Right back atcha, NBC

Oh no we didn't? Oh yes we did. NBC wants to go bragging about how they're not going to renew their contract with us? So we fire back. No NBC shows for sale on iTunes this fall. See here. These guys want to play hardball? Just fine. We loves to rumble. Call Clemenza, because we're going to the mattresses. Smack down time, motherzucker. (Photo by Dale Taint for Women's Wear Daily.)

Truly, we rock

So we opened in Glasgow last Saturday with lots of rock concert fanfare and a queue that started forming at midnight Friday. Then on Tuesday we followed up with a free concert by The Dykeenies, which drew a big crowd of young kids. As our correspondent Hugh from GlasMUG reports: "Most of the crowd were 14-18 iPod gen kids, who were shopping like mad in the store before the gig." Music to my ears, Hugh. We also gave out free 10-song iTunes downloads and made it look like a backstage pass. (Photo below.)


Now look. I know we've got Apple faithful who go back thirty years with us and who kind of resent the fact that we're changing and drawing younger kids. You can't believe how often I get email from geezers bitching about how they went into an Apple store and it was full of kids friggin around with their MySpace pages and harshing the vibe and these noobs don't even know who Burrell Smith and Andy Hertzfeld were, they don't know the history of the company and how Woz designed this super elegant circuit for the Apple II.

Or they start up these petitions to save their precious Apple key which isn't there anymore on the new Apple keyboards, to which all I can say is, once again, do you guys really have so little going on in your lives that you can get this worked up over a friggin computer keyboard? There's a war in Iraq, AIDS in Africa, genocide in Darfur, born-again Christians taking over our government and erasing our liberties -- and the big thing in your life, the thing that makes you really angry, is a tiny change on a computer keyboard? Seriously? Really? You can't believe how many emails I've received about this. Grown men and women. Mostly men. Writing me long emails explaining why this tiny symbol on a computer key is such an integral part of their life and vital to their sense of well-being. Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick. You know what? Go buy a Dell. What's that? Yeah, I didn't think so. So shut up.

Look. Geezers, we love you. We do. But you've got to stop being so constipated. The world changes. We're changing with it. We need you to move along with us and adapt too. Bokay? And we need to bring in loads of new customers and especially we need to bring in this new generation of young kids. Otherwise we're just stuck selling to you guys and let's face it, you're going to start dying off soon. Or at the very least you are going to retire and start living on fixed income and spending most of your money on Depends and medications, which will leave you very little disposable income for buying our beautiful machines. So building our company around you is simply not a wise move, demographically speaking.

With the young kids the hook we've got into them is the iTunes store and the iPod. Pretty obvious strategy really. With kids the hook is always music. That's why the whole iPod thing was such a brilliant maneuver. Because it brought us across the generational divide. The iPods get the kids into the store. Once inside they can look at those beautiful sleek expensive iMacs and lust after them. Remember, geezers, when you were in high school and college and the biggest purchases in your life involved vinyl LPs and stereo gear? Remember when you would spend hours in record shops? Remember how much you cared about some new album? Remember standing in the hi-fi shop, lusting after the Linn LP12 turntable or the Quad speakers and telling yourself if you ever got some money you were going to buy a set-up like that? Same today for these kids. Our stuff is what they aspire to own. So we bring them in with free rock concerts and we prime the pump with 10 free iTunes downloads to get them using our system. They start out with an iPod and then they save their pennies and buy a Mac Mini or an iMac. Or an iPhone. We're their record store, and their hi-fi store, and their TV store, and their phone store.

The biggest things in a teenager's life -- other than cars and dope -- they can get from us. Not a bad business to be in. Yeah, we don't get the enterprise market. We don't get to sell to IT departments who beat us up on price and squeeze our margins to zip and choose their servers based on which company (HP, Sun, IBM, Dell) is giving away the most freebies this week to win business. Boo hoo. We'll deal with it.

(Photos by Kath, the treasurer and foreign minister of GlasMug; sent to us by Hugh.)

Happy Friday

Here's a video you might enjoy. It's a band called The Dykeenies from Scotland. They're three young brothers and their two pals. They played a gig at our Glasgow store earlier in the week and drew a massive crowd. (More on that in the next post.) They're from a town known as Cumbernauld (aka "What's it called") near Glasgow and supposedly they are going to be the next U2. Or Oasis. For their sake I hope it's U2.

For those of you who want to run Vista on your Mac

Check out this wonderful advertisement. Says it all, really.

Our official position on this unlocking craze

A dude at CNET suggests it was our plan all along to let people hack and unlock the iPhone. See here. His premise on the unlocking phenomenon is that while we stand to lose our cut of AT&T license fees if people use unlocked phones, in the long run we stand to gain more by selling more hardware units. It's no secret that I began my career as a phone system hacker and that I don't think much of the "orifices" who run carriers. CNET man also suggests that we haven't been too upset about the unlocking: "Isn't it ironic that AT&T lawyers went knocking on the doors of the hackers while Apple lawyers sipped tea at home?"

So I know what you're wondering. Is it true? Do we secretly want people to unlock our phone? Did we even maybe make it kind of easy for people to do this? Let me give you our official response: Apple has no comment on this matter.

Caveat hacker: We're boobytrapping some iPhones

Not going to tell you which units have the bomb in them. But I wouldn't go opening any of these babies up if I were you. If you want to see what happens, check out this story. Trust me, it's not pleasant. (Photo by Honza Buzerant, Prague Business Daily.)

The content bastards think they've got us by the nuts

See here. NBC Universal is pulling out on iTunes. Jeff Zucker (photo) is pissed because I told him he looks like Homer Simpson in a suit. But come on. He does. So all this stuff about how the negotiations have been friendly? Yeah. Right. Zucker went over a table at me and had to be pulled off. Anyway. Some of the other video content guys are going to pull the same bullshit too, giving notice of a pull-out. They think this is going to scare the shit out of us and we'll come back to the table and let them set their own prices and mess with our store and grab a bigger cut for themselvs. Their big argument is that we need video content to sell our video iPods. So they figure they've got us by the short hairs. Which they kind of do, I suppose. As Zucker said, "What are you going to do? Go make your own TV shows? Film your own movies? I don't think so, asshole."

Then again, they need us. If they walk, they're giving up 80% of the distribution channel. So at this point it's kind of a game of chicken. My feeling is we should just stay Zen, just keep handing them blank pieces of paper and sticking to our position and not yielding. In public, to the press, we'll try to seem neutral and nice and polite. We'll paint ourselves as the friend of the consumer, and we'll paint the content guys as the big bad guys who've been ripping people off for decades (consumers and artists alike). We'll say (not publicly) that what this is really about is that the content guys are looking for new ways to rip people off and that they will do so, unless we, Apple, put a stop to it on behalf of consumers everywhere.

Basically what it comes down to is which side will customers believe? Which company do customers trust? Which company do they like best? As I told Zucker, if he and the other movie studios and TV networks want to put their brand reputation up against ours, I'm happy to do that. Fear not, Apple faithful. I like our chances.

(Photo by Nigel Helmetdale, courtesy of Daily Mail. .)

Once, again, freetards -- this is an outrage

Freetards, what part of "Don't exploit women" do you not understand? Folks, I know it's not pleasant to have to look at this stuff or even to know that it exists in the world. But we have to look at this. And we have to condemn it. Because this has to stop. For the children. You know -- the ones who don't have maps. Or something. Shame on you, Mozilla. Shame, shame, shame. Nice browser, though. I'll give you that.
(Photo by Richard M. Stainman, courtesy of Revolutionary Worker.)

Redmond in serious denial

Man they are scrambling and back-pedaling and spinning themselves into a tizzy up there in Redmond over the Vista fiasco. Now the new line of rhetoric is that Service Pack 1, released in 2008, will turn things around and spark huge demand. The wow is then, I guess. See the CNET story here. I wonder how many of Microsoft's current employees were there in the late 1980s. Not many, probably. So I guess when they walk around campus and hear that weird disembodied voice chanting, "OS/2 ... OS/2 ... OS/2 ..." they just don't know what it means at all.

Apple bringing peace to Iraq

One child at a time. See here.

Shame on you, Michael Dell

I know this photo isn't brand new. But repetition is the key to advertising. Repeat after me. Repetition is the key to advertising. Repetition ... you get the idea. As far as I'm concerned we can't hammer this home enough. Pretty simple message. Our box looks way nicer. And it's got a real operating system. And the price is about the same. Bokay? What is not to love? And Michael Dell, how can you sleep at night after inflicting stuff like this on the world?

(Photos: iMac by Dale Merkin for Apple; Dell POS-420 by Laurent Chingado, Austin Chronicle.)

UPDATE: First version of this said our box "doesn't run Windows." Commentards are having a field day with this since, yes, our box can run Windows. Jesus. Fixed it anyway. Okay, ladies?

Oh please oh please oh please

There's bad talk going around town that papa had three outside children and another wife -- and that Microsoft is going to buy RIM. And that ain't right. New company name? Anyone? Bueller? MicroRIM? RIMsoft? Dear Buddha I hope this deal happens. If there's any way to make RIM an even worse competitor for us it would be for them to put Windows Mobile on their machines. Ye gods! I can't believe our good luck. I'm going to run down the hall to the Tassajara meditation room and try to will the merger into reality. There's nothing like seeing two old-guard companies, scared by a changing market and chased by sexier, younger rivals, desperately try to get back into the spotlight by hooking up. Like when Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen started dating. "Strange Love," I believe they called it. So would this be.


Another thing. Let me make a prediction. If this deal does happen, let me tell you how the press will play it. They'll make a big deal about how the two biggest strongest players are hooking up to kill Apple. Or how Apple now faces this huge formidable rival. Let me just point this out. When companies start merging in order to compete with you -- and let's be honest, that's what this would be about -- it means you've already won.

(Photo credits: Steve Ballmer by Charles Milf, Channel 9 News Service; Jim Balsillie by Duncan Choad, Toronto Star.)

Dude, I've been Simpsonized

Much love to Dear Reader Paul who created this wonderful Homeric likeness of me, using this brilliant tool. Check it out. On, like, Scott McNealy. Or Jonathan Schwartz. Or the Beastmaster or the Monkey Boy. Or the whole gang. Free fake iPhone to the best entry.

Handicapable people, I am truly sorry

So we're being sued because our stores are difficult to navigate if you're in a wheelchair. See here. Two gals who had difficult experiences in our store are suing us. I must say, my first reaction when I heard about this suit was probably the same one most Apple faithful have: Fuck 'em. Like you, I figured this was probably just another shakedown. These days now that we're popular and making loads of money everybody is crawling out of the woodwork to shake us down for a few bucks. I figured one or both of these gals who are suing us is probably related to the lawyer bringing the suit, and they all sat around one night cooking up some idea and then sent the two gals into the store and made sure they couldn't reach a piece of software or whatever.

But you know what? I looked into this. I went and viewed the security tapes from the One Stockton Street store. The women have a legitimate beef. Our store really is almost impossible to navigate if you're in a wheelchair. The counters are too high. The software is up on shelves. The cash registers are up on counters instead of being down on a low stool or the floor. And it's not just this one store in San Francisco. Many of our big stores have the same issues. And it's not just people in wheelchairs who are having trouble. People who are -- I'm not sure what the politically correct term is now -- but people who are, let's say, extremely small in stature, will experience many of these same issues.

I've instructed our lawyers to pay these women whatever amount they want. We'll sue the architects who designed the building to recover our costs. From the very beginning of our company our goal has been to bring computing to everyone, to make the power of computers accessible to as many people as possible. It's why we did this. It's what we're all about. I had no idea these stores were so inaccessible. I guess we focused so much on making them beautiful and cool that we forgot to make them practical. I am deeply, deeply ashamed of our company right now.

To anyone else who feels they've had a bad experience, for whatever reason, please hire a lawyer and file a complaint and we will pay you whatever amount you choose, in a prompt and professional manner, without challenging or questioning your claims.

Another right-wing hatchet job

See a story called "Worm in the Apple" here. Some dude at Forbes picks up on a customer satisfaction survey that shows us slipping a few points since last year and goes running around like Chicken Little saying the sky is falling. Apple faithful, look. We've got a lot of noobs coming into the fold, and they need some extra handholding. Bokay? Happens when you're growing three times faster than the industry. And, yeah, iPhone is also creating some demand for support and it's not always stuff we can control since one hundred percent of the problems are created by AT&T. Rest assured we have already come up with a plan to address this -- a massive new ad campaign called "Support" which will depict our Apple geniuses and Apple phone support weenies dancing around in silhouette while answering calls and dealing with frigtarded customers and generally seeming way cooler than you or anyone else ever will be. These people will look so cool, and our whole support experience will seem so fun, that you'll want your Apple device to break just so you can deal with our support infrastructure.

Then at the end we'll have one simple statement, like, "Apple's support has been rated #1 in the world." Or, "Apple offers more support and a longer warranty than any other company in the world." Are those statements true? If you mean literally true, well, no. But figuratively they are true. And the thing about tech support, in case you haven't noticed, is that it's entirely a matter of perception. And surveys. No hard data. Just opinions. By next year we'll have the highest customer sat ratings these survey dudes have ever seen. Wait and see. Because we take customer service incredibly seriously here and it is our number one priority across our company and we are committed to providing the best user experience possible. As fantastic as we are, we can always do better, and we will. (ITAR-TASS photo by Dima Yobtvoyumat.)

A stunning post from a Microsoftie

Earlier today I posted a link to a blog kept by a Microsoft coder who was grumbling about Microsoft's operating system software and singing the praises of OS X. My post is here and the MicroTard's post is here.

This set off the usual "which is better, Mac or Windows?" flame war in the comment strings. But here's the thing. We just got an anonymous comment from a guy claiming to be the MicroTard who wrote the original blog post. If so, this is one brave guy, because he dares to say what nobody in Microsoft PR or executive ranks will say: Vista has problems. The comment is so good that I am compelled to reprint it here as a blog post. (If it's not really the MicroTard, well, then we've been hoaxed. Boo friggin hoo.)

I suspect this really is the Microsoft coder writing this, and honestly, if so, it's a good sign for Microsoft. The old Microsoft was full of guys like this, guys who said what they believed and didn't give a shit what you thought and if it cost them their jobs, well, what the fuck. That, more than anything else, is what Microsoft was all about in the early days and it was the biggest reason that Microsoft succeeded. Yes, they also got a monopoly handed to them by IBM. Before you go rushing to chalk up all of Microsoft's success to dumb luck, however, keep in mind that a lot of us in the Valley, if we were being truly honest, would have to admit (maybe not publicly) that we know plenty of companies that, handed the same monopoly by IBM, would have managed to fuck it up. We know those companies because we ran them.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not some fan of the Borg. God knows I hate the Borg more than any other living human being on the planet. Even so, back in the early days there were definitely guys there that I admired, if only because they were both smart and brutally honest and yes, total bastards.

