Totally wrong

Moshe's crew did some investigative work and they say the Beastmaster is behind this video. I don't doubt it. In fact we're expecting more. This is how the Borg operates. They look for any vulnerability, any tiny little crack, and they push and push and push. So they're going to ride us on this iPhone price cut fiasco and the feature-lite iPod Touch. They'll push millions into this. They'll probably even hire Dvorak to write a fake Ballmer blog to bash my blog. Whatevs. We'll survive.

Fear not. If you killed your iPhone, we'll gladly sell you another one.

You might have seen this story in the New York Times about iPhones freezing up. If so I hope you read down far enough in the story to see the following quote from our PR spokesbot: “If the damage was due to use of an unauthorized software application, voiding their warranty, they should purchase a new iPhone.”

We spent a lot of time debating this but I really think this is the best thing to do. We're going to stay classy and take the high road. No recriminations. No punishment. No fines or criminal charges for tampering with an Apple device or loading some dangerous unapproved software. If you messed around with your iPhone and now have an iBrick, okay. Fair enough. We're going to let it slide. Bring your broken iPhone to any Apple store and we'll take back the iPhone you broke and sell you a brand new iPhone for only $399, minus the $100 coupon that you might have.

We call it the "Fresh Start" amnesty program. Each unit sold in our Fresh Start program will come with a special card that says something like this: "Hey. Looks like we got off on the wrong foot. Let's start again, shall we? We're willing to take you back and give you a second chance, because we believe you have the right intentions and that you really do want to be a good customer. So here's to new beginnings."

Gotta warn you, though. This is a one-time deal. You mess with your Fresh Start iPhone, we're not going to sell you any more. That's it. You're cooked. I mean it.

This chick scares me almost as much as iJustine

Sometimes I watch videos like this and I wonder why I get up and go to work every day. Then I remember. It's the money. That's right. I feel better now.

Zuckerberg: Facebook now worth $50 billion. No, $60 billion. Oh wait--

No guff. This baby-faced punk kid has got balls like a gorilla. Few days ago he was turning away Microsoft, saying their offer to buy a piece of Facebook at a $10 billion valuation wasn't high enough because his profitless company was worth $15 billion. Now he's telling analysts that the price has gone up again and the company is worth $50 billion. Filthy hack asked him, "Did you say fifteen billion, as in one-five billion, or fifty billion, as in five-zero?" And Faceberg confirms it's the latter. He says they arrived at the number because they have 40 million members and each one should be worth just over a thousand bucks. Based on what? Who knows. Who cares. Does it even matter? This thing is tethered to reality like a helium balloon is tethered to the earth. Faceberg, you are a bold new breed of Silicon Valley huckster. You make the guys who run Yelp look like amateurs. Namaste. I honor the place where your chutzpah becomes one with reality.

UPDATE: I've just been informed that the valuation has gone up again. Just in the time it took me to write this, Facebook has gone to $60 billion. Wow. Bubble 2.0, baby.

Bono and I have had a falling out

It's been coming for a while, actually. First because of his erratic driving. Then it was the constant calls for free stuff from Bono and the rest of U2, especially at Christmastime. But the straw that broke the camel's back is this Palm deal, which I wrote about yesterday. (See here.) Bono's investment firm, Elevation Partners, are the ones trying to revive Palm. And Palm is now poaching away my engineers. I tried talking to Bono about this. Actually I just shouted at him for a while and swore a lot and threatened to sue him. No luck. He just laughed. Anyway, whatever. We were friends for a while after we did that U2 special edition iPod. But truth be told, he screwed us on that deal too. At the end of the day I'm not even angry, just sad. Bono is really pissing off a lot of people in the Valley. Word is that McNamee is thinking about tossing Bono out of Moonalice because no matter what song they're playing Bono turns his guitar up louder than everyone else and tries to sing lead, even when he's supposed to be singing backup. Apparently he and McNamee almost threw down during the last rehearsal. Bad vibes. Bono, look into your soul. Remember who your friends are. I wish you the best. Just like I wish the best for that general counsel that we just tossed out of Apple. Really. I mean it. Namaste. (Photo: Philip Apage, Rolling Stone.)

Legal news: We've hired a gunslinger

See our press release about this here. We're bringing over the guy who used to be Larry's general counsel at Oracle, and we're booting our current guy. Or, as we put it in the press release: “We thank Don for his contributions to Apple during the past ten months, and wish him well in his future endeavors." Translation: You're history, butt-munch.

The switcheroo was Larry's idea. Now that the feds are circling again he says I need some bad-ass mofo leading my team, not some namby-pamby Valley type. "I want you to have my consigliere," he told me. "He's a good man. He can be trusted. Listen to him." We've had one meeting so far and it went pretty well. We're back to considering the "get the fuck out of the country now" option, which previously I ruled out but now, given all the headaches around this damn iPhone, I'm thinking might not be a bad idea. More as it develops.

To all iPhone customers:

I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset because the new iPhone software update caused their iPhones to drop dead. After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions.

First, I am sure that we are making the correct decision to fuck up iPhones that have been modified or hacked in violation of our terms and conditions. I'm also sure that we've done the right thing in wiping out non-Apple programs that some users installed on their iPhones without permission from Apple. It benefits both Apple and every iPhone user (but mostly Apple) to keep all iPhone users completely underneath the iPhone 'tent' and following the rules. We strongly believe that keeping everyone's iPhone exactly the same will help us do just that.

Second, to those people who played by the rules and didn't do anything harmful to their iPhone and still experienced some minor problems like having their iPhone turned into a brick by our software update, let me say this: being in technology for 30+ years I can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before all the problems were worked out of the hardware or the operating system or whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the vendor to actually get everything working right, you'll never buy any technology product because there is always something that isn't quite right. The good news is that if you buy products from companies that support them well, like Apple tries to do, you will receive years of frustration and anger, plus the envy and admiration of all your friends.

