We call it "The Hurd Defense"

Goes like this. Did illegal activities occur? Yes. Was the current CEO in charge at the time of the illegal activities? Yes. Did the current CEO authorize said activities? Yes. And benefit from them? Yes. Therefore, the CEO is not responsible. And we think it's best that he stick around and clean house. Makes sense, right? This is what we are working with the SEC and other government authorities on right now. Our position is, Look, we've already done the investigation for you, we got to the bottom of it, and at this point we're really not in the mood to authorize you folks to do your own investigations since you'll just be duplicating efforts. So here's our report, make as many copies as you'd like, read it over the holiday break, and let's move on with a fresh start in the new year and get back to making beautiful products that restore a sense of childlike wonder to people's lives. Meanwhile would any of you nice lawyer types enjoy a brand new 24-inch iMac or a 30-inch Cinema HD display? Maybe our U2 model iPod personally signed by Bono himself? Lunch with Bono? Or Al Gore? Or maybe you just want to sit in my presence for 5 minutes and meditate together and feel my magic rub off on you? Just let us know. We want to work with you.

But I ain't leaving, motherfriggers. Not without a fight. And if that's the way you wanna roll, Katie Cotton and her team are still up in the guard towers, loaded and locked. So bring it on.

The Days Before PodPhone

This poem came in via comments from our good friend "A. Musing" -- not sure if he's related to "H. Aiku" -- and it is so good I want to share it with you here. (And yes, I was tempted to not post it in comments and just run it as my own and take all the credit for it. But look, I already invented the friggin iPod, all by myself. So I don't need to steal credit for other people's work.)



The Days before PodPhone
-----
twas a few days past Christmas and all through the house,
Vista was waiting to hear from your mouse.

Jim Allchin retired and bought a nice Mac.
He transferred his data and didn't look back.
Steve Ballmer had nightmares of market-share loss and wondered if next year he'd still be the boss.

The tired Vista team were asleep in their beds
while Russians with botnets built bugs in their heads.

When over at Apple there arose such a clatter
the bloggers all rushed in to see what's the matter.
The minutes of meetings of dubious truth had pushed Apple stock prices off of the roof!

The SEC lawyers, so lively and quick
looked into the options that CEO's nicked.

Steve Jobs used a strange phone to make many calls;
He fired some frigtards and showed his big balls!
Out Anderson!
Out Heinen!
Out anyone lacking!
You're fired! Clear your desks out!
I'm sending you packing!

And then, in a twinkling, the RDF came.
The SEC lawyers cleared Steven Jobs name.

He showed up at Macworld in mock turtleneck
and demoed cool things to keep Vista in check.

But lastly he paused, and said 'one more thing'
"I'm waiting for Shiller to give me a ring."
His jeans played some Dylan
I think 'Times a-changing'
He answered an iChat with greetings exchanging!

He slid closed the Podphone on ending the call
and said "Happy Macworld,
Happy Macworld to all!"

Sure, my job is real safe

Jeez. If I see another one of these frigtarded stories about how my job is so safe, like this one on Reuters, I am just gonna friggin scream. Safe? My job is safe? Do you realize how un-safe a CEO's job is even when things are going well? Have you not read Shakespeare? There is always -- always -- someone plotting to kill the king. And crap like this options business just gives those backstabbers more to work with. Oh yeah, I know. Apple can't exist without Jobso. You know that and I know that. But tell that to the saps who'd love to take the place over, and who believe, deep in their souls, that they could do a way better job than I've done. Oh, it's a dark night of the soul for the Jobsmeister, believe me. Heidi Roizen is calling me every hour, pretending she just wants to be supportive. Guy Kawasaki keeps leaving me voice mail and sounding like a vampire who just caught a whiff of an open cut somewhere in the vicinity. Bastards!

So pretty here

Just walking around the streets taking photos with my still-in-beta Apple camera phone. Nice, right?

If I did it

So I did a conference call with this new lawyer and I was like, Okay, let's say that the stuff that got written about in the Financial Times really happened. Why do people seem to think that if Nancy and Fred forged some documents and gave 7.5 million options to me, that somehow I had something to do with this? Where is the connection to me? I just don't see it. If anything, I'm the victim here. I mean, I didn't put my name on the documents. They did.

And then I was like, So what do you think? Can we run with this?

By then of course I had the lawyer fully hypnotized -- yes, I can do this to people over the phone, not just in person -- and he was like, Ya know what? It makes sense to me. I'll get back to you. Not to worry. Enjoy your holiday.

What, me worry?

I suppose you've seen the stories about supposedly
forged documents, and me hiring a criminal lawyer who also represented Frank Quattrone. All I'm gonna say is, Look, I have no idea about any of this options stuff. I am all about the creativity. And I do not want to lose one precious minute of design time worrying about something as crass and meaningless as money. Ask anyone who knows me. I don't care at all about money. I could wipe my butt with hundred-dollar bills and not even care. And yes, I've done that. The butt thing, I mean. Anyhoo. To all my fans and followers, let me just reassure you that the Jobsmeister is in fine shape and sleeping like a baby. And the only thing I'm thinking about is designing gorgeous shiny new products. That, and occasionally, whether it would be possible to just disappear here in Eastern Europe, and how much it would cost to have plastic surgery to change my looks, and hire a body double to go to Macworld and pretend to be me, and whether I could stage my own death and get the CIA to cover my tracks. Okay. I've said too much. Peace out.

Sergey, you are shameless

Dudes, I'm having a little R&R in an undisclosed Eastern European location this week but just took a peek at the blog and noticed that among the ads in the little AdSense bar (which, yes, I know, you frigtards never click on, thanks a friggin lot) there is an ad for "James Brown Tickets." With the following text: Buy Cheap Concert Tickets. Low Prices. Trusted Merchant. Includes a link to a site called ticketliquidator.com. Please, please, call these guys up and ask for James Brown tickets. I'm begging you.

Weather is cold here in Eastern Europe (actually this is central Europe, so I'm told). It's just so great to be someplace where nobody knows who I am, and I can walk the streets and visit stores and just pretend to be an ordinary person for a few days. I'm sitting here in this cozy little Internet cafe, drinking a chai latte and reading my email, and I just feel so, well, normal. Much love to everyone. Sorry about missing this week's photo contest. We'll pick up again next week OK? Much love.

Thanks, TUAW

And to reader Miketrose who points out this poem about yours truly on The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Much love, TUAW. See you at Macworld. What's that? Oh, you'll know who I am. Seriously.

Cause for concern?

I'm sure this has happened to you. You get on a plane and look over and there's some little granny with elastic waist pants and big clunky shoes thinking she's all cool cause she's putting on her white iPod earbuds. Or you're walking around some park and you see Mrs. Creosote here with her little pink iPod purse and some unidentified piece of her body hanging out of her dress. And suddenly you feel, well, a little less ... special. And you quickly take off your earbuds and stow your iPod away because you don't want to belong to the same club as these people.

Well, at Apple we're totally aware of this. Our marketing gurus are starting to get a little bit worried by the growing number of old and/or ugly and/or fat and/or badly dressed and/or just generally unattractive frigtards who are being spotted in public wearing iPods. Kinda frigs up our marketing message right? We're promoting iPods as the coolest accessory for slender, attractive, silhouette-type people, often of color, who want to think they are different and, yes, better than other people.

Not sure how we're going to handle this. But this kind of thing can really be potentially devastating to a brand. Ask the poor bastards at Helly Hansen, whose stuff became super popular ghetto wear. Or Burberry, which is now the official clothing of chavs.

One strategy is to just move upstream and create some new better-looking music player that costs maybe twice as much as a regular iPod, and leave the regular iPods to the frigtards. We're also thinking about a new training program for people in our Apple stores, with tips for how to spot uglies and steer them to the Zune. Because I swear to you, whoever sold an iPod to Big Mama Front Butt here is soooo fired, and I totally mean that. I just threw up in my mouth from looking at her.

By the way, you may have noticed that our retail employees are all decently slender and decently attractive. This does not happen by accident. We have rules. We screen out uglies. Against the law? Sure, but just try and catch us. It's been my rule from the start. No fatties. No uglies. Just smug, stupid people who make fun of you if you have a question, and then can't answer it.

Friends, be assured, we're keeping your interests in mind and we are working very hard at finding ways to get the uglies out of our exclusive club. I'll keep you informed. Peace out.

R.I.P., James Brown

Rest in peace, James Brown.
O Godfather of Soul,
O hardest working man,
O sex machine, you
auditioned for Mulan, Shrek & Dreamgirls
but Eddie Murphy, the lover of shemales,
stole your act & got
those parts instead.
Bastard!
John Ive says you were domestically
violent & did time in jail. Not
very kind of him.
"I feel good."
That was your theme song.
Not anymore.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Bill

I can't tell you how much it cost us to get this story into print. First we had to pay the Russki hackers on our Windows Virus Creation Team (aka "Operation Wavecat") to find the vulnerabilities and create the exploits. Then we had to spread the word. Finally we had to buy all of Markoff's Christmas gifts in order to get this story placed into the Times. You know what? All worth it. Friggin Christmas Day. I could not be happier. Almost makes me want to believe in Santa Claus.