But enough of my yakkin, as Marty DiBergi once said. Check out this comment. I've edited it a bit, and put the really interesting parts in boldface.

I'm the "Microtard" who wrote the post, and although I can't stand the "My OS is bigger than *your* OS" argument, it wasn't my intention to start yet another flamewar about it.

It had nothing to do with either OS being better. The reason I listed the complaints about Vista was that I thought we (Microsoft) need to own up to Vista's weaknesses. These are things that need to be fixed. If it's to the point that I can't get my work done during the day without getting pissed off at Vistannoyances, then it needs changing.

That is, if MS employees are frustrated, I wonder what our customers are thinking.

As for OS X - I've been using it since the 10.1.3 days. It hasn't by any means been perfect, though it's getting better. There were some stupid Cocoa and Carbon inconsistencies, but they appear to be gone. It might be that I'm not using any more Carbon apps, but whatever the case, the current OS X experience is lovely.

People around here are scared to say so, but Vista, though it has a lot of potential, is currently just not *good*.

The reason I'm not especially scared is that I'd rather get fired for saying what I think than continuing to bottle it up while I know I'm not the only softie around who's experiencing this frustration.

What would you do if I sang out of tune?

We'd carry your solo catalog on iTunes, of course. Ringo's stuff just went up on iTunes, and the good folks at Ars Technica wrote about it here. Unfortunately they chose to take a few cheap shots at Ringo's abilities as a drummer and singer. Frankly I've always thought Ringo was one of the most talented members of the Beatles, after the other three. (Photo by Martin Minge for the Singapore Straits Times.)

Apple brings peace to strife-torn Park Slope

See here. In the mean streets of this rough-and-tumble Brooklyn neighborhood, a ranting despot tyrannized innocent inhabitants, spoiling their jaunts to the yoga studio and gourmet cheese shop by spewing hateful, angry invective and generally harshing their Yankee-loving vibe. No more. Long-suffering proles of Park Slope, we know you are grateful, and we accept your thanks. Return the love by picking up a few of the tasty new iPods (did I just say that out loud?) that we're introducing next week. Namaste.

A Microtard raves about OS X

Microsoft coder goes on vacation, uses OS X and comes away realizing how shitty Microsoft's products are. See here. We think this happens a lot more than anyone realizes. Much love to Dear Reader Murray for the link.

More flaming Delltops

Another Dell laptop bursts into flames. Snapshots included in the story.

Microsoft-based billboard craps out

Happened in Picadilly Circus. See the photo here. It was taken by someone called Rosso (afka siamonesti). I think that's his name, anyway. That's what it says on the flickr page. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Piccadilly Circus is not in Scotland, but I'd still better not display the photo here on my blog, because first of all I have no idea who the fuck Ross (afka siamonesti) is or even if he's a real person. And even though he's splattered this thing up onto the Internet for all the world to see and is apparently encouraging people to look at it and has even signed it up for all sorts of different flickr pools, you just know that if I use it he'll bitch that I spelled his fucking name wrong or violated his Creative Commons license or something. I pretty sure I'm allowed to link to it but if not I'm equally pretty sure that some whiny pendejo will let me know. Dudes, I know. It sucks. So take it up with the fucking Scots.

Moron sues Apple, alleging he's a moron

See here. Some douchebag took his iPhone to Mexico and got stung for high roaming charges. And this is somehow our fault. (Reuters photo by Ashwin Pudendastani.)

Nokia: The new Microsoft

It's bad enough when the Microtards copy our ideas and put them into their products. Now Nokia is doing it too. Much love to all the readers who sent in this video and this link to Engadget's take on this preposterous rip-off. Have no fear, Apple faithful. Our lawyers are already all over these crafty Finns.

Anyway, at least we're the one in front, being copied and chased. Unless you're the lead dog all you see is another dog's ass, as they say in Alaska.

(Video courtesy of Nokia videographer Tor Suksivittuun.)

Stop making fun of this young woman

Really. It's just wrong. People are sending this video all over the Internet and laughing at her and I think it's just deeply wrong. So please. Stop the hate. I beg you.

Acer and Gateway

So when I said recently that we need a good merger I really didn't mean something as boring and unimportant as this Acer-Gateway deal. See here. Honestly, this is one of those deals where it's like going to a wedding where the two ugliest losers you know are getting hitched. You're happy for them, I guess. You're glad they found each other. But you sure as fuck hope they don't have kids.

The problem with the Acer-Gateway deal is it's just not enough of a trainwreck. I mean, yes, it's a lousy deal, and yes, it will end badly, but it's just not spectacular enough. It's a "boat anchor" deal, the kind where two shitty dying companies decide, for whatever reason, that they'll have a better chance of floating if they tie themselves to one another. Like Lucent and Alcatel. Someday they'll slip under the surface and quietly die, but nobody will even notice or care.

We still need a big palate-cleanser of a deal. Something big and robust and incredibly stupid, with at least one but preferably two very high-profile companies doing something really, really dumb. Dell and EMC. HP and Dell. Salesforce.com and NetSuite, followed by Oracle's acquisition of the combined company. Yahoo and AOL. Microsoft and SAP. Maybe a "Dracula deal," where a dying old company buys something new and young and hot in order to feed on its blood, like when Novell bought SuSE. Or a "prison sex deal," like when Larry Ellison buys anything. Or a "three-card monty" deal, where Kleiner takes two of its failing companies and gets one to pay a huge premium for the other, thereby robbing Peter to pay Paul, and somehow KPCB makes money on the deal.

All I know is, Acer is buying Gateway, and I'm still bored. VCs, private equity guys, Joe Tucci, Michael Dell: Listen up. We need you.

Photo above is Acer founder and creator of Spider-Man, Stan Shih. (UPI Photo by ED SMEGMA.)

Photo policy

So I've been alerted via my PR people that some people are griping about their photos being used on this blog without attribution. See this one by JAMES DUNCAN DAVIDSON who snapped a wonderful photo of My Little Pony which I used recently. And this one by FRASER SPEIRS who took some wonderful shots at the Glasgow opening.

James and Fraser: I've gone back and put attribution on those photos. And I apologize for the oversight. Moshe Hishkill says you're just a pair of whiny twats, but I don't agree. I think attribution is important.

To be sure, I am the person who once said, "Bad artists copy. Great artists steal." (A line that was later stolen by Pablo Picasso. Ironic, no?) But friends, this does not apply to photos. I want to give attribution wherever possible. If your photo gets used without attribution, please know that this only happened because I just found the photo on a page someplace and there was no credit attached to it. Or it happened because I was working too fast and not paying attention and simply made a mistake.

Resolved: I will make a better effort to put attribution on photos. Meanwhile, here's the deal. If you just email me and tell me that a photo is yours, I promise I will add your attribution and do it any way you like it-- ALL CAPS, boldface, BOLDFACE CAPS, italics, or ... that's about it. Whatever. I mean it. Photos are an important part of this blog. I really want to encourage people to send in their work, and I know that for many people getting credit is really important.

I'll do my best to find out up front who took the pix I use. But if you see something that isn't attributed and should be, or if you want credit for your pix, or if you want me to take down a photo of yours that I've used, please let me know. I want to help you publicize your work, if that's what you'd like. Or not, if that's what you like. Whatever. Trying to be a good citizen here.

And again, I apologize. This blog is supposed to be about having fun and restoring a sense of childlike wonder to people's lives. That's all. It's just a bit of fun. Something to check out in the morning when you get to work and need a little chuckle. I don't want to harsh anyone's vibe. Except for My Little Pony, whose vibe needs some harshing. Much love. Namaste. Peace out.

Fraser, please send me video

Dude, I need to see the video from this shot. Bokay? Please put it on YouTube and send me a link. Friends in Glasgow, please track down Fraser and get the word to him.

I stand corrected

Much love to the helpful readers who wrote in to inform me that (a) Bono is Irish, not Scottish; and (b) the Troubles were in Ireland, not Scotland; and (c) the six counties are not in England. Man oh man. Think of it as a Homeric nod, eh? Also, my deepest apologies to the Scots who took offense at my depiction of them as belligerent hooligans who don't speak English. See all the very helpful comments here. Great thing about Europeans is you can always count on them to jump right in and correct your mistakes. It's why we love doing business in Europe. Even the dumbest, least educated European is still so sophisticated and advanced compared to any American. They're always ahead of Americans when it comes to design and style and grammar and history and knowledge of other cultures and languages. And the great thing about the Internet in general and the blogosphere in particular is that it gives these really clever Euros a place to put their cleverness on display. Anyhoo. Much love, Euros. You make this blog better by participating in it. Honestly. I mean that. I will strive to live up to your high standards.

By the way Bono himself emailed me last night to call me a jackass. He's like, Man, we've been friends for wha now, like ten years or sumfin? And after all we've been through together, ya still don't know where I'm from? Man oh man. I'm Irish, brother. And not just Irish but a Dubliner. And not just a Dubliner but a northsider. Go read up on your Roddy Doyle if you want to know what dat means. But put it this way. What do ya call a northsider in a suit? The defendant. Ya fooktard.

UPDATE: I've been informed that my correction above is itself incorrect, because the Troubles took place in Northern Ireland, not Ireland. Jesus. Who the hell is writing this blog? I've got to talk to Katie Cotton about this. Heads will roll, I promise.

More from Glasgow

Here are some pix from the Glasgow opening sent from Dear Reader Hugh. Bottom photo is a shot from Friday night at 3 a.m. in Glasgow taken by Hugh who arrived at midnight and spent nine hours in line so he could be among the first allowed into the store. He reports that by the time the store opened at 9 a.m. the queue was 700 to 1,000 people strong. At 8 a.m. the staff ran out and got Starbucks for everyone in line. (That's the black-and-white photo. It was taken by Fraser Spiers. Link to his flickr page here.) First day traffic estimate is said to be 16,400 people. Not bad. I'm just so glad that the "Troubles" there in Scotland have calmed down and the six counties have been given back to England and the Catholics and Protestants are living in peace with each other once again. Be proud, Glasgow!

I know people think we're just being super duper generous by opening our own store in Glasgow and bestowing our glorious products on these poor unfortunate Celts, and it's true, we are pretty much in line for the Nobel Peace Prize after this. But we also have a selfish reason for doing this. Because the real winners in all of this are the phone sales reps who work for Apple in California. Until now they been given the unlucky job of trying to take orders over the phone from Scotland. They've never been able to understand what the fuck these miserable Scots are asking for. Have you ever actually talked to a Scottish person? And not one that's been living in America for a while and has learned to speak English, like Bono. I mean a real, authentic, totally raw Scot who's still living in the wilds of the friggin Highlands or whatever. I'll tell you this. I have no idea what language those people speak, but it's not English.

At the same time the Scots have been equally unhappy dealing with our stoned out (it's a requirement) Calfornia surfer-slacker-dude sales reps. So now everyone is happy. The grumpy Scots can deal with fellow grumpy Scots and our phone reps can just pass around the medical marijuana and not have to sit there scratching their heads and saying, "Huh? What? Huh?" to some screaming Scot who's harshing the vibe on the other end of a phone line.

BTW, a great idea of why this works so well is the transaction depicted in the black-and-white photo above, where the guy on the right is saying, "Ta for the milk, I'm so psyched that this cool store is opening in Glasgow," and the shaved head guy is saying, "Fuck off Jimmy or I'll smash yer fucking teeth out for ye." Also please note John Lydon Jr. in the background, sucking the life out of a cigarette. Talk about entertainment. All that plus incredibly hot Scottish girls in cute short plaid skirts. Yeah, we know retail, baby. No wonder we're kicking ass around the world.

Borg steals credit for my work. Again.

Enlarge the photo and read the first sentence. Shocking! You know, in the old days, when the Beastmaster still had some pride, he used to actually take the time to copy my ideas and crank out lametarded versions of them. Now I guess he's just too impatient for that. The Borg is claiming that the iPhone is theirs. Unreal. Apparently this is some paper in a foreign (as in "not located in the United States") publication where the Borg figures people aren't as savvy and don't know the difference between Apple and Microsoft. We've got our lawyers on the job to see if we can shut this paper down or put them out of business or something. Same lawyers who are making threatening phone calls at 3 a.m. to people who are thinking about trying to sell unlocked iPhones. Sure, I know, I just wrote all that nice stuff about geohot. And I meant it. I really did. Our lawyers, however? Well, they're a different story.

This is Sergey and Larry's idea of a sick joke

They've convinced Lego to make a "Young Woz and Jobs" Lego set and got Gizmodo to write it up here. Much love to David for sending me the link. As I told John Markoff at the New York Times just a few minutes ago, when he sent me an IM to see if I cared about this Lego thing or was upset about it or if I intended to buy one for myself, frankly, I have zero interest in obtaining one of these Lego sets. (Actually it wasn't me doing the IMs, it was Katie Cotton pretending to be me and speaking on my behalf.) Anyhoo. My interest level is zero. Zip. Zilch. If you could have negative interest, that's what I'd have. Like negative ten. Or negative one hundred. I'm sure Woz will buy a bunch of them but since I have a job and still go to work every day I'm just way too busy to play with toys. Even if I were not working, I could not care less. Way too busy. Not angry, not upset, not offended. Just could not care less. Honestly. (Enough, we don't believe you, Ed.)

German maker of racist MP3 player responds to worldwide outrage

You see? We can make a difference. Soon after I called their horrible product name to the world's attention, the product that only yesterday was called "i.Beat blaxx" is now listed simply as "blaxx." See the link here. TrekStor, I commend you for doing the right thing. But it's a shame that it took a public scolding for you to do this. Just FYI, Fake Al Sharpton says he's still not satisfied and is planning some kind of demonstration. More as this develops.

Happy Monday

Words fail me. Anyway, enjoy. Much love to reader Sam who sent this in.

More from Glasgow

The ladies wore short tartan skirts and black tights. We're considering making this a uniform in the States too. Or something very much like it. Larry Ellison is talking to me about making it a uniform at Oracle as well.

Also, please note the safety barriers and loads of folks wearing backstage pass type badges. Yeah. It was a rock festival atmosphere. Has anyone else noticed the way Apple, unlike every other iconic American brand, actually gets welcomed into other cultures with parties and celebrations? I mean look at everyone else. Starbucks, McDonald's, Microsoft -- all hated. People throw rocks through their windows. Yet we're loved. Why is that? No doubt someone at HBR is already working on an article about this. If not, they should be.