Third, even though we are making the right decision to blow up certain iPhones, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after the units that have been modified in violation of our terms. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who played by the rules and still experienced problems with the iPhone software update an electronic coupon which can be redeemed for ten free minutes of calling time on the AT&T network. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple's website next week. Probably it will involve downloading another software update. Which you may or may not be able to do if your iPhone is truly bricked, as is the case for some. In those cases you'll need to bring your iPhone to an Apple store and make an appointment for service, at which time one of our geniuses may or may not be able to help you and may or may not have to send the iPhone back to Apple for repair. Stay tuned.

We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers. We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.

Steve Jobs
Apple CEO

49% of IT workers admit to sleeping on job

And the other 51% are lying. See here. Also, many apparently claim to have kissed a co-worker. Come on. We have IT people at Apple. I've seen what they're like.

Jolie launches rival bid for Zuckerberg

This just in from some of the Disney people in Los Angeles. Angelina is an avid Facebook user and says no way is she letting Gates adopt Zuckerberg. She's trying to raise a fund to out-bid Microsoft and bring Zuckerberg down to Los Angeles. "Mark is too cute to be absorbed into the Borg," she says. "I want him to have a normal life, just like any other kid." (Again much love to Acid Gurl for the photo.)

Another sign that the end is near

You may recall that last summer News Corp. and Yahoo were supposedly trying to make a deal in which News Corp. would sell MySpace to Yahoo and get a share of the Yahoo business. Talks are back on, according to Rupert. He called up a little while ago to see if I'm going to the next TMWRTW (Twenty Men Who Rule The World) meeting, which is being held in Hawaii next month. We were shooting the breeze when he mentioned that his guys have been holed up with Yahoo guys again. This time they're proposing News Corp. gets 25% of Yahoo in exchange for MySpace. Not bad considering Yahoo is worth about $40 billion, which means old Rupe will have turned his $580 million purchase of MySpace into a $10 billion asset in just two years. Jerry Yang, meanwhile, gets to look like a man of action (ha ha) and finally gets a piece of the social networking business, which is where all the Internet traffic is going.

Rupert says business at MySpace is booming, couldn't be better. But trust me, he knows damn well they're about to get their head blown off by Facebook. Also worth noting: When crafty old Rupe decides that the time is right to start selling things, you know we're hitting the top on the current bubble. Just saying. Watch out for falling debris. (Photo courtesy of Ian Mangina, US Weekly.)

We are going to war with Palm

So you probably know that Palm is in tough condition these days and that they recently hired Jon Rubinstein, aka the guy who really invented the friggin iPod, to help turn things around there. See this story for example. What you might not know is that Rubinstein has been poaching away some of our best guys from the iPod and iPhone teams. What can I do? California law prohibits non-compete clauses, so the people are free to go. I've tried just calling up Ruby and screaming at him. Same with Ed Colligan, the Palm CEO, and anyone else who's close to Palm. Then I tried meeting with them and being nice while also making threats. Still they keep poaching. I've threatened to sue them over copyright violations and patent violations, and we still might do that, though Phil Schiller (aka Mini Me) says that would just make us look scared of Palm, and we're definitely not scared of Palm. Just pissed. I mean talk about disloyalty. In the short term I'm just deploying Moshe to mess with some heads at Palm. Slashing tires, smashing windshields, threatening notes. That kind of thing. Colligan called me last night and he was like, "Dude, I know that was you who slashed my tires, okay? So just cut the shit." You know what I told him? I said, Don't make me call OJ, brother. Because if you push me on this, I will. I swear to friggin God.

Just heard from Zuckerberg

He's like, Dude, look, the way I figure it is that whatever someone is willing to offer me, my company must be worth more, right? I mean if someone wants to pay ten billion for something they're only going to do that if they think it's worth more than ten billion, like maybe fifteen billion. But if it's worth fifteen billion then why should I sell it for ten? But then if they offer fifteen billion I know it's probably worth twenty or twenty-five billion. You see the quandary we're in. How do you ever sell something if it keeps going up in value like this? Especially in our case where it keeps going up in value for no apparent reason. And we've got all these crooks trying to steal this company out from under me. I mean sure I'm only fifteen years old and my CFO is still in junior high but we're not stupid, right? I mean I was going to Harvard before I did this. Harvard. Little college back East. Have you heard of it? And what a lot of people don't know is I was the king of poker in our dorm. Never lost a game. You know why? No, not because I was lucky. Because I was smart, but I acted dumb. And I was really good at bluffing. That helped too. (Photo: Dave Spart, Harvard Crimson.)

This stuff about me and OJ is partly true

So you've seen all the stories (like this one) about some prisoner in South Carolina filing a lawsuit claiming that I hired OJ Simpson as a hit man, among other things. Fact is, I have met OJ, but not in the context of hiring him to kill people for me. I've hired him as an acting coach. And I've been working with some of his defense team in preparing my own testimony in the options backdating case. At this point we're still hoping to kill off this subpoena where they want me to testify against Nancy Heinen. But if we can't kill it and I have to go talk to them, I want to be ready. So I've been working with some of the old OJ team. Who better, right? I mean they had the guy dead to rights, and he walked. Amazing.

I've also been doing some mime work and facial gesture work with OJ himself, trying to perfect that expression where you look kind of baffled and befuddled and confused, but also confident and unafraid, likeable and pleasant, and sometimes hurt and indignant and a little bit angry but not so angry that you scare the jurors. OJ had all that movie acting background which helped him tremendously. He'd been working with acting coaches for years on his Nordberg character. I can't comment too much on our work together but I can say that during all of our meetings OJ has been a complete gentleman and a total professional. We start out with some easy mime stuff, just facing each other and "walking down the glass," and then we do some physical stuff like "walking into the wind" to loosen up before we get into the serious facial work. There are something like fourteen thousand muscles in the face and a pro like OJ can control them at this incredible level. It's kind of amazing to see him work. These sessions last an hour and afterward I'm just drained. It's exhausting work. So much concentration.

We're also working on a slogan with a rhyme in it, something that encapsulates our "Steve knew nothing" defense and will be easy for the jurors to remember. Like this: "If he didn't know, you must let him go." (Photo: Burt Hammer, False Rumor Weekly.)