I told you Apocalypto was gonna bomb

So just as I predicted, Apocalypto has been a huge failure. We had a good pop on opening weekend mostly because we had no real competition. But since then ticket sales have dropped faster than Paris Hilton's panties at a frat party. Way back in the summer I told these frigtards at Disney, What are you thinking? A movie in ancient Mayan, with subtitles, and huge amounts of gore and violence? In the middle of holiday season? Are you nuts? Let's open small in a few artsy theaters, see if it grows legs and let it build by word of mouth. But no. The Disney marketing geniuses decide to open wide in thousands of cinemas. And, predictably, it's a flop. Well, the three guys responsible for this horrific decision just got canned. I did it. Iger was like, Dude, let's wait till January, we can't fire guys on Christmas Eve, and I'm like, Bob, first of all, I don't celebrate Christmas, and second, We'll give them each a week's pay as severance, and third, We gotta send a message to people at Disney about accountability. Sure, we want you to take risks. But if you make a mistake, you pay for it. All there is to it. Merry friggin Christmas, a-holes, and here's your extra week's pay.

Reaction to my management style

I've been getting loads of mail and a few comments here in response to my post about management techniques. Basically these people were telling me that using fear and psychological manipulation doesn't work. They said it works better to be nice to people and treat them with respect. Well, to those people, I say, Look at Apple. Look at our amazing success. Especially our success since I took over the company. Compare that to the abject failure under my predecessors. Now compare that to whatever company that you built with your bare hands into a multi-billion-dollar empire using your techniques. What's that? You don't have a company? You never started a company or ran a company? You've never been a CEO? Huh. Okay. The prosecution rests. And for those of you posters who work at Apple -- and yes, I know who you are -- don't be surprised when you show up and your door badge isn't working. It's not an accident.

Meanwhile here's another tip, which I just remembered because I happened to use it yesterday. It's a verbal technique based on Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and it's based on the use of non sequitur, which is French for "a word that makes no sense and freaks people out." So what you do is, in the middle of a meeting, when someone else is talking, you just sit there nodding your head, as if in agreement, but then at some point you suddenly switch and go negative and just stand up and go, "No! No! That's stupid! What is wrong with you?" Then stomp out of the room, slamming the door behind you. This freaks people out and they will tread lightly around you.

Another version of this is the "elevator putdown." I do this occasionally. I'll get on the elevator with some other people, and smile, or say hi, and they're usually nervous because they're standing next to me or whatever and I'm this big celebrity plus I'm their uber-boss, so it always freaks people out to stand in an elevator with me and I have to admit, I totally dig that. Anyhoo, often nobody will speak when I'm on the elevator. But if by any chance the people do speak to each other, and carry on a converation that does not include me -- let's say they were already having a conversation when I got on the elevator, and they keep having it after I'm with them -- I'll wait until just before we get to my floor, and then, as the door opens, I'll turn to them and say, "What you just said is completely wrong. You know not whereof you speak." And then leave. Keeps people on their toes, trust me.

Caption contest

Well, it's an oldie but goodie. Have fun.

Caption winners

Another amazing selection this week, proving once again that this blog boasts the most talented, intelligent and handsome collection of middle-aged computer nerds on the Internet. Still can't figure out why Viagra hasn't caught on and started sponsoring us. Oh well. The interns at FSJ Central here in sunny Krasnodar have been enjoying the unseasonably warm weather this week and it's been difficult to get them to concentrate. However they are all raving about the emergence of a new superstar, Mr. H. Aiku, whose work continues to astound everyone. Free beta copies of Leopard are in the mail but expect delays due to the holiday season. Peace out and thanks for your fine work.

H. Aiku
uncomfortable men
so embarrassed and troubled
he pays them to smile

Anonymous
and that is what a rim job tastes like.

mattf
OOH.. a fly!

H. Aiku
It's mating season
the display of the Ballmer
disturbing to most

vaporland
the latest Britney taco shot ...

Operation "Wavecat"

Awesome 2007 planning meeting with our top-secret Windows Virus Creation Team (aka WVCT, or "Wavecat") this morning. These guys are mostly Russians and we like to think they are the finest virus writers in the world. They did an awesome job on XP, and the good news is that Dima Mukhoyobski, our team leader, says they've got even better stuff cooking up for Vista. Apparently the new OS has got more gummed-up holes than one of Bill O'Reilly's loofahs. Meeting today was to bring together our advertising people and Dima's team so we can coordinate virus release dates with more of our "Switch Now" ad campaigns. Can't tell you exactly what these new viruses will do, but for those of you doing some last-minute computer shopping for the Solstice Holiday, let me offer some advice: Don't buy a PC. For those of you still stubbornly refusing to switch? Fasten your seatbelts, frigtards!

Regarding my management style

So I'm often asked about my management style. Especially since I gave that amazing commencement speech and everyone realized what an incredibly deep thinker I am. (And you know, I've seen those Internet rumors about how I didn't really write that speech, how I just hired some ghostwriter. All I can say is: Please. The guy fixed some grammar errors and punched it up a bit. But I'm the the one who spent half a day in Longs Drug Store reading friggin Hallmark cards to gather material.)

Anyhoo, my management style. Okay. I'm a little geeked about sharing my secrets, so I won't tell you everything. I'm saving the best stuff for the book I plan to write after I leave here. Then again, I'm probably not gonna be around much longer so here's a little taste.

Most important thing is I never subscribed to the conventional wisdom of the East Coast management "experts" like Jack Welch, who used to run General Electric or General Motors, I can never remember which one. For example. Welch says do a lot of reviews and always let people know where they stand. I say, No way. In fact, quite the opposite. Never let people know where they stand. Keep them guessing. Keep them afraid. Otherwise they get complacent. Creativity springs from fear. Think of a painter, or a writer, or a composer working furiously in his studio, afraid he's going to starve to death if he doesn't get this piece of work just right. That's where greatness comes from. Well, same goes for engineers and designers at Apple and Pixar. They come in every day knowing it could be their last day. They work like hell, trust me.

Because you know what? Fear works. Look at the crappy cars that get made in Detroit, where they have these jobs for life and union rules and nobody is worried about anything. Now compare that to the stuff that gets made in Vietnamese sweatshops. Or the bridge in "The Bridge over the River Kwai." That bridge was friggin perfect. Please don't say it was because the Brits were just these amazing perfectionists who wanted to do this ace job. Come on. I love the Brits but these are not people who are known for the quality of their workmanship. Ever bought a British car? Okay, enough said. No, what motivated those lazy, stupid Brits was their fear of the efficient, vicious Japanese. You put people's lives in danger, and they do their best work.

Obviously we can't literally put our employees' lives at risk. But we have to make them feel that way. This requires a lot of psychological manipulation on our part. But look at the result. You think we could have made OS X so reliable if our engineers didn't believe in their hearts that every time a bug surfaced one man was going to be killed?

Which leads me to my next management myth. You don't have to hire the best people. You can hire anyone, as long as you scare the bejesus out of them. That's the key, the fear. This applies not only to assembly line and factory type workers but to all of your staff, including top executives and even the board of directors. In fact, especially the board of directors. A corollary to this rule is this: Only promote stupid people. But not just any stupid people. You have to find the certain type of stupid people who actually believe they're super brilliant. They make insanely great managers and are super easy to manipulate. It's pretty easy to spot them. Former McKinsey consultants are top candidates.

The MBAs say you should set high standards, let people know what's expected of them, and hold them to that. I do a little twist on that and say, Hold people to an impossibly high standard, but here's the twist -- don't tell them what that standard is. And fire them if they fall short. You know what that does to people? Makes them friggin crazy. And guess what. Crazy people are more creative. And more productive. Every shrink in the world knows this. Go rent "A Beautiful Mind" if you don't believe me.

Another MBA type rule that I never follow is where they say a CEO or manager should be consistent and predictable. I say just the opposite. Be inconsistent and unpredictable. Be totally random. One day say something is great and the guy who made it is a genius; the next day say it's crap, and he's frigtard. Wait a few days, and repeat the process. Watch how hard that guy will work now, trying to impress you.

Management gurus also tell you to reward performance, and dole out loads of praise. I disagree. My motto is this: No praise. Ever. You start praising people and pretty soon they start thinking they're as smart as you are. You cannot have this. All employees must know at all times that you are better in every way than they are. Repeated criticism, in the most humiliating fashion, is one way to accomplish this. Once you have established your superiority you must make a big deal of being super modest and humble in public. Toss around some Zen type stuff, and tell people you're a super-progressive liberal.

One way to keep people's spirits broken is to fire people on a regular basis for no reason. Fly off the handle, shout at people, call them names, then fire them. Or better yet. Don't fire them. So they think they survived. Then wait a few days, till they're totally relaxed, and then fire them. It's all part of creating and maintaining the culture of fear. I've blogged about this before, how Jon Ive and I will play the "John Allen Muhammad" game and pick some random reason to fire someone, like we'll just fire the first person we meet with red hair, or the first person who dares to speak to us without being spoken to first. See here.