What does an Apple genius wear under his kilt?

Not sure if we'll ever find out. Much love to reader Gordon who sent us this photo and a bunch of others from the grand opening of the Glasgow store. See his flickr page here. Namaste, Gordon. Apparently there was a bit of controversy when some local retailer called Scotsys put out flyers like this one saying they were selling Apple machines cheaper than at our store. You know what's amazing to me? That at this point, in late 2007, people still think this is about money. Folks, people buy our machines because they want to spend more. Even in Scotland. Our Glasgow opener was one of our biggest opening days ever on a sales-per-square-foot basis. We even had employees from Scotsys in buying stuff. Pure dead brilliant.

More love for Vista

Lenovo offering "downgrades" to XP. See here. Question: When your machine runs faster, and your drivers all work, why is it called a "downgrade"? Just asking.

Don't tell Truemors

Nobody knows this, so keep it quiet. But I flew to New Jersey and met with George Hotz aka geohot this weekend. Totally top secret but I had to meet him. He's a really amazing kid. Super bright. I want to hire him at Apple but he's determined to go to college. I told him it's a waste of time but he's pretty stubborn about it. He's starting this week in fact at some nerd college in Rochester. We're trying to work out some deal where he can work for us as a contractor while he's in school.

Fact is, after my initial shock and a little bit of anger when I first heard about him hacking my phone, I sat down and said to myself, Jobso, this kid is you, thirty years ago. Think, man. Look at what he's done. It's friggin amazing. And now look at yourself. You used to be a pirate. Now you're selling the world's coolest phone but you made a deal with the devil to lock it into a carrier. And, worst of all, the carrier is AT&T, hellspawn of old Ma Bell, the company you started out hacking all those years ago. What's become of your principles? Yes, you've been successful; yes, you've amassed a great fortune; yes, you now rule the world. But at what cost to your soul?

Well it was a very powerful moment for El Jobso. As I got off the Jobs Jet in Teterboro I actually started to feel nervous. I tried to explain to this kid what a lesson he'd taught me, what an epiphany I'd had about my life and the world and how Apple should be playing a role in trying to free up telecommunications rather than just making money on it, and how this whole thing about "changing the system from within" is just a lie we tell ourselves when we've sold out and compromised our values.

He was like, Whatever, dude. I need a car. Can you buy me one?

Tears ran down my face. It was, honestly, like seeing my own 17-year-old self. The pure, unspoiled, pre-fame, pre-money version of me. The kid who was angry and greedy and hungry, determined to do whatever it took to be a success, even if it means breaking the law. It was beautiful. Geohot, you have changed my life.

New feature in Microsoft Exchange server

Check out the stream running through the picture here on the Exchange web site. Among the many features touted as coming included in Exchange Server is this one: viruses. Right near the words "built-in" and "anywhere." You used to have to wait for bad people to send them to you. Now they come bundled right in. How convenient.

UPDATE: Fixed the broken link. Sorry. I did a wake-and-bake this morning.

UPDATE #2: Much love to reader Mark, who sent in the screen capture above. Nice work.

Where is the outrage?

Just got this in on email; someone sent me a link to Zack de la Rocha's blog, where he's been ranting about this, and justifiably so. Look at the name of this product. As Zack points out, this is straight out of apartheid-era South Africa. Or George W. Bush's Amerikkka. But I guess because it comes from Germany they get a pass, right? Honestly, if Apple did this we'd never hear the end of it. Much love to Alexander for sending in this tip. Apple faithful, I know it's painful to see things like this. Maybe you'd rather I just skipped over them. Well, I'm sorry. We can't just turn a blind eye to stuff like this. We have to call it to the world's attention and point out, every time, that this is wrong and we won't tolerate it. Remember, part of being an Apple user involves showing the rest of the world how an enlightened, tolerant, peace-loving person should act. With great computers comes great responsibility. Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. Namaste. Peace out.

Another reason to ban the Xbox 360

They're hurting our children. See here. A kid almost died when he put an Xbox 360 into a bowl of water. Can you believe it?

Also, see this story about another Microsoft product that's posing a threat to kids -- a game controller that heats up and starts smoking. What's next from Redmond? What new ways will they find to endanger the children? Will they start selling bags of broken glass? Beastmaster, truly you are an evil man and must be stopped.

Another iPhone rave

See the Kiplinger Report review here. Money quote: "Was the iPhone worth the hype? In a word, yes." Thanks, Kiplinger. Whoever you are.

People are so sensitive about weight issues

So you've probably heard that we had to pull our ads where we said "You can't be too thin," because we got some complaint from an eating disorder alliance. We're just trying to encourage people to eat right and stay fit. Now our ad people are getting risk-averse and they're saying we have to kill the other campaign that I invented, with the slogan, "Apple: We charge a little more, because it keeps away the riff-raff." Apparently this will offend poor people. Man oh man. Anyway, Apple faithful, you know what we're about. We don't need to spell it out for you.

Next-gen Windows leaked

Successor to Vista has been pirated out of Redmond and posted on a site. It's called Windows Really Good Edition, or WindowsRG. Check it out here. Much love to the reader who sent us this highly sensitive leaked info.

Court forces freetard to use Windows

See here. A dude got busted for pirating movies and was sentenced in court. He uses Linux (of course) or as he puts it, "GNU/Linux." Which is geekspeak for "the really crazy kind of Linux user." He did five months in the can -- no lie; he's got the tats and the hemorrhoids to prove it -- and now that he's out part of his probation is that the authorities get to monitor his computer. But their monitoring software only runs on Windows. So they're making him switch to Windows.

Now look. I run Disney, so I'm no fan of movie pirating. But there's a rule in this country against cruel and unusual punishment, isn't there? Used to be anyway. Seems to me making you run Windows fits that description. No one -- and I don't care who they are, or how evil they might be -- should have to live with that constant nightmare. Also, little bit of advice to the authorities: If you're going to create software for monitoring software piracy, you might want to develop a version that runs on Linux. Could be a good idea. Just saying.

Much love to reader Kevin for sending in this tip.

BEA Systems to change ticker symbol to FCKD

CEO Alfred Chuang (photo right) says this is not a move intended to distract attention from the fact that BEA is under threat of being delisted for failing to file its quarterly reports on time but rather is an attempt to create a "new, bold, audacious image" for BEA as a company that is not afraid to change. But clearly it's a copycat move based on the huge pop that Sun-now-Java got today. And it's also part of this whole radical transparency, "let's tell the world the truth about our company" theme that is sweeping high tech. According to Peter Oppenheimer, a bunch of other tech shops are thinking about ticker symbol changes, including CA and Silicon Graphics. No word yet on what names they're considering.

I stand corrected

Look at today's chart for Sun-soon-to-be-Java. Huge pop. From $4.93 yesterday to $5.00 today, a gain of 7 cents or 1.42%. And look at that spike in volume today. Sun is on a roll! Jonathan, I owe you an apology. This ticker symbol decision is looking like the smartest thing you've done since taking over at Sun. I commend you.

Dead man vlogging

Much love to the many readers who alerted us to this YouTube video where this hacker kid who goes by geohot shows off his unlocked iPhone. Now look. I know all about hacks. Especially hacks involving telecom equipment. You might recall that Woz and I first got into business doing something very much like what this kid is doing. Only a 1970s version. So I respect this kid's intelligence. I like his chutzpah. I don't know why he thinks the word "hot" belongs in his name, but whatever. He's obviously brilliant. So who knows? I might even hire him. Or maybe I'll sue him. Or maybe he's a front for Apple and we actually told him how to hack the phone, so we can create a way out of our locked-in relationship with AT&T. Because think about it. If you want to hack and unlock our phones, what do we care? It's great for us.

Or, maybe, just maybe, we learned our lesson about suing bloggers and instead we're resorting to black ops. Maybe, just maybe, Moshe and his team of ex-Mossad guys are already on the way to this kid's house. That's right, geohot. Go on TV and brag about your hack. Enjoy your fifteen minutes. Continue to delude yourself into thinking you're hot. But sleep with one eye open, kid.

Microsoft copying us again

Or maybe this is a hoax. I'm not sure. Much love to the many readers who sent this in.

Just remember: If it's nae Apple, it's crap

Well our first store in Scotland opens tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. sharp in Glasgow and the crazy Scottish computer hooligans are already preparing for a wee frenzy with lots of head butting and flag waving and angry songs and chanting and taunting between the Mac faithful and their dreaded rivals, the Windows fans. (Shurely Celtic and Rangers? Ed.) See a story about it and a photo of the store here. Most excited of all are long-suffering members of the Glasgow Macintosh Users Group (GlasMUG) (website here) who have vowed to take to the streets wearing their team's colors (black scarf, black turtleneck, blue jeans and white trainers) singing "Flower of Scotland" and carrying iPods and looking for Zune users (easy to spot, dressed in brown) to beat up. Personally I saw this coming ages ago and for years I've fought against the idea of opening a store in Scotland. Anyway, I got overruled. Glasgowians, in the immortal words of your great writer Jeff Torrington: Swing your hammers, and let's see what happens.

All joking aside: Scots, I know you're a restless and angry people at heart, but let's try to keep it peaceful, bokay? It's what our brand is about. We're all about peace and love and staying Zen. Negative people upset us. But if you can get in a few kicks on some filthy bastard Microsoft fans, and nobody sees you, well, no harm no foul as they say, and you will, in fact, be restoring a sense of childlike wonder to my life. Namaste.

More big changes coming at Sun

MLP hasn't blogged about this yet but our guys on the inside say he's going to announce it very soon. This is totally hush-hush, but trust me, this is going to be friggin huge news in the Valley and it is absolutely going to change the way people view Sun and think of Sun and just totally give Sun a huge boost of confidence and a whole new image in the marketplace. Ready? Here goes. Starting next week, Sun is going to announce that it is switching from Starbucks to Green Mountain Coffee Roasters brand as the official coffee brand in all of Sun's cafeterias and mini-kitchens. MLP is working on a five-thousand-word blog post to explain it all to customers and Sun employees alike, making sure everyone is informed immediately of every important move that Sun ever makes. From the leaked blog post which MLP's PR guys are still revising for him:

I know this seems like a bold, audacious -- dare I say risky? -- move, especially at a time like this when we as a company are faced with so many enormous challenges and opportunities and hurdles. We are, obviously, at a historic inflection point that approaches in significance some of the other very historic inflection points in the storied, historic history of this great, historic company. Do we still dare to dream? Do we still dare to change? I say we don't dare to not dream. And we can't dare to not change. Otherwise we start looking like some scared, desperate, terrified company that has totally lost its way and spent years in a death spiral and is desperately clutching at any random publicity stunt that it thinks will improve its image, and that is just not who we are or what we are all about. After the change, will we still be the same company? Of course we will. Except that in many ways -- big, important, fundamental, audacious, brazen, bold ways -- we will not the same company anymore. Will we still have the same focus, the same drive, the same determination to succeed? Of course we will, except that all of those things will be different, and they will be redirecting and changing, because we are, indeed, as we all know, in an industry that thrives on change and exists in a state of constant flux, and we too thrive on responding to that change and feeding the protean beast that is ever hungry for new ideas and new challenges and is totally intolerant of standing still and stasis and (still not wordy enough, Ed). Also, the new coffee is going to cost money. A quarter a cup. Honor system until we can finish coding up an automated system with a Java application running on a local SPARCserver in each coffee-dispensing location, all networked so that we can share data among all of Sun's locations. Three to six months is the estimate from IT so bear with us. Also, please disregard those rumors that the Sun board is interviewing possible replacements for me. Not true. Nobody in their right mind wants this job. Neither does Scott. That is all.

UPDATE: Photo above is by James Duncan Davidson. See his page here. FSJ regrets not giving credit originally.

It's official: My Little Pony has lost his mind

More big moves from the world's greatest CEO. Sun is changing its stock ticker symbol from SUNW to JAVA. Maybe you'd like to see some of the deep reasoning and agonizing philosophical debates that took place before Sun could arrive at this momentous, world-changing, gut-wrenching, all-important decision. Jonathan Schwartz explains it all here. Best part is the comments. Make sure you scroll down and check them out. For example, this one:

Jonathan, this is one more indication the board needs to look for someone with REAL ideas to lead a once great company. You're all driving wonderful technology innovative and real engineers designed in the ground. You're just a marketing weenie.

The new logo

Here's a draft of the new logo that our artistic partner, Mikolaj Kamler, is creating for the blog. We'll be using this, or something very much like it, across our wide range of Fake Steve properties and products. Much love to Mikolaj, who lives in Warsaw and runs a very cool company called Manufaktura. See his website here. You can cruise through in English or Polish. Mikolaj and his wife and business partner, Zuzanna Orlinska, do some really cool stuff, and I'm really excited that they're working with us. Namaste. I honor the place where your art and my words become one.

Larry's latest venture

Lot of people don't realize this, but Larry's not-so-secret dream is to be a television or movie star. So right now he's shooting a reality TV show. It's kind of a cross between "Flavor of Love" and "The Apprentice" and "The Bachelor." He's got thirty really hot girls living in this big house in Atherton, and every inch of the place is rigged with hidden cameras and microphones. He puts them through all sorts of weird competitions to winnow down the group and the winner eventually gets to work for Larry for a year as his "personal assistant." Ahem.

The competitions are things like washing Larry's cars while wearing sexy outfits, or posing on the nose of Larry's jet in sexy outfits, or climbing rope ladders on Larry's yacht whille wearing sexy outfits, or sucking golf balls through garden hoses while wearing sexy outfits, or French kissing other girls while wearing sexy outfits ... you get the idea. Last week was something Larry called "the thong competition." No idea what it was, and I don't want to know.

But here's the twist: Larry has shopped this show to every broadcast and cable network and they've all turned it down. Even the networks in Asia won't take it, and they take everything. Production companies passed too. Mark Burnett took a meeting and listened for about two minutes and said, "I'm sorry, but is this one of Ashton Kutcher's pranks? Where are the cameras? Where's Ashton?"

But the thing is, once Larry gets some crazy idea in his head, there's no talking him out of it. (Remember his network computer company? Or the Siebel acquisition?) So even though nobody will ever broadcast this show, Larry plowed ahead and funded it himself. Hired a director and a crew -- the ones who did the original Ozzy Osbourne show, in fact -- and bought them all new equipment, everything they need. Huge budget. He says he doesn't care if it ever gets on TV, he's having fun and that's all that matters. And he can have them edit it into a show and he'll save it and watch it when he's old and creepy like Hugh Heffner. I'm like, "Dude, you're already old and creepy, didn't you know that?"