Regarding this Microsoft-Facebook deal, aka the world's most expensive adoption ever

People have been asking me for more than a year now if we're seeing another crazy dotcom bubble again, only this time with Web 2.0 companies. All I can say is, I thought Yahoo was nuts to offer one billion for Facebook last year. Then I started hearing the team of eighth-graders who are running the company now thought they were worth five billion and I thought, Okay, yes, we're in a bubble. Now the Borg is offering to invest at a valuation of ten billion, and the nuts running Facebook think they're worth fifteen billion. Where does it end? Gates keeps bidding, and no matter what he offers, they say they're now worth more than that? No idea why Gates is doing this except maybe he's figured out that Facebook is the only company with applications that are more useless and more annoying than Microsoft's. You've got to hand it to Zuckerberg though. Kid has brass balls. And he's figured out something very essential about the Valley, which is that, deep down, nobody really knows what anything is worth, and nobody really knows which ideas are any good, and everybody's always driven primarily by fear. So what the money does is hover, waiting to pounce at the last minute and then, if something takes off, acting like they knew all along that this was the Big One.

You have to admit that they do look good together, right? Bill and Zuck, I mean. They should form a club for very expensive yet essentially irrelevant companies. I wish them well. I really do. Now I must get back to the terribly unsexy job of taking over the music, film, television and telecommunication industries. Peace out. (Photo by Acid Gurl.)

This made me cry

When I see things like this -- a 1-year-old using an iPhone -- well, I just get a bit overwhelmed. Talk about a sense of childlike wonder. Much love to reader James for sending this in.

Finally, a customer!

Much love to Acid Gurl for the photo. And congratulations to OLPC for the big win.

I'm sending Ahmadinejad some Apple products

I don't know if you caught any of the footage from this thing where the new Shah of Iran was visiting New York this week and totally got into it with some hecklers and haters. The poor little guy is just so filled with anger. But beneath the anger there is also this incredible sadness. You can hear it in his voice, at least you can if you speak Persian, which I do. I listened to some of the audio from the event and honestly, I almost cried. So much pain! It brought me way back to 1976, to the original days at Apple and the goals we started out with. This is what we wanted to deal with. The anger, the pain, the sadness, the negativity. We saw our own culture wounded and saddened by a long and painful war, trying to recover. We saw our culture in pain and decided you know what? These people need beautiful consumer electronics.

Anyhoo. Long story short, I had my people pack up a crate of Apple products for the Shah and send them to him in New York. A few MacBooks, some iMacs, a variety of iPods, and an iPhone that they won't be able to use but at least they can play with the screen. My feeling is, let's reach out. Let's show these folks the best things about America, about the West. Show them our wonderful toys and invite them to use them too. Bridge-building has to begin somewhere. We're also talking about maybe opening a flagship retail store in Tehran. Namaste, crazy little Shah. I honor the place where your fingers and my iPod Touch become one. Much love. Peace out. (Photo: Khalil Gibran, Maxim.)

Bronfman finally speaks the truth

See this great article on Wired.com about how the music companies are now desperately trying to prop up some other online retailer as the alternative to Apple, and even sacrificing DRM to do it. Money quote from Edgar Bronfman Jr. where he admits that consumers now care more about their choice of music player than they do about the music itself: "Never before in the history of content has the hardware been more valuable than the software. You think about the VCR or the video cassette -- the video cassette always had more value than the VCR that you shoved it into. Apple has been able to turn that model on its head."

Yes we have. Ain't we cool?

Dear Richard Branson: Siooma

You tried to take on El Jobso with your own online music store. And guess what? It crashed and burned and got ground up under the mighty wheels of iTunes. Little advice for you, Goldilocks -- stick to runnning airlines and throwing water on talk show hosts, and leave the online music business to me.

Money quote from the Wired article: "News of the closure comes at an especially active time for the digital music market with high profile competitors like Sony also shuttering its online music store just last month. In an attempt to avoid a similar fate, MTV Networks and RealNetworks recently merged their online offerings, but with the increasing popularity of iTunes it's looking like the market is only going to get smaller and pricing less competitive."

Prediction: Within the next six months someone will accuse us of engaging in anti-competititve behavior. We're already hearing rumblings about this. They'll get Congress to hold hearings. Or get the DOJ to announce it's looking into it. Or more likely they'll start in Europe, where there's already some momentum in this direction. The guys who bring the charge will know it's horseshit. But they won't care. They'll get up there and act pious and pretend they really believe what they're saying. Look for Rob Glazer of Real Networks and maybe some music industry types. Microsoft won't participate but they'll be enjoying it, trust me.

The guys complaining won't really care if they win. The idea is just to slow us down -- to distract us and hobble us and tie up our resources so our rivals can try to gain ground in online distribution. Why not? Worked on Microsoft, right? Difference is that we're already anticipating it and have a plan in place to fight it off. At least I think I do. Note to self: Ask Jerry York what the plan is. (Photo: Burt Hammer, Men with Manes magazine.)

Vivendi says we're "indecent"

See this article where they claim we're taking too big a share of iTunes revenue and they say our contract terms are indecent. I told you a backlash was coming. Here it is. The media guys are calling in all their favors with the hacks in the press and launching a huge campaign to portray Apple as the big bad guy, the evil monopolist putting the squeeze on the poor little record companies. Story behind the story is they all just woke up and realized that they've lost control of their own industry. Now they're desperately scrambling to get back on their feet. Of course it's too late. But they're not going to go down easy. They're going to fight like a pack of cornered rats. Our job is to control the damage and get these rats into a big canvas bag and toss them in a river. For a while we thought we might be able to herd them along happily but now it is clear that this is not going to happen. It's going to be a street fight. Ugly, bloody, messy. We're going to get bitten a few times. But we'll win. Trust me. We'll win.

Marketwatch compare us to the Mob

See here. Says our message to iPhone users read like a Sicilian threat. You know what? Running a company like this is a lot like running a family. Marketwatch, you may think you know how we play rough, but the truth is you have no idea. None at all. Just ask Fred and Nancy.