I also keep an eye out for enemies and potential insurrections, and I kill them off quickly. My advice here is simple: Be friggin ruthless. Good example. I told you recently how some of Tim Cook's loyalists are dragging their heels in engineering, trying to make me look bad. So here's what I did. I called a meeting with a bunch of these bastards. I told them, Look, the Apple keyboard is not small enough. So instead of a regular qwerty keyboard, we're going to make it like a cell phone keypad, where each key has three letters. Right away we cut the alphabet portion by two-thirds. Sure, people will have to re-learn how to type. But if we make this keyboard beautiful enough, and if we charge enough money, like say maybe five hundred bucks, they'll switch. You know they will. Remember: these are people who spend 500 bucks extra, on average, just because a computer is shiny white.

So these idiots all went around taking turns about how this new keyboard was a great idea and they started brainstorming some ideas for names, until I cut them off and and stood up and said, No! No! This a stupid idea! You're all fired, you assholes! If I can't trust you to tell me when an idea is stupid, why are you here? Get out! Right now! I called security and had them taken out in handcuffs and didn't even let them clear their desks. Family photos, personal items, car keys -- all into the trash. Tough noogies, traitors.

Well, that's my little food for thought, and I hope you find it helpful. I could go on all day but my new buddy Ja'red is here to work out with me on our climbing wall, after which we've got some killer fruit smoothies on the agenda. Peace out.

Vegetarians are more intelligent

Says so right here. They also make better computers. But you knew that.

My Little Pony calls, stomping his hooves

And goes, Damn, Steve, I can't believe you just ran that email from Irving without challenging him at all. They're going around trying to act like the king of open source when everyone knows that Sun is waaaay more open than IBM. Heck, open source is in our roots. It's part of our legacy. That BSD code in your Mac operating system? Yeah. Send Bill Joy a thank you card whenever you're ready. And now you're just out whoring for IBM, is that it? Steve, we've open-sourced Solaris. We've open-sourced Java. We've got all of these free desktop applications. Paid millions to build or buy all this stuff and we're just giving it away to make the world a better place. Not only do we give away free software; we also give customers free hardware to entice them into using our free software. The hardware is what gets you in the door for the free software. Or we can do it the other way around, and use the free software as the lure to get you to use our free hardware. Either way we win. Total double whammy!

How can Microsoft compete with this? Answer: They can't. First of all they're still charging money for their software -- which is so last century -- but more important, they don't have any free hardware to give away. Linux can't compete either. Same reason. No free hardware. IBM says they're listening to customers? Gimme a break, dude! We're the ones listening to customers and giving them exactly what they want. Free stuff. No charge. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Steve, we are so far ahead of everyone on this one that it's not even funny. We're paying thousands of people to keep making all this free stuff. Think about that, Steve! I mean, don't we deserve a little credit? And yet here you are, using your blog to promote IBM. You make me so mad I just wanna go set my ponytail on fire. Or pull out my split ends. Except I don't have any split ends. Just long, silky, perfect strands. So soft and shiny, so perfectly conditioned. Watch the way it waves when I move my head. Just like in the commercials. Are you jealous, baldy? You know you want to touch it. You wait and see how we take over the world with all our free stuff.

Oh, and I know what you're thinking. How do we make money if we give everything away free? Obvious. Advertising. Heard of this little company called Google? Seems to be working for them. So we put some ads into our software. And we get endorsement deals to put stickers on our boxes, like NASCAR. Think of the companies that would die to attach their brands to our boxes and be seen in every data center. Red Bull. Dr. Pepper. Chocolate covered coffee beans. Or all those geeky karate and slasher movies that those weirdos go for. All these years, we thought we were selling computers. But no. We were aggregating an audience. Millions of IT geeks the world over. Now all we do is monetize that audience. Easy peezy. Oh wait. My groomer is here. Gotta hop.

An IBMer writes in to explain

So I just got email from "Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger" and I must say, I just don't trust people who have Ph.D.s and call themselves Doctor So-and-so. I mean, okay, you've got a Ph.D. I didn't go to college. Who has more money? Who invented the friggin iPod? Nuff said, Mr. Big Brain. Anyhoo. Here's what Irving has to say:

Dear Steve,
I think maybe you were a little rough on Sam in that item on your blog. You're still operating under some very old ideas about what IBM is like and how we operate. The company has really changed since the days of your "Big Brother" ad. In fact one reason for Sam's visit was to reach out to you and explain a bit about the new IBM. These days we're all about sharing and openness, Steve. We're driving the open-source revolution. We really believe that no one company has a monopoly on innovation. That's why we're reaching out to people all around the world and encouraging them to sign over their IP and let us put their brilliant ideas to work in lucrative consulting engagements. Why do you hoard your marvelous OS X operating system and those fantastic iLife applications? Why do you keep the workings of an iPod secret? Think how much more valuable those things would be if you would stop charging money for them and just let anyone copy them for free.

I know it sounds upside down at first. But here at the new IBM we're all about taking your hard work and intellectual property and using it to help our customers. I know. You're thinking, Wait a minute. What the fuck? You want me to do all the work, and you get all the money? A lot of people balk at this. Hey, I was there once too. But that's the old way of thinking, Steve. The world is changing. Closed, proprietary systems are becoming extinct. Today it's all about maximizing responsiveness, accelerating speed to market and responding to customers.

The customer is now in charge. And it's an On Demand world. And what those customers are demanding is that you give them your stuff free. We've done huge amounts of research on this. We asked, How much do you want to pay for software? For computers? Kept getting the same answer: Zero. Well, IBM is listening to customers and responding to that dynamic and evolving with the market to meet the needs of end users. We're looking for the best and most innovative ideas. Whether those ideas come from inside IBM or from outside our walls doesn't matter. It's kind of like how scientists work, or academics, by standing on the shoulders of giants. You give us a gigantic idea, we're not going to compete against it, or try to kill it. We're going to take it from you, jump on its shoulders, and sell it. We're open.

Instead of the old "not invented here" syndrome, we're saying to innovators, look, whoever you are, wherever you live, share your ideas with us, and you know what? We'll use them. And we'll give you one hundred percent of the credit. All we get is the money. Sure, we knew we were taking a risk by embracing this new open way of doing business with partners, but once we made the leap we found this new model works so much better than the old one, where we had to actually hire engineers and pay them. It's a new world, Steve. So what do you say? Are you gonna be a change agent? Will you embrace the disruption? Can we count on you to jump in and join us for the big win?

Confession: Vinyl still sounds better

I shouldn't admit this, because of all the money we're making on iPods and iTunes, but when I really want to sit down and listen to music, I listen to vinyl. I've got an old Linn-Naim rig and some Harbeth speakers and I gotta tell you, this stuff is all 30 years old and wasn't that expensive but it friggin sings. There's a reason why Dylan and Neil Young have been griping so much about the way all the new music sounds. Frankly I never liked the sound of CDs either and most of what I buy is still vinyl, like when my old records wear out I'll replace them with another record. If you've never heard Joni Mitchell's "Blue" on 180-gram vinyl, well, put it this way: you've never heard it. Same goes for any of the old Dylan, CSNY, or Dead albums. Or anything really. Look, I know these audiophiles hate me for selling this iTunes crap in a compressed format that sounds even worse than CD. Can I help it if frigtards want to carry a zillion songs in their pocket? And if they're too stupid to know that it sounds like crap? Damn, people, I'm a businessman. Mea culpa, as they say in Farsi. And lo siento.

Anyway, this is just something I've wanted to say out loud for like forever. I love vinyl. I love analog. I hate digital. If you could see my vinyl collection (which you can't, so don't even ask) you would understand. It's amazing. I've got thousands of records, just an encyclopedia of everything: blues, jazz, folk, rock, country, bluegrass, classical. After I'm gone this will be in a friggin museum, I swear. God, you know what, my PR people are gonna friggin kill me when they see this post. Too bad, people. You told me just say what's on my mind. So there it is. Now I have to run. My carrot juice has just been squeezed, and my tai chi instructor is gonna be here in fifteen minutes. Peace out.

So some IBMers came to visit

You may not know this if you're not in the industry but IBMers are a bit like Roman Catholic nuns. They never travel in groups of less than 20. I have no idea why except that everything at IBM seems to require massive logistics and planning and scheduling, and a series of pre-planning meetings to discuss the later planning meetings to discuss whatever the actual meeting is. I swear the execs there can't take a dump unless it's on their calendar; and before they go they have to find three other dudes to take with them. Yeah. Anyhoo.

This visit in Cupertino was the top brass, with Palmisano and about two dozen of his thugs and flacks and bodyguards and yes-men and shoeshine boys. They rolled up in armored SUVs and they were all wearing suits but they'd taken off their ties and stuffed them in their pockets in an attempt to be cool. You could see the bulges. Palmisano had a guy with him whose job, it appeared, was simply to tell him where he was and the name of whatever guys he was meeting. When I came down the guy was whispering to Palmisano and then Palmisano walked toward me with this big jock smile and I saw him very quickly glance down at a little card in his hand and he said, "Hey, uh," (glance down again), "Steve, well, it's great to see you, and thanks so much for making time to see us." And he gives me the big phony salestard handshake and says, "And I'm here on behalf of the IBM Corporation to tell you personally how much we value your business and how much it means to us to have you as a customer." I'm looking at him like, What the frig?