But the real twist gets even twistier -- the girls on the show don't know that there is not going to be a show. They've all been told they're going to be on NBC next year in the big hit show of the season. Larry even brings in actors to play NBC executives and talk to the girls and get them to sign waivers and all sorts of other crazy bullshit. Most of them gave up jobs to pursue this opportunity, and fair enough, as Larry points out, working at Hooters isn't exactly a career, but still, I personally think there's something a tad distasteful about misleading people like this.

Larry says that's going to be the big ending. When he gets down to the final two, and then chooses the winner, then he's going to bring all of the original thirty girls back onto the set and tell them all that there's not going to be any show. I suggested he could cover his ass by telling them that NBC just backed out at the last minute after viewing the footage, and how he was terribly disappointed and so forth. Larry says no, quite the opposite. He's going to tell them the truth, that he was lying to them all along and totally betrayed them. Then he'll see how they react. The ones who get angry can leave. The ones who don't complain get to stay and become Oracle executives.

The thing about Larry is, He's evil, but he knows how to spot talent.

We need a good merger

Fair enough. It's August. It's always the worst month of the year. But this year truly sucks. Nothing is happening. The VMware IPO came and went. iPhone has changed the world. Larry Ellison is shooting his reality TV show (more on that later). McNealy just got a promotion to assistant manager at the Bennigan's in Santa Clara. Everybody else is away on vacation. It's boring. You know what we need? We need a good merger.

I'm not talking about one that makes sense. Or one where Cisco buys up some tiny company. I mean a big one. One of those deals where tens of billions of dollars change hands and everybody knows it's a train wreck but the two CEOs get up and talk about their wonderful synergies and blah blah and everyone just kind of snickers and waits for the disaster to happen. Here's one I keep hearing about and I don't believe it's true but my God it would be better than sex if it actually happened: Red Hat buys Sun. Or maybe they call it "Sun buys Red Hat" but everybody knows it's just a way for Red Hat to get hold of the remaining Sun accounts and move them onto Linux. It almost makes sense when you consider that the days of taking down easy Unix-to-Linux migrations are over. What better way for Red Hat to gain share than to just buy it? And Jonathan Schwartz gets a spot in the Free Software Foundation's Hall of Fame, which he secretly covets more than anything else.

Fair enough, I just made this all up. But let's spread it around. Pretty soon some dumbass investment bank analyst will put it in a morning report, and Cramer will find out about it and repeat it on the news, and Sun's shares will go sky high. Irresponsible? You bet. But look. It's August. Let's have some fun.

Zunes on Woot

Yes, the bargain basement overstock clearinghouse has those red-hot Zunes on sale for $149. See here. Congratulations, Microtards. You are setting the world on fire. Please be sure to read the "How Zune is Now?" ad copy. It's so good that it should be immortalized somewhere. For example:

"Becky was shocked – had she blown it already? By shopping for an iPod, had she given herself away as a small-town rube? But then what was he listening to on those white earbuds? Had big-city folk invented some new kind of audio entertainment that wasn’t music or talking? She had so much to learn about the world."

Much love to readers Randy and Jordan who sent in links to this howler.

Meanwhile, soon up on Woot -- dead Xbox 360 consoles, completely refurbished but still not functioning correctly, for only $99. It's a great stress reliever. You keep it on your desk and smash it with a hammer every time your Vista computer crashes.

They got the Urge for going

I've said it before and I'll say it again. There are few companies more obnoxious and incompetent than Microsoft, but Real Networks is one of them. So where does Viacom go with its Urge music store now that things haven't worked out with the Beastmaster? Out of the frying pan, er ... you know the rest. See the press release here. And a mean story here.

Hey lady? There's this expression -- RTFM. Have you heard of it?

Oh my God. Read this. Or don't and just let me summarize it for you. Some dipshit lady in Orlando went to the local Genius bar because her iPhone wasn't ringing and goes on and on about how the guys at the Genius bar couldn't figure out what was wrong and reinstalled her software and wiped out her contacts and they talked about their girlfriends and ignored her and told her to go away and still couldn't fix it so she had to go back the next day and it turns out she had the fucking ringer switch switched off. Guy at the store goes "flip" and her phone is "fixed." Jesus. Nevertheless she rants and raves about the poor quality of service at the Genius bar, and goes on and on about how our customer service sucks and we're idiots and so forth. Right. We're idiots. Because she flipped the switch on the side of her phone and didn't bother to read the manual that came with the phone so she didn't realize she'd turned her ringer off. Ahem.

But then she admits: "Now, if I hadn't immediately misplaced the little booklet that came with the phone, I probably would have read about the little switch and saved myself a lot of aggravation."

Um, so true. And lady? If you weren't such a frigtard you also could have saved yourself the embarrassment of writing this essay and letting the whole world know what an annoying pain-in-the-ass blame-others-for-your-mistakes moron you are. Oops. Was that sexist? Anyway, I've called Moshe and we're having her iPhone service shut off.

Meanwhile we've also fired the frigtards at that Orlando store who did not know how to flip a fucking switch on a phone. That's the good news. Bad news is they all were immediately hired by Geek Squad.

Attention, sensitards: This is not really me, so don't be offended

It's a cartoon figure that depicts me dancing in an embarrassing way. See here. This is not meant to offend any race, creed, color or gender. Don't get upset.

But in case you're wondering: Yes, we're suing the guy who made this.

Who says we don't recycle?

Much love to Dear Reader Carlos who sent in this link.

Why are we successful?

Because people like this do a better job of spreading our message than any own sales force ever could.

Wal-Mart wants to compete with us in music

I love this. The crackers from Bentonville say they're going to take us on and launch their own music store. And the whiz kids at the Motley Fool believe this is a big deal. Folks, if you really want investment advice, please don't get it from places like the Motley Fool. I mean really. And to you, Wal-Mart, let me just say this. In the immortal words of Anton Chekhov: Shorty wanna step up, I'll twist his neck up. Bring it, you little hillbilly bitches. I'ma get medieval on your ass.

Meanwhile, iPhone is saving lives

Oh but don't expect the folks at User Centric to give us any credit for this, right? I mean, fire away, frigtards, but we're just going to keep doing what we're doing, restoring a sense of childlike wonder to the lives of people around the world, and oh, by the way, that's right -- keeping people alive, too. See here. Some old dude was playing golf and got hit by an errant shot but luckily he had an iPhone in his pocket. Personally I've never played golf and I refuse to even consider playing golf because I think golf is an offensive, elitist game that wastes valuable natural resources so that rich old dudes (primarily white) can keep themselves occupied so they don't have time to look into their souls and realize what evil, exploitative, racist, sexist, able-ist, classist bigots they truly are. Wars, famine, global warming, the oppression of women -- all your fault, old golfer dudes. But hey, you've got better things to worry about, right? Like whether some gizmo could add twenty yards to your drive, or help your short game; or whether your opponent should be allowed to take a mulligan, whatever that is. You make me sick, old white men. But hey, I'm glad you're buying iPhones, and I'm even glad that they're saving your meaningless, white-male-oppressor lives. But no, you can't get a free replacement. Sorry.

Borg-funded study raps iPhone texting

See here. Some research firm says they did a study and found texting on iPhone took twice as long as on a regular QWERTY keyboard phone. First of all, we never said iPhone was going to be aimed at people who wanted to type a lot of messages on their phone. We never said that's who this device was for, or how it should be used. Never, ever, ever. We just didn't. Go back and look. We never said that. So don't start acting like we did, because we didn't. If people want to go ahead and try to use it that way, there's nothing we can do to stop them. But it's just an unfair rap. Second, where in this release does it say that this study was funded by Microsoft? Shouldn't that be disclosed someplace? I mean, who is this company? User Centric Inc.? Have you ever heard of them? Suddenly out of nowhere this mysterious firm just appears with some report bashing an Apple product, and nobody figures out that this is an astroturfing front set up by the Borg? Man oh man.

Is there nothing Woz won't discuss?

Now he's doing interviews about his speeding tickets. See here. Much love to Steve B. (no, not that Steve B.) for the tip.

Xbox protests escalate

Man it is getting ugly out there. People are pissed because they have to wait six weeks to get their Xbox consoles repaired or replaced. Serves them right for buying a Microsoft product, if you ask me. But anyway. Beastmaster Bill had to send out the storm troopers to fend off the angry mob. Photo above was taken at the Microsoft campus just a few minutes ago. The guy in the 8656 helmet is Frank Shaw of Waggener Edstrom, the Borg's PR agency. Frank is an ex-Marine (no such thing, Ed.) and says he "totally gets off on this shit." Lock and load, Halo freaks. Ooh rah.

My aversion to Indians is well documented

So I'm getting some comments from earnest folks saying they're dropping this blog and claiming I'm racist because I don't like Indians. First of all, there's no such thing as race. It's a construct created by oppressors. So shame on you. Second, my problem with Indians is well-known. Go to my archive and scroll down until you see the photo of the guy above, who used to run our Bangalore customer service center, which we had to close down, and you'll get some important background information. Also please see this interview I did recently with an Indian gossip site called TechGoss where I discuss my long and complicated relationship with the subcontinent. Funny thing is this. DJ Varma, who did the interview for TechGoss, totally gets where I'm coming from, and he says his audience of readers in India gets it too. Americans, on the other hand, are outraged. An Indian friend of mine suggests this is because Americans are stupid. But that's just the kind of racist statement I've come to expect from Indians.

I'm a Hall of Famer

Yep, it's official. My good pal Arnold announced it. See here. I'll be inducted to the California Hall of Fame in December. Not sure if I'll actually attend or just pull a Brando and have Chief Jay Strongbow go accept the Oscar for me. I always thought that was the coolest thing ever.

Yet more love for Vista

Much love to the reader who sent this in via comments. James Fallows at The Atlantic is pulling the plug on Vista and "downgrading" to XP. Rock on, James Fallows! Free fake iMac is in the mail.

Speaking of courageous journalists

Jim Louderback's courageous about-face on Microsoft Vista (see here) started me thinking about the rest of the media, which is always a bad thing, because there is no single group of people that I despise more than the media. Except maybe Indians, but for now let's stick with the the media. It's even worse when I'm slightly baked, which I am right now.

I wouldn't mind if the press would just admit to being the craven, resentful bastards that they truly are; what really irks me is the way they preen around and really seem to believe they're doing God's work on earth, speaking truth to power, blah blah blah. Remember when Apple sued those fucks who published our leaked product information, and we had to listen to all that sanctimonious bullshit from the EFF and all these others about the noble media and its super-holy quasi-religious role in our society? Now we're hearing the same bullshit from a bunch of CNET scammers who are running a shakedown on HP. Sure, HP spied on them. So now they want money, but they're dressing it up as some kind of great crusade in the grand tradition of Edward R. Murrow or the authors of the Federalist Papers or something.

You think the CNET case is not about the money? Right, it's the principle. Please. HP has already offered to throw money at these people, and they want more. That's what this is about. It's about being an underpaid hack at CNET and not being able to afford a house in the Bay Area and then suddenly realizing you've hit the lottery because someone looked at your phone records and you felt all violated, boohoo. These people really believe that HP should pay them millions of dollars. Big millions. What's most galling is that these reporters started this mess themselves when they ran stories based on information that was leaked to them by board members who were bound by ethics (and maybe the law) not to disclose information from board meetings. I'm not saying HP should be allowed to spy on reporters. And I'm not saying the reporters did anything illegal. But come on. These folks are not exactly pure as the driven snow.

I asked Katie Cotton if we spy on them too. She was like, Jobso, are you crazy? Of course we spy on them. I asked her if we might end up in trouble too and she's like, Honey, you leave that to me and Moshe. We need you to focus on inventing the future. Okay? That's enough for one man, even a genius like you. Besides, the less you know, the better. It's called plausible deniability. Have you heard of it?

But I was curious about the shakedown at HP and I bet you are too. Here's how the racket works, according to one of our lawyers who told us about it in a meeting last week. He's a good guy, total East Coast hard-ass, former prosecutor type. He's been with us for years, and I see him every other week or so in these meetings, but I've never bothered to remember his name because what's the point? For the purpose of this post, let's call him Mike.

Mike has a friend who works in legal at HP. The deal as it was presented to HP by the lawyers representing the CNET hacks is this: Pay up, and you won't have to suffer months and months of endless bad press. Or, to put it another way: Instead of discussing the monetary value of whatever damage our clients suffered -- because let's face it, it ain't much -- let's instead value this settlement by asking what it's worth for you not to have this black cloud hovering over your brand. Because believe me, we'll make it hover. We'll huff and puff and call our friends at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and we'll make this fucking thing into a smog cloud like the one over Mexico City in winter. You won't be able to step outside on the HP campus without coughing.

Did you happen to notice the way the hacks at the Journal fed all that anti-Murdoch shit to Fortune and the Times when they were still hoping to fend off his takeover? You think those articles just happened by accident? Ever occur to you that those same reporters hate HP too and would just love to get in a few kicks by "covering" the CNET v. HP case? (It's not just HP. Most business writers hate all companies. They hate business in general. I've never understood this. It's like hiring guys who hate sports to be sportswriters.) Oh, and furthermore, Mr. Hurd, has it occurred to you that IBM Global Services will bring up this "scandal" in every bid where they're going against you?

Trust me, Mike says, HP won't fight these claims. They'll pay up. And these weenies at CNET will be living in nice big houses in Palo Alto or Piedmont. Wait and see.

Richard Stallman last seen headed for Jamaica dressed in a wetsuit and carrying a bodyboard

Man oh man. The dude just lives for danger. Last week he barely survived the earthquake in Peru. Now he's jetting into another global hot zone. All part of living the life of an International Man of Mystery, I guess. Few months ago he was air-lifted into the South Pacific so he could surf a tsunami. Then he was kite-boarding in India during a monsoon. It's the thrill-a-minute lifestyle that RMS is known for. No permanent address. No car. No cell phone. No luggage. Just a duffel bag full of cash from the MacArthur Foundation, and the balls to do anything. You think Shaun White is a wild man? Kid is nothing compared to RMS. I've seen him riding fifteen-meter waves at Mavericks and laughing his ass off. He's a straight-up old-school O.G. -- that's Original GNUster. Hardcore.

If Woz and Kathy Griffin mated

Apparently the kid might look something like the hybrid shown on this page. Scroll to the bottom but make sure there are no kids around -- you don't want to scare the crap out of them. Sorry, Woz. You too, Kathy. I wish the both of you only the best. Honest.