Jon Ive as our next CEO?

Jon swears he didn't have anything to do with this article where some design guru pens an open letter to the Apple board saying that after I've retired they should put Jon Ive in charge. Fair enough. And the guy says lots of nice things about El Jobso and even acknowledges how difficult (I'd say impossible) I will be to replace. And with the recent news about the subpoena hovering over me I guess we'll have to expect more crap like this to start showing up in the blogosphere and even the mainstream press -- like last year when the Journal for no good reason did that big glowing profile on Tim Cook.

No worries. Katie and her team are writing a new 14,000-word piece under her "Daniel Eran Dilger" pen name where "Daniel" will explain why the options backdating thing presents no threat to Jobso and how the whole thing is just another Microsoft ploy to cast doubt over Apple because we're doing so well, and the U.S. Attorney and the SEC and all of the mainstream media are secretly doing the Beastmaster's bidding and the whole thing is just FUD and spin and lies and anyone who doesn't agree with this is a shill and here's a list of them and they should all be blacklisted and anyone who reads them or cites them should be blacklisted too. Whew. Katie cut her teeth doing Mac user group propaganda ops. When she gets going she really gets going.

Dear iPhone hackers: You dead, suckas

See here. If you unlocked your phone, our software update this week is gonna turn your precious phone into the world's most expensive paperweight. I mean, we appreciate reviews like this one in The Register where a guy raves about his unlocked phone. But folks, if you do this kind of thing, you're on your own. And don't even think about complaining. I told you not to do this. And no, this time we're not going to wuss out and change our minds and give you your money back or whatever. Frankly you should know what I wanted to do to the unlockers and believe me it wasn't just disabling the phone. Peace out.

IBM plans $1 billion commitment to XO laptop

Supposedly TBA later this week. Hot on the heels of its $1 billion commitment to Facebook, IBM is making another big, bold bet, this time on the XO machine. Now that OLPC is releasing the XO laptop to commercial customers IBM is jumping on board in a huge way to push the machines into corporate sites. "This has nothing to do with displacing Microsoft and everything to do with providing customers with wider choice," says Steve Mills. "The fact that the XO machine runs a non-Microsoft operating system and could become the standard platform for one-third of the world's population if it catches on in developing nations has nothing to do with our decision to invest up to one billion dollars in XO-related projects."

In addition to buying up to one million machines at $400 each to distribute to corporate customers in Brazil, IBM is devoting 14,000 programmers to the task of creating applications for the XO platform (first up: Lotus Notes, followed by the other Symphony productivity apps) and creating incentives for IBM business partners to bring their applications over to XO as well. Also, IBM Research is working on advanced XO concepts including next-generation salad spinners (14 patents pending but IBM promises never to use them) and developing a version of the XO environment that runs on mainframes. Also, IBM Global Services will roll out an XO practice aimed at bringing XO to vertical markets like health care, life sciences and transportation. Finally IBM will announce the creation of the XO Alliance, a multi-vendor consortium devoted to the XO platform with 14 IBMers taking seats on its 18-member board of directors and retired IBM visionary Irving Wladawsky-Berger hired as chairman and executive director. The XO Alliance will work close with XO Development Labs, a vendor-neutral development lab housed in IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. In turn these centers will distribute their efforts to a set of 300 XO "Centers of Excellence" located around the globe. Furthermore, IBM will name Nicholas Negroponte an Esteemed IBM Fellow with funding for a new lab at MIT so XO volunteers can "collaborate with IBM Research to help in effecting a technology transfer by which the ideas and concepts created for XO can be brought to the wider commercial marketplace."

"Once again IBM is staking a claim on innovation and thought leadership, driving synergies and delivering leveraged economies of scale across multiple platforms and markets with a global approach to open collaboration and freedom that shows once again IBM's new openness and willingness to take ideas created outside our company and use them. It's all about helping the kids," CEO Samuel J. Palmisano said. "Also we're kind of hoping it fucks up Microsoft."

Remember when Microsoft was fun?

This was shot in 1986, just 18 months before Ballmer sold his soul to the devil. Check out the price on the software. Back when they had to compete, they actually kept prices down.

Another reason to avoid Northwest Airlines

As if you needed one. See here.

Good news, bad news

Good news is some Eurotards have put out a report saying that the EU should require that all PCs and laptops be sold without an operating system pre-loaded as a way to give Borg rivals a chance to compete. See the article here which lets you download a PDF of the full report. Also in the good news category is the fact that the report's authors seem to exempt Apple from the unbundling campaign. But the bad news is their reason why:

”To be clear, this paper deliberately concerns itself with the commodity computer market, where products are aimed at the mass market. We consider the Mac to be a premium, niche product, like a Bang and Olufsen television, which is difficult to justify in the business world outside of the publishing sector. We therefore do not think that the Mac, despite claims of its superiority, provides a meaningful competitive threat to Microsoft.” Italics mine.

Not sure whether to celebrate or just sit here screaming. Much love to dear reader Oscar for alerting us to this report.

From Russia with sauce

Much love to Dear Reader Laszlo who sent in this link to a page showing Mac-centric barbecue tools on sale in Russia. Please note: These are not official Apple products. Notice the proportions on the spatula are not quite right. If they were Apple products, we'd get that right. And they'd cost more. (Photo: Abarybin.)

Chandler update: Final beta now due in 2H2008

Speaking of Cantabrigians with who dream big and talk even bigger, I shared a spliff with Mitchell Kapor at a drum circle workshop over the weekend and he told me his revolutionary Chandler software project, which has been in development since 1988, now is making huge progress. Mitch says they're now at version .7 (see here) and should be hitting beta by the second half of 2008, with a final release scheduled for a year or so after that. "So we're looking at late 2009 or early 2010," he says. "And the whole team is just totally pumped up. Really on fire." Mitchell says the project would be farther along but recently he made a unilateral decision to scrap what they had and rewrite the code so that Chandler will be optimized to work on the OLPC XO laptop, which he says is going to become "the de facto computer standard around the world." (Photo by Burt Simmons, Lotus Magazine.)