His handler dude grabs his sleeve and they do this little huddle where the handler is whispering to Palmisano and Palmisano says, "Huh? Who? Where? Wait a minute, this is Steve Jobs? Steve Jobs of Apple? But what's he doing-- oh, we're at Apple? This is Apple? Right here? Oh Jesus." Then he just looks back at me as if I couldn't hear what he just said and he's like, "Well, the famous Mr. Steven A. Jobs of Apple Computer, man oh man, do I like what you're doing out here! Man, with those iPod compact disc players. Wow! My kids love them."

So right. Whatever. There's no point to any of this, it's purely a meet-and-greet, and my guys have arranged to take the BlueTards on a dopey do-nothing tour of a fake manufacturing facility that we've set up, just something to keep them busy and walking around for thirty minutes until we can get rid of them. So we get to this area where we've got our current product line on display and Palmisano is looking at the Shuffle and asks me if it's a tie clip, yuk yuk, just joking, he says. Then he goes, "Seriously, what the hell is this? Some kind of mouse?"

I explain what it is and we move down to the iMacs and he goes, "Wow, these are beautiful flat-panel TVs, are you getting into that game too, like Dell? Smart move, if you are. Big money in that consumer space." I tell him we're not making TVs, that these are computers. "So they're hi-def, right?" he says. I tell him again that they're not TVs, they're computers. He seems kind of confused for a moment, then he goes, "You mean like terminals? Like network computers?" And I go, No, they're full computers. He asks me where's the hard drive, and where's the computer, and I try to explain that it's all one piece, and he goes, "Okay, so these are not hi-def television sets is what you're telling me?" I'm like, That's right, they're not television sets. They're computers. He stands there shaking his head and whistling, like Andy Griffith. And he goes, "Wow. Imagine that. You know, we got out of the PC business. Sold it off to the Chinese. No money in it. But I'm sure you'll do really well with these, no worries. Stay out of that TV business though. No money there. Just a huge sink hole."

Right. So we walk along and he asks me if I ever played any football in college, I tell him no, he tells me he played college football and was a lineman and man oh man it was a different game back in the old days, different game, you didn't have the equipment that these kids have today, why the helmets were just these cheap plastic things with barely any padding, can you believe that? I tell him, Yes, I can believe that, for sure. By then we're back in the lobby and he says, "Well, uh," (glances down at card in hand again) "Steve, thanks again for letting us come visit and thank you again for being such a great partner, and you've got to come visit us in Armonk sometime and we'll play some golf over at Winged Foot, ever been there? Beautiful course. You play any golf? No? Seriously? You're kidding, right? Well that's a shame. We gotta get you out there. Right guys? We gotta get this guy out on the golf course! Don't we?"

Then Jon Ive and I just stood in the lobby watching them all waddle their fat asses out to their armored SUVs, putting their ties back on as they went.

R.I.P., Alan Shugart

Rest in peace, Alan Shugart.
O Father of the disk drive,
O surfer of waves,
O wearer of colorful Hawaiian shirts, you
were both floppy & hard,
and well-loved at Seagate.
Until they threw you out.
Bastards!
Are you kind? I once asked you
when there was no weed anywhere
and you said sure come down &
gave me that incredible homegrown
from your friend's farm in Scotts Valley.
Jon Ive called you scuzzy.
A bit unfair of him, in my
opinion. Though you did make
your dog run for Congress.
He was Ernest.
You were not.

Microsoft's new robot software

It's true. They've announced an OS for robots. Check out the first model here. Dude! So lifelike.

Then again, I've got friends too

Like Rebecca Runkle of Morgan Stanley, who just upgraded our stock and raised her target price to $110 and boosted her earnings estimate for next year. Becks, just send me that Christmas list on email and I'll have my assistant take care of it. Much love, girlfriend. And hey, Tim Cook? Bite me, pal. I've been in this game a wee bit longer than you have. I grew up in this Valley. I know you're all proud of being a "Fuqua Scholar" at Duke and I guess I'd be impressed by that if I knew what a Fuqua is. I do know what a fuckwad is. You want to rumble, ese? Let's do this thing.

This is not good news for El Jobso

So Forrester says they did some study and found that iTunes transactions have declined by 58% in the past year. Of course they don't know what to make of this. Not sure if it has occurred to them that maybe their survey is just all frigged up. After all, these were the same frigtards who were going around a few years ago saying how enormous all these different markets were going to be by the year 2010. How'd they figure this? They picked a percentage growth rate at random and applied it, year by year, into the future. For no good reason. Which resulted in predictions like this: "Forrester estimates the market for online pet food sales will reach $1.75 trillion by the year 2010."

Anyway, look, this iTunes report is baloney. Sort of. I mean there's a grain of truth. Whatever. Doesn't matter. The real issue is that this is very bad news for me. Because I'm under tremendous pressure at Apple these days. I haven't been blogging about it because it's just too painful. Just know that Tim Cook and his little pals on the board are still out to get the Jobsmeister. They say it's about the options stuff but come on. It's a power play, pure and simple. If you think this Forrester report just magically happened on its own, think again. Hint: Guess which member of our board is pals with George Colony, the coin-operated head of Forrester. Yeah, this was paid for. Perhaps you've noticed the steady stream of what look like random bad news items about Apple over the past six months. If you wondered why companies spy on their board members, now you know. These assholes are treacherous. It's not like some karate demo where they fight with wooden sticks. This is a friggin death match, with real knives.

But as I've said before, money talks and bullshit walks. I need to be putting up some big numbers for Q4 (that's calendar Q4, for you pedants) or I'm gonna be in hot water. So iTunes is critical. So is the iPhone. And iTV. All of it. Hey, I've been here before, with my back against the wall. Heck, I've been down way worse than this. Just gotta pull another magical rabbit out of my hat. Usually I'd say no problem. But as I've explained before here on this blog, my mojo is having some intermittent funkiness lately. And I swear Tim has got guys in engineering who are working against me, dragging their heels, introducing bugs, trying to slow down these new products and frig me up. Warning to those dudes: If you shoot at the king, you'd better kill him. Allah bless you if I survive this coup and remain in charge. You'll be off to meet your 72 virgins. Peace out and happy holidays.

Regarding our iPhone

Lot of people ask me why the frig is it taking you guys so long to make a friggin phone? I mean, how hard can it be? I mean, friggin Disney has a phone service and a bunch of phones, and their stuff is made by friggin Keebler elves or something. (In fact Bob Iger is one of the dudes who's been busting my stones on this.) You have to understand how we do things at Apple. We think different. So, por ejemplo, as they say in the Netherlands, we don't start with the phone, or the software. We start with the ads. We'll spend months doing storyboards, writing slogans, making fake billboards that we put up in one of our windowless warehouses. I realize this is the reverse of how most companies do it. Just about everybody else starts with the product, and only when it's done do they go, Oh, wait, we gotta come up with some sort of ad, don't we? Which is why most advertising sucks, because it's an afterthought. Not here. At Apple, advertising is a pre-thought. And if we can't come up with a good ad, you know what? We probably won't do the product. It's why we're different. (And no, the one you see here is not the actual iPhone.)

Anyhoo, once we've got the ad campaign, then we get to work on the product. But we don't start with the actual technology. We start with design. Again, different. Jon Ive will bring me, say, fifteen iPhone prototypes. These are all beautiful phones, better than all of the phones on the market today. But you know what? For Apple they're not good enough. Not even close. I take them into my meditation room and just look at them. I go into a kind of trance. And here's the key part: I don't think about them. I don't think about anything. Not so easy to do, to think about nothing. Try it and see. But after years of practice I can empty my head and get into this non-thinking state in about fifteen minutes. I'll spend a few hours just sitting there, non-thinking about the fifteen prototypes, and gradually, very gradually, I begin to become aware that one is emerging from the others as the best of the bunch. When that happens I'm done. (And I'm usually so exhausted that I just go home and sleep.) I'll send the "emergent design," as we call it, back to Jon Ive and tell him to start all over, making a hundred or so new prototypes that branch off from this one. From those hundred they will winnow down the pool, relying on their own meetings (which can get quite heated, believe me) plus some contributions from consultants that we bring in to check out things like the feng shui, emotional balance, interior and exterior harmony, and so forth. When they've got another batch of fifteen "winners" they bring them to me, and I return to the meditation room once again and empty my mind and choose the next "emergent" design.

This can go on for months, with round after round of emergent designs, and it's all based on non-thinking, intuitive kind of interpretation, just an emotional reaction. When we finally have settled on a single physical prototype, only then do we start working on chips and software. And we don't just outsource the job the way the MicroTards did with the Zune. We make our own special chips. Our own special software. This process can take months, with teams working all over the globe, in China, Europe, and Cupertino. Then we put the chips and software into the physical design and see how it feels; and unfortunately it often occurs that the software is amazing but it just doesn't feel right in this physical package, and so we have to go back and redesign the phone all over again, employing the same "emergent design" winnowing process. Or sometimes the phone just doesn't look right in the advertisements, and so we have to redesign for that reason, too.

When we're done with all that, there's the color issue. Do you have any idea how many shades of black there are? And white? And then you have to consider finishes. Satin, matte, glossy, high-gloss. And there's the combination of finish and color. I'll spend weeks working eighteen-hour days just looking at color chips and just be drained at the end of each day. Then we'll make up prototypes and each one has to be handcrafted and lacquered. And I'm like, Nope, not good enough. Try this. Or try that. Maybe this one. I don't know. Let me sleep on it. Nope. Still not right. Back to the labs, dudes.

