Woz, move on

Guy flies halfway around the world to Tokyo just to talk about me. See here. As they point out, at least he didn't diss me for not doing any programming. Still, you'd think after all these years Woz would have something better to do with his time than fly around reminiscing about the good old days with yours truly. Sad.

It's not my fault that iPods are expensive

Look, read the article about South America. Our products cost a lot in those countries because their friggin corrupt governments load them up with taxes. Nothing I can do about that, amigos. Take it up with your politicians.

It's not that we don't like Latin America

It's just that we don't like them that much. Despite what the sensationalists at Gizmodo allege here. And please don't write in saying I'm racist because I totally have nothing but Mexicans on my grounds crew, and I always make a point of speaking to them (yes, in Mexican) on my way into the building. Like I'll say, Bonjour, amigos. You're doing a totally bueno job. Muchas gracias.

What is up with this stock market?

Not that I care, because I don't. I don't even know how many shares of stock I own. I'm told that it's a lot. Not that I would know. Because I have no idea how many shares Apple has given me over the years. I don't even care about money. Ask anyone who knows me. I'm all about the creativity. But what is going on? Someone takes a shot at Cheney, and things get a little rough in China, and suddenly nobody in New York can hold their mud? So much for the big tough-guy rep of New Yorkers. Look, get a grip, people. That's not even the real Cheney we sent over there, for one thing. Look at the photos. He's a stand-in. As for the Chinese, who cares what happens to their stock market? These are people who blow off firecrackers and read the gunpowder spray to figure out which stocks are gonna go up or down. Or something. Man oh man.

Anyone seen Nancy Heinen lately?

If so, tell her about this. Former general counsel at McAfee charged with criminal fraud related to options backdating. Last I heard Nancy was in Scottsdale having loads of work done. Friend of mine said, "Dude, you wouldn't even recognize her." Which I think was the idea. Duh. For all I know she's out of the country already. I know I would be.

Caption contest

Sorry I missed the contest yesterday. I'm on a sales-slash-political mission in a wacky part of the world many time zones from my home base and have completely lost track of days. Anyway. Here's a shot that should provide hours of fun. Much love to reader "deleon" who sent it in. (And yes, I know it's been around for a while, but come on, let's have some fun anyway.) Now I must get back to milking yaks and pretending to be fascinated by the local weaving techniques. All so they'll buy some friggin iMacs.

Check this out in Biz 2.0

Jon Fortt (who he?) has a column called "Utility Belt" on the Business 2.0 web site. His latest brainstorm is titled, "Why Apple should license the iPhone platform." See here. I think a better title would be: "Why John Fortt is a writer at a web site and not the CEO of a multi-billion-dollar corporation." Honestly. I mean, if you're a stupid person, that's fine. But keep it to yourself, right? Why do these guys always become journalists and advertise their stupidity to the world? It's like a form of self-flagellation. And why do they always gravitate to business journalism? Could they not get jobs on the sports desk? I'm sorry. I guess that was mean. Awww. By the way, Jon Fortt, you've got an extra "T" in your last name. Not sure if you've noticed. But you should lose it. Makes no sense and throws off the balance of the letters. Way too heavy on the right side. Think about it.

Bono, king of marketing

Well his (RED) thing is a bust. Big surprise. I told him, Look, you need to run a huge ad campaign to build awareness. Of course he's too cheap for that. He's like, Ah, no, Steve, I'll just use me fookin star power to get loads of interviews. Right. Friggin leprechaun. As of year-end they raked in a whopping $11 million. Ugh. Other thing I told him is if you're gonna crusade for the Nobel Prize, you gotta be subtle about it. And you gotta at least pretend to care about whatever cause you're doing. Look at Al Gore. You listen to that guy and you'd really think he believes in this global warming stuff. Very convincing. Bono, you're my pal, so take this the right way. You should Stick to music.

Wet work

So you're IBM. You've got thousands of dead-wood lifers hanging around doing nothing but you don't have the stomach to purge them. What do you do? You move them into your PC group, then sell that group to the Chinese, and let them do the wet work for you.

UPDATE: In response to complaints, I've taken down the photo of the recent Lenovo layoffs. It's ugly, I know. Hope your karma is restored. Namaste.

So our TV product is gonna slip a little, big deal

Nevertheless the drones at CNET think this merits a big story. See here. Folks, this TV stuff is really hard. And what a lot of people don't know is that back in September when I first showed that thing off, all we had was a nice looking box with some ports on the back. No software. Frankly I think we've done a pretty amazing job cranking this out in such a short period of time. Apparently these days a lot of development can get done really fast because our engineers can go to these open source web sites and just grab GPL code that other people have put up to share. Much love, open source people. We can't give you a discount on the TV box, but I'm sure you'll want to buy one to see how your code actually works.

Scooter's got a radio show

You know they've been trying for years to find a way to keep McNealy from going to product meetings and frigging things up for the engineers. And now they've succeeded by making him a DJ and giving him his own goddamn radio show. Go here and click on the link about "McNealy's Minute." This hilarious little tidbit has him talking about what a huge vote of confidence it is to get that recent investment from the nice fellows at KKR. Yep. You know things are really going well at a company when hatchet-face Henry Kravis and his buyout barbarians snap up a chunk. Why that almost always means good things are just around the corner. Riiiight. Better yet is that after his intro Scooter goes on to interview Jon Schwartz, and asks him, "So how's business." You might be able to guess the answer. Business is great. Never better. The world is beating a path to our doorstep. Whew! Anyhow I guess Sun PR figures they're better off having McNealy interview Schwartz than letting any actual reporters do the job. Though, judging by the way most of the Valley covers Sun, I can't imagine the questions would be any tougher.

Much love

Reader Michael J. emailed in this photo of a birthday cake he made for yours truly. Or, well, actually for RSJ, but I'll definitely enjoy a slice too. Thanks, Michael J. Namaste.

BTW, in case you're wondering, we had a really nice birthday dinner, all vegan of course, and everything was great until Branson and Sting and their entourages started wondering out loud why Ireland, with a climate and natural resources virtually identical to England, had remained such a backwater for so many centuries while England built an empire and became a global superpower. Don't think they meant anything by it but Bono and the boyos from U2 took offense and started shouting about centuries of feckin slavery and oppression, and the feckin famine, and next thing you know the Brits moved off to a different room while the Paddies got hammered and started reciting Brendan Behan and singing "Come Out Ye Black and Tans." Meanwhile Sergey and Larry Ellison were doing some mock karate but then it started getting serious, and Sergey managed to do something bad to Larry's wrist, so Larry's Japanese girlfriend had to drive him home, and we only found out later that she's a high school kid and doesn't even have her license yet. Oh well. Good times.

Nice one, thanks

This came in via comment strings. We're loving it. Much love, deleon.

Life imitates art

This one comes from "Overheard in New York"(see here) which I think means it's something that someone actually heard:

Apple's Next Anti-PC Marketing Campaign Takes Shape

Office thug #1: Yo, Windows is, like, mad-retarded!
Office thug #2: Say what?
Office thug #1: I said Windows is bullshit, man.
Office thug #2: Man, I been telling you that shit for years. My G5 is way better than whatever computer you got.
Office thug #1: Nigga, my laptop has AIDS!

--52nd St & Madison

Someone's already done it

Much love to the reader who sent this in via comment strings. To see the original and to give full credit, go here. There's also a funny iChav movie here. Shows a chav beating the crap out of some other guy and stealing his iPod. Yeah. Exactly the message we're trying to send about how iPods are edgy, cool, maybe a little dangerous. Love it.

One thing the Journal almost got right

Way down low, in the last few paragraphs, they bust on Google for giving $2 million to Larry Lessig and his "Center for Internet and Society." Story doesn't say it but kind of hints that this was Google's way to buy off Lessig and keep him off their back and maybe even get him to go do some of their legal dirty work for them, as he pursues his quixotic quest to relieve all copyright holders of their rights which in turn allows Google to steal -- er, use -- their material and sell advertising against the content and keep all the money to themselves. Trust me, I was there when Schmidt and Brin were going over the shakedown -- er, proposal -- from Lessig. They view the $2 million they spent on the Google Center -- I mean the "Center for Internet and Society" -- as kind of a down payment on future revenue streams.

But isn't it funny how these anti-copyright free-everything law professor types are always railing about big corporations but at the same time they're so good at shaking those corporations down? Lessig's got his center, funded by Google. Eben Moglen, Larry's somewhat crazier East Coast counterpart, has his Software Freedom Law Center, funded by IBM. Oh, and the lawyers all talk a good game about there being no "quid pro quo," but trust me, the companies putting up the money totally view their contributions as a way to buy themselves a pass from the anti-business loonies. Don't believe me? Go see if Moglen's software-patent-hating law center has filed any amicus briefs on behalf of Amazon and PSI, two companies that IBM is suing for alleged software patent violations. I won't hold my breath.

Taking things one step further, could it be that these anti-corporate radicals are really absolutely cynical and are just using the law as a cudgel to shake down big companies and line their own pockets, while wrapping themselves in some flag of do-gooderism and spouting lots of horse shit about protecting consumers and defending freedom? Well, you know how I feel about lawyers, so maybe I should keep my opinions to myself. But, um, yeah. That's about what it boils down to. Not so easy living on a law professor's salary. But once those millions start rolling in for your law center, well, consider it a supplement.

Larry Lessig. Eben Moglen. Bill Lerach. The nice fellows at Milberg Weiss. Same game, just different tactics. Much love, you parasites.

It's official: The Journal hates Silicon Valley

Maybe you saw the big story on A1 of today's Journal about Stanford prez John Hennessy. In case you're wondering what it means when the Wall Street Journal leads their Saturday edition with a huge profile of someone and then devotes an entire jump page to the story and a big chart showing all the pies that person has his fingers into, let me explain: This is now what passes for a "gotcha" story in the Journal. This is their big "investigative" journalism. Sad to see how they've gone downhill. But they really think this is big Woodstein and Bernwood type stuff. Prez of Stanford has made money on Google and on some other companies. He's put money into startups! Whew! He's on the board of Google, and Stanford does business with Google!

Here's the thing. The Journal hates the Valley. They think we're all crooks. They think we're playing a rigged game. Forget that we're out here building companies and making products and taking risks and creating magical devices that restore a sense of childlike wonder to people's lives. No, that's not important. The reporters on this one are the same frigtards who are hoping to win a Pulitzer with their big back-dating "scandal" which wasn't a scandal until they decided to try to whip it up into one.

Journal reporters, listen to me: You're pygmies. You're midgets. You've never invented anything. You've never created anything. You've never run a company, and you know what? You couldn't. If you had any balls you wouldn't be sitting at the Journal making peanuts and you know it. Bottom line: You're jealous of us. So you reduce our success to a fairy tale about how we cheated to get where we are. Okay, makes you feel better about yourselves. Fire away. But here's a challenge for you. If you really think you're such hot shit, come out here, think up some bright idea, raise some venture money and see if you can make a go of it. What's that? Yeah, I didn't think so. You'd rather sit in your newsroom and scold the rest of us for being successful.

Help us create a marketing campaign for chavs

We've been doing some thinking about this Philadelphia hoodlum story and the opportunities to sell to thugs, juvenile delinquents and other low-lifes. Our marketing guys thought it might be a good idea to "open source" the project and get some idea from Apple users. Sort of a precursor to an Apple version of that Dell IdeaStorm website. (BTW have you seen that? Request number one is "ship machines with desktop Linux pre-loaded." Shows just how happy all those Windows users are right? Though my experience with Linux loonies is they love to sign petitions, and who knows how many of those names are actually legit. Ahem.)

Anyway, I know we've got a lot of creative types who read this blog, so work up some ideas using your amazing Mac-based graphics design tools and send them in. We'll post them here, or you can send in links and we'll link to your efforts. Let's put our heads together and reel in those elusive chavs! Peace out.