Hundred-dollar laptop: Now $400, and for sale to American yuppies

See here. Since orders aren't rolling in from the Third World, Saint Nicholas now is targeting a new audience -- freetards who will overpay for a piece of not-quite-working-right equipment in order to keep Double-N from having to admit defeat. The deal is you'll have to buy one for yourself and one for the kids who don't want them, under a new buy-two-and-get-one model that takes the concept of freetardation to a whole new level. Money quote from the Double-N: "There's a much bigger gulf between a handshake with a head of state and a real check coming out of the treasury. You could argue I could have been more realistic in the beginning, but if I had, I would never have done this."

Think about that last sentence for a minute. Read it again if you need to. Let it sink in. Kind of distills the entire OLPC fiasco right down to its essence, doesn't it? If I'd been more realistic, I wouldn't have done this. Wow.

Meanwhile, in light of the fact that they'll be selling these machines in November, maybe you're wondering how close to being completed the actual product is. If so, check out this reassuring memo that OLPC prez (and MIT Media Lab dude) Walter Bender sent out over the weekend. (Photo: Burt Hammer, Hammer Agency.)

UPDATE: Double-N writes in to tell me that they stole their business plan for us. Writes the prof: "Boils down to this: Charge too much, and people will flock to your product." He says the chose the $399 price point to match our new iPhone price. Fair enough. I know which one I'd rather have under my Christmas tree. If I had a Christmas tree, which I don't, because I don't believe in Christmas.

Stephen Fry loves the iPhone

See his wonderful blog post here. Money quote: "We spend our lives inside the virtual environment of digital platforms - why should a faceless, graceless, styleless nerd or a greedy hog of a corporate twat deny us simplicity, beauty, grace, fun, sexiness, delight, imagination and creative energy in our digital lives? And why should Apple be the only company that sees that? Why don’t the other bastards GET IT??"

Much love to the many readers who have sent in links to this post. I'm told Stephen Fry is a wonderful actor. Now that I know he loves Apple I may go get some of his DVDs, as long as they come in subtitles. As you know, I don't speak French. (Photo: Jacques LaLanne, Le Monde.)

People forget that I'm a real human being with real feelings

How else to explain scathing articles like this by marketing guru Laura Ries? Her premise is that iPhone is a dud, and that its failure has clouded the launch of iPod Touch which she feels is the better and more important product. She says, "iPhone is distracting Apple." She says, "Apple is cooking the goose that has laid the golden eggs." She says, "Jobs loves to create cool things. And Jobs is a great salesman. Initially the media, the market and consumers eat his stuff up. But eventually you come crashing back to reality."

Well, I told you the backlash was coming. Still, Laura Ries, listen to me: When I read stuff like this, it hurts. Okay? I'm a very sensitive guy. So go easy on a brother.

I friggin hate consultants

So I just got a call. We've got some pack of twats from McKinsey doing some bullshit study about iPhone roll-outs and supply chain metrics and blah blah whatever. I'm totally opposed to consultants but Tim Cook insisted and the board overruled me and brought these douchebags in. I swear all they do is hang around hitting on admins and striding around with their stupid Bluetooth headsets strapped to their ears like a pack of Klingons. Worse yet a few of them came in here carrying Windows machines. Huuuuuge mistake. The ones who remained after that fiasco aren't much better. They've been holed up in a hotel in Cupertino for weeks, going out to bars and running up huge tabs. They actually sent in a bill from AJ's in San Jose, like maybe we wouldn't know it's a strip bar. Egads. I've had Moshe and his guys following them at night, keeping an eye on them, slicing the tires on their rental cars while they're sleeping, stuff like that. Anyway, now there's some meeting tomorrow morning and they want me to attend. I just told Tim Cook to piss up a rope. Two minutes later the iPhone rings and it's Jerry York telling me that Tim called and told on me. Wah! He says if I don't shape up he's gonna rat me out to the SEC himself. Goddamn you, Jerry York.

Why TV must change

Much love to the reader who sent in a link to this interview with George Lucas where he discusses his 100-episode Star Wars TV series. So far nobody has agreed to carry it. George says he's not worried because after all he's George Lucas and after all this is Star Wars and somehow or other this will get shown. But as our reader points out, why should Lucas bother with the frigtards at the networks at all? Why not just put the episodes on iTunes and distribute them that way? Makes loads of sense to me. George thinks it's a decent idea too. We'll see.

Woz and Paul Allen are starting a private equity firm together

Investment opportunities include outdoor music festivals, professional Segway leagues, rock-and-roll memorabilia, commercial spaceship manufacturing, moon-based condominium developments, age-reversing biotech products, high-definition TV stations, and real estate. Company name: BecauseWeCan.com. From the press release: "Individually, we have squandered millions. Together we could squander hundreds of millions, possibly billions. We look forward to this exciting collaboration."

More great news about Vista

The Borg is widening its Vista-to-XP downgrade program, due to heavy demand for said downgrade among hardware makers. See here. Money quote: "While there is always resistance by some to move to a new operating system, there appears to be particularly strong demand, especially from businesses, to stick with XP." Of course Microsoft still insists this thing has been a huge smash hit. Yep. Huge hit. Huge. Meanwhile Ballmer is throwing chairs at a lifesize Jim Allchin doll. That's what we heard, anyway.

His famous last words?

" ."

Marcel Marceau, dead at 84. See here. Much love to Dear Reader Bryan for this one.

Squeal like a pig, boy

What are these two dudes from ZDNet supposed to be doing in this photo? Not sure but the smirk on the guy in back and the pained expression on the guy in front sort of make me wonder. Anyhoo, when they're not going for quiet walks on the beach or spending peaceful moments together they are keeping busy by hating on our new Apple keyboards. Money quote: "I don’t have a problem with Apple standardizing components to save costs, except when those components stink. And boy, do Apple’s new keyboards ever stink." Talk about catty. Meow.