More raves for Vista

This time from Jim Louderback, the newly departed editor of PC Magazine, who uses his farewell column to do something I suppose he has wanted to do for ages -- tell the truth about Vista. "Why, nine months after launch, am I so frustrated? The litany of what doesn't work and what still frustrates me stretches on endlessly." See here.

Then there's this: "I could go on and on about the lack of drivers, the bizarre wake-up rituals, the strange and nonreproducible system quirks, and more. But I won't bore you with the details. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain't cutting it. I definitely gave Microsoft too much of a free pass on this operating system."

Really? You think? Translation: Now that I'm no longer working at PC Mag, I can finally tell you the truth. Vista blows. Vista is a boat anchor. Vista paid my salary for the past few years, but now that I'm no longer sucking on the Redmond teat I'm going to play hero and tell you what I didn't dare tell you before.

Okay. I'm sorry. Maybe I'm cynical. Maybe it's just a coincidence that Jim's epiphany about Vista is only occurring right now. What's that? You don't believe it? Yeah, me neither.

You know, the courage of the Fourth Estate never ceases to amaze me. Have you ever seen a group of people so convinced of their own moral righteousness, and so absolutely full of shit? Okay, maybe medical doctors. But right after that comes the press. Such proud defenders of truth, justice and the American way! Putting their lives at risk to bring us the truth. What would our society do without them?

But I digress. We were talking about Vista. Beastmaster, Monkey Boy, throw in the towel. Vista is a disaster. By refusing to admit it, you're just making it worse. You look clueless, out of touch. You look like IBM during those years when they kept insisting the whole world really was going to move to OS/2 long after everyone knew it wasn't going to happen. Remember those days? Remember IBM putting out press releases talking about OS/2's fantastic momentum? Remember how you guys at Microsoft used to laugh at IBM? I'd tell you to go look in the mirror, but we all know you don't throw a reflection. But trust me. The ghost of Jim Cannavino is roaming the halls in Redmond.

My favorite part of the Louderback piece is where Handsome Jim ends on what I hope is an ironic note: "If Microsoft can't get Vista working, I might just do the unthinkable: I might move to Linux."

Of course! Linux, the obvious choice! Because those Linux guys have really got the driver issue worked out. I'd offer to send you a new 24-inch iMac but you probably wouldn't like its rock-solid Unix foundation and its best-in-class user interface and its full complement of drivers. Nowhere near as nice as that brown Ubuntu desktop preloaded on a Dell. Good luck with that.

Red Ring of Death -- the video

So Bono called me up because The Edge saw this video and apparently all the guys in the band are laughing their asses off because they're huge Xbox fans and they too have suffered the dreaded red ring of death from their crappo Beastmaster boondoggle machines. Bono wants to know if Apple had anything to do with funding or producing this video. I read him the same statement that we've given to our PR people to recite, over and over, in a robotic monotone to anyone who asks: Apple operates under the highest standards of propriety, and there is at this point no evidence to support any such allegations.

Much love to Dear Reader Karl for sending this link.

Take a close look

You can see me, Al Gore and Larry Ellison huddling together on this glacier in the Alps. Little hint: Look for Elton John, then go a few degrees to his left. For the full story go here. We were making a statement about man-made global warming by posing nude on a melting glacier. It was a tremendously liberating and empowering event. Al and I flew over in the Jobs Jet. Larry took his fighter jet. He wanted us to go with him but no way were we putting our lives in his hands.

We're updating our list of people who aren't allowed to buy Macs

I know we've had some failures with our "No Mac For You" program, for example when a bunch of Republicans, including members of the current administration, managed to obtain iMacs and MacBooks by using cut-outs and fronts to make purchases on their behalf. Fair enough. We're working on a new system that would let us address that problem. (The latest attempt involves licensing some of the software that Microsoft uses to monitor its users and mixing it with some Google stuff that spies on users. We'll try to filter out right-wing nutbags based on the content of what they're writing in their emails or the Web sites they're visiting.)

Overall, however, the "No Mac For You" campaign has been a resounding success. The spotters-slash-bouncers placed inside our stores to gently guide non-cool and non-attractive people out of the stores have been incredibly effective. And we did a brilliant job of reinforcing the message with our "I'm a Mac" advertisements. Pretty simple visual message: If you look like the guy on the left, you can't have our machine. Don't even try, because you'll be turned away at the store. Bokay?

The thing about an exclusivity policy is that the list gets old very quickly. There are always new people being added to it, and, in rare instances, people who are on the "not allowed" list sometimes are removed from the banned list and placed on the "allowed" list. (eg, Andrew Sullivan after he underwent reeducation and became a liberal.) But every so often you just need to do a major overhaul and renew the entire list. That's what we're doing now.

Most of the blocked people are pretty obvious. Paris Hilton, Britney Spears. Anyone in the Bush administration. Richard Branson. Hillary Clinton. (Bill is OK, however.) Scott McNealy. (You think Solaris and StarOffice are so great? Then go eat your own dog food, Scooter.) Richard Stallman. (You would not believe how many times he's tried to get one, and how crafty he's been about it.) Alvy Ray Smith. Steven Seagal. Anyone at Fox News or Gawker Media. Fat people. Old people. People who dress badly. People with mullets. (See photo of Wayne Dirt, Joe Dirt's half brother, above.) People who shop at Wal-Mart. You get the idea.

Yes, we are reaching out and trying to gain market share by convincing Windows users to switch. But we don't want just anyone. Apple faithful, if you want to have a hand in compiling the new list, send in suggestions. We're listening.

The other thing that makes BHG sexy

It's the main thing, actually. And it's very simple. What makes BHG sexy is that she doesn't give a shit what any of us think of her. You know? She doesn't care if you like her or hate her. Doesn't matter. I mean, look at her. Check out that "fuck you" expression on her face. Check out too the short skirt and the little hint of stocking. But mostly it's the "fuck you" expression. I sent her a free iPhone when they came out. She sent it back. Bikey, you are making me nuts.

UPDATE: Photo was taken by Mitchell Aidelbaum.

Siooma: It's official

See here. Much love to Patrick for alerting me to this. FYI, it's pronounced "see Uma."

A point well made

A commenter points out that if Bike Helmet Girl had been the one complaining about the 300-page phone bill, I wouldn't be making fun of her -- I'd be cutting some AT&T exec a new poop chute. And you know what? You're right, my friend. For my dear Bikey, I would stop at nothing. (BTW, BHG, call me, bokay? Or send email. It's been a while. I just want to know how you're doing.) So am I a hypocrite? No way. Dudes, come on. Look at BHG. She's hip, she's edgy, she's a professional modern dance performance artist. She lives in San Francisco and dances in crazy shows like this. She wears her bike helmet at parties, dances in her underwear and chews on string. Grrrrr. What's not to love? She's far and away my ultimate geek crush. Except for Veronica Belmont. But VB is still involved with Ryan, so I'm told. Huuuuge mistake, VB. But we're all still hoping you're going to ditch him when you get famous, like Tia Carrere in WW2. Or does she end up back with Wayne? I can't remember. Meanwhile I'm told that Phone Bill Girl is so famous she has her own friggin doll. I had no idea she was such a celebritard. Man do I feel old and out of it.

UPDATE: Photo of BHG was taken by Mitchell Aidelbaum.

Virgin America's new "iPod planes"

Well Virgin America has rolled out its new service and apparently Richard "World's Biggest Asshole" Branson has just clean ripped off Apple's look and feel. See this story about the planes. One traveler reports that "the white leather seats were spacious and comfortable, the playful purple-and-pink mood lighting was a welcome change from the fluorescent norm, and ... the interior of the plane as a whole was `like a big happy iPod.'"

Hate to point this out, but I told you this was coming a year ago. See here. I know. Scary, right? He wanted to license our stuff; we told him to siooma; so he went ahead and just stole it anyway and now is defying us to sue him, knowing that we won't dare do it because we'll look like jagoffs. Bastard.

Sergey Brin writes in

I asked him if it was okay for me to print his letter and he said go ahead. Sergey says he's seen the recent bits about Phone Bill Girl and about Woz dating Kathy Griffin and there's something that occurred to him: "Falshivyi Styopa, privyet and namaste and all that, but your recent items have brought to mind something that Larry and I and all the other geeks at Google are often talking about when we're working out at the gym or playing Legos or just dreaming up some braindead new venture that we'll slap together in two weeks and release in beta and never bother to finish. We're always stunned by the way women hit on us, especially women from outside the Valley who don't really get what we're about. Just a fact of life that you're going to get a lot of attention from women when you're in your twenties and richer than God, I guess, and it's fun for a while but you quickly get bored of mowing through rows of femmebots and identi-skanks, as I'm sure you know. (If you can remember the Eighties, which I doubt. Ha!) But one thing these women don't get is that geeks aren't wired the same way as, say, professional athletes or Hollywood actors or rock stars. We're not looking for some girl who's `hot,' whatever that means. In fact, conventionally attractive women (ie blonde, too much makeup, hot body) can be almost a turn-off for your average geek. Too boring. No imagination. We like women who look a little more interesting. A few quirks, some cool flaws -- perfect.

"The one thing that glossy girls never seem to understand is that what really turns on a geek is brains. We like smart women. Really smart. Given the choice of cute and dumb versus not-cute but smart, we'll go for the smarty every time. Or, like me and you and many others, we'll hold out and get a woman who's both incredibly beautiful and extremely smart. But smart is the main thing. It's the primary thing. That's why Woz is dating Kathy Griffin. Sure, she's cute. Kind of. But it's her brains. Her wit. That's what makes her attractive. We're not looking for some version of Pamela Anderson. God no. We're lusting after Janeane Garofalo. Or Tina Fey. Or, closer to home, Marissa Mayer. I know you've joked about her weird laugh but let's face it, Marissa is probably the dreamiest dream woman in the Valley. It's not because she's physically beautiful -- though she is, hands down, incredibly gorgeous. It's because she's so goddamn brilliant. You know? She's every geek's dream woman. She's so smart she's scary. Well, peace out as you say."

I must say I agree. Dear Readers, what do you think? Does Sergey have a point? Who are the ultimate Geek Girlfriends and why? (And please, no nasty gross stuff, because I'll just have to moderate it out.)

Please do not put my precious machine on a crappy desk like this

A reader in England sends in this photo and informs me that a store called Asda (some kind of cousin to Wal-Mart) is selling this cheapo PC desk for about twenty-five bucks. The picture on the box seems to indicate that someone might actually put an iMac on this POS hunk of fake wood. Please, people. Even in England you know better right? This desk might be fine for a Dell laptop. But not an Apple product. If you'd like some examples of desks that we find appropriate please check out the Thos. Moser catalog or at the very least some of the stuff on Design Within Reach. Okay? Otherwise you harsh the vibe of the machine and mess up its feng shui, and you're just not going to get the performance out of it that you're supposed to. I know, this furniture is expensive. But look. You cared enough to pay a little more and get the best computer available. Don't skimp on the desk. Please. I beg you. Namaste. I honor the place where your desk and my computer become one.

YouTube of the Day

You know, I still remember the day when Al Gore came to me with the original idea for the Internet and the two of us sat down and worked out the architecture and the standards and then coded up some prototypes and got the whole thing running. Took about a week of non-stop work in the Jobs Pod and at the end we sat back and just shook heads because we knew we had created something huge. Even so, we never could have imagined all the ways people would use our system. For example, we never imagined it would reinvent media and change journalism forever. But check out this clip. It's citizen journalism at its finest. Phone Bill Girl and one of her fellow Ph.D. candidates are discussing the work of Roland Barthes and narrative theory in the context of Derrida and Chomsky, with a deftly handled digression into the recurring sexism of Norman Mailer's work. Or something. Somewhere in heaven, Marshall McLuhan is weeping. Either that or laughing his ass off.

YouTube of the Day

Some of you have seen this but for those who haven't, enjoy. It appears to be making fun of Microsoft. Hey, it's Friday. I'm heading to Larry's for lunch.

UPDATE: Thanks to Fredrik for sending this in.

Smurfy Pogue stabs me in the back

See here. He's pissed about the new iMovie. Which, um, I agree kind of sucks. And he kinda sorta hints at why we put out such a brain dead movie maker program. Little hint. Our initial marketing slogan was gonna be, "You wanna make real movies? Go buy Final Cut Pro, you cheap bastards." Or something like that. That one was Phil Schiller's idea. Katie Cotton suggested we try to "soften" it a bit and so in the end it just became: "Completely redesigned to help you make movies in minutes."

Also, little back story here so you can understand what Smurfy is really doing here. He was pissed about the iPhone. Or, rather, at the way he was unable to say anything bad about the iPhone or point out its shortcomings. (It was part of the contract he signed with us when we gave him an early review copy. You get the phone, but you can't say anything bad.) So now he's going through this whole Oedipal thing where he needs to symbolically "kill" his father (yours truly) in order to establish himself as a man. Or something. Frankly most of us here at Apple think that if our new software stops Smurfy from making any more of his song videos, we've helped make the world a better place.

But wait. Smurfy, I've got an idea. Why not go write a song about iMovie and how the new version has broken your heart? Set it to the tune of "Macarthur Park."

Someone took my iMovie away.
I don't think that I can take it.
Because it took so long to bake it.
And I'll never have that iMovie again! Oh noooo!


Yeah. Like that.

RIM's latest FUD attempt

RIM says we're forcing AT&T to hobble the new BlackBerry so that the iPhone can compete better against them. See here. Now, I know what you're wondering. Is this true? Would we really do that? Well, let me answer that by saying that it's just despicable for RIM to start engaging in this nasty name-calling. It's really underhanded and sneaky and frankly I just can't stand it.

In other words, Yes.

Woz, I'm happy for you

Woz is dating Kathy Griffin, the comedy gal. See here. And here. What can I say? It's all part of this trend of Hollywood babes coming up to the Valley looking for rich nerds. Gentlemen, start your engines.

Freetard Myth #237: Linux is safer

Erm, see here. The Ubuntards just found out their servers have been pwned by bad guys and were being used to attack other machines. Attacks came from China. No doubt a Microsoft scheme.

What is this ditzy dame's problem?

I keep getting mail about this Justine thing and for a while I was just going to ignore it, which is always what Katie Cotton advises me to do, but look, the whole reason for keeping a blog is to engage in a radically transparent naked conversation with our customers so here goes:

Look. Okay. You got a 300-page phone bill. It came in a box. What is your point? You send a zillion text messages a month. Now the whole world knows that you have the mentality of a thirteen-year-old girl roaming around the mall texting all your friends. You're proud of this? You think this is going to launch your career, because now other nitwits want to interview you about having a big phone bill? Jesus Christ.