So where are we with the iPhone? In fact we've had the actual phone completed for months. And we've got all our carrier relationships ironed out. I've been using an iPhone since last summer. (White, natch, and just insanely beautiful.) So what's the hold-up? Well, it's packaging. Here at Apple we don't just put something in a box and ship it. We put as much thought, maybe more, into the packaging of the product as we do into the product itself. What we're looking to achieve is this magical sequence that takes place when you open the box. How does the box open? Is there a tongue? Two side slots? What color is the box? Which grade of cardboard do we use? How does it feel to your fingers? And what about inside? How is the iPhone itself presented to the customer when the box first opens? Does it lie flat? Is it tilted up? Is there plastic over it? Do we put a sticky thing over the screen that you have to peel off? Here, with packaging, we do the same process as with the iPhone itself, with round after round of prototypes, winnowing, meditation, non-thinking, and so forth.

It's maddening, and I get a huge amount of grief from my staff, especially the salestards who are super pissed right now that we're not gonna have this iPhone ready for the Christmas -- er, holiday -- season. But you know what? This is how I do things. This is my process. I can't be hurried. The work comes at its own pace. Call me a perfectionist. Fair enough. I am. Now will someone please see what happened to the friggin chai latte that I ordered a half hour ago? And make sure it is at exactly 165 degrees? And yes, I mean Fahrenheit, not Celsius. Jesus! Do you realize how hot 165 degrees Celsius would be? It's like a million degrees Fahrenheit or something. You could burn a hole through my desk with it. And no, not Kelvin, either, you assholes. And hurry up because I've got yoga at noon and then Pilates at one and at two we've got some dickwads from IBM coming to visit. Good grief.

Caption contest

This was sent in by a reader. And I must admit, I can't wait to see what you guys do with it. Free fake beta copy of Leopard to the winners.

Caption winners

Another mindblowing round of contest entries this week, with a real standout new player, Mr. H. Aiku. Much love, H.

H. Aiku
1.
the lone stink finger
it's presence told by context
Bill Gates sits and smiles

2.
the iPhone comes soon
feels like waiting for Godot
soon we will call him

vaporland
Bill, thinking to himself:
Hey! I can see daylight through his earhole!

Rip Ragged
If you want to kiss my ass take a number. Make it a big fookin' number.

Free fake iPhone protoypes are in the mail. Peace.

What's the difference between Taco Bell and Microsoft?

When Taco Bell ships E. coli, it hurts their business.

Off topic

This one has been going around Apple all day. Just wanted to share.

Microsoft: Vista will create jobs

Vista will create 157,000 new IT jobs, says IDC. Of course it will. Just think of all the frigtards who will now be gainfully employed running around installing patches, fixing problems, answering help desk questions. Oh, the humanity! Bill Gates, you are a scourge to the planet! Your company is like a nasty yeast infection that keeps coming back, no matter how many times it's treated with anti-fungal cream. Not that I would know anything about such things.

"I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft."

Have you heard this? Apparently in some Iowa antitrust case against Microsoft some lawyers have dug up an old email from 2004 in which Jim Allchin, father of Vista, told Gates and Ballmer, "I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft." Jim, I feel your pain. But that's no reason for you to go and just copy our friggin OS, add some bugs and defects, and call it Vista. Shame on you, freak. Anyhoo, we're sending you a top of the line iMac for Christmas. And we're building a new ad campaign around you. Maybe this: Hi, I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC, but I wish I were a Mac.

BTW, Allchin plans to retire next year. You're welcome to come here to Apple, Jim. We won't let you touch anything important but at least you could live the dream and stride the sacred hallways of Apple, inhale the musky man-scent of my greatness and imbibe the vibe of perfect Zen-balanced software development. Plus we've got a kick-ass cafeteria. Call me, girlfriend.

Larry smokes way too much weed

Lot of people don't know this but Larry really has a very silly and sometimes sick sense of humor. He totally loves to pull practical jokes and make prank phone calls. Especially when he's blitzed. So yesterday I went over to his place. He's brought back these incredible buds from Hawaii. Bright green, with bright red woven through, and totally sticky with resin. One bong hit and you're wasted. Three and you see color trails. Five and you can't talk. So we put on Tuvan throat singers and did three hits each and lay on massage tables looking at color trails while these Japanese ladies massaged our faces and feet. Incredible. Buzz lasted about an hour. We drank some miso soup and green tea to bring ourselves back down and then Larry starts making calls. First up, he calls a hardware store in the Castro and asks them if they have caulk. And do you have black caulk? he says. Is it thick? Will it get hard right away and stay hard? Okay, so you do have thick black caulk that will get really, really hard? Cause I need it hard. The guy at the store was totally playing along but finally he got sick of it and he's like, Girlfriend, do you really think you're the first moron who ever called here asking for caulk? Do you really think that's original? And, by the way, Mr. Lawrence Ellison, you might want to turn off your caller ID before you make prank calls, okay? Have a nice day! But even that doesn't stop Larry. He's laughing so hard that he's got tears coming down his face. He fiddles with the caller ID and calls a Thai restaurant in Mountain View and asks them if they have chicken satay, and does it come with penis sauce? What kind of penis? Is it Asian penis? What does the penis sauce taste like? It is salty? I mean he's just baked and totally cracking himself up. Larry, you're fun to hang out with, but I think you are getting stoned too much. Maybe you need a new challenge. I dunno. Take up karate. Or you could merge with Microsoft. Kidding.

Microsoft's clumsy attempt at astroturfing

More anti-Mac FUD from Redmond. Nice job making it look "amateur," guys. Honestly. These kind of astroturfed propaganda marketing campaigns really bum me out. Except when we're doing them.

What a night

Well it's Saturday a.m. and I haven't been able to sleep all night. Waiting for the Friday night box office numbers on "Apocalypto." This is my first big project at Disney, the first one where I've really put my stamp on it and got behind a movie. And let's just say there's a lot of deadwood type people at Disney who are kinda hoping to see the Jobsmeister go down in flames on this one. It's how I roll, G. I'm a polarizing type figure. Say a little prayer to Buddha or Moses or Jesus or whatever God you happen to worship during the Holiday Season.

UPDATE: As I predicted, we're number one. Yep. It's official. I'm the new King of Hollywood. The modern-day Louis B. Mayer. Hey, SEC? You wanna push me out of Apple? Go ahead. I'll go make movies with Mel, and you can just bite me.

Re: this whole Britney flashing "scandal"

Okay, I feel I have to weigh on this. Just want to say, as pathetic as it is for Britney Spears to be flashing her crotch in order to keep her name in the papers, I think it's just as sad the way every friggin blogger in the world now seems to feel compelled to put up some Britney crotch links just to drive traffic. Folks, come on. We can do better. Honestly. By the way, if you want to see Britney's new car, click here. Trust me. It's worth it. Larry says he's gonna order one just like it. Only a Porsche.

Sure you can't stay and be dinner?

Do yourself (and me) a favor, and see "Apocalypto" this weekend. We're making a bold bet and opening wide tonight, on 2,500 screens. Lots of dudes at Disney wanted to do the slow build thing and start with a small footprint and let the movie build an audience by word of mouth. "Easier to declare victory on Monday if we set expectations low," was Iger's opinion. No way. Overruled. El Jobso trusts his gut on these things, and I'm telling you, I've seen this movie a dozen times, and it is an amazing piece of filmmaking, a classic that people will be talking about forty or fifty or even a hundred years from now. I'm not kidding. It's that good. I'm getting behind it 100 percent. So please go see it. It will change your life. Say what you will about Mel Gibson. The man is a genius. And sometimes geniuses can be, well, difficult. Look at Henry Ford. He hated Jews too. But the Model T changed the world. I'm not defending these guys. I'm just saying, Go see the movie, and then decide.

Have you heard of this Fergie person?

Man oh man. We had this woman named Fergie in for a meeting about iTunes and some promotional stuff we're doing. I'm told she is some kind of pop singer or dancer or something. I think she was one of the Spice Girls who didn't make it. Either "Slurry Spice," or "Sloppy Spice," I can't remember. No wait. It was "Crank-Smoking Spice." Anyhoo. She appears to be about forty years old but came in wearing a schoolgirl uniform and sucking a lollipop, which could almost be kind of funny if it weren't so very, very sad. She appears to be white, but she talks in this kind of fake black voice and honestly I could not understand a word she was saying. Because not only was it some kind of fake black accent but it was also like this baby talk kind of voice. No matter what I said, she spoke back in this black babytalk voice. And she was being all crazy and saying things like, "S to the T to the E to the V to the E to the J to the O-B-S." And then giggling. For a while I thought maybe she was some kind of female version of Ali G and that this was all a prank. Like maybe they had set up some hidden cameras and I was getting punked.

