Apple Inc is on a high these days, on the back of news like that it has crossed Microsoft in terms of Market capitalization, the upcoming WWDC where Apple is expected to bring several much awaited products.

So it’s no surprise that Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO got invited to an opening day interview at the D: all things digital conference, better known as D8. What is surprising is that the Steve accepted!

This interview from the CEO of Apple comes after a long time, as Steve Jobs has given a limited number of interviews after his return from illness.

So what did the man at Apple have to say:

On Apple TV:

Steve: So all you can do is ADD a box to the TV. You just end up with a table full of remotes, a cluster of boxes… and that’s what we have today. The only way that’s going to change is if you tear up the set top box, give it a new UI, and get it in front of consumers in a way they’re going to want it. The TV is going to lose in our eyes until there is a better go to market strategy… otherwise you’re just making another TiVo.

On gaming:

Steve: Clearly iPhone plus iPod touch have created a new class of gaming. It’s a subset of casual gaming. But it’s surprising how good some of them are. They’re almost as good as console gaming in terms of graphics. Console games the software is $30 or $40 a game. It’s cheaper on iPhone, so the market has exploded.

On privacy:

Steve: No, we take privacy really seriously. Take location on phones — we take this really seriously. Before any app can get location data, they can’t just put up a panel asking if it can use location — they call OUR panel and it asks you if it’s okay. That’s one of the reasons we have the curated app store. A lot of the people in the Valley think we’re old fashioned about this. But we take it seriously.

Question from Walt: Okay, one theme we want to ask about here is privacy. There seems to have been a spate of mistakes or false starts… Facebook, Buzz…

Steve: Or Google’s WiFi collection.

Ouch!

On Apps:

Steve: We discovered something — people are going into apps. They’re not just going onto to websites. And people love apps. This is an entirely new thing — they aren’t using search, they’re using apps like Yelp.

On iAd:

Steve: Ads now rip you out of your app, you lose your place. Wouldn’t it be great if they didn’t do that?

Steve: Well we think their ad delivery system sucks!

On Apps and Open standards:

Steve: Well let first say we have two platforms we support. One is open and uncontrolled — that’s HTML5. We support HTML5. We have the best support for it of anyone in the world. We then support a curated platform which is the app store. It is the most vital app community on any platform. How do we curate this? It’s a bunch of people, and they come into work every day. We have a few rules: has to do what it’s advertised to do, it has to not crash, it can’t use private APIs. And those are the three biggest reasons we reject apps. But we approve 95% of all the apps that are submitted every week.

Steve Jobs did not comment on the rumored upcoming launch of the new iPhone 4G/HD.

Go here to find the whole the whole unedited interview.

watch this space for more interviews from some of the other technology leaders at the D8.

[via engadget]