Don't listen to polls

One reason: They're never right. See this one claiming consumers aren't willing to pay the iPhone price. All I'm gonna say is, wait and see, people. I'm telling you, it's gonna be huge. And you know why? Yes, it will be expensive. But it'll friggin work. And it'll be simple. That alone will make it unlike just about every product in the world. It's gonna be a Mac in your hand. Okay? Simple, reliable. Or, yeah, you can save a few bucks and get a frigtarded Windows Mobile device and reboot it every time you want to switch applications. And in case you haven't noticed, high prices actually create more desire for products. Think about it. Duh.

Teacher attacked over iPod

Man oh man. Well this is a terrible story. Some 60-year-old teacher in Philadelphia (which I believe is on the East Coast) was attacked after he took an iPod away from a kid in class. See here. Two kids jumped him and they broke his friggin neck. One of them was a ninth grader, if you can believe that, though I've heard he's twenty-three years old. Well although this is a tragic incident I think there's also a silver lining -- which is just that incidents like these show the power of our brand and how attached people become to their iPods. Especially juvenile delinquents, which honestly is a potentially huge but so far untapped market for us. I've put our marketing people on this to see if there's some way we could use it in an ad or something. Maybe show some inner city kids in snorkel coats carrying a gun in one hand and an iPod in the other, and the slogan: "I'd kill for my iPod, yo." Or maybe get K-Fed to do some kind of TV ad. Something like that. Meanwhile I told our people to send this teacher a free iPod of his own (since he seems to want one so bad) and maybe an iMac or a MacBook or something. My guys say maybe an iPod isn't exactly the gift that's gonna cheer this guy up right now. Not sure I agree but I defer to them for now. Namaste.

Well this is why I hate bloggers

Goddamn guys at Gizmodo totally try to sensationalize my new love thang with Wired News. See here. You know it's just such typical tabloid journalism to try to cheapen a lovely relationship into some kind of tawdry hookup that's all about the Benjamins. Although they do call me a "geek parody god," which is pretty cool. Much love, Gizmodo. Namaste.

Happy Birthday to me

Okay, I'm celebrating early. But I hope you do remember what day tomorrow is. Put it this way, in our religion tomorrow is the equivalent of December 25th for Christians. And yes, for precisely the same reason. Tonight, all across the Valley, families will come together to eat a special meal and open presents. Then, at midnight, they will gather for a midnight service, singing songs like, Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Yes, friends, fifty-two years ago tomorrow, a savior was born. In the sky above the Bay Area, a star appeared. I'll thank you in advance for all your cards and letters of support. In case you're wondering, we'll be having a few friends over for a quiet celebration with miso soup and a brown rice birthday cake with sugar-free frosting. Much love. Namaste.

David Geffen, guardian of honor

Well since I've been overseeing this exploratory committee I've started paying attention to political stuff. And I must say I'm kind of taken aback by this latest thing where David Geffen criticized the Clintstones for being such awesome liars. See here if you missed the story. Well, I'm no fan of Bill and Shrillary. But I gotta say, Having someone from Hollywood call you a liar is like having Mini Me call you short. Have you ever dealt with these scumbags? These are guys who'd stab their mothers in the eye to get the last slice on a pizza tray. My God. And David Geffen of all people. Guy came up through the music business, and believe me, it shows. You should hear the stories from artists he screwed. Talk about someone who knows how to lie. David doesn't know how not to lie. I used to go to meetings with him but just can't be bothered anymore. There's no point. He's just sitting there trying to figure out how to screw you. And he doesn't even bother to try to pretend otherwise. It's sick.

As for the Hillary thing, what's really going on is that he's pissed cause he gave Bill Clinton all this money to pardon Leonard Peltier and then Clinton didn't do it. Poor David was furious cause he thought he was gonna be the big hero springing old Sitting Bull from jail. Told Clinton he wanted his money back. Bubba told him to pound sand. Now David realizes that Obama is desperate for money. Believe me, these Hollywood vampires can smell that kind of weakness a mile away. And they know exactly how to exploit it. So now David is Barack's new best friend. And he's taken his little girlie-man cheap shot at Hillary, teed up and scripted with the help of Maureen Dowd, who by the way is just so awful that I can't even believe they let her write for a newspaper. She's like a smarmy college kid. But God it is fun to see the Democrats turning on each other like rats in a bag. And I always love it when the Hollywood vipers get all pious and sanctimonious. Nothing better.

BTW, as for my own plans, at this point I'm pretty much leaning toward running in 2008 on the Green Party ticket.

Mr. Bill is hitting the crack pipe again

How else to explain this story where he says, "Vista's had an incredible reception," and "The reviews have been fantastic." Bill, I'm saying this as a friend. (Okay, not really.) You need to shave your head and get into rehab like Britney. And not that phony celebrity rehab; real rehab. Remember, the first step toward recovery is admitting you have a problem.

Now Negroponte is calling me

And he's screaming and furious and all upset and says I'm making a mockery of him and he won't stand being mocked, not by anyone. Says he's down in Rio on a "fact finding mission," but he took a break from doing focus groups to call me and tell me I totally don't understand how this magical laptop of his is gonna work. "And by the way, calling it a 'craptop' is slander, and we will take action," he says.

I'm like, Dude, take a chill pill, put some ice in your Speedo or whatever, I don't give a damn about your stupid little toy computer, except one question I have is, Who's gonna fix these things when they break? He says they're not gonna need to be fixed because they're not gonna break, because they're gonna be designed correctly in the first place. He says this in this real "gotcha" kind of douchebag voice, like he's really breaking my stones on this, like he and his little team have done what even the Great Steve Jobs couldn't do, blah blah.

So I'm like, Really, they aren't ever gonna break? Ever? He goes Nope, they're not gonna break. I said, You know, you guys should build a car, too. I think they'd be a great market for a car that never breaks. He goes, We're already working on it. In Cambridge. We've got a skunkworks car made out of Legos and D-cell batteries. Totally works and never breaks.

He goes, As for the laptop, I realize you're jealous because ours is so much nicer than the MacBook Pro. But you'll just have to get over it. We're the disruptor here and we're disrupting your business model with the power of open source. You'll just have to deal with that, Mr. Dinosaur. And the more FUD you spread about us, the worse you look. You see? You're hoist on your own petard.

He goes on to say that even if there is maintenance or other kind of work to be done, 95% of the maintenance can be done by the kids. (Afterward he sent me this article where this claim is cited -- as if because he's said it in an article somehow it must be true.)

I'm like, Really? Because what we find is that even with our machines, which are pretty easy to use, people need some help. Even more so with Windows and even more again with Linux. I mean, Nicholas, do you actually know how to do things in Linux? Like, could you write a device driver for some random Olivetti printer that's maybe 10 or 20 years old? He says, Well, no, I couldn't, but the children can. That's the wonder of it. The kids know more than we do. We're empowering them to teach themselves. I'm like, Really. You mean a professor at MIT in computer science can't write these drivers but a 9-year-old in some little village who's never seen a computer before can do it?

Yes, he says, that's exactly what I mean. Why I'm right here right now working with a group of 4-year-olds who are using these laptops as we speak. I'll send you a photo. Two of them are taking turns charging the machine with the hand-held salad spinner power adapter, while the third one works. The little girl in the photo I'll send you (shown above) had never seen a computer before this week. Now she's writing a new game for the Playstation 3 in C++. That's the kind of miracle we're talking about down here.

I was like, Nicholas, that's not one of your laptops she's using. He goes, Oh, yeah, well, she did spend some time working on one of our prototype machines but, um, well, we had a few glitches, you know, we're still working out some of the interface stuff and the software we have on our prototype machine was written for the previous generation of the hardware so some of the screen commands aren't working exactly correctly, so we loaded our OLPC software environment onto a Dell machine just so they could get up and running and get a feel for the software. Still pretty amazing right?

Yup. Real amazing, dude. Good luck with that.

Behind the scenes info on the Cisco deal

So you should have seen Chambers. What a total douche. He's sitting there with a straight face doing his aw-shucks "Good John" act, telling us how his Cisco iPhone is going to be this huge thing and it's so important and he's afraid customers will get confused if we have a phone with the same name. Yeah right. Then he switches into "Bad John" and starts telling me how he owns this fucking trademark and he's gonna put my balls in a fucking vise and squeeze until I scream and he's all worked up and doing his big gorilla chest-thumping act. Thing is, I invented this "Good Steve, Bad Steve" routine that he's now trying to use on me. I know what he's trying to do. He wants to get me riled up. So I just do my Zen thing. I go very quiet. I press my hands together. I close my eyes. I wait. I wait some more. Finally I open my eyes and say, in a very soft voice, Are you done, John? Then I slid him a piece of paper and said, These are our terms. Thanks. Talk to you soon. And I got up and left.

So what was on the paper? That's the key. There was nothing at all on that friggin piece of paper. It was blank. Apparently he went apeshit, screaming at my lawyers, blah blah. But he got the message. Which was: Dude, we will steamroller you. Of course he caved. The whole "lawsuit" was ridiculous to begin with. Oh, we also threatened to have Al Gore's pals in the government start taking a closer look at their Cisco contracts, and maybe slowing things down a bit, and considering some new vendors. That might have played a role too. Much love, Al.

Just got mail from St. Nicholas

He says -- no kidding -- that his One Laptop Per Child foundation is going to raise a separate fund to outbid the Gates Foundation when they launch their secret plan to try to buy up the hundred-dollar craptops, a scheme first reported here on this blog not long ago. Negroponte says he fully intends to win a Nobel Prize for this cockamamie cheapo laptop, and he's not going to let Gates get in the way, and he doesn't care how much it costs. If he has to spend five hundred bucks on every kid to keep that kid from selling his machine, so be it. It's other people's money anyway.

But guess what. A few little issues are starting to appear at the ragged edges of Nick's utopian fantasy. Like in Nigeria, even in the big cities, there's no electricity in the schools -- not just in people's homes, but in the friggin schools. No worries, says Nick, we'll just run electricity for them. Er, right. And get this. A recent study found that in Nigeria the cost of buying one laptop for every child in the country will work out to 73% of the total Nigerian budget -- not the education budget, but the budget for the whole friggin country. See here.

Nevertheless, that's not stopping jolly old Saint Nick. He's still zooming around the world, lobbying for the Nobel Prize and pulling weird faces, while his clueless MIT Media Lab professors sit around with their thumbs up their asses in Cambridge, drinking lattes and working grueling five-hour days and talking about all the cool features their little toy machine is going to have, um, really soon, definitely by the time we ship in June. Honestly, folks, trust me on this. Making a completely new system from scratch is really, really hard. Same for all the apps and other stuff. You can't do it with a bunch of well-intentioned tenured professors who've never actually worked for a living.

Man, just look at Negroponte with those doofy glasses. Really thinks he's the shit, doesn't he?

Headline: Steve Jobs Has Guts

In the New York Sun no less. See here. They're loving the fact that I dared to say that teachers unions breed frigtards. Well I guess it was kind of ballsy. I don't know. I'm sick of holding back. My exploratory committee is still working and this teacher stuff was kind of a trial balloon. If I run it'll be on the left but I'm not going to just rubber stamp every leftie issue. So get used to it people. President Jobs is gonna be the education president but not the kind you're used to.

We're announcing a major new alliance

Namaste, FOFSJ. Maybe you've noticed some new buttons on the sidebar of my blog. Or you might have seen this story about the huge multi-billion-dollar deal that I've struck with the Wired publishing empire. Well, it's true. As you know, I recently made a desperate and somewhat shameless plea for a sponsor. (What choice do I have when I'm collecting a $1 per year salary and facing some serious legal fees over this options bullshit?) Well after a fierce bidding war I have found a happy home in the warm soft furry bosom of Wired magazine.