She kept licking her lollipop and saying, "Wapasennahmanagit? Hmmmm? Wapasennahmanagit?" And I was like, Excuse me, I'm sorry, but could you speak English? Finally her lawyer just told me, "Fergie would like to know what percent of sales she will receive as a royalty." So I said it was all spelled out in the term sheet, she'll get the same as everyone else, it's kind of a standard deal. So she comes over and leans over the table in front of me like some kind of lap dancer, showing me her panties -- and her cottage cheesy cellulite, which I really didn't need to see first thing in the morning -- and looks over her shoulder, holding the lollipop on her tongue, and she goes, in that same baby voice, "Wazzagirlie gonnageeet? Wapasennahmanageeeeet?" I think she actually believed she could get a better deal by showing me her ass or something. I was like, Lady, I gotta go, just deal with my lawyers and good luck with your "career," such as it is. I actually did the finger quote thing. When they were leaving they went past my office and I could hear her totally bitching out her lawyer. And she was totally talking in a regular white voice, saying stuff like, "You know, Stuart, if you can't negotiate for me, then why do I have you around? What am I paying you for? Seriously. Do you not even know what residuals are? How long have you been in this business? Stuart? Stuart? Are you listening to me?" Man oh man. Sometimes this job just blows my mind.

Arnold is blogging

Dudes, my good pal Arnold Schwarzenegger is now fake blogging. It's really good stuff. Check it out here. Such a good idea that I wish I'd thought of it myself. Or I guess I did, kind of, and this bastard copied me. Bastard!

To see the real Arnold dancing with light sticks, go here. Better yet, to see a dorky dweeb doing his Arnold impersonations, go here.

Here's to you, open source frigtards

So Larry calls me, howling, and says, Remember that French frigtard who said he'd just "fucked Larry Ellison" and so I canceled a deal to buy his dumbass company, JBoss? And so he went and sold it instead to the frigtards at Red Hat? Well, now, the obnoxious Frenchiepoo is walking out on Red Hat, as expected, but not after he first went around mouthing off to the press about how the place sucks. Guess maybe he figured that he was never gonna get his earn-out bonus now that I've trashed Red Hat's stock with my little announcement about cloning their software. So tell me this. What does Red Hat now have, for its $350 million? All of the JBoss dudes have left. The software itself is open-source, meaning JBoss doesn't own it. So what does Red Hat have? A handful of dust, brother. And some bad publicity. Ha! And where this little caniche Fleury gonna go? Who's gonna ever hire him or give him venture money? This is a guy who once told a customer, "Suck my dick." I swear to God. We found this out in our due diligence. Along with the fact that not only does Monsieur Caniche not own his IP, in fact someone else, um, kinda does. Yeah. Should the patent holder (cough IBM cough) decide to pull the trigger, Red Hat is now on the hook for the damages. They can write that check just after they write one to Mr. Bill for the IP that their Linux infringes. Oh, it's a world of merde, my friend. Do you suppose it has ever occurred to any of these morons that I never intended to buy this POS company, and was only dangling big numbers out there so that I could bump up the price that Red Hat would have to pay when its hair-trigger CEO got all huffy and rushed in to "outbid" me? Brother, this is like playing checkers with chimps. Hey, Mr. French dude, and Mr. CEO of Red Hat, whose name escapes me, I've said this before but I'll say it again: You don't fuck Larry; Larry fucks you.

Yahoo realigns its top-notch management team

Terry Semel throws some folks overboard while Yahoo figures out new ways to get its ass kicked by Google. I never went to business school, but I'm pretty sure this is something they teach you in management 101, in the chapter titled, "What to Do When You're Frigged." Option #1: Fire some lieutenants and announce a reorg. Squirrel Boy tells me this is a sure sign that a CEO has no idea what he's doing. (He should know, having been at Sun and then Novell.) Apparently consultants even have a name for this maneuver: "When in doubt, throw someone out."

A holiday season note

This memo just went out on email to all Apple employees, including retail store employees. I'd appreciate it if you could spread links to this post on Fox News and other Christiano-fascist websites so that people will understand why we follow our tradition-neutral holiday policy. Certain organizations have been attempting to bully us with threats of boycotts. I have strong feelings about this issue. I'm proud of Apple's policies. As a non-Christian (an atheist-Buddhist in fact) this issue is also personal to me. I really want to let people know where Apple stands and why we behave the way we do. Please help. Thank you.

TO: Apple employees
FR: Steve Jobs
RE: Holiday protocol
DATE: 6 December 2006

Dear fellow Apple employees:

Since its inception our company has worked hard to provide a welcoming environment to all employees and all customers. We are very proud of our diversity and inclusiveness. For this reason we have adopted the following holiday season policy.

1. Retail employees are instructed to not greet customers with "Merry Christmas." More inclusive expressions such as "Happy holidays" or "Season's greetings" are recommended instead. If a customer should greet you with "Merry Christmas," please be gracious, smile, and respond with an inclusive greeting such as "Season's greetings."

2. Employees in Cupertino and other Apple facilities are asked not to decorate their offices or common work spaces (doors, coffee areas) with Christmas-related symbols, eg mangers, trees, crosses, Santa Claus, tinsel, reindeer, and so forth. As above, inclusive decorations that celebrate the festivity of the season for all people are encouraged instead. Also, as in the stores, please, no Christmas music.

Folks, most of this is common sense. Apple is a world company serving the needs of all people from many traditions. We hope this seasonal policy will help bring people together at a time when togetherness and understanding are most urgently needed.

Happy holidays, and peace to you all.

Steve.

Caption contest

Yeah, we're making this way too friggin easy. I know. Well, enjoy. Free fake iPhone prototypes to the winners.

Caption winners

Wow. Friggin amazing. 58 entries this week. That's a new record. I am starting to get the feeling that some readers of this blog don't have the warmest feelings for the MicroTards, and perhaps even enjoy making jokes at their expense. Well there were so many good ones that really it's almost pointless to give awards but here are some that the whole staff at FSJ Central found enjoyable. Your fake prizes are in the mail.

Einlanzer
"and then Bill pulled it out and it was brown and about this big. I just about squirted with joy!"

silta
The unity, the wholeness;
MicroSoft Zune sucks;
The Emptiness, the 0

rog
Take a rough wooden post about this big and ram it up your butt. That's the kind of user experience Vista will give you!

Steve Silverman
At the Zune launch in New York, Microsoft's president Steve Ballmer gave reporters an idea of the maximum brain size allowed to work on the Zune team. "Squirrel brains are pretty much the standard, especially in our marketing division".

Flyingcowman

Steve Ballmer
Of which mater alma?
Harvard, of course!
Where he blew a horse.

rog

That dirty Steve Balmer,
An experienced hairy palmer,
Boasting the bore of his ass,
He will never feel the touch of a lass.


Arden
This is how big it is after we've, ahem, "partnered" with you.


JDJ
"...and thats about how big Novell's ass is going to look like once we get done bending them over."


Mikolaj
Steve Ballmer
who instead of saying "Val Kilmer" said always "Kil Valmer"
should be in jail because
not only he sells Windows,
but also 'cause he's the one who killed Laura Palmer.

[Ed. note, this got props just for the reference to Twin Peaks. Molodets, Mikolaj.]


Sartre from the Grave
William H. Gates
hires men with bald pates
to deaf-sign the ballad
of tossing Bill's salad

On being obscenely wealthy

So Larry emailed me this article today about how the richest 2% of the world controls more than half of the world's wealth. And his subject line was, "Way to go! We friggin rock!"

I know how obnoxious this sounds. I can tell by the tone of these articles how people feel about this. It's like they want us to apologize for having so much money. Well, you know, for a long time I had mixed feelings. Like, I really, really wanted to be rich; but then I felt weird being so rich. But then I just had this huge turning point. It happened when I broke through the billion dollar mark. Which is a big deal, ask anyone who's experienced it. It freaks you out, really. I was standing in front of a mirror in my living room, naked, just looking at myself. Which is just something I do. I check out my body. And once a month I take a photo, and save them in a scrapbook. I've been doing this since I was fifteen. Anyhoo. I'm standing there in front of the mirror on the first day that I woke up a billionaire and I'm going, Steve is a billionaire. Steve is a billionaire. A billionaire. Like saying it over and over, listening to the sound of that word. And then I was like, Dude, you know what? This isn't luck. This isn't an accident. I'm different. I'm special. It's like in one of those movies where a guy realizes he's got telekinetic powers and it's just too bad if he doesn't want them, he's got them. Likewise, I have this gift. It's who I am. There's no sense going around trying to hide it, or trying to be something I'm not, or pretending I'm just a regular person. I'm not a regular person.

I mean, Jesus didn't go around being all humble and pretending that he wasn't who he was, right? He just said, Dude, I'm Jesus, okay? And I'm like the son of God? So you all just have to deal with it, all right? Because I have to deal with it too. Same for El Jobso. I hope this doesn't sound super vain or whatever. But there's no way to be honest about who I am and also sound humble. I know some people (cough Bono cough) think the richest 2 percent should give away their money and spread it evenly all over the world. But think about it. There's a reason why super smart people get all the money. It's because we know what to do with it. What do you suppose happens if you just give all this wealth to poor people? You know they'll just go out and buy 50-inch flat-panel TVs and bags of crack and loads of other useless shit. And then they'll be right back where they started.

So I'm not going to apologize for being rich. What I am going to do is go finish this goddamn iPhone. Now that will be a gift to the world. It's beautiful. Honestly. Just insanely gorgeous.

