

“We are curious whether this new technology could infringe on the privacy of the average American,” the letter said. “Because Google Glass has not yet been released and we are uncertain of Google’s plans to incorporate privacy protections into the device, there are still a number of unanswered questions.”

The glasses, which are not yet for sale to the public, connect to the Internet and allow people to do things like take photographs, record and watch video, send text messages, post to social media sites and read text snippets. They have already raised privacy concerns on issues like unwanted recording.

The request, from the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, came as Google held its annual I/O developers conference in San Francisco, where it showed off Glass, gave software developers information about how to build apps for the device and introduced seven new apps, including ones from Facebook, Twitter and CNN.

The group, for which Representative Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, is a co-chairman, asked questions including how Google would collect and store data from the devices, how it would ensure that it did not unintentionally collect private data, how Google would protect the privacy of people not using Glass when they are with people using it and whether the device would have facial recognition technology.

Steve Lee, director of product management for Google Glass, addressed the facial recognition question in a statement.

“We’ve consistently said that we won’t add new face recognition features to our services unless we have strong privacy protections in place,” he said.

Google has faced punishments over privacy violations with past products, including a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over a social networking tool and another one with 38 states over data collection during its Street View mapping project.

In a session at the conference, Mr. Lee addressed other concerns in the letter. Google followed all its privacy and data collection policies with Glass, he said, and built social cues into the device to help prevent certain privacy violations. For instance, users have to press a button or speak to Glass to take a photograph or record video, and look directly at whatever they are shooting.

Still, one developer said he had already built an app for Glass that enables users to take a photograph with a wink.

In a statement, Chris Dale, a Google spokesman, said, “We are thinking very carefully about how we design Glass because new technology always raises new issues.”

He added that Google was slowly selling early versions of the device, which cost $1,500, to people who sign up for them, “to ensure that our users become active participants in shaping the future of this technology.”

More Clients Ask Questions of Bloomberg

With new concerns emerging about practices at its news division, Bloomberg L.P., the sprawling financial services company founded by Michael R. Bloomberg, scrambled to shield its lucrative terminal business and appease nervous customers.

The report on Friday that a Bloomberg reporter had used the company’s financial data terminals to monitor a Goldman Sachs partner’s logon activity has set off a ripple effect of inquiries from other worried subscribers, including JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and the European Central Bank.

The revelations now stretch back to 2011, when UBS complained after a Bloomberg Television host alluded on air to his monitoring of the London-based rogue UBS trader Kweku Adoboli’s terminal logon information to confirm his employment status at the bank. Then, last summer, executives at JPMorgan Chase questioned Bloomberg reporters’ techniques after they were among the first to report on the trader Bruno Iksil, nicknamed the London Whale. “I’m unaware of any record of a complaint from either bank on this issue,” said Ty Trippet, a Bloomberg spokesman. The fallout continued on Monday. Bloomberg has now received roughly 20 inquiries about whether reporting practices violated the company’s policies about getting access to subscriber information, including one from Bank of America. The bank also contacted Bloomberg to raise questions about the security of its employees’ private information, people briefed on the matter said.

Citigroup and other Wall Street banks have also contacted Bloomberg in recent days, according to these people, who spoke on the condition they not be identified discussing confidential conversations. The banks all declined to comment. In response, the company has been contacting subscribers.

“Since the news came out, my executive team and I have personally reached out to more than 300 clients,” Daniel L. Doctoroff, chief executive of Bloomberg L.P., wrote in a blog post late Monday night. “We started each conversation with an apology.” A person briefed on those conversations said no one immediately canceled their subscription.

Every Bloomberg user who logs onto a terminal is greeted with a screen that contains a letter from Mr. Doctoroff calling the practice a “mistake” and addressing privacy concerns. The company is preparing a blog where subscribers can discuss concerns about data security. Bloomberg subscribers pay on average about $20,000 a year to lease each terminal.