Yes, I've taken the mickey out of Wired in the past. Mostly for their long-ago habit of writing stories in circles around the page and using other creative approaches to typography. I'm told this no longer happens in Wired. Certainly not in Wired online. Anyway, they're definitely the kind of guys who remember to give you a reach-around when they're doing you know what, which is more than I can say for most folks out here in the Valley (cough Larry cough Google cough cough). And I'm very very psyched to be starting what I believe will be a beautiful relationship with them.

And to be honest, another reason I'm psyched about this is that I recently have become a huge fan of Leander Kahney, who writes the Cult of Mac blog for Wired. (That's the two of us in the photo above.) So I'll probably be keeping an eye on his stuff, and vice versa. Also, his book, The Cult of Mac, is a must-read. Honestly. I'm reading it now and it's great. And I'm not just saying that because they're paying me. Seriously. I'm not. Honest. Go buy it.

All joking aside: nothing about the blog will change. It will still be the same sicko stuff. It's just that now I'll be getting a little of the green stuff to keep this offensive site limping along. And I know what you're wondering. Hey Fake Steve, what can I do to help? Well, if you'd like to click on a few Wired links now and then, well, that would be nice. Show some love to the nice people who care enough to sponsor Fake Steve. Much love, Wired. And much love, readers. Peace out.

Squirrel Boy is freaking out

Big surprise, doofus. The big TV networks don't want to give you their content for YouTube. Shocking! You know sometimes I think these guys at Google have been smoking their own inflated stock for so long that they can't think straight anymore. They're like one of these NBA players who's been banging any woman wants for so long that he's shocked when someone says no. "You mean you won't just give us your content and let us sell ads against it and keep all the money for ourselves? What's wrong with you? All the print guys did it and look how well it's working out for them."

Gates Foundation will buy $100 craptops in the aftermarket

This little item came in via our competitive intelligence memo this morning. Appears that Beastmaster Bill is going to use his philanthropical foundation to buy up as many of those hundred-dollar craptops as they can. They're gonnna offer Third World kids cold hard cash, or food, or vaccines and other medications, in barter for the machines. Program is gonna be called, "Be a Hero, Feed Your Family." Our guys have already seen mockups of the ads, which are tailored to each country. Gist is the same. Picture of kid beaming with pride and holding his OLPC machine. Message goes like this, "Hello, Abdul. Isn't it wonderful to have such a shiny new toy? How happy you must be! Yet how sad your Mama is that she cannot buy food for your family. Or that your sister needs medicine but your family cannot afford to buy it. Well, now you can be a hero! The 'Be a Hero' program will offer you valuable goods in exchange for your wonderful toy. As much as one hundred dollars, Abdul! Think! That is more than your Papa earned all last year! Fortune has smiled upon you and granted you this valuable object. Now you can use it to save your family. Won't you feel proud?"

You get the idea. Negroponte is flipping the hell out. Says it's a transparent scheme to wipe these machines out of the market and kill Linux. Bill's people say it's just an exercise in free market economics. Man oh man. This is a real fiasco in the making.

Caption contest

Well here I am with Michael Dell at some event in Austin last week about teachers. See here for some good quotes from yours truly on why teachers are such frigtards.

Anyhoo, Michael and I have a testy relationship at best. But here we are trying to look like pals. Check out my very, very sincere smile. Incredibly convincing right?

Well, put some quotes with the photo, and you might win a fake iPhone. Or at least a fake circuit board.

Another delay in the iPhone

Well the engineers want to kill me but you know what, I know how to design products. And I'm sorry, this circuit board for the iPhone is just way too friggin ugly. There's no balance. You've got this long skinny piece on the left and then nothing on the right to balance it out. And the big chip should be right in the middle, not off center. And the two little gold pieces on the right should be lined up straight. I mean there's a million problems with this design. Just look at it. You've got all these little skinny lines on one side then big fat lines on the other, with loads of space. WTF? So I told them go back and redo it. I want it perfectly symmetrical. They're like, Steve, nobody is gonna see the circuit board. I'm like, Yes, but I'll know it's in there, and that will ruin it for me. They're like, Steve, it's not just about looks, because the thing won't work right if we move the chips the way you want them. I'm like, You know what, try it. Just do it and let's see. They're like, Dude, with all due respect, we're electrical engineers, okay? We know what we're talking about. One guy goes to the white board and starts trying to give me a lesson in how electric current flows through a circuit. I'm standing there, just shaking with rage, and I'm like, Excuse me, but please put down that marker and then go to your desk and fire yourself. Okay? Thank you. No, I'm serious.

After he left the other guys told me he was the lead engineer on the project. Oh well. Too bad. Guess you'll all have to work that much harder now eh?

Folks, this is probably the single most important product we've ever made. This is going to define the new Apple. This thing has to be like a Porsche. Or a really well-made Swiss watch. I want it to be perfect. Inside and out.

I love this kid

See this story about a kid in Mongolia who got pissed after his dad gave him a Dell instead of a Mac and finally, in a fit of rage when the POS Windows machine kept crashing, he threw it out the friggin window. Young man, namaste. We are sending Yuri Yobtvuyomat, our Central Asia director, to find you and bring you a brand new iMac, free of charge. You have given us more and better publicity than we could ever have bought on our own. Peace out.

Jet Blue blames its computers

That's the story in this morning's NY Times. They're canceling flights left and right, have pilots stuck in hotels but can't figure out where to send them, and so on. CEO says their Mickey Mouse operations systems are set up for smaller airline, can't support their bigger volumes, blah blah blah. So guess where the bargain basement airline got its software? Um, see here. And here. And here. Yeah. The beast from Redmond strikes again.

I'm thinking of taking Apple private

This was Bono's idea. He's now a big private equity guy, in case you hadn't heard. So last night we're both baked and watching an old Cheech and Chong movie and he goes, You know wha? Youse oughta go proivate. So we started thinking about it. Ran some numbers. Then we called up some people who actually know how to run numbers and found out our numbers were off by like a factor of a hundred. Nonetheless, these guys still think it could work. Then we tell the SEC and everybody else to bugger off, we're private, nothing to see here folks, move along, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here. That kind of thing. Well, Blackstone and Carlyle want to get together. I'll keep you informed. Much love, Bono.

I'm sorry but this is hilarious

Microsoft has hired a former tech analyst to be an "enthusiast evangelist." See here. Guy says his job is to "find, engage and work with enthusiasts and other influencers and show them all the cool stuff that Microsoft is doing." Question: Are there actually any Microsoft enthusiasts? Who are these sad people?

Telstra to Apple: Stick to your knitting

Some dude from Telstra says we're making a mistake building the iPhone and we should "stick to our knitting." See here. Now, I don't know who this guy is. And I don't see why some refrigerator manufacturer in New Zealand should be telling us how to run our business. But the iPhone is a perfectly natural next step for us. Second, we go into any business we want. And we win. If we want to make Apple iToasters, we will. And you know what? They'll rock. And they'll cost a fortune. And people will line up to buy them. Or watch out, Telstra man. Maybe we'll start making refrigerators, and put you guys right out of business. Put that on the barbie and grill it.

Stallman: Why do people keep calling me a Communist?

Richard Stallman just can't figure out why people keep saying he's a communist. He says he can't help it if he happens to get along with communists, really, really well. And they all view him as a hero. Like at this conference in Havana where he got a standing ovation. Look, can Richard help it if these people love him for being such a non-communist hard-liner capitalist? Cause that's what he is. Yep. These friggin commies just love his free-market, pro-America, pro-capitalism, pro-democracy philosophy. Funny old world.

I just don't get British humor. Or is it humour?

Says here that our "Get a Mac" ads aren't working in the UK. You know what? It's true. I hate to admit it but the ads are backfiring. As the article says, instead of creating the impression that Macs are hip and cool, "Some viewers complained that the ads reinforced the `smug superiority' stereotype of the typical Mac user." I think this is because most Brits already go around feeling smug and superior. So they don't know how to handle our smug, superior attitude. Kind of overwhelms their tiny British brains, I guess.

This morning's unauthorized Journal story

Maybe you've seen this morning's A1 story in the Wall Street Journal which by the way we did not authorize and will not link to. It's a paid site anyway and I'm totally against that. Gist is that I was a total hard-ass with the frigtards at Cingular and drove some really hard deal or whatever. We are working very hard right now to find out who leaked to the press on this. When we find out those people will join the illustrious ranks of ex-Apple employees. But just for your information, the story doesn't get halfway into what a total dick I was to those guys. The whole point of being all secretive like we are is that so people are dying to meet us. And they think we must possess some secret power or something because nobody knows anything about our company. They feel like Martin Sheen when he finally gets to meet Brando in Apocalypse Now. And I totally do the Brando thing. I insult them. I speak in a very low voice. I speak in riddles. I remind them that I could have them all killed right now, right here in this room. At that point they're just willing to buy anything I say. Plus, I throw in some NLP trigger words and hypnosis techniques. Works like a charm. Sigman at Cingular went under in about 30 seconds first time I met him. Eyes rolled right up in his head. Next thing I know he's chanting, "We are a commodity. You are the value. We are a commodity. You are the value." Verizon guys were much more difficult. They're kind of the cell phone version of us; they really think they're the shizzle. Frankly, all the phone carrier guys are basically cretins. It's just a matter of finding out which one will be the most submissive, then hauling out the hood and dog collar.

Britney Spears shaves her head

Not sure if this is some kind of Vista protest. Or Zune. Or maybe the Norwegians got to her and she's angry about DRM. Who knows? Well, at least now the drapes match the carpet.

Kid defaces Powerbook, allowed to live

See this flickr page. Guy's kid snuck in when he wasn't paying attention and drew all over his Powerbook with a Sharpie. Page also links to a YouTube vid about the episode. Good news is, a little alcohol was all it took to clean up the P-book. That's how good we are. We have a stain-resistant casing on all our machines. And yes, in case you're wondering, I'm the one who thought of that. You're welcome.

Yeah, I met this girl

True story. I got to attend the shoot and put the iPod in position. Better yet, this was a loaner iPod, so I got to take it home with me. I've got it here on my desk. Jon Ive keeps coming in to borrow it. Not sure why.

Maybe you think it's funny

To laugh at my misfortunes. Apparently this guy does. Well, I don't. Sorry. Then again, I'm the poor bastard who's gonna be wearing an orange jump suit and trying to avoid the communal shower.

Search for another missing blogger

Our BSD guys alerted me this morning to an ongoing story about the disappearance of a blogger called Pamela Jones of Groklaw. Apparently the open source community has launched a huge search effort to try to find her. Supposedly nobody has ever seen this person so nobody knows quite what they should be looking for. But this drawing is the best anyone has to go on. Also there's a support blog here where you can sign a petition urging law enforcement officials to step up their activities. Blog also is following all breaking news related to the case. If you're a Linux fan I guess you might be interested. Peace out.

The noose tightens

You've probably seen the stories like this one about the feds trying to speed up their inquisition on the options stuff. And yeah, when they talk about "Apple officials" they are most definitely talking about El Jobso. Friends, I am this close to just pulling an OJ and fleeing the country. The JobsJet is fueled and ready. This whole thing is just total horsecrap.

Uncle Fester is backpedaling on Vista

So now Ballmer says maybe Vista isn't going to do as well this year as they'd previously thought. See here.Then he takes a crack at me and our "I'm a Mac" ads:

I'll give Apple credit for what it's done. It's not like they've really grown a lot of market share. Remember, when you're the little tiny niche guy who owns about 2 percent of the worldwide market, you can be cute one time and it helps you grow.

You know what? Sure, I'd like to have more market share. But I'd rather have 2% share with something I can be proud of than 95% share of a pile of dog crap. But that's just me I guess.

"Mac in My Top"

Much love to the reader who sent this in. And to the ladies who made this wonderful video, please get in touch. Free fake Macs for all of you. You sweet hot sexy mamas. Namaste.