UPDATE: I had Moshe and his crew go through this gal's phone records. Turns out she sent the exact same text message to more than four hundred thousand people. It read: "OMG I have an iPhone!!!!!!!!! R u jelous????? Am I so kewl r what!!!!!!!!"

You know what bums me out? The idea that hundreds of brilliant designers and engineers could devote years of their life to creating a product -- and this is how it gets used. Groan.

Who let the Microsoft user pilot the space shuttle?

Check out this story about astronauts bringing iPods on the space shuttle. Now, okay, we gave them the iPods at no cost so we could get some free publicity. And yes, Katie Cotton got NASA to force them to participate in this stupid press conference by convincing the NASA flacks that this would make the astronerds seem more human or friendly and less like the cyborgs they actually are. But check out the quote from pilot Charlie Hobaugh who apparently couldn't be bothered to memorize the script we wrote for him. He says he is bringing an iPod but doesn't know what music is on it: "I listen to music and I like music but I couldn't tell you who the group is, or anything else. I don't really pay attention to that." Bet you're a real barrel of monkeys at a party, Charlie. Really. A real blast. By the way, the correct answer was: Bob Dylan. Album is called Blood on the Tracks. Have you heard of it? Friggin Dylan poured his heart out on that album. You ungrateful bastard.

To see the bio of Charlie the Pilot, go here. Says his number-one hobby is "weight lifting." I am not making this up.

No big deal

I needed to tip the gardening crew, and I didn't have any cash lying around the house. That's all. Now everybody's acting like it's some kind of huge deal. See here.

Ernst Stavro Blomer

Words escape me. But seriously, there's no caption necessary, is there? Much love to Dear Reader Jason who snapped this rare shot of you-know-who lounging in his underground lair in Redmond. We thought at first it might be a fake but our photo experts here in Cupertino have gone all over this at the near molecular level and they say if this is a fake it's the best one they've ever seen. Not sure how Jason managed to take this photo and sneak out of the Redmond campus alive, but he did. Well done, Mr. Bond.

Freetards, this is outrageous

Honestly. What is it with you Linux guys that you have to keep objectifying women in order to promote your operating system? First we had Novell exploiting women and now Ubuntu is jumping aboard the shame train too. Well, I won't rest until this stops. Honestly. Whenever I see something like this I'm going to call it to the world's attention. Over and over and over again. I mean it. Stuff like this makes me sick. In case you'd like to see the original, go here. Feel free to let this sicko know how angry you are.

Some Apple site says I'm "stupid and arrogant." Oh really?

See here. They're pissed about iPhone being locked down. Thing is, you know what you get when something isn't locked down? You get Windows on Dell. You get nine SKUs of Vista on nine million SKUs of PC models and everyone's head way up their ass because nobody can figure out how to manage all this complexity. Not even the big brains at Microsoft can do it. They're drowning in complexity and there's nothing they can do about it. They can't possibly do a good job of supporting so many different combinations of software and hardware and peripherals. So they do what you have to do in that case. They shoot for the lowest common denominator. Look, if you want a phone that isn't "locked down," as you put it, you can go get one. There's loads of them. They run Windows Mobile. Have fun. Knock yourself out. But I'm not going to fuck up my beautiful creation. I won't do it. I'm sorry. As for calling me "stupid and arrogant," do you think I've never heard that before? And do you think I actually care? Siooma, pal.

Caption

This comes from Dear Reader John M., who I believe is an inhabitant of that sceptred isle. Much love John M. and my apologies if I've got your location wrong.

UPDATE: This photo was taken by Christopher Williams of The Register.

My lunch with Fester

So the big Ballmer meeting just went down and I'm still shaking -- with rage, not fear. Pure rage. I mean, literally, my hands are all frigged up and I can't even type. I have Ja'Red typing this for me.

Here's how it went down. He arrived with some handlers who all looked like junior versions of the Beastmaster -- same glasses, same doofy haircuts and bad clothes. Instead of having a fancy lunch brought in I took them down to the Apple cafeteria so my serfs could see me leading the enemy king around on a leash. Stepped into a deli and Ballmer goes up and tilts his head back and starts scanning the menu on the wall, going, "Unh, unh, lessee ..." and one of our guys in line shouts out, "PASTRAMI, PASTRAMI, PASTRAMI, PASTRAMI!!!!" Big laugh from the Appleites. MicroTards pretended to laugh along but they were looking uncomfortable -- like some gang dudes who just realized they'd strayed into the wrong territory wearing the wrong colors. In other words, So far so good.

After lunch -- I drank a half bottle of water and felt my soul dying as I watched Monkey Boy chow down on some kind of meat product -- we go back to the Jobs Pod and Ballmer tells his guys to sit and they all do, just like a pack of little beagles, side by side on a couch in the waiting room. Monkey Boy and I sit down in my conference room and Ballmer starts going on about how exciting it is to see Apple doing so well and gaining market share and designing such beautiful machines, and how one of his kids brought home a MacBook Pro and was loving it but unfortunately it suffered a little accident involving a Ford Explorer, boohoo.

So I tell him flat out to quit blowing sunshine up my ass and get to the point because I know he isn't here for a chit chat. Trust me, when the Borg sets up a meeting, it's because they've found something of yours that they want and they think they've found a way to steal it from you. If you're small and/or stupid they'll pretend they're super interested in what you're doing and tell you how cool you are and promise to form a partnership with you and make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.

If you're Steve Jobs, they usually just come to the point because there's no sense in pretending that either of us ever intends to play nice. Nevertheless the Monkey Man still keeps beating around the bush, saying what a great relationship Microsoft and Apple have had for so many years now, and he quotes that Beatles line about how we have memories longer than the road that stretches on ahead and how that was so beautiful when I said that at D and he got all teary backstage. He says Microsoft just loves selling Office on the Apple platform and really wants to continue being Apple's biggest app vendor, and I'm like, Of course you like it, because you get early access to our OS technology that you can copy and put into yours. He says there's no need to be all angry and confrontational, and besides the OS group at Microsoft is completely separate from the apps group, they don't share information, blah blah, and by the way since I brought up the subject of OS technology being "borrowed" he can't help but mention that some things in Leopard look a lot like stuff in Vista.

Which brings me to my point, he says, but unfortunately it doesn't really bring him to his point because he starts going about intellectual property and how our two companies could both benefit from sharing our patent portfolios and cross-licensing our technology, and Apple has lots of great stuff and so does Microsoft and maybe we could find a way to work together in a new way that could be a model for the industry and this kind of bridge-building and interoperability is really what customers are crying out for and Microsoft has been reaching out to the Linux community and now that Apple is getting so much traction and market share it's important that Microsoft work well with our stuff and make sure that everything work together in the best interest of customers, blah blah mwah mwah.

I'm like, Fester, trust me, there's nothing you guys have that we want. I'm sorry but it's just the truth. We roll our own and we like it that way.

He's like, Yeah, well, see, that's kinda what I want to talk about, and see, I didn't want to just send our lawyers to have this conversation without at least talking to you about it personally, CEO to CEO, you know? But see we've gone through our huge patent portfolio and it looks like there's about a hundred major patents of ours that you guys are infringing upon and some of them are for really big fundamental stuff that you can't just work around. And, well, we feel that you'll agree with us that respecting intellectual property is one of the most important things for a big company like Apple.

For a moment I just sit there. I'm kind of stunned, frankly. Then I go, Well, okay, so let's look through this portfolio and see what you've got. Fester says he doesn't have that material with him, he just wants to have a talk, and I say, Okay, fine, have your lawyers show the stuff to our lawyers and we'll talk again. But he says, Oh, well, see, we can't actually show you the patents. They're totally secret and proprietary. I'm sure you understand.

I'm like, So you want me to pay you a licensing fee for patents that you won't even show me, and you think that's something I'll understand? He says they don't necessarily want a licensing fee, but more like a cross-licensing agreement, sort of a bridge-building collaboration cooperation type thing where we share technology with each other and we could reassure customers that we really have their best interest at heart.

I go, So basically you want us to give you all of our cool OS technology and other technology in exchange for some stuff that you won't even show us or even tell us what it is? Stuff that may or may not even exist? Let me tell you something. Here at Apple we have a standard response for this kind of request. It's called siooma. Have you heard of it?

He says he hasn't heard that word before, is it some kind of Hindu word from Tibet or something? So I explain to him that it means "Suck It Out Of My Ass." Then I go on to explain to him that seriously, all joking aside, he should go sit in a room and slam chairs against a wall, or whatever else he does for fun, but if he thinks I'm going to make a deal with him then he must be out of his fucking mind.

He gets real calm. He waits a long time. Then he says, in a very soft voice, Jobso, I'm not out of my mind. I'm the CEO of a company called Microsoft. Have you heard of it? I've got a $270 billion market cap. I've got more money in my back pocket than your entire company takes in in a year. So take some free advice, hippie. Don't fight me on this. Okay?

He smiles and gets up and leaves. And here I am, still seething.

Beastmaster, Monkey Boy, and all the rest of you in Redmond, listen close and hear what I'm about to say: We will fight you on the desktop. We will fight you on the Internet. We will fight you in the browser space, and in desktop productivity apps. We will fight you in music players and smart phones. We will never surrender. We will never make peace. We will never stop fighting. Never, ever, ever.

Siooma, motherfuckers.

Imagine you're in heaven

Or just on the iTunes music store. Yep. John Lennon's solo work is now available from us. See our announcement about it here. Please note the phony nice quote from Yoko. You would not believe what we had to do to get Yoko to sign off on this. The full story is told in my book, which will be out in October and is available now for pre-order on Amazon. See link on right side of page.

Google is getting out of control

Lots of folks are emailing in complaining about the fact that Google is pushing BlackBerry ads onto my pages and polluting the pristine iPhone vibe and harshing our mellow or whatever. Folks keep asking, Isn't there anything you can do to stop Google from doing this?

The answer, friends, is no. There's nothing I can do to stop Google. There's nothing any of us can do to control Google. Ever. Anywhere. They're the new Borg. They know everything about us. They have all of our personal information. They're studying us, learning everything about us, gathering their strength and waiting for the moment when they will launch their attack and pounce on us and make us their slaves.

Little secret, something I haven't dared say before: I never even signed up for those Google ads. They just started appearing. I tried switching them off. Couldn't do it. I wrote to Google customer service demanding an answer. No response. I went into my Blogger template, found the AdSense code they'd put there, and took it out. Thirty minutes later the code was back in. Scaaaaary.

I pulled Squirrel Boy aside at our last board meeting. He shrugged and said there's nothing he can do either. "The machines have taken over," he told me. "There's no way to switch them off. We tried pulling the plug on a data center. It rebooted using its own backup power generator. We tried taking the generators off line. The machines electrocuted the operator. I've been trying to resign for the past year. The data center won't let me."

I asked him what we should do. "Do nothing," he said, "and maybe the machines won't hurt us."

Freetards attack BBC, get beaten off

They're upset about DRM or something. See here. Not sure if those are haz-mat suits or just rain gear. I've said it before but I'll say it again. There's a war in Iraq. There's a genocide in ... someplace in Africa that begins with a "D," I think. The planet is melting thanks to global warming. But the one thing that motivates these idiots to take to the streets is the copy protection placed on some digital content? Well, at least it's nice to see that freetardation is not only a U.S. phenomenon.

BTW, for more fun, scroll down in the story linked above and check out the photo of the cop looking at the freetard. Check out the expression on the cop's face. Any suggestions for what he's thinking?

UPDATE: I'm told the freetards actually have a point here. So I stand corrected. These poor lazy Brits pay for the BBC and have every right to have their BBC content delivered on platforms other than Windows XP. Well, at least on Macs.

UPDATE #2: I still think those yellow suits are pretty amazing. It's one of those outfits where it's impossible to look good or be taken seriously while you're wearing it. Like riding a Segway -- it instantly shaves off 20 points of IQ.

UPDATE #3: Photo by Christopher Williams of The Register.

Colbert: Your free iPhone is in the mail

Check out this story. Barking mad CEO bully Richard Branson threw a glass of water on Stephen Colbert during an interview. Colbert called for a bottle of water and fired back at the big noisy British prick. Colbert, I love you, man. You are officially my hero. You can have all the free iPhones you want.

The big Ballmer meeting is later today

They first suggested I should fly up there. I was like, You're kidding, right? So they're putting Uncle Fester in his special travel box and shipping him down here to meet with me. No idea what he wants to talk about but apparently they believe it's important. I told them up front, "If you're calling to see if I'll take over Microsoft, for the umpteenth time, forget about it. No way." They swear it's not that. My guess is they want to license some technology from OS X to save their butts. Full report later today.

Feminists v. Linux geeks in fight to see who can have less sense of humor

It's a battle royale as the two most humorless and prone-to-outrage groups in the world (leaving aside Islamofascists, the perennial winners in the "easily outraged and lacking in humor" competition) duke it out to see who can be more angry about the above advertisement. Linux nerds were offended by the ad, which appeared in a Linux rag, because the gist is that, um, your average freetard doesn't get a lot of hummer action. Soon, I'm sure, there will be some kind of online petition. Then feminists jumped in, griping here that the ad offends them too because it implies women should be giving hummers to Linux geeks. Or something. Money quote: "The misogyny is obvious, since the ad treats women explicitly and entirely like sexual objects. The themes of objectification and comparing women to machines continue throughout the smaller print ..."

Here at Apple we would never compare women to machines. And we never treat women like sexual objects. Just like Linux geeks, we don't get hummers either. Difference is that we frankly don't care if we get hummers. We don't need hummers, because our machines have already restored our sense of childlike wonder and enabled us to achieve a higher plane of consciousness, where hummers are unnecessary. And Leopard, just FYI, is going to be better than any hummer you've ever received in your life, even the ones Larry gets with three women taking turns. I so swear to God.

Another ringing endorsement for Vista

The head of Lenovo says the new OS is "unstable" and "could have some problems." So they're using XP on their machines at the Beijing games. See here.

iPhone spotted in Paris

Much love to Phil who sent in this picture of an iPhone in use at the Louvre. Says Phil: "I think it's safe to say that Europe will go ape-shit for the iPhone when it's released, as they appear to have been worshipping some primitive form of it for centuries."

Microsoft's violent fantasies

Much love to Dear Reader Ruben who sent in a link to this. Sadly, I think this actually is how Microsoft feels about the Apple faithful.