Mr. Bloomberg, who stepped away from day-to-day operations when he became mayor, declined to comment on the situation at the company that bears his name. “No, I can’t say anything. I have an agreement with the Conflict of Interests Board,” he said in a news conference on Monday.

The company also began to discuss possible legal ramifications. While people close to the company doubted that clients would threaten legal action, Bloomberg hired outside lawyers on Friday to steer it through the crisis. The lawyers, according to the people close to the company, have assured Bloomberg that there is no basis for a lawsuit, since the subscribers did not suffer any damages and the information obtained was more trivial than confidential. An early analysis conducted by Bloomberg further suggested that reporters rarely, if ever, published stories based solely on information gleaned from the terminals.

The people close to the company also noted that Bloomberg’s sales agreement with subscribers disclosed that company employees had access to certain private information. While the agreement did not specify that Bloomberg News reporters were among those with access, the journalists are technically employees of Bloomberg L.P.

But some bank executives said the snooping could have violated a common confidentiality clause in their contracts with Bloomberg. In the clause, Bloomberg promises to keep large swaths of information “in confidence,” meaning that it won’t be shared with “third parties.”

One Wall Street executive, who asked not to be named because of a firm policy prohibiting employees from speaking to the media, said his company was involved in a sensitive situation last year and he now wondered if reporters were monitoring his activities.

Susanne Craig and Jack Ewing contributed reporting.

Media Decoder Blog: Hulu's Chief Is Leaving, Raising Questions About Its Future

Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesJason Kilar, the founding chief executive of Hulu, gave no indication why he was moving on.

8:39 p.m. | Updated
Jason Kilar, the Web wizard who turned Hulu from a punch line into a popular source of online video, said on Friday that he would step down as the site’s founding chief executive in the next three months.

The announcement is certain to turn up the volume on something that’s a constant hum in the media industry: speculation about the future of Hulu — and if it has one at all. Its owners, the Walt Disney Company, Comcast and the News Corporation, also run the ABC, Fox and NBC networks, and they do not agree about what to do with the Web site. Perversely, the more popular Hulu becomes, the more of a problem it is for the owners, since it may be taking viewers and advertising dollars away from their core television businesses.

Mr. Kilar never saw it that way, however. He was Hulu’s best advocate, sometimes clashing with the network executives on Hulu’s board and arguing that they had to keep investing in the site, since television’s future will surely involve Internet distribution.

For many Americans, that future is already here: Hulu’s streams of TV shows attract 30 million unique visitors a month via computers and untold millions more via tablets and Internet-connected television sets. Three million pay for Hulu Plus, its subscription arm — not bad for a start-up once ridiculed as “ClownCo.”

Mr. Kilar declined an interview request on Friday. In an e-mail message to employees, he gave no indication why he was moving on or what he might do next. “My decision to depart has been one of the toughest I’ve ever made,” he said.

He said his departure would take effect within the first quarter of the year. No successor was named. Rich Tom, the site’s chief technology officer, will also depart in the first quarter.

Mr. Kilar, a former executive at Amazon, has in the past been mentioned for a number of prominent jobs in Silicon Valley. He was a top candidate last year for the chief executive position at Yahoo, but Hulu said he declined to be considered. The job later went to Marissa Mayer, a longtime Google employee.

His departure comes just several months after the only independent owner of Hulu, Providence Equity Partners, sold its 10 percent stake, originally bought for $100 million, for $200 million. Mr. Kilar and other employees also sold their stakes in the company at that time, netting Mr. Kilar about $40 million, according to an executive with knowledge of the transaction.

On Friday, there was widespread praise for Mr. Kilar for steering Hulu through sometimes turbulent seas. “He defied enormous odds, built from scratch one of the top five digital video brands, created two viable and growing businesses (free and pay) and got his well-deserved payday — not bad for five years’ work,” J. B. Perrette, who used to help oversee NBC’s investment in Hulu and now runs Discovery Communication’s digital operations, said in an e-mail.