IBMer found in Second Life, refuses to come out

After an exhaustive manhunt lasting more than a week, renowned IBM computer scientist Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger surfaced yesterday in Second Life, saying he had decided to make the virtual environment his permanent home. He is playing shortstop for the Second Life Mets and has changed his name to an acronym based on his initials, DIWB, or "Dweeb." Said his annoyed wife, Mrs. Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger: "Oh, that's just Irving being Irving." As we first reported here, scientists at Google and other Silicon Valley companies last week launched a huge effort to find DIWB, a much-revered figure in high tech. A Google Earth team spent days frantically searching satellite images in hopes of finding DIWB alive. In a rambling, often incoherent interview with CNET, DIWB said, "I found a place here in Little Havana that makes the best Cuban sandwich you've ever eaten, I swear to God, I'm not even kidding. And the brothels! Don't get me started. I appreciate all the concern, but honestly, I'm not coming out."

A Valentine from Steve

No, baby, I didn't forget what day it is. Not at all, lover. How could I? No, I was just teasing you. I wanted to build the suspense a little bit. Because you know, on this day of all days, you're the only thing I can think about, my sweet dove. And I made you this special Valentine's Day card, with my own hands, with paper and glue and scissors, so you could have it and look at it and just think of me, and know that I'm thinking of you right back. I even made it while sitting in front of a mirror, so I could see myself thinking about you and think about how sexy it is for me to be thinking of you and you to be thinking of me. Yeah, that's the word. Sexy. Say it. Breathe softly and say it. Mmmm. Sexy. Girl, you make me want to lick my desk. Now ladies, and I know there are a lot of my readers out there who are ladies, well, if you're out there tonight, reading this, and you're home all by yourself, and you're starting to feel a little bad about all this, well, stop right there. Don't feel bad. Print out this picture of me. Check out young Steve, all lean and handsome, with that full thick head of dark hair, and those deep soulful almond-shaped eyes, those sexy bare feet, that cup of coffee and loaf of bread, that bottle of wine and those flowers: this is how I want you to imagine me. This was way back, back in the old days, the innocent days. Now just print this one out, ladies, and tape it up on your refrigerator, or bring it to bed with you, or better yet, I'll tell you what. Call up a florist and order yourself a dozen long-stem red roses. When the flowers arrive, clip this photo to them, along with a note saying they're from me. Hold those sexy flowers to your nose and drink in their fragrance and remember how special and sexy you are to me. Or better yet, let's take this to another level. Let's put the freak on. How about you draw yourself a nice hot bath, and fill that water with sensual bubbles and special oils and such things. Switch off all the lights. Now light yourself some flowery scented candles and some of that sexy sandalwood incense. Put this photo at the foot of your bathtub. Imagine my sexy breath on your neck, my lips next to your ears, saying, Boom. Eighty gigabytes. That's right. All eighty. Boom. Slip into that bathtub, slowly. Ease yourself in. That's it. Put some mad crazy sexy lovemaking music on that iPod of yours, and gently ... ever so gently ... push those earbuds into your ears. Deeper. That's it. Now a little deeper. Aw, yeah. Now are you feeling me? Because I'm feeling you, lover. I really am. Boom. A touch screen. Feel that? Go ahead. Multi-touch it. Insane, right? Boom. Happy Valentine's Day.
--Love, Steve
xoxoxo

Great piece by John Gruber

On his Daring Fireball blog. See here. John shows once again why he is far and away the best writer going when it comes to all things Macintosh. (In other words: He's defending my DRM letter against its critics.) Much love, Groobs. Peace out.

The Squirrel Boy rumor

Apparently there is this rumor going around the Valley that the reason we brought Eric Schmidt onto our board is so that he can step up and be CEO if I have to step down during this SEC investigation into the options stuff. I just want to say, this is totally not true. And even if I do have to step down it will only be temporary. But I'm pretty sure I'm not going to have to. We're really working hard to get this whole thing settled and put away. You can't believe the crap that Nancy Pelosi is putting me through, however. That lady gets your balls in a vise and friggin squeezes, let me tell ya. Free use of the JobsJet, iPods and iMacs for her nine hundred grandchildren, donations (cash only, in suitcases) to the Pelosi Library. I mean who even knew this crazy dame even had a friggin library?

Anyway, have no fear. Squirrel Boy is not going to be running Apple. At least not yet. And not permanently. I think. Um, okay. Peace out.

Yahoo music dude jumps on my anti-DRM bandwagon

And tries to act like he got there first. Money quote:

"I've long advocated removing DRM on music because there is already a lot of music available without DRM, and it just makes things complicated for the user."

Oh, and now that the fabulous Steve Jobs is saying this in public, I'd like to take credit too. Please.

The Zune complaint blog

Okay ladies and gents, this site is just too ripe. Not saying what you should or shouldn't do but I'd imagine it might be fun to dream up some really creative weird Zune-related problems. eg: "Dude, my Zune keeps scrambling pieces of one song into another song, is anyone else having this problem? Like it's doing its own DJ mix on my songs and it's really freaking me out." One warning: Do NOT all go straight from this blog. Otherwise, as with the LinuxPetitionTards, the ZuneTards will figure out the source of the prank and just throw up a blockade. Be stealthy. Much love.

More praise for my DRM open letter

See here. Bob Lefsetz also takes a few shots at that idiot Edgar Bronfman Jr. of Warner. But my favorite quote comes in an aside:

My MacPro computer with its 23" HD screen makes my dick hard every time I walk by it. Because it’s so fucking BEAUTIFUL! And it’s never ever crashed, not a single fucking time.

That just made my day. Namaste, Bob Lefsetz.

At last people are realizing

What a powerhouse we are becoming. See this article where the dude tried to figure out how we strong-armed Lions Gate into accepting our terms to sell movies on the iTunes store. Money quote:

So, let's just call this deal what it really is: more proof that Apple is becoming the heaviest of the new Hollywood heavies.

Right on.

Re the campaign

Well in one day of hitting the phones we got commitments for all the money we'd need, and then some. Folks in the Valley might not love me but they'd rather have one of their own in the White House than another born-again weirdo who wants to outlaw teaching evolution in schools. Or Hillary, with her mandatory abortions and higher corporate taxes. I went outside in the afternoon and did my tai chi and tried to do some non-thinking about all of this. Right now I'm non-thinking that I should do it. But I want to hang out for a while and non-think about it some more.

Let's not jump the gun or anything

But much love to the reader who sent this in. I'm sure it took a long time to put together. And if I do decide to throw my hat into the ring, this will make a fine poster. Namaste.

BBC's Bill Thompson calls me a liar

See his sad little rant about me here. Says he doesn't believe what I say about DRM. Like it matters what some BBC guy believes. Yeah right. Let's just take Bill's word on this. His bio at the end says he's now so unhappy with Apple that he "might finally make the jump to Linux." Ha! Tosser.

Hi boys and girls! Wanna meet a rock star?

So Bono hitched a ride back to the West Coast with me on the JobsJet (and didn't offer to help pay for gas, natch). He's going on about how he can't stand Al Gore's wife. "You know what she did? Yer woman says she's gonna be in Ireland this summer and she asks me can I get her in to meet Paddy Reilly. Jaysus. Have you ever heard Paddy fookin Reilly? The fookin fields of Athenry? Make you want to blow your fookin brains out. Steve, I'm a fookin northsider. We wouldn't be caught dead listening to shite like Paddy Reilly. That's what your gran in Wicklow listens to."

Then he gets out his little miniature guitar that he travels with and he starts plinking away and trying to work on his big global warming song. But he gets all frustrated (and okay, by now he's half drunk too) and finally he just whips the guitar across the plane and says, "Oh I fookin give up. I can't write lyrics for shite Steve. Never could. It's my one great weakness as an artist. That and not being able to read or write music. And not being able to sing very well."

I told him maybe he should try playing a full-size guitar like ordinary grownups instead of his miniature mandolin or ukulele or whatever. He says I can fook off. Then he goes, "Look, Mr. Wise Ass, why don't we toss this out to your readers on that stupid blog of yours eh? See what they can come up with? The whole user generated content thing right? And like whoever writes the best song gets to come backstage and meet the band and get an autograph or sumfin. Long as I get the copyright on the song I don't care about fook-all else."

Thus was born this week's contest. Please help Bono come up with some words for his lame-ass global warming song. He says if you want to write the guitar chords and melody too, he'd be even more appreciative, as long as you keep it simple enough that The Edge can play it. Like mostly stuff with only the top two strings would be ideal. Furthermore, he says if you wanna go ahead and record a rough sample and post it online that'd be even better.

As I told Bono, this blog has just about the smartest and most talented readers on the Internet. So I'm sure we'll come up with something amazing. At the very least I'm sure we'll come up with a great song title. Peace out.

What a day

I'm in New York. Have been meeting with Al Gore and Bono about their global warming concert series. Apple is totally going to be a lead sponsor. Bono played me a few bars of the big ballad that he and Geldof are working on for all the superstars to sing in a giant chorus. Something about the fookin ice floes meltin and the polar bears a-drownin and the fookin smokestacks belchin while mankind does fookin nuffin, blah blah blah, and then a chorus that goes, "CEE-OH-TWO-OO-OO, let's do what we all can do, CEE-OH-TWO-OO-OO, reach across the oceans blue." Or something like that. Needs a little work. But I'm feeling it.

Anyway. Bigger news is this. The concert discussion was just a pretext. They really wanted to get me to New York and talk to me about the race in 2008. As in, running in it. My first reaction was like, You gotta be kidding me. Do you have any idea how many times I dropped acid in the Seventies? They say that's no big deal, Obama went on TV and talked about smoking weed and doing coke. I'm like, Dudes, I'm talking about friggin hallucinogenics, okay? The kind of stuff that wipes out entire sections of your brain and twists your DNA into pretzels. I've got sperm cells with twelve tails and fourteen heads and each one looks like the Keep on Truckin' guy. I did this shit like five hundred times, at least. Not to mention all the crystal meth and coke and weed and hash and angel dust and black beauties and downers and whatever else. I mean it was a lot.

No worries, they say. America's moved past that. Gore says his machine is primed and ready, but he's not going to be the candidate. I am. He says this isn't about me, or him, or any of us -- it's bigger than that. It's about saving this country from that woman. He says Hillary can probably raise $250 million. I'm like, Why can't we back Nader? Or Jerry Brown? Nope, Al says as he sees it I'm the only person on the planet who has the mixture of charisma and cash that this battle is gonna require. Heck, I can raise half a billion and not even feel a pinch.

Think of all the stuff you've told me, Al says, about the ways you'd like to make this country better. Including reforming the DOJ and ending this crazy practice of turning hard-working entrepreneurs into the the target of ridiculous criminal investigations, and wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on pointless crusades.

All good points. But it was Bono who closed me, and God love him he did it by throwing my own words back at me. Boyo, he says, do you wanna make fookin music players for the rest of your life, or do you wanna change the fookin world?

So fair enough. We've set up an exploratory committee and talk to some fund-raising type people and see what kind of reaction we get. We'll do some polling too. Apparently in some of the prelim work I've put up some ridiculously high name recognition numbers and some very low negs, as long as they don't poll former Apple and Pixar employees. So we'll see. We're a long way from actually declaring a candidacy, so let's not get too excited just yet.

I miss Lou Gerstner

Believe it or not he was pretty much the smartest guy who ever spent time in our industry. Remember this quote about Dell back in 2001? "Price wars in a commodity business are really dumb."

Of course the big brain pundit types jumped all over themselves to explain why Lou was wrong. Like J. William Gurley here and Michael Schrage of the MIT Media Lab here. These guys insisted Dell could drain all the profits out of the PC business and still remain profitable itself. Might have been easier to turn water into wine. Or loaves into fishes. Or whatever. Anyhoo, look at Dell today and it appears old Lou knew whereof he spoke. One thing I never understood though is how a guy that smart could cut off two of his fingers in a friggin lawnmower. Oh well. Can't be an expert in everything.