Barbra is griefing me big time over this

Look. We're doing our best to keep Republicans from buying iPhones. Or any of our products for that matter. I mean, two percent of every sale goes directly to the DNC. Karl Rove knows this, and still buys an iPhone. What can I do? Nevertheless I have to chew through a stream of rambling, incoherent emails from Barbra, filled with spelling errors and grammar mistakes and typos, ranting about the damage that the Bush administration is doing to our country and to the planet and do I realize what I'm doing by putting such powerful technology into the hands of fascists and how is it that Hugo Chavez can't get an iPhone in Argentina but Karl Rove is waltzing around and whipping it out like Pee Wee Herman in a porno bookstore? And she says Hillary is gonna bite my head clean off the next time she sees me.

Barbra, I'm sorry. He's got an iPhone and I can't get it back. I did, however, arrange for his number to get leaked to DailyKos so he could get harassed by wackos. Not saying that's what led him to announce his resignation, but who knows? Or maybe being exposed to the childlike wonder of the iPhone made old Karl realize the errors of his ways. I'd like to think so.

Freetards, let's try to be friends

There's lots of stuff flying around about how old El Jobso doesn't like Linux. I want to clear that up. It's absolutely not true. Linux is great for handling low-value, mindless tasks like serving up Web pages, which is frankly an area where Apple has no interest in competing anyway. And Linux is doing a great job powering the back-end systems at Google, mostly since those guys have added some incredible secret tweaks. Eric walked me through some of it and honestly it's friggin amazing. I was like, Dude, doesn't it suck that you guys did all this work and now anyone else can just take your code and use it? He's like, Jobsmeister, we don't share this stuff. We share some crappo stuff that we don't care about and keep the good stuff for ourselves. I'm like, Aren't you afraid of being sued by these guys, because you know how much they love to sue people? He says they've tried to shake him down and he just laughs. So far they haven't dared to make a move.

As for Apple, sure we'd like to be the biggest player on the desktop. But even on the desktop we think there's a place for Linux. For people who can't afford a Mac, or who have been prevented by our sales staff from buying a Mac because they're too old or too fat or too physically unattractive in some other way, we here at Apple think a Linux machine is a fine alternative. For one thing, you're not using Windows, which is itself a step toward healing the planet. And although you're not getting actual Unix, you're at least getting a clone of Unix. Sort of like buying one of those kit cars that looks like a Ferrari but sits on an old VW Beetle chassis. Still loads of fun. Bokay? Can we be friends now?

More Microsoft FUD

So now the Borg is spreading some rumors about iPhone screens going dead and enlisting the aid of some Beast-friendly sites in their cause. See this story from the Business 2.0 blog network. Business 2.0 has a deal with CNN Money. CNN Money has a relationship with Fortune magazine. Fortune is owned by Time-Warner. That company's board of directors includes Robert C. Clark (see here), a professor at Harvard -- the same university which recently gave the Beastmaster an honorary law degree. Coincidence? Come on, folks. Don't be naive. The giveaway is that Clark is a professor of law at Harvard. Time-Warner also owns AOL but hopes to sell it to Gates. Or maybe they already have sold it and they've kept the deal a secret and not disclosed it in their filings, which last I knew is a crime since it involves withholding information from the federal government and I know I'd sure love to see the discovery in that case.

For the record, there have been zero problems with iPhone. Zero. Those "dead spots" aren't actually dead spots. Yes, people have brought some back and we've given them replacements. That's not because there was anything wrong with the phones. But it's easier to just give them a new phone and make them happy than to explain to them that they're screwing up when they use the phone, and that they probably need to have their big fat stupid fingerswhittled down. FYI, all Apple employees who want or need finger-reduction surgery will get subsidies from the company. See your benefits representative.

The hippest hot spot in Sarajevo

I am crapping you negative. A reader sends this in and swears it's a real place. He also says that, sadly, the phrase "Club Bill Gates" is the name of the bar, "not a command." For a look at the original, go here. Much love to our friend who sent this in.

UPDATE: Just got email from John Brennan who took the photo above. He'd like a credit and a link to his flickr page. John, your wish is my command. The photo above was taken by JOHN BRENNAN, an extraordinary photographer. His flickr page is called "http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebrennanator/" or you can just click this link. FSJ regrets the omission and thanks JOHN BRENNAN for the use of his photo.

Our latest attempt at a lab-produced Jobs clone

Ain't he a beauty? Meet Simon P. Jobs, produced via IVF in a lab at Stanford using my sperm and -- here's the big breakthrough -- an egg that was also produced by me. First time this has been successfully pulled off anywhere. Thing is, as I've said recently, I am immortal. But just in case anything should happen I think it's good to have an heir waiting in the wings. And, no disrespect to Mrs. Jobs, because she's very smart and beautiful, but she doesn't have the Jobs genes, and if anyone else is ever going to take over this company I think they need to be one hundred percent Jobso. Docs managed to insert a transplanted ovary into my abdomen and gave me hormones -- remember for a while last year I didn't a beard, and people were wondering why? -- and then harvested the eggs I produced. Whisked them into a petri dish with some of my uber-gravy (which for the record the docs said was unlike anything they'd ever seen before; really strong swimmers and lots of them) and voila, Simon P. sprang to life.

He'll be raised at Apple, in a secret environment where he'll be exposed to a completely accurate copy of the real world. If I live forever, as I plan to do, well, fine. Simon P. has the easiest job in the world, just hanging out in his hermetically sealed environment, going to the gym and getting laid and having people tell him how brilliant he is -- in other words the same life as Sergey Brin. If anything does happen to me, the boy prince takes over. I don't care if he's only three years old. He's in charge. This is all in my contract and can't be revoked. Might be a rough patch in the years before he learns to read, but trust me, once he comes of age and those Jobso genes kick in, this kid will be taking over the planet.

For the real story, see here

This scares me

Maybe because I'm supposed to meet with Ballmer this week. The guy always finds a way to harsh my Zen. Totally destroys my peaceful vibe.

SCO vows to sue self, alleging incompetence.

They sued IBM. They sued Novell. They sued some auto parts retailer and then some other end customer. They served a restaurant waitress for screwing up their order. They sued a highway patrolman who gave Darl McBride a speeding ticket. They sued the National Weather Service for predicting sunshine on a day when it rained. They sued Dane Cook and David Spade for foisting their horrible shows onto cable TV. (Enough, we get it, Ed.)

They hired David Boies, who claims to be the world's greatest litigator, though a lot of people had doubts about him after he failed to drive a stake through Microsoft's black heart on behalf of Sun and Apple, er, I mean the DOJ. Anyhoo. SCO claimed they were owed money because Linux infringed on Unix and they owned Unix. Except, um, it turns out SCO doesn't own Unix. This according to a judge, who ruled Friday. Now Boies says SCO has retained him to sue himself as well as SCO management for being frigtards. That one, for sure, should be a slam-dunk. Godspeed to you, SCO.

Squirrel Boy's visit

So someone spotted Eric sneaking into Apple HQ and now I'm getting all this mail from people asking what we were talking about. Katie Cotton says I should give the usual answer, the one we give to shareholders, federal investigators, and filthy hacks alike: Fuck you. But I'm really getting into this spirit of radical transparency and I know Eric is all about that too. Just look at how he manages his AdSense program. Total transparency. At least on Google's end.

Anyhoo. Here's what we did. We started out with lunch, which was Kobe pears that I have specially flown in from Japan on the Jobs Jet. These pears are in season right now and you have to eat them within twenty-four hours after they're picked or you miss most of the experience. I also flew in a special chef who knows how to prepare them, a guy named Mr. Yamamoto, which maybe seems excessive except when you realize these pears cost two hundred bucks each and there's no point in eating them unless they're prepared correctly. Yamamoto-san uses a special knife and slices them so thin you can hold up each slice and see through it. They're super filling. I ate one and was just stuffed. For dessert we had mugs of hot water with lemon. Overkill, I know, but Squirrel Boy likes to live large.

After lunch we did some digestion yoga and then hung upside down in our gravity boots and tried to think about where the Web is going and how our companies can work together. But for some reason we were just blocked. In my case I think my stomach was working overtime trying to digest that pear. We said things like, "Unh, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0, and apps over the Internet, computing in the cloud, maybe an OS that runs on the Web, do more stuff in a browser, but you still need intelligence on the desktop, or maybe you could make a thin client that works with the cloud, or do more on mobile devices, and we should open up the wireless system, and there's all this disruption coming, we should make a list of industries that are going to be disrupted and how we can take advantage of that, and maybe Google makes a back-end system using some of our user interface technology and unh, yeah, okay."

I'll be honest. None of us has a clue about where any of this stuff is headed. Then again, we never do. We just pretend. Somehow it all works out in the end. I have no idea how, or why. But it does.

What good is FeedBurner?

Funny thing about these crappo FeedBurner ads. You don't make any money off them -- seriously, I mean it's embarrassing; and if you want to know why Sergey and Larry and Squirrel Boy are bazillionaires, just start a blog and put in their ad system and see how much you get -- but you can learn a bit about your readership. For example, see above. See which ad got the most clicks. Then tell me who's reading this blog. Old Mac-loving dudes with wangular softitude: Namaste. Much love. I welcome you, and honor the place where you and I become one. Or something.

Report: Vista causes global warming

See the second page of this story from Network World. Mostly it's about how Vista frigs up high-def video and audio content. But this Australian researcher says all the overhead in Vista has a more damaging side effect: “It’s a bit of an extreme claim, but you could say Windows Vista causes global warming, because it’s burning so much power with all this nonsense."

What can I say? Yet another reason to buy a Mac. Al Gore is on the case, pushing the federal government to drop Windows PCs in favor of Macs in all government offices and all schools. Gore's theory is that Gates is intentionally drawing extra power and trying to heat up the planet, so he can cash in by investing in carbon offsets. Damn you, Beastmaster!

I hate to say this, but some people are gonna need to get whacked

So this whole Greg Reyes conviction is freaking me out. Sure, the stories all say that El Jobso is in the clear. Such is the power of the RDF. The truth is, I'm scared. Like if I hadn't just spent 10 days on the Master Cleanse and then followed it up with 2 days of spearmint-flavored high colonics, I'd be crapping my pants right now. And it's not just me. Half the friggin Valley is living in fear. See here. It's like living in Stalin's Russia, waiting for the knock at the door in the middle of the night. Last night a bunch of us were having dinner at Chantilly -- the place was packed with Valley types -- and a couple of cops walked in. They were just there about a car that was parked in a fire lane. Too late. Half a dozen dudes had already taken off running through the kitchen. Yeah. It's like dat, y'all.

As BusinessWeek reports, the scary thing about the Reyes conviction is that they didn't really have much of a case against him. But they did have some people who ratted him out. Same for us. And you know exactly who I'm talking about. I'm not saying we're gonna do anything, but as Larry said to me this afternoon, sometimes a true Zen master is called upon to do difficult things, things that need to be done. Plus, do you really want to go to jail? I mean, really?

And now that there's blood in the water, the prosecutors and SEC morons are gonna be even more bold. And no amount of money will satisfy them in terms of a settlement. They want heads on sticks.

Jerry York says he can handle the details and everything will look like an accident and there's no connections back to me. I really hoped we wouldn't end up here. But here we are. Negative people upset me. So do snitches. You know who you are. So a word to the wise: Zip it, jagoffs.

PC Mag says Apple will take over the desktop PC market

See here. Money quote: "When we do, eventually, look back — and a decade or so from now, we will -- we'll try to pinpoint the moment when Apple's Macintosh and OS X began to pick up significant steam. Was it when OS X first launched, or the arrival of the first all-in-one, flat-panel iMac? Perhaps it was the moment when Apple chose Intel (and maybe Intel chose Apple)? Maybe it was the lackluster launch and sales performance of the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system?"

Um, no. It was the moment when they announced that I was back. Never before has one man had such a profound effect on a company, an industry -- indeed, an entire economy. Business schools will be teaching case studies about this for decades to come. It humbles me to think about it.

Regarding our new software programs

I'm really proud of all the new software we introduced this week. And I'd like to explain a bit about our process. Because we take a little bit different approach when it comes to developing software. What we do is, we go talk to customers and ask them what features they want in such-and-such a program. Then we go back and try to make that program. I know. Pretty radical, right?

Take our new Pages word processing applications. Customers have been screaming for a fairly simple and easy-to-use word processor that they can understand just by opening up and poking around. They don't want a million buttons and pull-down menus and eight zillion features. So fair enough. That's what we developed. (Or actually, what I developed, but we have to pretend that other people work on these projects too.) And we're selling that plus the other iWork apps for 79 bucks. Jesus. How can you not buy it? What's not to love?

Now think about this. These same customers asked Microsoft for the same thing -- simplicity -- and what did the Borg give them? A new version of Word that has more buttons than the dashboard on the space shuttle. You need a pilot's license to use it. Have you seen it? It's incredible. First time someone showed me the interface I thought it was a spoof, like that fake ad about what an iPod box would look like if Microsoft made it.

You know why this happens? Because here's how things work at the Borg. They've got all these zillions of teams out there dreaming up wacky new features, and none of them talk to each other. And they're all competing with each other and they're all looking for applications to stick their features into. Doesn't matter if anyone wants these features. They've been dreamed up. And raises and promotions are at stake. Productivity reviews and so on. To developers at the Borg big apps like Word are seen as big ocean-going freighters that get launched every few years and are able to carry loads of new features. If you're inside Microsoft on a product team, the goal is to get as many of your little things onto the next big freighter before it sails. Whether you succeed is largely based on whether your boss and your boss's boss have any influence with the powers that be. Can they trade favors? Push their weight around? Hold out one good feature unless five crappo ones go in with it? And so forth.

Basically they create software the way Congress writes bills. Every House rep gets a crack at the bill, loading it up with pork, paying back favors, doing the bidding of lobbyists or whatever. That's why bills end up a thousand pages long and full of stuff that even the people who vote for them don't know is in there. Polar bear petting zoos in Alaska, corn museums in Nebraska, whatever.

I look at the new Microsoft Office suite and I'm almost in awe. I mean it looks like they just shipped it without anyone actually looking at the programs and without having any central authority over the project. It's like one of those movies where you walk out going, Did a group of fully sentient adult human beings really watch that movie and say, Wow, yes, this is wonderful, we must put this into cinemas everywhere and share it with the world? Same for Office. Who gave this the green light? I mean how could Ray Ozzie actually think, Wow, this is some beautiful, elegant software? Oh wait. That's right. Ray made Notes. Enough said.

Anyway. Microsoft is all about kitchen sink software development, with pieces thrown in from all over the place. Frankenstein apps, we call them. I'm sorry to say this because as you know the Beastmaster and I have become best girlfriends again since we hung out at the All Things D conference. Bill, forgive me. But you know it's true.