That said, Mr. Kilar’s announcement did not entirely surprise many in the industry. During his tenure, he sometimes clashed with the owners on Hulu, exemplifying the divide between new, disruptive modes of distribution like the Internet and the more traditional operations at major media companies. As the parent companies pulled back on the amount of ABC, Fox and NBC programming provided to Hulu, the Web site invested in original content to fill the gaps and attract attention. That investment effort continues, led by one of Mr. Kilar’s deputies, Andy Forssell, but many in the industry say they believe that Hulu’s future remains fuzzy.

An internal memo obtained by Variety in August showed that the owners may want to change their agreements with Hulu so that it is no longer the exclusive distributor of repeats of television shows like “The Office” and “Family Guy.” That way, the owners could also sell repeat rights to online video services like YouTube, Netflix or Amazon.

Some of the owners also wanted more advertisements on the site, which had revenue of about $700 million last year but is not yet believed to be profitable. Much of the revenue came from Hulu Plus, and therein lies another fault line: the owners may concentrate on the paid part to the detriment of the free streaming part.

The owners had no comment about any of that on Friday, though. Robert Iger, Disney’s chief executive, called Mr. Kilar an integral part of the Hulu story and said in a statement, “We are proud of his achievements, we appreciate what he’s built, and we share his confidence in his team’s ability to drive Hulu forward from here.”

This month, Richard Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research, predicted that News Corporation would seek to acquire its competitors’ stakes in Hulu in 2013. Comcast, he said, has no managerial control of Hulu and Disney “appears increasingly less interested” in the site.

In August, News Corporation said that Jonathan Miller, the company’s chief digital officer since 2009 and a vocal champion of Hulu, would leave the company. Mr. Miller represented News Corporation on the Hulu board and had helped the media company broker a stake in Roku. And Chase Carey, the No. 2 to the chief executive of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, is said to be less enamored with the service.

News Corporation has had some high-stakes stumbles in technology with both Myspace and its tablet-only publication, The Daily, which has led some analysts to expect the company to tread cautiously with future digital investments like Hulu.

Mr. Murdoch, however, praised Mr. Kilar for “building Hulu into one of the leading online video services available today.” He added, “It’s incredibly well positioned for the road ahead.”

DealBook: Questions Remain Over Hewlett's Big Charge on Autonomy Acquisition

The $5 billion fight over accusations of improper accounting brought by Hewlett-Packard shows no sign of abating.

In November, H.P. took a charge of $8.8 billion as it wrote down its acquisition of Autonomy, a British software company that it acquired in 2011. H.P. said that “more than $5 billion” of the charge was related to accounting and disclosure abuses at Autonomy. H.P. added that a senior executive at Autonomy pointed to the questionable practices after Mike Lynch, Autonomy’s founder and former chief executive, left H.P.

Mr. Lynch denied the charges. In November, he said the accounting moves H.P. highlighted were legitimate under international accounting rules, and he demanded that the company be more specific in how it arrived at the $5 billion number.

H.P. on Thursday released its annual report for its 2012 fiscal year, noting that the United States Justice Department “had opened an investigation relating to Autonomy.”

The report discusses the methodology it employed when making the $8.8 billion charge, but it did not break out exactly how the purported accounting improprieties were behind $5 billion of that charge.

Mr. Lynch seized on that. In a statement on Friday, he said H.P.’s report had “failed to provide any detailed information on the alleged accounting impropriety, or how this could possibly have resulted in such a substantial write-down.”

This accounting rabbit hole has real world consequences.

Hewlett-Packard, led by the company’s chief executive, Meg Whitman, has proceeded with a feisty certainty since the outset of this spat. If the $5 billion figure is not ultimately substantiated, shareholders may doubt H.P. management’s judgment. Also, annual reports are supposed to be exactly the place that investors can go to get their questions answered.