Much to love to the reader who sent us this

Reader says this company might want to sponsor the blog. Nice. Now, the question is, any thoughts on what the hell this Frigmobile actually does? And who uses it? Let your imaginations run wild, people. Hint: Apparently there are a fleet of them in the vicinity of Redmond, Wash.

Since Linux keeps coming up

A reader (SB) sends in this riff on our Mac v. PC ads. Maybe you've seen it. I hadn't. Much love, SB.

A guy named Eben Moglen writes in

He describes himself as the "attorney of record" for the Free Software Foundation and says that on behalf of his client he is seeking to redress numerous inaccuracies in my posts about "the kernel, Linux." First among these is that Linux is only the kernel of what should correctly be called "the GNU/Linux operating system" and that by referring to Linux as "an operating system" I am misleading my readers. Moglen demands that I correct this mistake immediately and send a check for one thousand dollars to the Software Freedom Law Center to cover his expenses, or risk facing the wrath of the "community." Moglen also insists that from now on I must only refer to Linux as "the kernel, Linux," or "the Linux kernel."

But here's the kicker. Moglen also urges me not to port iTunes to Linux. "The petition to which you keep referring was not sanctioned by the Free Software Foundation. We would never endorse the notion of mixing non-free code with free code. The kernel, Linux, is fast becoming a relic. The Free Software Foundation is working in a most determined manner to hasten this process. We encourage the community to abandon the kernel, Linux, in favor of a truly open alternative. Furthermore, the community has no need of your proprietary programs such as iTunes, so unless you are willing to liberate your code, which I am assuming is not part of your plans, please do not waste your time or ours in an effort to pollute the world of free software by creating non-free programs and inserting them into our pure programs. Such miscegenation will not be tolerated."

He attached his photo and gives a phone number in New York and says I can call him whenever I'd like. I'm not sure but I think this could be Larry punking me. Has anyone ever heard of this guy? Sounds like a made-up name.

My Little Pony warns me off Linux

So I was all ready to order up the iTunes on Linux initiative but then I got a call from Jon Schwartz. Says he read my blog and he's like, Dude, you're asleep at the switch. Linux is over, man. Linux is like 2003 or something. Haven't you heard? There's this new GPLv3 coming out and Linux won't embrace it. But we are gonna use it. So now all the Linux freaks are moving to OpenSolaris. Dude you gotta start reading the message boards and Slashdot and stuff. We're totally taking over.

Linux is done. Novell made a deal with Microsoft; done. Red Hat forces you to pay through the nose; done. Ubuntu just made a deal with Linspire, and they're shipping closed binary blobs; done. OSDL just shut down and "merged" (read: disappeared) with some other group. IBM's pulling back on the money. Stallman and Moglen are doing everything they can to kill Linux in its crib. Torvalds is job-hunting and will probably end up at Google. Even Google, which is the world's biggest Linux user, is starting to migrate off. The revolution is over, baby.

Or rather, it's moving to the counter-revolution phase. You know how that always happens? Did you study the French Revolution in college? Oh, that's right. Anyway, every revolution ends up spawning a counter-revolution. That's when things get ugly and they drag out the guillotines. Read anything nice about Torvalds on Slashdot lately? That's what I'm talking about. One of these days old Linus is gonna have to dress in servants' clothes and sneak out of Oregon in the middle of the night.

And who rules in the Brave New World? Yours truly. The Sun King, dude. So, um, I wouldn't worry about iTunes for Linux. Now, iTunes for Solaris? That makes sense.

Update on the iTunes on Linux petition

Well they've now managed to get nearly 8,000 signatures and at least half of them seem to be from actual people rather than made-up names. Man oh man! Who knew there were so many people using Linux? When I saw this I thought, Ya know, maybe we should do a version of iTunes for Linux after all.

Not because it makes financial sense. I mean, I figure doing the port would take 10 programmers half a year, which is about a million bucks cost to us, then double it cause it's software and things always go wrong, so you're looking at two million dollars. At that rate each of these signers would have to spend $250 on iTunes to make us break even. No way that's gonna happen. First of all because let's face it, these Linux freaks aren't exactly big spenders. These are guys who would waste hours, days, even weeks of their lives trying to get some half-assed OS to run on their machines and recognize their peripherals, rather than spend a few bucks and have the work done for them by Microsoft or Apple. (And please, no more letters from you guys trying to tell me that Linux is "better" than OS X. I've been making computers since before most of you were born, and I can tell you, categorically, that you know not whereof you speak.)

No, Linux users are the OS equivalent of the early Napster or Kazaa users, the kind of guys who would waste hours online downloading illegal songs and risk getting all sorts of malware just to avoid spending 10 bucks on a CD. And even if they weren't the ultimate cheapskates, I know for damn sure they're not going to buy our iTunes songs wrapped in DRM; these guys are the ultimate DRM foes.

So I know what you're thinking. Why do it? Well, it might be good buzz. Could make us look hip. We could get that weird blonde-haired Eminem kid from the old IBM Linux ads, put him in a pair of iPod earbuds and have him do some spazzo Linux dance. Then the words, "iTunes on Linux" run across the bottom of the screen. Cool, right? Makes us look all open and non-restrictive. Definitely worth tossing two million down the toilet if it would get these Eurotard regulators off our backs.

Rolling Stone, we need to talk

Katie Cotton just sent me this article from Rolling Stone about how Apple is becoming the new evil empire. Believe it or not we actually pay a lot more attention to mags like Rolling Stone than we do to the Wall Street Journal or the Economist. Gotta stay in touch with what the kids are thinking. So, yes, this kind of worries me, that they're starting see us as evil because we have some big quasi-monopoly in the music player business. Particularly scary are the comments. Katie is freaking out. No worries. I'm gonna call Jann Wenner next week and find out what's the going rate for good coverage these days.

Microsoft, king of marketing

They really know how to keep their loyal fan base hyped up, right? As soon as Vista ships, they're already whetting everyone's appetite for the next disaster. "Vienna" (the code name) is scheduled for 2009. My prediction: Expect it in about 2015.

Say something nice about Vista

It's Saturday and I'm bored and frankly I'm feeling a little bad about that Stephen Manes review of Vista. And I thought maybe I could restore my karma by saying something nice about Vista. But, um, I can't think of anything. So I figure I'll toss it out to you guys. Anyone have something nice they can say about Vista?

Blogging from LA today

Down here trying to put out fires about the Pixar options mess. Maybe you saw the story on A3 of the Journal this morning? Here's a synopsis. Big scoop. Back in 2001, I gave John Lasseter a sweet deal to stay with Pixar. Folks, the guy is the greatest animator of our time. Our deal gave him a huge bonus, a salary of $2.5 million per year, and a million stock options which were dated back a few months to make them a little more valuable. Point is, who cares? Would anyone argue we did the wrong thing in paying Lasseter huge amounts of money to stay on board? Have any shareholders been harmed? Mother of God.

Better story is the one about why I'm down here in the first place. Iger calls me last week and says Michael Jackson is shopping around a superhero movie based on an original script. I'm like, Dude, we're not gonna buy that, are we? He says of course not, but can you imagine the pitch meeting? He tells me he's got guys willing to pay to sit in on this. Mark Cuban has offered half a million to watch from behind a one-way mirror. So I arrive. There are like a hundred Fruit of Islam dudes outside Disney HQ. Inside, Iger says to me, Hey, Steve, you wanna use the men's room before we begin? I tell him I'm fine. He says, Steve, I really think you ought to use the bathroom. I go in there, and, no lie, there's Michael Jackson and Tito standing at the mirror. Michael's in tights and a cape and -- I swear to God -- he's got no nose. Just a hole in his face. Like Lon Chaney in the Phantom of the Opera. He sees me and just goes, in that little girl voice of his, Oh, hi Steve Jobs! How are you doing? I swear to God I almost gakked. Then he turns to Tito and says, Tito, give me my nose. Tito opens a case and pulls out a nose. Michael goes, Damn, Tito, not that nose! My bidness nose! Tito's like, I thought this was an audition. Michael says No, it's a business meeting, and I need my bidness nose, and dammit, Tito, I swear I'm gonna smack you, you know that? So there's this elaborate process of sticking it on his face, and the whole time Michael is just totally calm, asking me about the iPod. He says, Steve, now tell me, don't you guys also make computers? I tell him we do and he turns to Tito and says, See? I told you! Tito says that's a different company but I said no it's all the same. Dammit, Tito, I'm really gonna smack you, you know that?

Weirder still is the meeting. There's like 20 Disney execs sitting around waiting and then Tito does this big introduction, where he goes, Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ... Holy Man! And in comes Michael in his superman suit with an H on it. And he tells us the plot, which is that he plays this Holy Man character who is born on earth but is really a divine being from another planet and at some point discovers his superpowers and is called upon to save the earth from an evil villain. Iger, totally with a straight face, says, Michael, um, since the character's name is Holy Man, how would you feel about having the costume have holes in it? Wouldn't that make sense? Michael's all exasperated and says, Bob, it's not that kind of holy, okay? It's holy as in, you know, like God. Like holy. People are snickering and kicking each other under the table. Michael appears not to notice. Iger goes, Oh, I see, okay, my bad. Sorry. Continue.

Michael says he knows this will be the biggest movie of all time, and as a result he wants fifty million dollars, cash, up front, before shooting begins. And he wants twenty percent of the gross receipts. And he says, Look, you white devils, don't even try to start negotiating with me or whatever, because I tell you what. I grew up in this business. I know all your dirty white devil tricks. If you won't meet my terms I'll just walk across the street to the other batch of white devils and get my money from them. Understood? Good. You have twenty-four hours to give me an answer.

Then he snaps his fingers and his little crew of bodyguards take off in formation after him, with Tito trailing along. Next thing I know Mark Cuban comes out from behind a wall and says, You know what? It's crazy but it might work. I'm serious. Everybody else just shakes their head and goes back to sitting in their offices pretending to check email or make phone calls or whatever.

This is what they do down here. They play practical jokes on freako Michael Jackson. This is what passes for "work" in Hollywood. God. And they have the balls to give me grief about options? I can't wait to get back to the Valley.

As promised, the meanest review of Vista yet

Don't be fooled by the Muppet Show photo and the easygoing smile. Stephen Manes of Forbes is one angry man. And nothing stokes the dark fire of his genius more than Microsoft. Check out this review of Vista, which is really more of a rant than a review. Money quotes too numerous to mention. eg:

"A vista slightly more inspiring than the one over the town dump."

"... a fading theme park with a few new rides, lots of patched-up old ones and bored kids in desperate need of adult supervision running things."

"Should you upgrade your current machine? Are you nuts?"

"... utterly unimaginative, internally discordant and woefully out of tune."

Not sure but I think he doesn't like it. Seriously, if you hate Microsoft as much as I do, you're gonna love this review. Reminds me of Anthony Lane writing about "The Da Vinci Code."

Only problem is you have to endure the inane talking ads on the Forbes site. I wish they'd give you a little animated gun you could use to shoot the dude who's going on about personal finance or whatever.

How to install Vista

Here's a really useful video. Enjoy. It's Friday.

Another thing that irks me

Is this claim that we're embracing DRM because we fear that without it we would lose customers for our iPod hardware. Please. We're very happy to go toe-to-toe with any other device in the market. Honestly. If anything, I think getting rid of DRM would help us sell more iPods. There. I said it.