The video game rumor

I guess you've heard the rumor that we've hired some video game developers. I know we usually keep things like this secret. But in this case I'm gonna break with tradition and just come clean. It's all true. We're working on a swordfighting game for the Wii that lets you slice off Ballmer's head. And stab Mr. Bill in the eye. I friggin love it.

Hello? Can you hear me now?

More buzz about us doing an iPhone, or even two, according to this article. What cracks me up the most is this paragraph down toward the bottom where three different analysts cite their target price for Apple stock.

Munster rates Apple "outperform" with a $99 price target. Tortora rates Apple "neutral" but raised his price target Tuesday from $74 to $87. Reitzes rates the company "buy" with a $108 target.

Nice to see so much consensus out there. Makes me think we're definitely doing the right thing, keeping these frigtards totally confused. Awesome.

Ground control to Major Torvalds

Linus, man, I feel your pain. First the "community" turned on you because you wouldn't swear an oath of loyalty and adopt the GPL version 3 license. Now IBM has pulled the plug on OSDL, firing everybody but you from that cozy little gig up in Portland. Nothing like it when IBM shows you love, right? And nothing worse when they take that love away. Oh, it's so cold, isn't it? You're just sitting there on the dunk tank platform in your Speedo, shivering, waiting to get dropped. Brother, I feel your pain. I've been there. Remember, I got fired by my own company, the company I founded. Same with you, right? You created this friggin Linux stuff (which I still haven't tried but I'm meaning to, one of these days) and IBM rode the hype and pushed a lot of boxes and sold a lot of IGS engagements and got all sorts of great free publicity. Now they're folding their tent. Seen any of those IBM Linux ads with the scary blonde Eminem kid lately? Me neither. No, IBM has moved on. They're out looking for the next big craze that can sell loads of hardware and ridiculously expensive consulting engagements. As for you, well, they put you in a bear hug, squeezed all the juice out of you, and now they've sent you packing. I know, you feel like some chick who got a little drunk at a frat party and fell for some line of bullshit from some handsome clean-cut All-American football jock named Sam, and now it's Sunday morning and your panties are missing and you're doing the walk of shame across the quad with messed up hair and a broken heel on your fuck-me pumps and a little itch that you suspect might require a visit to the university STD clinic in the near future. Don't feel bad. You're not the first one. Lotus was once a great, sexy, exciting software company. In fact they were once bigger than Microsoft. No really. It's true.


I mean, sure, you've still got a nice little gig, sitting in your basement up there in Portland, staring at computer screens. And don't worry, IBM will leave you out there for as long as you want, like the guy who stays behind on the space station when everyone else returns to earth. Keep cranking out your free code, and maybe they'll even use some of it. Or maybe not. Payback's a bitch as they say here in the U.S. and A. Because for years you've been turning up your nose at the code people at IBM and elsewhere were sending to you. Now there are as many different versions of the kernel running as there are users. Every bank on Wall Street runs its own version of Linux with their own mods that you didn't want. Google doesn't even bother sharing back anymore, at least not on the good stuff, from what Squirrel Boy tells me. Sure they're happy to look at whatever you and your pals crank out, and they might even use some of it. But they've got what they need, and thank you very much for all your hard work, here's your gold watch and if you need a reference we're happy to write up something nice about you.

Meanwhile your old pal Richard Stallman is making plans to kill Novell and frig you up too with his farkakte license; Red Hat is run by retards and analysts are freeting about its "viability"; Sun is making noise about giving away Solaris under GPLv3 which will add another touch of much-needed complexity and confusion to an already murky market; the wackos are all atwitter about dumping Linux and switching to Solaris or HURD or BSD; and Microsoft is watching all this with glee. Haven't we seen this movie before? I think it was called Unix: Better, Yet Destined to Lose. (Except when harnessed by Apple Computer in which case it wins.) Oh, dude, the shame is that it all could have been so good, right? I mean, man, you were gonna change the friggin world. Yeah, me too. Instead I've got 3 percent market share. But at least I've got a few billion bucks in the bank to soften the pain. I know, you don't care about money. All you want to do is sit in your basement and eat potato chips and write code, and you don't care whether anyone uses it or not. So hey, things have worked out perfectly for you.

But look. Squirrel Boy is probably gonna offer you a job, so you can move back to the Bay Area and hang out with your buddy Andrew. But if you want to come to Apple instead, and work on a real operating system, you've got my phone number. We'll even let you work at home, and give you a couple of free iMacs, and some MacBook Pros for the kids. And we'll buy you all the chips and non-diet soda you want. Whatever you like. Call me.

The real gating factor: Power

You may notice a piece in this a.m.'s Journal about a new private equity fund gathering up a few billion bucks to invest in power plants. You may not have noticed this story from last month about Mr. Bill getting into the energy business too. That one got mostly overlooked but trust me, Squirrel Boy noticed it. And he's freaking out. Why? Cause the real plan over at Google ain't about selling advertising or letting frigtards search for porn more efficiently. The real plan is to build a global data center, or rather a string of data centers all connected to form one giant supercomputer that circles the globe. Guess what that friggin thing runs on? It ain't yogurt and carrot sticks, bub. It's electricity. That's why they're building all their new data centers next to power plants. But guess what the money dudes have figured out? If you project out a few years and look at how much power these humongous data centers are gonna need, well, there isn't enough in all the world. Not nearly enough. So guess who's gonna really be in the driver's seat a decade from now? Right. The dudes who own the electricity. Which is why Mr. Bill, while making all this surface noise about Office Live and competing with Google in search, is doing his real fighting under the surface, by quietly getting a choke hold on the power grid. You wait and see. That's the huge, colossal battle that is going to get played out a decade from now. Just raw power. Nothing sexy or techie about it. Now imagine a next-generation Enron springing up out of nowhere, only it's run by Mr. Bill. Yeah. Armafriggingeddon.

That's why Squirrel Boy is leaving skidmarks in his underpants. Everybody else is going up the stack, Mr. Bill is going down the stack to the electrical grid. This is also why the Satanic wizards of the venture business (read: John Doerr) are getting boners for energy-related startups. Sure, they dress these things up as "green" funds, and sure, maybe they'll do some ecofriendly stuff, if only so they can get some good press from the frigtards at the New York Times and some subsidies from Al Gore or whatever other global warming freak happens to inherit the White House in 2008. But trust me. These guys don't give a crap about putting cute little solar panels on your house. The real green is gonna be made by selling technology to the conventional power plant industry. Or, at the other end of the value chain, better batteries that can hold more of the juice that gets cranked of those bigger, better power plants. Or both. The ultimate irony is that these pious "greenies" are gonna make their next batch of billions by helping power plants crank out MORE energy, not less. A decade from now we'll have doubled our power consumption. And those "do no evil" Google guys will be largely responsible for this. Why do you think we're all kissing Al Gore's ass so fiercely out here? We want him to keep focusing on those big, bad oil companies. Riiiight.

Anyhoo. Squirrel Boy is actually considering using some of his phony baloney billions to get into the power game himself. That's what he tells me, anyway.

Much love, Hugo

Just want to send out a big hug and kiss for my good friend Hugo (we pronounce that "Ugo" in Venezuelan, FYI) Chavez who just won reelection in a landslide. "Ugo" (who by the way loves his new 17-inch MacBook Pro with Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of RAM) is living proof that when you care about people, when you are motivated by love and the desire to make the world a better place, well, people will repay your love and generosity in spades. Of course Fox and the White House will continue to spread FUD and smear him as a communist, even after these freely held elections. Don't listen to them, Ugo. You won. The Devil lost. Viva la revolucion!

Contest: Find a new "Yelptard of the Month"

Dudes, BPG has taken down all her reviews on Yelp. Which is unfortunate because they were amazingly good. Anyhoo, we've had our fun, but it seems best that we should just leave BPG and BPB alone. Not because of the lawsuits or the samurai sword expertise. (Well, okay, maybe a little because of the swords.) But they seem like nice enough folks, and they don't seem to appreciate the humor. So let's bid them a fond farewell and go find some other Yelptard who is either a) super pretentious; or b) super mean; or c) both. Free fake shuffle to whoever finds our first Yelptard of the Month.

Also: Though we're going to lay off BPG and BPB, Fantasia Q. Minge is still fair game. Peace out.

Update on Ja'red

So Ja'red, the dude that Bike Helmet Girl brought to Thanksgiving dinner, just finished his first week working at Apple and I think he's a little disillusioned. We put him in manufacturing and at first he was all psyched about the bunny suit which seems very high tech and all. But after a couple of days it dawned on him that mostly his job involved typing out shipping labels (photo above) and shooting packing peanuts into boxes with one of these hoses that we've got hanging from the ceiling. (Again, kind of cool the first few times you blast away; not so fun after you've done it a thousand times. And yes, at Apple even the packing peanut dudes wear full bunny suits. It's one of the first changes I instituted after I took over again.) Anyhoo, I explained to Ja'red that you can't just walk in here and start going to top-level strategy meetings. I want him to learn the business from the bottom up, the same way I did. He agreed this made sense. But I saw him this afternoon and he was kind of bummed out again. Turns out one of the guys down there showed him a parts list and price list for the components in an iMac, and he calculated the obscene amount of profit we're making on every machine, and this got him kind of upset. Sigh. Remember being young like that?