The fact that the $5 billion part of H.P.’s case is not repeated there should give shareholders pause. The report avoids words and phrases that would help a reader understand just how much of an effect the supposed improprieties had. The report says lower financial projections for Autonomy contributed to the write-down. In one part, it said those financial projections “incorporate” H.P.’s analysis of what it believed to be improper accounting. In another section, the report says the changed financial projections were “driven” by the purported abuses.

That sort of language led Mr. Lynch to say in his statement on Friday that “H.P. is backtracking.”

H.P., however, says it is doing nothing of the sort. In a statement released after Mr. Lynch’s on Friday, the company said, “As we have said previously, the majority of this impairment charge, more than $5 billion, is linked to serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations.”

The statement also appeared to respond to the criticism that more details about the $5 billion should have appeared in the annual report. H.P. said the report “is meant to provide the necessary overview of H.P.’s financial condition, including our audited financial statements, which is what our filing does.” The company added, “We continue to believe that the authorities and the courts are the appropriate venues in which to address the wrongdoing discovered at Autonomy.”

Sifting through the Autonomy weeds could obscure the bigger question: was everything above board at Autonomy? H.P. may have overstated the impact of what it calls improprieties in the charge. But Autonomy may still have had unreliable numbers that overstated its value at the time of its acquisition.

Mr. Lynch says the poor performance of Autonomy once it was part of H.P. was a result of H.P.’s mismanagement. But it could also have been because the new owners were not benefiting from the accounting that they have since questioned.

In some ways, the most intriguing detail in this mystery is the supposed whistle-blower who brought the accounting issues to management’s attention. This person may have been able to show how what he or she believed to be chicanery was hidden from the accounting firms that checked Autonomy’s books.

H.P. has enough performance problems that its executives will probably see the Autonomy issue as a distraction and shareholders may get little extra detail. By the sounds of it, that probably will not satisfy Mr. Lynch.

“It is time for Meg Whitman to stop making allegations and to start offering explanations,” is how he signed off his Friday statement.

NBA: Dwight Howard Dismisses Questions About a Future With the Lakers

Though many people are waiting for Dwight Howard to make his debut with the Lakers others are looking towards the future.  Will he stay and re-sign with the team?  Read more after the jump.

Shay Marie x Sabrina B.

He’s in the last year of a contract paying him $19.5 million this season and is in the long-term Lakers’ plans. He just doesn’t want to discuss whether they’re in his future plans.

“I’m not going to get into that stuff,” Howard said Friday in a quiet moment before the Lakers last to Sacramento, 103-98, in an exhibition game at Thomas and Mack Center.

“I’m happy that I’m here. This year is very important, and I’m looking forward to doing some great things here.”

It makes financial sense for Howard, 26, to stay. He could re-sign for five years and $117.9 million, as opposed to a four-year, $87.6-million deal with another team.

Howard appears to be enjoying LA but whether or not he’ll re-sign with the team is definitely dependent on how they perform this season.  I’m anxious for the season to start.

LA Times

NBA: Dwight Howard Dismisses Questions About a Future With the Lakers

Though many people are waiting for Dwight Howard to make his debut with the Lakers others are looking towards the future.  Will he stay and re-sign with the team?  Read more after the jump.

Shay Marie x Sabrina B.

He’s in the last year of a contract paying him $19.5 million this season and is in the long-term Lakers’ plans. He just doesn’t want to discuss whether they’re in his future plans.

“I’m not going to get into that stuff,” Howard said Friday in a quiet moment before the Lakers last to Sacramento, 103-98, in an exhibition game at Thomas and Mack Center.

“I’m happy that I’m here. This year is very important, and I’m looking forward to doing some great things here.”

It makes financial sense for Howard, 26, to stay. He could re-sign for five years and $117.9 million, as opposed to a four-year, $87.6-million deal with another team.

Howard appears to be enjoying LA but whether or not he’ll re-sign with the team is definitely dependent on how they perform this season.  I’m anxious for the season to start.