I faith-healed a guy last night

This is not something I do very often. And I never do it when anyone else is around. Not that I'm ashamed or anything but it just involves a lot of explaining and then you have to swear people to secrecy and I really don't want word getting around about me having this secret power. Anyway. It was past midnight, and I'd just got out of a dinner in Palo Alto with some guys from Google. (No, I can't tell you what it was about. But it's insanely cool, trust me, and you'll be hearing about it soon enough.) I was walking back to my car and I came across this skeevy looking guy sitting on University Avenue dressed in layers of sweaters and jackets and begging for coins. So I stopped and gave him a pre-loaded Shuffle, which is what I usually do with homeless people, because I believe music has the power to transform lives. We get talking. He tells me he's an Army veteran, was in the first Gulf War, doctors still can't figure out what's wrong with him. He's been in and out of VA hospitals. Muscle pain, joint pain, weakness, dizziness, shortness of breath. His memory goes in and out. Sometimes he can't remember his own name, or where he's from.

So I look around. There's nobody on the street. I figure I'm safe. I go, Do you know who I am? He nods his head. You're Steve Jobs, he says. The guy from Apple. I go, That's right. So I ask him, Do you believe I can heal you? And it must be something about the tone of my voice or maybe he can feel the force coming out of my eyes or something because he goes, Steve, I do. I really do.

It's a frightening thing, when this happens. I'll be honest. Every time I've done it, I've been scared myself. It's like my whole body starts to vibrate at this very super high frequency, so fast that the movement is almost imperceptible.

Stand up, I say. He goes, I can't stand up. My legs are too tired. So I lean down and put both of my hands on his head. I close my eyes and start moaning my syllable. I can feel the power rushing through my hands into his skull. He starts to shake like he's having an epileptic fit. It's all I can do to hold on to him. But I hold on. I tell him, Stand up! Stand up and walk!

He's making this weird high-pitched sound, like a whining sound, and I know what it is -- it's the illness leaving his body. All of the years of badness, all of his demons, flying out out of his mouth. And as this is happening, he starts to lift up off the sidewalk. It's like I'm pulling him off the ground by his head, except for one thing: I'm not pulling him at all. He's floating up, on his own.

I take my hands away. I go, How do you feel? He says he's a little woozy, but otherwise he feels fine. He says the pain is gone. He feels like he could go run a marathon.

Dude, he says, thanks a lot. Seriously! And thanks for the Shuffle. But wait. This shit's not DRM'd is it? I'm like, Um, yeah, you know, we pre-load those from iTunes, so yeah, it's got DRM on it. He goes, Oh, well, in that case, here, you can take it back. I don't want it. Cause I friggin hate DRM. Totally impacts on my freedom. But thanks anyway. And thanks for healing me and whatever. Okay? Peace, man.

Tone deaf Microsoft defends DRM

Robbie Bach tells Forbes why Microsoft loves DRM. And he gives me a little bit of grief for my open letter, "Thoughts on Music." Now, I've explained recently why I don't think DRM is a big deal. That's me personally. But what Microsoft doesn't get, and what the record companies don't get, is it doesn't matter what we think, personally. What matters is that customers, for reasons that are often irrational, or, shall we say, founded on emotions, don't want DRM. They just don't. And it's holding back all of our businesses because customers don't want to buy music that's wrapped in DRM. And at the end of the day we've got to remember we're in the business of trying to make things that people want to buy. It's as simple as that, really. We need to listen to customers. I know. A foreign concept for Microsoft.

Warner Music stumbles, but clings to DRM

See here. Sales down 11%, profits down 74%. Ouch. Their business is in the crapper yet Edgar Bronfman Jr. insists they won't drop DRM.

Money quote: "We advocate the continued use of DRM. We will not abandon DRM nor services that are successfully implementing DRM for both content and consumers."

Well, don't say I didn't warn you, idiot. Only 10% of the company's sales are coming from digital. Could be way bigger if they'd just dare to be open.

That Google-YouTube deal

Were you wondering who made what on the Google acquisition of YouTube? Well, it's all here. So don't say I never gave you anything.

Brent Schlender tries to decipher El Jobso

Fortune's resident Apple expert speculates here that my open letter about DRM was some kind of crafty ploy to push the labels to rewrite our agreement so that the iPhone can download music directly from iTunes, rather than being connected to a Mac or a PC. Okay, fair enough. Brent always thinks I've got some kind of ulterior motive. And he's still a little mad at me for some previous slights. Let me just say this. Brent was a much better Apple prognosticator when we were writing his stories for him. Now that he's trying to go it alone, well, he's often wide of the mark. Folks, take this for what it's worth. There was no ulterior motive. I just wrote what was in my heart. Simplest explanation is usually true, right? It's called Ockman's Razor. Have you heard of it?

"Frigtard" added to Urban Dictionary

See here. I love it. How long until Merriam-Webster wakes up too?

From our pal Mr. H. Aiku

Vista's perspective
its view through a long window
cold scenes of winter
---
sing strong and loudly!
keep their attention to hide
your soaking flop sweat
---
they say 'Wow is now'
when everyone really knows
it comes in the spring

--H. Aiku

Twas the Night Before They Met Fake Steve

Here's one by a reader who calls himself "the unknown poet."


"Twas The Night Before They Met Fake Steve"


'Twas the night before Christmas,
and all through the house...
the Norwegians were grumbling
and calling him a louse.

The IPOD's were placed
by the chimney with care,
in the hope that St.Nick would
answer the Norwegian's prayer.

So Santa slid down the chimney
and brushed off his jacket,
looked into the crowd and said,
"What on Earth is this racket!?"

The Norwegians started up,
all griping at once,
until Santa scolded and said,
"I have time for only ONE dunce".

So up steps Bjoern Erik Thon,
all gallant and poised,
and delivers a sermon
that is construed as white noise.

So Santa loses it fast...
and hammers down his fist!
While the Norwegians produce
a ludicrous laundry list.

Santa rips off his beard,
throws off his hat,
call the Norwegians 'frigtards',
and that's that.

Their shock is immeasurable,
they quickly take leave,-
shrieking louder than ever:
"Who is Fake Steve?!?!"

"Ode to an iPod" by Kura

Kura is a new friend to the FSJ blog. She's also new to blogging. Check out her blog here. This is her poem, which she says we can publish.


ipod! ipod! An Ode to my ipod


ipod! ipod! sleek and white
In the city streets at night
What GenXer’s hand or eye
Could frame thy perfect symmetry?

In what distant memory lies
Music collections burnt down to size
On Napster dare we aspire?
What the hand dare seize the buyer?

Now headphones white we never part
We twist the click-wheel of thy heart
And when the songs begin to beat
We shake our hands and move our feet

What the manner? By this name
Chose the white box for your frame?
But what’s the reason – I cannot grasp
I cannot make the battery last

When the artists threw down their fears
And littered itunes with their wares
Did Steve Jobs smile to see
Did he who made the Mac make thee?

ipod! ipod! sleek and white
In the city streets at night
What GenXer’s hand or eye
Dare frame thy perfect symmetry?

Larry's got the "flu"

So Larry bailed out of the keynote at some RSA conference today claiming he had the flu. That's odd. Because he looked fine when he met us for dinner tonight. Um...

Not that I care, because I don't. But it drives his PR people nuts. Larry signs up for all these stupid events but then when the big day arrives he realizes he has to go hang out with a bunch of security nerds and he just can't be bothered.

Vista reviewed by The Onion.

Nice. They seem to like it about as much as everyone else. See here. BTW I'm informed by reliable sources that the absolute meanest, nastiest review of Vista yet will be hitting the Web tomorrow. I'm told it will bring tears to my eyes. Keep fingers crossed. Peace out.

This made my day

While the Eurotards keep bashing me, it's nice to know there are still some people who love their iPods. Someone named "Kura" sent me a link to this poem s/he has written, called "ipod! ipod! an Ode to my iPod." See here. Much love, Kura. If you give me permission, I'll reprint your poem in full here and add it to the "Poetry Corner."

Also, to any other aspiring poets who would like their work added to Poetry Corner (Mr. H. Aiku are you listening?) please send in some fine examples. Poetry means almost as much to me as music. Let's use the power of words to make the world a more beautiful place. Peace out.

Darwin award winner of the week

Some state senator in New York wants to fine people for walking in a crosswalk while listening to an iPod. See here. Clearly just another jackass trying to ride our coattails and get a little publicity for himself. I'm speechless.

Even more thoughts on "Thoughts on Music"

There's one more thing I want to set straight. I hope you'll pay attention because this is an important concept. When you buy a record or a CD or a digital download, you are not buying that music. You don't own Abbey Road just because you bought a copy of that recording in some format. All you've bought is a physical device that plays that music until the container wears out or breaks. Some of the DRM rhetoric is akin to people buying a vinyl record, playing it for a while, and then when it wears out, going back to the record label and saying, "Hey, I already own this music, so gimme another record to replace this one that wore out. Why should I have to buy it twice?"

Either that or it's akin to people saying, "I already bought this record on vinyl and it will only play on my turntable and not on my CD player. I mean I've tried putting it in the CD player and it's not even the right size! How can you sell me a piece of music that locks me in to one kind of player? And forget about putting it on my Zune! I tried that too and there's not even a slot where you can load the vinyl record in."

Get this straight because it's an important point. You're not getting a perpetual license for any and all playback mechanisms when you buy a record or a CD or when you download a song. You never were. Records didn't play in cassette players didn't play in 8-track players didn't play in CD players. Okay? And another thing: Music is cheap. You can buy a copy of Abbey Road for $9.99 on Amazon. How do you argue that this is not an amazing bargain?

Yes it would be nice if you could buy a song on iTunes and have it play anywhere. But you don't have any constitutional right to this. Look it up. I did. There's nothing in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence about digital downloads being transferable from one machine to another. There's no law against making iTunes songs play only on an iPod. You can go all the way back to ancient Rome, to the Magnum Carta, and you'll see -- nothing there either.

More thoughts on "Thoughts on Music"

One claim that really irks me is this claim that people are forced to use DRM. I really resent this. Nobody is forced into DRM. Simple reason: You can always go buy the CD. They sell them online. Place called Amazon. Have you heard of it? And it's almost always cheaper to do it this way. Has this not occurred to you? Jesus. Wake up, people.

But even if there were no CDs, nobody would be locked in to iTunes. Friends, you know not whereof you speak. I bow to the Buddha inside you, but if you don't like the iTunes business model, don't buy your songs on iTunes. It's as simple as that. Nobody is holding a gun to your head. I'm amazed by the level of hysteria and outrage over this. Folks, it's just music. It's not like I'm Harry Lime hoarding penicillin and little babies are dying. Nobody needs music. Okay? Yes, we love music. Music is great. But you can simply decide not to buy it, and you'll manage to survive. You're not gonna die if you can't buy the new Paris Hilton album.

If you really want to devote your outrage and anger toward a worthy cause, go stop the war in Iraq. Or Iran getting nukes. Or the genocide in Darfur. Or AIDS in Africa. Or poverty everywhere. I mean, look, in the list of real problems in this world, DRM ain't even on the top 10. But for some reason it's the one thing that really gets spoiled, middle-class, bourgeois white people in the United States and Europe -- people like Richard Stallman -- worked up into a lather. They think this is just the biggest evil in the world. I hate to say this but if you are one of these people, your outrage only demonstrates what a narrow, selfish little person you are and what a tiny, sheltered life you lead.

To put it another way: If DRM is the worst thing you have to deal with in your day-to-day life -- if your biggest problem is that you can't make your iTunes songs play on a Zune -- then you should take a minute to thank God for giving you such a wonderful life. And you should immediately get on a plane to some part of the world and do something good for another human being.

Or consider this: Instead of spending a few hundred bucks on a frivolous piece of electronic gear only to have that device cause you years of outrage and anger, forgo the music player and send your money someplace where it could feed a kid for a year. Honestly. Shame on you.