More praise for Jobso

Check out this amazing story in Fast Company by a gal who says my products keep failing on her yet she keeps buying them. Why? Because she's got this weird love thing going for yours truly, who she says "is the human incarnation of the average Apple product: He's good-looking, he overpromises, and he's notoriously temperamental." Amen to that.

Dear religious people: Ego te absolvo

I've been getting loads of complaints about the previous item on Woz which originally had a headline which some considered blasphemous. I've changed the headline to something that should be less offensive. Fear not, tender souls. I am looking out for you. And yes, I forgive you for complaining. Jobso is a benevolent leader, after all. Did I not just give you a hundred bucks for complaining about a price cut? Yes, it's the new, kinder and gentler Jobso. Besides, it's Sunday morning and I'm getting my buzz on and listening to Lothar, and I don't need anyone harshing my mellow. Peace be with you. My peace I give you. (Photo: Simon Peter, Vatican News Agency.)

Goodness gracious, Woz

What the fuck is wrong with this guy? Now he's done a Q&A with some trade mag and uses the opportunity to blast me and the iPhone some more. I guess he's mad because I made fun of him over this Kathy Griffin thing. But still. Some really juicy stuff in this article, like he admits he cheated to get into the front of the iPhone line:

"We opened up the door and out there sleeping on the ground were all the people and I took control. I said I am here, we are going to pass out t-shirts and numbers and we passed around numbers each one signed by me. But the first number I passed out was nine. I took one through eight."

He also says he's still not totally sold on iPhone and still loves his BlackBerry Pearl. And he disses us on the iPhone refund:

"I bought some for friends and they get the discount and not me or if I bought it and gave it as a gift they get the discount. So why don't you just take my receipt and give me the money back? And of course it always comes back in Apple store credit. So instead of getting $100 back you get $50 back in a sense. It is very optimal for the company. I feel badly about the situation for everybody. I don't think Apple should have even done it."

He touts Google's products, particularly Gmail:

"Boy if I was to tell somebody new and tell them what they should do for email GMail would be my first suggestion."

He takes a shot at Apple:

"I don't like that a lot of the dreams of our early Macintosh era they really came from the Lisa group that kicked Steve Jobs out more. But a lot of those dreams of the computer being so humanized, making a person feel like a real human being, feel important, feel empowered. A lot of those get dissolved. ... I know Steve Jobs doesn't like me criticizing Apple stuff but you know a lot of times it doesn't live up to what I'd like."

The syntax is so frigged up that in some places I'm not even sure what he's trying to say. But you know, Woz, if you really are that dissatisfied with Apple products you could always come back and get a desk and do some work. Right? (Photo: Burt Hammer, Musclebear.)

Truly, we rock

So Computerworld asked some testing lab to compare iPhone to the Nokia N95 and the HTC (aka "Heavy Taiwanese Crap") Touch in terms of usability. Money quote: "Let's cut to the bottom line: In terms of usability, iPhone blew away its two competitors. Its overall score in the usability tests was 4.6 out of 5. The HTC Touch was a distant second at 3.4, and the Nokia N95 scored 3.2. `Testers were [typically] about twice as fast doing specific tasks on the iPhone, which is pretty remarkable,' Thornton said."

Take that, naysayers. So much for all that bogus gunk about our keyboard being hard to use. See the full story here. I'm so excited I just told Sveta the flight attendant to get a bottle of champagne and come sit on my lap.

I'm blogging from the jet

So I'm on the Jobs Jet, winging my way home from New York to dear old California. All I can say is that New York was hotter and muggier than the inside of a monkey's ass. Who the hell can live in this dump? I wore a summer-weight turtleneck and a pair of light-cotton jeans and still I was sweating like Peter Oppenheimer on a treadmill. And nothing came of it anyway. I was meeting with GE guys, trying to put some pressure on them to put some pressure on the NBC guys. I was telling them we could do some joint venture stuff, bringing some of Apple's design flair to their crappy dishwashers and microwave ovens. Maybe even license them some built-in iPod type technology. Brought Mr. Ive with me to dazzle the dipshits. Turns out, however, that the GE guys are just as clueless as the NBC guys. Maybe worse. They totally don't get it. They're like, What are we going to do with a washing machine that's one inch thick? How's that going to work? Why do we need an oven with an LCD display to play movies? Ive tried to answer but they cut him off and wouldn't even let him speak. Total dicks. No vision. Oh well. We tried. Jonny stayed behind in New York to see "Jersey Boys." Real culture maven that one.

Some web site called Woot is mocking me

Thanks to the many readers who alerted me to this horrible insult. Basically they think they're being really clever by doing an imitation of Katie's non-apology apology that we put out under my name a couple weeks ago. Rest assured we are investigating this web site and will bring the full force of Apple's legal resources to bear. If we can free up someone from this SEC subpoena mess. Peace out.

I'm traveling today, in meetings with media execs

I swear it's like sticking your head into a friggin buzzsaw. But I keep doing it. Meeting with morons from media companies today trying to straighten their butts out. Then I have to go talk to some new lawyer who says she can keep me out of prison. Hooboy. So I'll be out of the loop for most of the day until I can get back on the Jobs Jet and start beaming down my thoughts again this evening. Peace out.

News flash: You can make a Linux desktop look like Mac OS X

See how to do it here. We've lived in fear of the day when this would happen. Well, here it is. It's over for us. We're done.

Dear people, let's stop the hate, bokay?

Check out this article from England about what a bad guy I am. Guy's all worked up over our music pricing. Man oh man. Look, friend, if you don't like it, just don't buy it, okay? Nobody's got a gun to your head. Yet.

I'm changing my mind on iJustine

See this video. Most excellent. Much love, iJustine. Namaste. I honor the place where your sensibility and mine become one.

Goatberg turns on us

See here. He slams the iPod Touch for having insufficient battery life and no mail client. Money quote: "Apple says the Touch was meant mainly to present typical iPod features, not to replicate the iPhone, and it included the Web browser only so users could get onto Wi-Fi to use the mobile music store in certain places that required a log-in screen. But it seems ridiculous to me to sell a powerful device with Wi-Fi and a huge screen, and to leave out things like an email program, even though you can use Web-based email programs."