LA Times

Bits: A Reddit Forum Prompts Questions of Where to Draw a Line

Jane Jacobs, an urban activist, made that observation in 1961 in her landmark book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Although she was describing cities built of bricks and mortar, her ideas about cultivating vibrancy feel relevant today, as some of the most important metropolises of the 21st century are being constructed online, where chaos is in no short supply.

The latest controversy surrounds Reddit, a community and social news site that lets members create and run their own forums on any topic, from movie news to local politics to the sharing of beautiful nature photographs. Reddit has come under fire for harboring a forum that encourages people to covertly photograph women on the street and upload the images to the site for others to ogle and comment on. The pictures, nicknamed “creepshots,” incited outrage and provoked other members of the site and some journalists to publicly out those distributing the suggestive images. These actions, in turn, prompted an outcry from those who felt that they should be able to retain their own anonymity while posting photographs of women without their consent.

The skirmish has set off a debate about privacy and free speech, ownership and community, digital rights and accountability, touching upon issues of privilege and the undercurrents of power that course through the Web. At its core, the fallout is about how we transport social order, morals and responsibility to the digital realm and whether the online infrastructure can find a weird wisdom in the way it is being erected that will allow all its inhabitants to flourish.

Reddit is just one Web site — and one that many people have never heard of, at that. But it wields a sizable chunk of influence online, playing an instrumental role in rallying the Web to halt the progression of antipiracy bills proposed by Congress earlier this year, as well as enticing President Obama into its virtual halls to answer questions submitted by its members. It also drives significant amounts of traffic around the Web each month.

Zeynep Tufekci, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, described the site as “the secret backbone of the Internet,” which is why it is even more crucial that it be accountable for the environment it is fostering, she said.

“Reddit is not just a cog in the machine,” she said. “It may not be the most visible site, but is a powerful platform.”

Of course, Reddit isn’t the only Web site struggling with these issues. Such creepshots appear on other places around the Web, including Twitter. And sites from YouTube to Instagram, the photo-sharing app, are grappling with how to address provocative content, from images depicting self-harm to violent torture videos, and where to draw the line about what to publish and what to remove.

But the discussion around Reddit feels particularly pertinent because it is a site that deftly straddles the old Web and the new, managing to house the wondrous and the freewheeling, an antidote to the mainstream social networking sites where advertising and data-mining can seem more important than the conversations and community they contain.

As more of our life migrates online, the digital domains where we spend so much time may be as influential and important as the towns where we choose to go to school, find jobs and raise our families. The gap between who we are online and who we are offline is closing, said Katie Baker, a writer for Jezebel, who has been covering the skirmishes around Reddit. “It is increasingly clear-cut that we can no longer think that way,” she said.

Reddit, like Ms. Jacobs’s great cities, is a hub of interaction and civilization. And if one population feels marginalized within it, as many women and men who oppose those forums do, it detracts from the overall health of the community.

Those turned off by Reddit’s policies, which the company has no plans to amend despite the blowup, could always find a new place online to roost. But in Ms. Jacobs’ book, the cities that drive people away rather than deal with their unsavory bits begin to deteriorate and decay, and eventually wither.

In other words, averting our eyes and avoiding certain forums won’t solve the problem of how to deal with those forums when they tolerate and encourage attitudes of hostility and exploitation of women and underage girls.

Reddit is not an island. It is a site with 19 million users a month, according to Quantcast, one that is inexorably linked to the rest of the Web, and its community’s ideas, memes and images migrate from its front page to a larger online world. While it is owned by Advance Publications, which also owns Condé Nast, it is largely independent.

Bits Blog: Answers to Your Questions About Apple's iPhone 5

4:40 p.m. | Updated Adding more questions and answers.

Peter DaSilva for The New York TimesThe iPhone 5, right, and the iPhone 4S.