Thoughts on "Thoughts on Music"

I know what you're wondering. Jobso, what did you really want to say? What did this letter look like before your PR flacks polished out all the good bits? Well, for one thing, the title wasn't "Thoughts on Music." But the PR folks felt that "Don't blame me" and "Frig off" didn't have the right poetry or whatever. But just for the sake of posterity, because I know there are people who hang on my every word and will study them for generations after I'm gone, here's one of my rough drafts:

Namaste. I honor the Buddha inside you. I come to you today with a message of hope and peace, a message that charts a new path which I believe will restore a sense of childlike wonder to your lives.

DRM sucks. You know it. I know it. But the record companies are assholes. Somehow it's been twisted around to make it seem like we're using DRM to protect our monopoly in music players. Nothing could be further from the truth. Friends, let me remind you of something: We are the good guys in all of this. Okay? We're the ones with the cool ads with attractive ethnic-type people of color dancing in suggestive ways. We are all about diversity and freedom and using people of color to help sell expensive electronics to white people. We are totally progressive and gay friendly and multicultural and caring about the environment. Just look at our board of directors and our management team and you'll see what we mean by diversity.

We're not into DRM. We're into music. I get up every morning and ask myself, How can I make the world a better place? That's what drives me. Not money. I've already got way too much money. Heck, I could wipe my butt with hundred dollar bills and not care. I've actually done that. The butt thing, I mean. Was totally liberating.

But dealing with these guys in the music business is like dealing wth the Corleone family. I blogged recently about how much I hate having to breathe the same air as they do. Honestly, I get hives after our meetings. See here. It's the worst part of my job besides having to endure Jerry York's dog breath. Basically they are total morons. I've never been happy with our DRM arrangement with the labels. Bad as it is, it's the best we could get out of them. And you can't believe how much work we had to do just to get even this much. These people are just total boneheads.

The fact is the labels will only change if they start to get hurt financially. Which is why I think, frankly, that the best thing people could do would be to stop buying music on iTunes altogether. I know, it sounds radical. But that would show the record companies. I'll tell you a little secret. I never buy music from iTunes. Not because of DRM. But simply because it sounds like shit. The format we use compresses the data and the music sounds awful. CDs are bad enough, compared to vinyl. But they're a hell of a lot better sounding than the stuff we sell on iTunes. See my recent post on this subject.

The worst thing about DRM is that it doesn't work. There's always some jagoff (and usually he's from Norway or some random place like that) who will devote his entire miserable non-life to trying to crack a DRM scheme. And then these same jagoffs in Scandinavia will start making noise about how we are the ones breaking the law -- not the ones who illegaly hack into our software. Let me digress for a moment to say that I hate Norway and we have totally declared war on them. Tell me this. Why is it that all these freako hacker type guys always come from Scandinavia? Jesus. Is it something in the water? This DVD Jon guy just really bugs the crap out of me. And it's not just the Scandinavians. Now the rest of Europe is jumping in too. I think there's a reason why Europe has fallen behind the United States economically, and these guys represent the worst of it. Protectionism, over-regulation, gimme-gimme-gimme. They can pass all the laws they want. All it will accomplish is they will end up not getting any music. Fine by me.

But to those of you who get really outraged and angry at our iTunes service, ask yourself this: If our service sucks so much, why are so many people using it? Why are these Linux freaks forming a petition to beg us to port iTunes to their crappy operating system? Is it not obvious that iTunes must be doing something right if so many people are using it? Is this not something that a child running a lemonade stand would comprehend? I mean, it's not like we're selling all those songs only to retarded people who don't understand the terms of the purchase.

And let's be honest about something else. Underneath all the sanctimonious crap about how evil DRM is, at the end of the day what these agitating socialist fuckwits really want is just to be able to get music for free. It's like the kids in college who lobby for making hemp legal and they say it's because hemp makes such great clothing and strong rope. Riiiight. Just a coincidence that it's always the stoners who are lobbying for this. No, come on. Let's be honest. What this really is all about is that certain noisy scumbags are trying to decriminalize stealing. They want to make it legal to steal, as long as what's being stolen is music. What comes next? Movies, probably. Then books. Then software. Who knows where it ends.

Now, I don't like DRM. I think it's stupid and I'd be glad to drop it because I know we'd sell way more songs if we didn't have to use it, and since I'm not the copyright holder I don't really care what happens to the musicians who made the music. I'm a middleman. That's it. I'm like the guy who runs the record store down the block from you. If the record labels want to ship their records in cement blocks dipped in smallpox, what do I care? As long as the kids want to buy them.

Musicians and record labels can do whatever they want with their music. If they want to make it a shitty purchasing experience and piss people off, so be it. Ultimately the only recourse you customers have, really, is to not buy their music. But that's a very huge and powerful form of recourse. I urge you to use this power. Boycott our store until the labels cave in. Won't take long, I promise.

Finally, I know there's been a lot of speculation about the Beatles lately. I'm happy to report that you'll see the entire Beatles catalog on iTunes in the near future. And there's a special extra too. Can't get into it right now. But Paul was just here in my office and we were listening to the white album (on vinyl, of course) and going over our plans and we both agreed, this is mind-blowing stuff. Like game over kind of stuff. Like they're going to redesign cities to accommodate it.

That's all I can say now. Frig the record labels. Frig Norway. Remember who the good guys are. It's us. Namaste. Peace out. Much love.

Man the press is all over this Apple deal

Bill Gates, master of public relations

Here's a guy who knows how to burnish his image. Microsoft is having some Russian school principal tossed in jail -- he might get sent to the gulag archipelago in Siberia with Solzhenitsyn and Baryshnikov and Bobby Fischer -- because the school bought PCs that had illegal copies of Microsoft software on them. See here. So Mikhail Gorbachev (who I totally know and who totally loves our new MacBook Pro, by the way) posts some open letter asking Mr. Bill to intervene. Says the principal didn't pirate the software, he just bought machines and didn't know the software wasn't legal. Even Putin, who believe me sits at the other side of the devil from Gates, says the poor principal should be let off the hook. So what does Microsoft say? Frig him. Money quote from Microsoft: "We are sure the Russian courts will make a fair decision. We do respect the Russian government's position on the importance of protecting intellectual property rights."

And you guys at Microsoft still wonder why the entire world hates you? Man oh man. You've got more money than God and yet you're gonna toss some poor broke-ass Russian in prison? Evil.

I've already instructed my guys to get on this like a hobo on a ham sandwich. We're going to go in and remove all the Windows machines and give the Russkis an entire school full of Macs, gratis (which means "free" in Russian.) Our Central Asia regional director, Yuri Yobtvoyumat, is taking the lead on this.

Thanks, Mr. Bill, for yet another boneheaded move. You guys make it too easy, really.

It's "Ubuntu," not "Ubantu," my bad

And hey this stuff is pretty nice. It's a lot like our interface, only brownish orange. Which is a really super attractive color. Very easy on the eyes. How long until Stallman tries to frig it up? Oh wait, he already has. Meanwhile, would someone please go to the Ubuntu page on Wikipedia and make sure it explains that these guys stole our GUI design ideas?

This week's prank du jour

For those of you who don't speak Italian, this means "prank with ice cream on it," which is not meant to be taken literally but rather is meant to be understood metaphorically, ie it is one of those expressions that means something different than its literal meaning, or as literature professors would say, it's an "anachronism." (How do I know this stuff? Like Tony Soprano, I did a semester and a half of college.) But on to this week's assignment. One thing that has always really irked me is the way people have rewritten history to make it seem as if Apple copied the idea for a graphical user interface from Xerox PARC. Just go to Wikipedia and you'll see these false claims still being made on the pages for Xerox PARC and the graphical user interface. I get the sense that they know their claims are false, since on the GUI page they even admit that "this article or section needs a complete rewrite."

I'll say it does. The page completely overlooks the fact that I designed the first GUI when I was in high school, and further refined it during my time at Reed College in Oregon. All on paper, of course, but still -- the ideas were there, and this was long before PARC came up with their thing. What really irks me is that I brought my ideas to PARC on paper when I was just a kid, and they kept the drawings, told me they'd get back to me, and then never did. When I called they said, Oh, well, it's kind of interesting but not for us. Next thing I know PARC comes out with the exact friggin thing. And what was I gonna do? Sue? I was just a kid. Besides I didn't really care as long as the ideas got out into the world, because as you know I am all about the creativity and don't care at all about money. I would never have complained except that years later the Xerox guys rewrote history and claimed that I copied from them.

So please. The GUI article needs a rewrite. The PARC article could use a few edits. Let's set the record straight. And heck, if you want to include the stuff about PARC's founders being Satanists, and how the original PARC logo included a pentagram, be my guest. Send links to your handiwork and I'll publicize them.

Free fake copy of Leopard in beta to whoever does the best job and gets away with it.

Linux petitioners say thanks

So we're getting loads of very angry email and comments from Linux lovers who want to rant about how much OS X sucks and how something called "Ubantu" (is that a real name?) is so much better. Riiiight. Well I must say I'm very impressed by the sophisticated sense of humor among these Linux people. Kind of reminds me of the Yelptards. Wish there were some way we could pit these two incredibly humorless communities against one another. Ideas?

UPDATE: The Linux freaks are blocking links from FSJ with a somewhat unpleasant photograph of Richard Stallman. And they've erased all of our names. Talk about ingrates. If you're really determined to keep adding names, you'll have to go there on your own. Oh well. We had our fun. Next!

The iTunes-on-Linux petition

Thanks to everyone who signed the iTunes-on-Linux petition. I think we've managed to make our voices heard. In case you get bored and want to keep doing this, I've put a new item under LINKS (in sidebar at right) so it's easy to find. Just click on the link and fire away. Feeling bored? Make up a few good names and sign up. There's no limit, apparently. Let us know what you've come up with. Peace out.

UPDATE: The Linux freaks are blocking links from FSJ with a somewhat unpleasant photograph of Richard Stallman. And they've erased all of our names. Talk about ingrates. If you're really determined to keep adding names, you'll have to go there on your own. Oh well. We had our fun. Next!

So Yoko calls

And she's acting all Zen and saying she's been praying for my soul and she's so glad that my Apple and "the real Apple," as she calls it, have been able to make peace. "I know this is what John would have wanted," she says. "He was all about peace. And making peace. Not war. But peace. Yes. That was John's way. And so it is mine as well." And I'm sorry but I've just had to swallow way too much of this crazy bitch's bullshit (like this), so I was just like, "You know, if you're so into peace, then why have you a-holes been fighting me for twenty-five friggin years over the word apple? It's a friggin word. You don't own it. Jesus. Honestly. And now you're fighting me over the iTunes downloads. For Christ's sake! It's a distribution deal." She starts telling me she doesn't like my tone, and I'm just like, "Well, I'm sure you don't like my tone, but I'm also sure that you do like money. Right? I mean, you sell a line of friggin John Lennon baby clothes and pacifiers. You think I believe for one second you're not gonna agree to sell downloads of the catalog? I've got Paul and Ringo and George's family already lined up, and they're gonna out-vote you." She says they can't outvote her, all decisions have to be unanimous. At that point I described to her a few ways in which the other three could, um, eliminate the obstacle that stood between them and like a billion dollars in new revenue. She got the hint.

Bottom line: You're gonna see Beatles downloads in the not-too-distant future. And Yoko will be all smiles and saying how great it is. Mark my words.

Torvalds: I want to do something else for a living Satan: Sorry, a deal is a deal

My OS team has a bunch of open-source BSD freaks on it. Those guys follow all these underground hacker message boards and they say Linus Torvalds is tearing out his hair these days. Apparently he just realized that he's going to have to spend the rest of his life sitting in his basement cranking out little bits of code for the Linux kernel and dealing with angry weenies from the Free Software Foundation, people he can't stand in the first place. Docs have doubled his Prozac but he still just mopes around going "Why did I do this? Why? Why? Oh, I should have gone to law school. Or med school. I should have been a radical extremist or something. Instead I'm just another drone for IBM. Or is it Novell? Or Red Hat? Ay, dios mio! How did this happen?"