Okay. Look. Factually, he's correct. But it's the way he says it. He says we included the browser just so you could use our music store. It's like he's trying to say we're greedy or something. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We just really, really want you to use our music store, because frankly we think it's great. We think it's the best one out there. I don't know. Some people see the dark side of everything. Worst thing is I was just talking to Walt and he didn't mention any of this. Totally pretended to still be hypnotized. Very sneaky, that Walt. Very sneaky.

This whole SEC subpoena thing

Of course everybody spins it in a bad way. Like John Paczkowski does here. What's really going on? It's like this. We threw Fred and Nancy under a bus, and said that I was completely innocent due to my utter ignorance of all things related to stock and money and finances. So the SEC says, Okay, well, Steve, then we'd like you to help us build our case against Nancy. How about you come in and answer some questions. Tell us all about how you knew nothing and it was all Nancy's idea. No problem if we put you under oath, right?

It's called a perjury trap. Oldest trick in the book. So how did I respond? That part I can't tell you.

Alley Outsider says I've got it wrong

See here. WRT to my claim that the TV networks will surely screw up their digital distribution systems and come crawling back to me, these guys (who are based in New York) respond: "Not everyone who works for big media conglomerates is an idiot. In fact many of them are wary of just this scenario. Also, if they're going to experiment -- however expensively -- this the time to do it. At least give the networks credit for trying to save their business before it disappears."

Check out the headlines just below this however: "Why Hulu Is Screwed." Ahem.

These European countries need to merge

So we've announced our deal in Germany with T-Mobile. See here. And the news on France is already leaking out. But before we go forward with other countries we're taking a proposal to the EU commissioners. The thing is, it's just a huge pain in the ass for us to have to go through these negotiations time after time after time with each one of these little countries. Basically, we need to get some of these other countries in Europe to merge, so we can just make one deal for all of them. Our biz dev guys have been shopping this proposal around but they say we're already getting pushback from some of the European countries. Like Switzerland, in particular. Big friggin deal Switzerland. They think they're so special. We wanted them to merge with Germany and take the T-Mobile deal. Same with Austria and Poland and the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Slovaks were actually willing to sign on -- didn't even need to be asked. Apparently they've done something similar before.

But the rest of them gave us this big song and dance about national identity. Our position is that national identity is what caused all these guys to go to war again and again, and maybe they could look at this as an opportunity. You know? Like, maybe technology has the power to heal all those old wounds and bring people together. I mean, isn't this what John Lennon was talking about when he wrote "Imagine"? Imagine all the people using the same iPhone with the same carrier. Instead of "me versus you," or "us versus them," how about just one big "us"? These Euros say they're not going to rewrite their national boundaries just for a phone. I'm like, A phone? You think that's what this is? A phone? Then you know what? I'm not even sure you deserve to get iPhone.

Anyway, they won't budge. So we're going to have to play a little hardball. My position is, How bad do you want the iPhone? If you want it bad enough, you'll merge. Once we've rounded up Europe we're going to get to work on Africa. Bono has offered to help out on that. He sees a pan-Africa merger as a great way to deal with some other issues too. Says we can put the capital in Guyana. I told him fine, I don't care where it is, just round these guys up.

Woz wants me to be his best man

He called me up last night all excited. All these stories (see here ) about Woz being engaged to the comedy lady are true. All I can say is this is classic Woz. Guy goes on a first date and brings a diamond ring and the keys to his house. He's like a big goofy dog sometimes. You know the old joke about what does a lesbian bring to a second date? A U-Haul? That's Woz. I mean he's been married like eleven times already. Most of them were dissolved within two weeks. I personally have attended at least five of his weddings.

So I told him to get a grip, maybe slow down a bit, get to know this woman. He says he already knows her from watching her on TV and he knows that she's perfect for him and sure enough when they met they just talked and talked and talked for hours and they stayed up all night and she even likes the same movies as Woz and the same food and everything and he really wants me to be his best man and they're going to have this huge wedding in Hawaii with all sorts of celebrities and movie stars and it's going to be just so great and this time he knows it's going to work out.

So what could I do? I said, Sure thing, pal. Sure thing. You let me know what time and what to wear. I'll be there in jeans and a black turtleneck, two hours late. He says they're looking a couple dates next week but he's not sure and he'll have to get back to me. (Photo: Rosa Minge, US Weekly.)

Wil Shipley says we're acting like a greedy monopoly

See here. It's the usual stuff. Everything we do should be open and free and we shouldn't impose any control over our own products. Of course, we're expected to support them, right? Even when people load them up with all sorts of frigtarded stuff that makes them not work right? Sorry, pals. That's Microsoft's business model, not mine.

Says Wil-with-one-L: "But Apple has to always remember that simply making money CANNOT be its point of existence. The point of any company should be to make customers want to give it money, NOT to get money from customers. It's a subtle distinction that is the difference between good and evil."

Tell that to our board of directors and our big institutional shareholders. I'm sorry but they seem to like the "simply making money" business model.

Just think of the leverage we'll have

When the frigtarded TV networks spend two years trying to flog their own download services and fail and then come crawling back to us. Same with the music guys. This has always been their one big threat to us: "We'll go make our own download service." We've always dismissed it as meaningless because, unlike these guys, we already know how hard it is to get one of these systems working correctly and smoothly, and we already know that they'll never be able to do it on their own. Nor will they ever be able to participate in some kind of consortium where they all build one system together. No way.

So they've all been threatening us with this for years, and we've told them to feel free and go right ahead, and now they're finally going to take the bait and go do it. We're thrilled. They are going to waste hundreds of millions of dollars wading into a quagmire and in two years they'll be looking for a way to back out while saving face. (Sound familiar?) They know they're making a huge bet and they know what's at stake -- it's their entire future. What they don't realize is that they can't win. That's why we're excited. We've needed them to do this. This is the beginning of the end for the TV networks, the last big lurch of the dinosaur as it gets dragged down into the tarpit. This is the last great spastic battle of the old pre-digital media giants. It's going to be both ugly and hilarious.