Apple on Wednesday unveiled its much-anticipated iPhone 5, as well as upgrades for the iPod Touch and iPod Nano. In reaction to the news, many readers posted questions. Here are answers to the most commonly asked ones.

Cost? Available to order date? Anticipated ship date? –David Wachte, New York.

The iPhone 5 costs $200 for the model with 16 gigabytes, $300 for 32 gigabytes and $400 for 64 gigabytes, with a two-year contract. You can pre-order it starting Friday. The phone releases Sept. 21, and ship dates vary depending on when you place the order.

Does Siri now allow you to issue configuration requests, such as “Turn Bluetooth on,” or “Turn ringer off”?
–Zak456, Hoboken, New Jersey

No. In the new version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 6, Siri has been expanded to add things like booking a restaurant through OpenTable, but tweaking core settings is not something it does yet.

Does the new Nano have a clip to attach to your clothes (for when you workout) like the current version does? – D, Conn.

No. Its workout feature is a built-in pedometer and support for Nike+.

Why did Apple create another proprietary connector, instead of adopting the ubiquitous Micro-USB connector? It would be great if the industry could standardize chargers for cellphones. –Mark, Calif.

Apple executives say the smaller “Lightning” connector allowed it to make the iPhone 5 and new iPod Touch thinner. Apple is the only company that uses a proprietary charging port, which benefits it in a number of ways: If people buy accessories like docks, clock radios and chargers made just for Apple products, they have to keep buying Apple products if they want to keep using their gear. Making its own port also allows Apple to make industrial design decisions that other manufacturers who conform to the Micro-USB standard probably couldn’t make.

What’s this gorgeous thing gonna cost me each month? Can I keep my existing plan (AT&T, $70 per month) when I buy the iPhone 5? Any good pointers for comparing pricing and plans? –MT, San Francisco, Calif.

AT&T has said you’ll be able to keep using your existing plan if you upgrade to the iPhone 5. So if you’re paying $70 a month now, you should continue to pay that price, unless you decide to change your plan.

Plan to order my phone on the 14th from Apple to be delivered to my home. Since the new phone will have a new SIM card, how do I transfer from old card (iPhone 4) to new without going to Apple or AT&T store? Am I missing something obvious? –PN, Franklin, Tenn.

When you purchase the iPhone 5 through AT&T or Apple, it includes a SIM, and you activate it with your number through iTunes. You won’t have to swap cards or go to a store.

Near Field Communications (NFC) is the best technology to unify payments with a cellphone. The Apple rumors had the new phone coming with NFC. Why did Apple not put NFC in the new iPhone 5? –J.C., San Francisco, Calif.

Only Apple knows the answer to this question, but in general, Apple doesn’t do anything that it feels it doesn’t need to, and mobile payments are still a premature technology. Also, Will Strauss, an analyst at Forward Concepts, which studies chips, says the iPhone 5’s all glass and aluminum body precludes it from using NFC.

It’s become an annual question, but is the iPod Classic still being sold?– Mark L. Milwaukee, WI

Yes, it’s still alive and selling.

So I am out of contract. AT&T or Verizon? No more unlimited data, which I’ve had with AT&T. Which is better for the iPhone 5? –Mark Calif.

To clarify, even if your contract is up on AT&T and you have an unlimited plan, you can still get an iPhone 5 and keep the unlimited plan. But if you are still debating between AT&T and Verizon, it depends on your preferences. Verizon has a larger 4G LTE market than AT&T, so if reliable coverage matters most to you, Verizon is the right fit. However, customers new to Verizon only get to choose a shared data plan, which can cost you more over the long run unless you’re sharing a plan with multiple family members or plan on using multiple devices. AT&T still allows customers to choose between a shared data plan or an individual “tiered” plan. So if you’re on a budget and you don’t plan on sharing data, AT&T’s tiered plans are a better deal.

Bits Blog: Answers to Your Questions About Apple's iPhone 5

4:40 p.m. | Updated Adding more questions and answers.