Sayonara, Kutaragi-san

Well it was bound to happen. The Playstation 3 has cost Ken Kutaragi his job. It's like I've said all along. This machine is too expensive and nobody wants it. Who's gonna pay $600 for a game machine? And what gives with this butt-ugly design? It looks like one of those goddamn home sandwich grillers they used to sell on TV. I don't know what Ken was smoking when he dreamed up this crazy box with its stupid freako one-off chip. Seriously. Brain dead from the start. Total DOA. Well, don't say I didn't call it, cause I did. Sayonara, Kutaragi-san. And take that shiny turd of a PS3 with you when you leave, okay?

The new Disney -- we're all about the ultra violence

So you shoulda heard all the little nancy boys at Disney whinging when we first decided to handle "Apocalypto." Oh, it's so violent, they said, and can we really put this out under the Disney brand, and it's not even in English, and blah blah blah. Then came Mel's meltdown and everybody freaked out all over again. Well, here come the reviews and let me tell you, this thing is gonna be a friggin huge smash hit. Money quote:

Indeed, "Apocalypto" is the most violent movie Disney has ever released, with so much blood spurting out of orifices that even Martin Scorsese would blush.

And this:

... two-hour plus torture-fest so violent that women and children will be headed to the doors faster than you can say "duck."

And this:

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to see heads and hearts removed without anesthesia, then this is the movie for you.

I know, I know. They think this is a negative review. But let me ask you something. Have you ever seen the way teenage boys react to phrases like "two-hour torture fest" and "heads and hearts removed without anesthesia"? Well, we have. We've focus-grouped it. They flip out. Friggin saliva starts drooling out of their mouths. So thanks, Fox, for the "negative" review. Now every little Beavis and Butthead in America is gonna be sneaking out to go see this thing over and over again. And it's not just teenage boys. Because come on -- who doesn't wonder what it's like to see heads and hearts removed without anesthesia? (Okay, Bill Gates doesn't wonder, but only because he's already paid to see it done.) Plus, we're marketing this movie to the born-agains, telling them that if they really love Jesus they need to see this film. We're doing showings in church halls. Amazing, overwhelming response.

I know what's coming next. Some nitwit on TV is gonna start complaining about how Disney shouldn't be handling this kind of material. Well, Mr. Rogers, or Mr. O'Reilly, let me tell you something right up front. This isn't your old man's Disney anymore. We're not just about little elves and Cinderella and Bambi whatever. It's a new era. We're evolving like everyone else. Carpe the friggin pecuniam, as they say in ancient Mayan.

A special thanks

So I've been sitting here for hours staring at white color swatches trying to find the exact right shade for the new iPhone. And just to give my eyes a rest I thought I'd take a little break and look at some recent photos of myself. It's something I like to do from time to time. Anyhoo, as I was looking through the shots I came across this one from our recent press event and I was struck by how amazingly nice my beard is looking these days. I mean look at it. Cool, right? Gives me just the right amount of Arafat-style gravitas without making me look old. I can't tell you how difficult it is to get this balance just right. It's all about salt versus pepper, yin and yang. You don't want to know how many colorists I've sent away in tears after they frigged it up by having 1% too much white or something. I just wanted to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to Ana Medeiros, the woman (magician?) who has been doing my color recently. I discovered her working at the Vidal Sassoon salon in Beverly Hills and brought her on full-time to work at Apple. Signed her to a non-compete contract, too, so forget about it, Larry. She's all mine. Ana, you're the best. Honestly. I thank you, and my beard thanks you too. Much love.

To Apple shareholders: You're welcome

Pretty cool, right? Think about this when the SEC bozos come back around for their next strafing run over Rancho El Jobso. Remember who put the sizzle back in your portfolio. Yep. It's me. The one and only. Now excuse me. I am going to go find a mirror and kiss myself on the mouth. Peace out.

Gee, really?

FT says here that Microsoft may need to "rethink" the Zune. No argument with that. While they're at it why not "rethink" the rest of the crap they're inflicting on the world?

Oh man now this is really getting out of control

We have just received a "subpeena" (sic) from a woman named Fantasia Q. Minge, who describes herself as an "adult performer" at the Spearmint Rhino in Vegas, seeking "damiges" for repeating the "slandrous defecation" of her reputation by Butt Plug Girl on Yelp.

PLAINTIFF(S) FANTASIA Q. MINGE and SPEARMINT RHINO MANAGEMENT hereby contend that DEFENDANT(S) BUTT PLUG GIRL, BUTT PLUG BOY, YELP INC., GOOGLE INC., and FAKE STEVE JOBS have cast aspersion on the performance of PLAINTIFF FANTASIA Q. MINGE to the detriment of her career and for their own commercial gain. PLAINTIFF SPEARMINT RHINO contends that PLAINTIFF FANTASIA Q. MINGE did perform a satisfactory private lapdance for DEFENDANT(S) BUTT PLUG GIRL and BUTT PLUG BOY, with said performance remaining well within the limits set forth in the ordinances of Las Vegas, Nevada. PLAINTIFFS contend that misleading and inaccurate reviews have caused PLAINTIFF SPEARMINT RHINO to suffer a loss of patronage and in particular has caused PLAINTIFF FANTASIA Q. MINGE to suffer a decline in requests for lapdances. Thereby the above-named DEFENDANT parties are asked to pay no less than $1 million (USD) to FANTASIA Q. MINGE and SPEARMINT RHINO MANAGEMENT in compensation and restitution; to delete all offending reviews from the Internets; and to post a public apology immediately to FANTASIA Q. MINGE, her colleagues, and the management of SPEARMINT RHINO.

Hoo boy. This one just keeps getting better.

UPDATE: Apparently BPG got the same letter from Fantasia Q. Minge and took it to heart. She has taken down all of her reviews on Yelp including the one where she said mean things about Fantasia and the other girls at Spearmint Rhino, like calling them "stupid bitches." Not sure if she's also agreed to compensate Fantasia Q. Minge for her lost lapdance wages. Personally I'm just hoping that Fantasia Q. Minge will go away now that the offending material has been taken down off the "Internets." --FSJ

Speaking of people who say mean things online ...

Since Saxon Schrute now is threatening legal action I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the nasty reviews that Butt Plug Girl has posted on her Yelp page about various establishments. I won't reprint them but let's just say that BPG isn't shy about sharing her opinions or revealing waaay too many details about her intimate life with her beau. She accuses one restaurant of serving rotten meat; calls a store in San Leandro "not honest," and complains that strippers at Spearmint Rhino in Vegas did not deliver a satisfactory lapdance for her and her boyfriend. She does, however, rave about the strapons at Good Vibrations in San Francisco. Not kidding. Dudes, you can't make this stuff up.

Scaaaaary

Check out these videos from the Samurai sword website where Saxon Schrute appears to be a member. I think this dude may be his personal sensei. Holy crap. The bottom photo on this page appears to show what happens to bloggers who use their typing hand to offend a master swordsman. Okay, now I really am scared. Kind of.

Boyfriend of Butt Plug Girl writes in again

Now he's eschewing physical threats and instead imitating an attorney. He writes:

You have published libelous and copyrighted materials for commercial gain without authorization. This has caused damages to the parties named. You are hereby asked to pay $7500 to these parties, remove the offending materials, and post a public apology immediately. Other parties who have republished these libelous and copyrighted materials have been similarly notified.
Saxon R MacLeod

Not sure who this guy is but now he's added his middle initial so things are getting more official. He shows up here having something to do with a psychology experiment at Stanford and here
publishing an extremely erudite analysis of Plato on the Barnes & Noble website. This appears to be his LinkedIn page showing a B.S. in psychology from University of Iowa and employment at a non-Yelp company in the Bay Area. He seems also to have some connection to this website about Japanese Samurai swords. (Eeps. Check out the scary video.) One of his comments: "It is a good thing to divine the meaning behind the events of life. In fact, the meaning IS the life." Here he is badgering Tori Amos online and getting smacked down in return.

Okay, he's not a lawyer. But he's clearly an intellectual heavyweight and quite likely an expert Japanese swordsman. But then again, um, I invented the friggin iPod. Have you heard of it? I asked Apple's fake legal team to check on this stuff just in case. Their opinion is that when people post stuff online it is fair game to link to it and make fun of it; and reproducing comments they make or photos they've published falls under the doctrine of "fair use." Especially if a site is clearly a parody and no reasonable person would ever take anything on it seriously. Ahem. They suggested I file a fake countersuit over Saxon's threat of physical violence. I'd rather just direct SRM to this page about blogging and free speech on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website. Money quote:

We're working to shield you from frivolous or abusive threats and lawsuits. Internet bullies shouldn't use copyright, libel, or other claims to chill your legitimate speech.

Much love, Butt Plug Boyfriend.

Poor Woz

The guy is just desperate for attention. Colbert was bad enough. Now he's been reduced to this. Sorry about the excruciating ads that you have to sit through. I'd like to say it's worth it, but, um...

One interesting nugget is that Woz reveals he still collects a paycheck of $12,000 or $23,000 from Apple. Note to Peter Oppenheimer: If we stop paying him, will he go away? Is it like how you deal with a stray cat?