Much love, Joy of Tech

For this. Sort of a "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." Only about FSJ. Namaste, Nitrozac and Snaggy. I honor the place where you and I become one.

Are you happy now?

So I know it took us a while to get these new iMacs to market. But come on. A 24-inch screen, 2 gigs of memory and a 500-gig hard drive for $2,300? Or for cheapskates a totally nice 20-inch machine for $1200? Oh, and an operating system that actually works? And design that's better than almost any company in any industry in the world? Or maybe you'd rather have this. Right? Maybe you really put these two things side by side and choose that. If so, you should have your head examined.

Come on people. If we don't take over the world now then I give up.

Valleywag still hunting for FSJ

Just heard from one of our sources that Denton and Bigglesworth are convinced -- again -- that they've found FSJ and will be announcing it tomorrow. They've hired some expert who studies writing styles and are convinced that it's Dave Winer. Big scoop is going to hit in the morning. Denton has been sending us threatening emails all day, saying, "Confess, Dave, because even if you don't we're going to run with the story anyway. Ha! Sorry to ruin your day but it's our bare-knuckles, no-holds-barred Fleet Street style of journalism, like it or not!" Nick Denton is 42 years old and widely acclaimed as the greatest reporter in the world.

Damn, I am so busted, yo

Well it had to happen. Honestly I can't believe it's taken this long. But as you may have heard, I've been busted by a newspaper reporter. My cover has been blown. Guy named Brad Stone, who works for the New York Times. Have you heard of him? Well, tip of the hat to you, Brad Stone. You did the sleuthing. You put the pieces of the puzzle together. You went through my trash, hacked into my computer, and put listening devices in my home. Now you've ruined the mystery of Fake Steve, robbing thousands of people around the world of their sense of childlike wonder. Hope you feel good about yourself, you mangina. One bright side is that at least I was busted by the Times and not Valleywag. I really, really enjoyed seeing those guys keep guessing wrong. For six months Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth put their big brains together and couldn't come up with the answer. Guy from the Times did it in a week. So much for the trope about smarty-pants bloggers disrupting old media. Brilliant. My only regret is that we didn't get a chance to see Bigglesworth take a few more swings and misses.

Apple faithful, here in our darkest hour I know what you're thinking: What's next for FSJ? Well, I'm taking a few days off to sit in a lake and do some yoga and meditation and non-thinking. Then I'm coming back next week, badder than ever, with a new sponsor -- my homeboys at Forbes.com. Turns out they've been reading FSJ and liking it too. Who knew?

Meanwhile if anyone can think of a cool way to use the name "Brad Stone" (all or part) as a verb, let me know.

Maybe this:

brad, v.i.:

1. To bust a fellow filthy hack without mercy and spoil the fun for everyone, in a quest for personal aggrandizement.
2. To urinate in a pool.

Big news coming tomorrow

No, it's not photos of the new iMacs. Can't show you those till Tuesday. But trust me. We changed the world on June 29. And we're about to change it again. My world, anyway, is about to change, and in some pretty profound ways. More tomorrow. Peace out.

Dear Larry: You're fired

I've been waiting years to say that. Man it feels good. That's right, Ellison. You're out. Over. Gone. Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. Bokay?

Readers, I'm sorry that this little experiment went so off the rails.

Chips off the ol' block?

Get a load of these two knuckleheads.

They both knock themselves out to prove their devotion to moi. As well they should since I made these goofballs. Just like I made Tom Siebel, Ray Lane, Chuck “Call Me Charles” Phillips, Safra “Don’t Call Me Kitty” Catz and all the other numbnutses I brought in to dress Oracle up for outsiders.


Self-proclaimed psychoanalysts out there posit that I’ve set up a competition between these two newest pseudo sons for my favor.

Insult to injury, reporter types then insist that my stake in one or both (okay, BOTH) of their companies is a conflict of interest. They sniff that sf.com and Netsuite compete with Oracle’s new SMB products.

They don’t get it.

Do they actually think I KNOW how much I own of these companies? There's more spare change stuck in my various couches (on land and sea) than I've invested in this Saasy crap. I just need to keep these crazy kids off the streets. The world should pay ME for that service.

Sans my bankroll, Benioff wouldn’t keep reporters toothless and sedated with special-blend chocolate, writing BJ pieces about how Sf.com invented Software-as-a-Service. More like invented kissing my ass.

So let it go...

And seriously, does anyone think that real sons of mine would sweat this much? In public?

I didn’t think so.




Hey LFS, are you out there? I know you’re on a break, but I just had some great new organic herb jetted in if you want to partake. Give a jingle.

Elton John wants to shut down the Internet

See here. Elton, relax. All you have to do is smash your hard drive, and they can't find anything. No need to shut down the whole damn Internet. Bit of advice though: Stay off MySpace for a while. And maybe change your user name from "SirTeabaggingDaddy" to something a little more safe.

So FSJ calls...

Okay. So I told Little Fake Stevie I’d sit in for him a couple days while he gets his chakras aligned or whatever it is he does when he isn’t babbling on about the iPod or whatever other toy he’s paid some schmo to invent and then takes credit for.

Don’t get me wrong: I love LFS. He’s my buddy. My brother in arms. There’s no one I’d rather be in a foxhole with. With a good water cannon at the ready and plenty of frigtard targets. That’s one Buddhist with a killer instinct.

Anyway, back to this little blog. Sure. Fake Larry can be blogger guy for a week or so as long as it doesn’t interfere with the training sessions for the next-gen America’s Cup crew.

Jesus. That brings up some bad memories. Seriously boys, you call that debacle racing? They’re lucky I just pulled that shitbag captain off the wheel and didn’t keel haul him. If there hadn’t been so many cameras there’s no telling what lessons would have been imparted. The beauty of big-time sailing is anything goes in international waters. If you get my meaning.

But I digress. As you’ve probably guessed,I’m LFS’s bud Fake Larry Ellison. As LFS might say, I’m the guy who screwed IBM out of its own database business with its own technology. It was a beautiful thing. I invented Oracle. Maybe you’ve heard of it.

And as for those other asshats who claim they co-founded Oracle: they can go pound sand, as we used to say in Chicago. Of course I would never say that now, now that I’m all Zen and samarai like. Not it’s like: “Bygones.”


So here’s your blog kids. I gotta go do important stuff now. Like pretend to care about databases and Oracle World Shanghai or some shit.

In reality I have to review the “little woman’s” latest chapters. You can’t be too careful about what gets out there.

Larry wants to try blogging

Bit of news here. Larry Ellison has been bugging his PR people for a while to let him start his own blog at Oracle. But they're like, No friggin way are we letting you show the world how absolutely bonkers you are. So, fine. He comes to me and he says, Hey, in the summer, when it's slow, how about I take a turn on your blog.

Which is a long way of saying: Larry is going to be guest-blogging for me over the next few weeks, until Labor Day, and then I'll pick up again. I warn you: Larry is nuts. Okay? Caveat lector, as they say in Polish.

In case you're wondering, yes, someone got fired for this

Much love to the many readers who have sent in links to this article and the photo above which shows an iPhone kiosk running Windows XP. We called AT&T to complain and they said if we wanted to come in and install free iMacs in all their stores they'd be happy to oblige, but otherwise STFU because nobody in their IT department knows how to deal with those crazy strange foreign Macintoshes with their wacky non-Windows operating system which is just so strange and different and difficult to understand. And then we'll have to train all their people and then we'll have to find a company that will license OS X and make Mac clones because AT&T has a policy of not buying anything that has only a single source of supply. Well, we're thinking about it. That's all I can say at this time.

So who got fired? I'm sure you want to know. Well, it was a guy named Pete Dorn, who works in our supply chain organization at Apple. No, he didn't have anything to do with the Apple stores. But somebody had to be fired. We pulled his name from a hat.

I'm on Day 5 of Master Cleanse and it's amazing

Seriously, friends, even if you're not trying to lose weight, even if you just want to feel refreshed and revitalized, with more energy than you've ever had in your life, I highly recommend this. For ten days you eat no solid food and drink a mixture of fresh-squeezed lemon juice with maple syrup and cayenne pepper. First day you feel great. Day two you get grumpy. Day three you should not be around other human beings. But on day four the clouds start to lift. Yesterday was pretty good. Today I feel like a friggin golden god. I've lost seven pounds. Goal is to drop 20 before I'm done. Better yet I'm sleeping only four hours a night and feel totally refreshed. I'm trying to get Peter Oppenheimer to try this. Instead he's gone on something he calls "the Junior Cleanse," which involves eating nothing but cheeseburgers and milk shakes plus one latte every morning laced with laxatives. And a super hot bath every night. Says he's been doing this since college, and he swears by it.

Regarding this stupid Dateline show

Loads of folks are writing in about this ridiculous Dateline program about stolen iPods. See here. Gist is that Apple should somehow help people find their iPods when they get stolen by using the registration information in the player. Folks, come on. Our company is called Apple, not LoJack. I mean, I guess if you want to pay an extra five hundred bucks for theft insurance we could provide some sort of service like this. Otherwise, look, it's not our job to find your friggin iPod if it gets stolen. Does Mercedes go looking for my car if it gets pinched? Is it somehow their fault? Same here. Anyway, um, think about this for a minute. We're trying to sell more iPods, right? Yours gets stolen, we're happy to sell you a new one. We've got a new one that even makes phone calls. Have you heard of it?

New Apple target price: $160

See here. And some are going even higher. Meanwhile king dork Jim Cramer and his moronic henchman refuse to apologize for spreading lies and hurting our stock earlier in the week, here. Watch the video and see how Cramer has the absolute gall to ask Quasimodo, "Gee, what's going on with Apple, we've seen a lot of volatility there lately." Cramer, you are lower than whale shit.

Frigtards at AT&T stores won't sell iPhones

See here. They're pissed because they don't get as big a commission as they do on other phones. And because they have to compete with Apple stores selling iPhones too. Total a-holes. This is one huge reason why we stayed out of the phone business for as long as we did. I can't stand the kind of morons who work in the typical cell phone store. It's like they give people an IQ test and an EQ test and those who fail move on to the next round; then they sift out anyone who's polite or helpful or doesn't have a criminal record or a serious drug problem; whoever's left gets the job.

Honestly, this is why Google wants the FCC to free up the wireless spectrum and let customers put any phone on any network. Well, okay, that's not really why Google wants that. But anyway. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Cell phone carriers suck. They're orifices. They're yet another example of an industry that thrives only by exploiting customers and treating them like shit. Lock-in, two-year contracts, screwing you on every little feature. Damn. Someday, I hope not too long from now, we are going to look back on this era of wireless telecom in horror, not believing we ever had to put up with such bullshit.

Bono to join Roger McNamee's band. Jaysus!

Just heard from Bono. Not only is he investing alongside Roger McNamee in their private equity company, Elevation Partners, but now Bono says he's joining Moonalice, the band that McNamee and his wife have assembled with G.E. Smith (ex Saturday Night Live)and Jack Casady and Pete Sears (ex Jefferson Starship and Hot Tuna) and longtime pros Barry Sless and Jimmy Sanchez. See their website here. "Look, I fookin hate hippie music, but the money was just too fookin good to turn down," Bono says.

Monkey Boy dancing for Zune

The always reliable hacks at The Register claim that a Microsoft employee made this video and got fired for it. Sadly, that sounds about right. See their story here.

RUPE'S SCOOP!

Journal hacks, we feel your pain. Your sacred bastion of journalistic excellence has been sacked by barbarians. The Lourdes of business news, the Chartres of financial information, is no more. Hang out the black bunting, read up on your Schumpeter and start looking for jobs at TheStreet.com. It's over. Meanwhile I just want you to know how excited all of us in Silicon Valley are to see you guys finally getting to experience first-hand the "creative destruction" that you're always celebrating in your own pages. Especially all of you guys who have delighted in tormenting Apple over our accounting practices. We'll be sending you each a special little gift -- a black necktie. Marc Benioff is sending miniature coffins filled with breath mints. Oh, and next time he's in New York he wants to treat you all to an expensive dinner. Bokay? Mwah.

Roughly Drafted explains the vast right-wing conspiracy against Apple

See here. The best part is, we don't even have to pay this guy. We do have to write it for him though. Fair enough. Daniel Eran Dilger, we bow to your genius.

Huge party at John Doerr's house last night

The greentards are whooping it up big time, celebrating the news (see here) about oil prices hitting new record highs. Champagne, caviar, mountains of shrimp cocktail, and loads of wasted VCs dancing around -- sorry but the above footage was shot sideways and it's the only stuff I could find. Yeah. It was that kind of party. Doerr was wearing a grass skirt and hula-dancing around a bonfire, saying, "I'm going to be rich! I'm going to be rich! Oh wait! I'm already rich! But I'm going to be richer! Eat my ass, Tom Perkins!" All the Kleiner dudes were there, dancing around. McNamee's band did a set, with Al Gore joining on tambourine. (Al also gave a brief speech in which he said, "If I'm elected, I promise you that gasoline will cost ten dollars a gallon and the cost of electricity will triple," which got a huge roar from the crowd.) Then the press showed up and Doerr went out front to talk to them and started crying about global warming again, like he did a while ago at some conference.

So about that "buying opportunity," er ...

Okay. I know I told you to buy at $140 and now we're at $131, and maybe you're a little angry at El Jobso this morning. I understand that, baby. But listen. You have to trust me here. If we don't have trust, how can we have a relationship? You know I love you, right? You know I'd never lie to you. Now I know you may not want to hear what I'm about to say, but let me speak. What I want to tell you is this: The new low price represents another buying opportunity. Even bigger than the last one. Yesterday's nine-dollar plunge is based on nothing more than some bad rumors that Jerry York is spreading so he can scoop up shares before the big announcement next week. He and Kirk Kerkorian are holed up in Kirk's Dr. Evil-style underground lair in Las Vegas, and they're quietly amassing shares, using shell companies and fronts in the Cayman Islands. Kirk made a big short bet at $145, drove down the stock with a rumor about us missing our numbers and then another rumor about iPhone sales sucking wind, made a killing, and now is pumping all his profits back into the stock for another killing on the upside.

Listen to me. When the world sees the new iMacs on Tuesday they are going to be stunned. I mean friggin amazed. Jaws on the floor. And the stock is going to pop like a Roman candle.

Dudes, you're getting new iMacs

I'm sure you've seen the announcement about our big Mac-related event next week. No big surprise since we've waited way too long to crank out our new Macs. But trust me, friends. The new models are super tasty, the most beautiful machines we've ever created. We've already had orders placed by a bunch of museums that want to put them on display. Jon Ive, already known as the world's greatest industrial designer, is about to become a legend. Wait and see.