Reason #1,352 for avoiding Linux

Because the nuts in the "community" can do what they're doing to Novell -- threatening, somehow, to revoke Novell's license to distribute Linux. Well, Novell, that's what you get for building your business around a tinker toy OS made by the Dungeons and Dragons crowd. Richard Stallman and the rest of the Bad Smell Brigade will crawl out of their basements and try to ruin your day. And why not? They've got nothing better to do. I mean it's not like they've got jobs or anything.

IBMer feared lost in Second Life

Just heard this from Jon Ive. Apparently renowned IBM computer scientist and tech "visionary" Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger has been missing since Saturday. Told his wife he was going upstairs to his office to play with Second Life -- and never came out. Irving has been going around raving about this new virtual world, and now it looks like Second Life just got the better of him. Linden Lab has sent in a search team. Someone claims they saw someone who looks like Irving's avatar going into some seedy Second Life neighborhood on Sunday night. No word yet but everyone is hoping for the best. Sergey Brin has a team of engineers scanning Google Earth images. IBM is putting out a statement thanking everyone for their help and prayers and urging people not to give up hope. Statement has to go through channels in Irving's organization and then get vetted by IBM's corp comm staff before a final run-through by Jon Iwata and then a quick zip through the executive management committee. Should have something out by the end of this week or early next, is what we're hearing. Man, poor Irving. Weird thing is I just got email from him back in December telling me all about IBM's strategy around open-source software. Great guy. Hope he's okay in there.

Those Linux petitioners

Just checked the Linux petition to see if you sick bastards were just kidding about posting fake names there. And you weren't. So far I see the following: Olga Fukyercelf, Ivanna Humpadog, Ima McHoe, Balzac T. Bagger, Peekup Andropov and Jack Meoff. Folks, keep it going. Just shows what a pack of bored tech nerds can do when they set their minds to it! (Thanks also to those who managed to send love to FSJ in the comments. Nicely done.)

UPDATE: Pierre Hauweelee, Leigh Frigtard, Ajay Matharchod, Hugh J. Boner, Sir Humps A Lot, Watson Asfour, Mikeydell Satwat, Katya Balzoff, Miles Long, Bee J. Queen have all now registered too. Thanks folks for supporting the Linux community.

UPDATE #2: Lee Kyo Reem (an Amiga user), Jack Mehoff, Michael Dell and Ben Dover have all now joined as well.

Speaking of Linux

Much love to the commenter who sent in a link to this petition from Linux freaks demanding that we make iTunes available on Linux. And they've got a whopping 599 signatures. Okay, weirdos! We'll get right on it. Jesus. You know, if you want to go run some obscure operating system that nobody else uses, fine. But don't think the whole world owes you free applications too. Go make your own music store, losers. Oh, but no, it's much easier to just sign petitions. You and the friggin Norwegians. Next they'll be joining up with the San Francisco Gay Longhairs to protest outside our gates.

Friends, Romans, countrymen (as Billy Joel once said): I urge you to mess with these Free Software freaks by going to their petition and adding as many names as you can -- names like Olga Fukyercelf, Dick Hertz, Ima Slut, Ivana Reemyu, I.P. Daley. You get the idea. Let's do this thing. Let's make this freako petition a wild success. After you've added your names, send in links so we can see your handiwork.

What prank comes next? I'm thinking an assault on the Wikipedia pages of various non-Apple computer makers. More on that later in the week. And if you have some ideas on the kind of things we should say about Dell, Gateway, Sony, et al, please send them in.

A solution for Michael Dell

Well old Mike is working very hard to seem like he's not scared shitless. Here his company is going down in flames and he's spending the weekend at a Renaissance Faire. Trying to get in good with the Linux freaks I guess. But the question is, where does Dell go next? Mikey already has tried everything when it comes to cutting costs. He's got a SWAT team that scours the globe looking for the shittiest parts at the cheapest price. Then he forces his suppliers to store their parts in warehouses in Round Rock, so that they carry the inventory on their books. Worse yet, he makes them put the inventory in warehouses that are owned by Dell -- and he charges them friggin rent.

That's right. Not only does this cheapskate squeeze his suppliers to the bone on price. And not only does he make them hold his inventory for him. But he also makes them pay him friggin rent. Small price to pay, I suppose, for the great honor and privilege of being able to sell parts to the great Michael Dell and his wondrous crap machine.

Gotta hand it to Mike, the guy knows how to squeeze a penny. Makes Wal-Mart look like goddamn Santa Claus. Half of Dell's managers are former Wal-Mart dweebs who were hired to bring Wal-Mart's brand of cheapo supplier-squeezing tactics to the world of computers. The other half are former management consultants from Bain. You know, those super innovative, creative MBA types. Riiight. No wonder they're doing so well.

So what's the way out for Dell now? Once you've won the race to the bottom, what happens when the runners-up finally get there too? How much lower can you go? Well, he could take a page from our playbook and learn how to strike some deals and find young labor on the Asian market. Win-win for both sides. We get low-cost machines. They get fifteen cents an hour.

Schadenfreude, Part II

Then we looked at this one from October 1997 in which Michael Dell famously said that if he were running Apple, he'd "shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." I don't want to rub this in (well okay yes I do) but take a look at Mikey's market cap these days and then look at mine.

Schadenfreude

So Peter Oppenheimer and I were going over some financials today after I got in from my Ultimate Frisbee game (we won, yay) and we got to talking about how great the company is doing and all, and then, just for kicks, we got out our "favorite stories of all time" file and read a few. Like this one from October 2000, entitled, "Apple R.I.P." And yes, the author is the same Michael S. Malone who recently
wrote a piece about me called "iGenius" for the op-ed page of the Journal, in which he said how brilliant I am and then boasted, yet again, about how we grew up in the same neighborhood and went to the same school.

Turns out this guy isn't even a real lawyer

Meet Vivek Bhenchod. He's the Apple assistant general counsel who told me I had to stop blogging. Claimed he was an EE from IIT and had a law degree from Stanford. Turns out he was neither. In fact he's not even Indian. He's friggin Mexican. Grew up in East Palo Alto. I would never have found out except I got so pissed on the blogging thing that I had our ex-Mossad guys look into him. Now they're all laughing at me, telling me I'm an idiot for hiring him. Oppenheimer is like, Um, Steve, you think maybe the fact that he wears a loincloth instead of a suit might have been a little hint? But for my part the loincloth was the main reason to hire him. Way I see it, if you're gonna go around saying that you think different, well, you should back that up. How many companies do you know that have lawyers who wear nothing but a loincloth? Seemed cool to me. That and the fact that he was willing to work for twelve bucks an hour. Good deal for an assistant general counsel -- maybe too good, but I figured, WTF, the dude's Indian, so maybe he doesn't know better. And the loincloth stuff did throw people off balance. It was a hoot having him around, bringing him into meetings, watching people's mouths fall open. Especially the ladies. Made people very uncomfortable. You should have seen the stiffs at Cisco when we sent old Viv in to negotiate the iPhone stuff. Anyway, Vivek (real name: Carlos) is gone now. Too bad. I'm gonna miss his scrawny little ass.

The lawyers are freaking out

They're like, Jobso, dude, what are you thinking? You're blogging again? We told you, you can't be out there making fun of the SEC lawyers and U.S. attorneys at the same time they're trying to bring a case against you. I'm like, You know what? It's PR. It's marketing. It's the battle for public opinion. Everybody else who gets in trouble like this, like Martha and Quattrone, first thing they do is clam up. And all it does is make things worse. It makes them look guilty. And I'm not guilty. So I'm not going to apologize. And I'm not gonna shut up. Honestly. I'm blogging, and they can eat my friggin shorts. They think they're gonna push me around? I'm friggin Steve Jobs! I invented the friggin iPod. Have you heard of it? So look, SEC dudes and US attorneys and Eliot Spitzer and whoever else. Here's my deal. You want to rumble? You want to make your bones by taking down a celebrity CEO? Bring the noise, frigtards. I'll give you a war like you've never seen.

I told the Apple lawyers this. Look, I know you went to law school. I know you understand the law. We hope. But you don't understand marketing. You don't understand public image. That's my specialty. I'm the greatest friggin show on earth. Trust me on this one. I know what I'm doing.

Gates: Apple keeps stealing all our best ideas

I love it when Bill gets all defensive and pissed off in interviews, like when someone tweaks him a little bit and he just turns into this absolute pissy little bitch. Like here in this interview with Newsweek where he gets all testy because Levy, like everyone else, is dumping on Vista. But the real howler is when Bill says that Vista isn't a cheap knock-off of our Apple OS X, that in fact Apple stole its ideas from Microsoft. Riiight. We saw those super-cool early Vista ideas, liked them so much we raced into our time machine and went back in time and used Bill's ideas to build the NeXT operating system in the 1980s. Then we used those same ideas again when we made OS X in the 1990s and released it in 2001. Just like in "Back to the Future." And now in 2007 Microsoft is finally arriving with the real goods because, uh, they spent the past twenty years getting the job done right. And they don't have a time machine. Or whatever. My favorite Gates quote:

If you just want to say, "Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along," that's fine.

Um, actually, you know what, Bill? I like the sound of that. Or you could say, "Steve Jobs invented the world, and the rest of us just live in it." That'd be swell too. Great. Glad that's settled. You friggin thief.

PS if you're wondering about that wire going into his ear? It's where he gets his instructions from Satan.

Vista? We wouldn't recommend it.

So Gates just called all in a rage. He'd heard about us telling iTunes users not to upgrade to Vista just yet because if they do they may lose all their songs and blow up their house or whatever. He's like, Steve, you know that's utter bullshit. There's no danger at all and you're just making this all up. Jesus!

And I'm like, Dude, it's not bullshit, it's very real, there are definitely problems making iTunes work with Vista, and I should know, because our guys put them there. And you should have seen what we were originally gonna do -- was gonna be a popup window that says, Sorry your data got wiped out, loser. Guess you shoulda bought a Mac.

He sat there sputtering and ranting on and on about how he was gonna sue me or fight me or something, and I'm like, Yeah yeah, whatever, look, don't you have to fly over to Freedonia and give out some vaccines or something?

God it feels sooooo good to do to Mr. Bill what he's been doing to us and everyone else all these years. I love having a monopoly.

And as for this commenter who says we're dragging our feet trying to work out the problems, you know, that's just not true. We are really working hard on this. It's a very big priority. Yep. Making iTunes work really well with Vista is really, really super important to us. I mean it.

I need a patron. Or a sponsor. Or something.

Friends, I am overwhelmed by the letters and comments. And articles like this one by Rich Karlgaard at Forbes (may Allah send him one hundred virgins) who says Fake Steve is "the best satire ever to come out of Silicon Valley." Even Nick Denton at Valleywag had kind things to say. Well, thank you so much. I can't tell you how much fun it is to write this blog. It is about the most fun thing in my life, next to sweat lodge yoga and mango smoothies. But it's tough to be out here on my own, blowin' in the wind as Mr Bob Dylan would say.

Basically, the gist is this. I'm clueless about money. (Hence the backdating mess.) I don't have anyone to go sell banner ads. So I need a sponsor. Or a patron. Someone to protect me and keep me warm at night. Like hey, Mr. Karlgaard, or Mr. Denton, or you guys at Wired -- how about picking up this blog and making a go of it? I'm a hard worker, speak many languages, and I'm expert at tai chi and various forms of yoga.

Seriously, my brothers and sisters. The audience is here. So let's play ball. Just to your right, under Links, is a button you can press to email me. Send in your ideas. Also, dear readers, do FSJ a favor and send email to these big rich publisher dudes and tell them to get on the FSJ bandwagon. Or any Apple-related companies that want to have their name associated with this, as a sponsor. Let's do this thing.

Peace out.