Peter DaSilva for The New York TimesThe iPhone 5, right, and the iPhone 4S.

Apple on Wednesday unveiled its much-anticipated iPhone 5, as well as upgrades for the iPod Touch and iPod Nano. In reaction to the news, many readers posted questions. Here are answers to the most commonly asked ones.

Cost? Available to order date? Anticipated ship date? –David Wachte, New York.

The iPhone 5 costs $200 for the model with 16 gigabytes, $300 for 32 gigabytes and $400 for 64 gigabytes, with a two-year contract. You can pre-order it starting Friday. The phone releases Sept. 21, and ship dates vary depending on when you place the order.

Does Siri now allow you to issue configuration requests, such as “Turn Bluetooth on,” or “Turn ringer off”?
–Zak456, Hoboken, New Jersey

No. In the new version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 6, Siri has been expanded to add things like booking a restaurant through OpenTable, but tweaking core settings is not something it does yet.

Does the new Nano have a clip to attach to your clothes (for when you workout) like the current version does? – D, Conn.

No. Its workout feature is a built-in pedometer and support for Nike+.

Why did Apple create another proprietary connector, instead of adopting the ubiquitous Micro-USB connector? It would be great if the industry could standardize chargers for cellphones. –Mark, Calif.

Apple executives say the smaller “Lightning” connector allowed it to make the iPhone 5 and new iPod Touch thinner. Apple is the only company that uses a proprietary charging port, which benefits it in a number of ways: If people buy accessories like docks, clock radios and chargers made just for Apple products, they have to keep buying Apple products if they want to keep using their gear. Making its own port also allows Apple to make industrial design decisions that other manufacturers who conform to the Micro-USB standard probably couldn’t make.

What’s this gorgeous thing gonna cost me each month? Can I keep my existing plan (AT&T, $70 per month) when I buy the iPhone 5? Any good pointers for comparing pricing and plans? –MT, San Francisco, Calif.

AT&T has said you’ll be able to keep using your existing plan if you upgrade to the iPhone 5. So if you’re paying $70 a month now, you should continue to pay that price, unless you decide to change your plan.

Plan to order my phone on the 14th from Apple to be delivered to my home. Since the new phone will have a new SIM card, how do I transfer from old card (iPhone 4) to new without going to Apple or AT&T store? Am I missing something obvious? –PN, Franklin, Tenn.

When you purchase the iPhone 5 through AT&T or Apple, it includes a SIM, and you activate it with your number through iTunes. You won’t have to swap cards or go to a store.

Near Field Communications (NFC) is the best technology to unify payments with a cellphone. The Apple rumors had the new phone coming with NFC. Why did Apple not put NFC in the new iPhone 5? –J.C., San Francisco, Calif.

Only Apple knows the answer to this question, but in general, Apple doesn’t do anything that it feels it doesn’t need to, and mobile payments are still a premature technology. Also, Will Strauss, an analyst at Forward Concepts, which studies chips, says the iPhone 5’s all glass and aluminum body precludes it from using NFC.

It’s become an annual question, but is the iPod Classic still being sold?– Mark L. Milwaukee, WI

Yes, it’s still alive and selling.

So I am out of contract. AT&T or Verizon? No more unlimited data, which I’ve had with AT&T. Which is better for the iPhone 5? –Mark Calif.

To clarify, even if your contract is up on AT&T and you have an unlimited plan, you can still get an iPhone 5 and keep the unlimited plan. But if you are still debating between AT&T and Verizon, it depends on your preferences. Verizon has a larger 4G LTE market than AT&T, so if reliable coverage matters most to you, Verizon is the right fit. However, customers new to Verizon only get to choose a shared data plan, which can cost you more over the long run unless you’re sharing a plan with multiple family members or plan on using multiple devices. AT&T still allows customers to choose between a shared data plan or an individual “tiered” plan. So if you’re on a budget and you don’t plan on sharing data, AT&T’s tiered plans are a better deal.