As for us, we'll just sit back and wait for them to sue for peace. If they think I'm boning them now, just wait till you see how I bone them once their only threat has been taken off the table, once they've completely surrendered and the whole world has seen how clueless and greedy and inept they are. Wait and see the kind of terms I extract once they're at the end of their rope and I'm their only salvation. These idiots have no idea how mean I can be. Frankly, I can't wait. (Illustration: Peter Frommer, Alley Invader.)

We're thrilled about this NBC download service

If you haven't heard about it, see here. NBC is going to launch its own download service where you can get NBC shows. This is their new initiative in the wake of severing their relationship with us. Why are we psyched? Because this will let everyone see the kind of world that the media companies would like us to live in. And we're pretty sure people aren't going to like it. For example, NBC is making a big deal of saying that the downloads will be free. Free! Free! Did you hear me? Not 99 cents like that greedy bastard Jobso, but FREE! Well they made sure the word "free" would get into all the headlines but when you read the stories a little more closely you find the warts. Like, the commercials will be embedded into the shows and you won't be able to skip over them. Like, you'll only be able to download to a Windows PC. Like, they'll only be free for seven days after broadcast. Then they dissolve. If you want to get them later, you'll have to pay. How much? Um, ah, mwah mwah oh did we mention that they're free for the first seven days?

Oh, and if you want shows from ABC, you can go to AOL. (And yes, heads are rolling at Disney over that deal. More on that later.) Money quote from the story about the ABC-AOL deal: "The consumer is probably becoming confused. He will need to go to AOL to watch ABC. CBS programming is on the iPod. NBC will be doing direct downloads from its own website. NBC and News Corp (NWS) are starting a joint online venture called Hulu."

So, fair enough. Bring on the big media cluster fuck. Roll out all the different systems that don't work together. Bring on all the different kinds of software, none of which will work as well as iTunes. Bring on a zillion different user interfaces, a zillion accounts you need to set up, a zillion new usernames and passwords and a list of which services can work on which devices in which format. Right. When you're good and tired of that, we'll be here waiting for you.

It's true, I really am the smartest human being of all time

But much love to CNET for finally realizing it. See here. Money quote: "Apple's iPhone business model is second to none and Steve Jobs really is smarter than the rest of the world." All this because we got 02 to bend over and give us a huge slice of their iPhone revenue, and we'll soon be getting carriers to do the same in France and Germany. At the same time we'll also be letting people unlock the phones and run them on any network they want. Look, it ain't rocket science. But it's nice to be appreciated. And yes, I am one bad motherfrigger. Straight up. Namaste and all that.

Everybody thinks they're a product designer

Check out this article. Guy wants us to redesign the iPhone to make it more like a BlackBerry. Not sure where to begin on this except to say that we don't sit down and design our products based on what other products look like. We start every time with a clean sheet. Jon Ive calls it "tabula rasa" which apparently is some French term meaning you start with a clean sheet and because he's British he has to use fancy French terms even when you could just say something in plain language.

This pirate day thing is outlawed at Apple

Lots of people are writing in asking how we celebrate this crazy "Talk Like A Pirate Day" thing at Apple. Simple: We don't. Reason: I said so. I can't stand things like this. Valentine's Day, Christmas, Easter. Honestly, who dreams this crap up? I actually had to have Steve Dowling send around a memo telling people no pirate costumes, no pirate talking and no pirate email. Drives me nuts. Arrr. (Photo: Garth Sarsgaard, Harvard Yard.)

Brits chilly on iPhone

See this write-up in the Times Online, and this one from something called The First Post. They're focusing a lot on the cost, which they consider too high. Cheap bastards. There's also some grumbling that we squeezed such a good deal out of 02 that they'll be losing money on the iPhone from day one. The 02 guys brought this up too during our negotiations. I told them it was the strangest thing I'd ever heard. I mean, why should I be held responsible for their inability to run their company at a profit. Weird.

IBM making dent in software market

Big news from IBM. They announced yesterday that they're introducing Lotus Symphony again. Naturally this has rocked the IT world to its foundations. It's like that scene in Rocky V when Rocky gets fed up with that young punk Tommy Morrison mouthing off about him, and comes out swinging. The Original Borg is going after the Borg. Man oh man. And this isn't some new untested software. This is Lotus, baby. And it's ODF compliant. Jesus. Devastating.

You can see one of many stories about it here. Best part comes toward the end:

It was all a very earnest effort from a company that's tried to unseat Microsoft as the dominate [sic] player in enterprise software for years. During the press conference, one reporter asked why it sounded like he'd heard all of this from IBM Lotus before. IBM senior vice president Steve Mills fielded that question. "It's no secret that anything you do is based on what you've tried to do in the past with varying degrees of success."

We got swamped with calls yesterday because people view this new Lotus Symphony suite as a threat not only to Microsoft Office but also to our iWork '08 suite of desktop productivity apps. Our official version is that we welcome IBM into the market and we think this will serve to further validate the office productivity market space. Secretly, however, we are freaking the hell out. There's a huge threat of collateral damage as these two titans go to war. (Photo: Gareth Keenan, Lotus Magazine.)

Our new ads in England

Check it out. Bono and I got invited to the palace for tea. Fun-tastic. I was totally nervous and had to drink some cough syrup with codeine right before we went in just to calm my nerves and take the edge off. But you know what? This lady is totally cool and down to earth. And she totally gets it. She was laughing her ass off about how we frigged with the wireless carriers in the UK and treated them like a pack of little bitches. "They're all bastards anyway," she says. Better yet, she's got an iPod, loves it. Listens to Coldplay. Bought a new MacBook Pro a few months ago, and loves that too. She's all over OS X and wants to see a beta copy of Leopard and says she's heard bad things about Stacks. Who knew? I told her we'd ship over a few goodies and she said, "Oh, mummy just loves goodies." Little secret, however: Up close she's got that "old people" smell. I am so not kidding you. (Photo courtesy of Dear Reader Jason.)

Brit carriers bruised over iPhone snub

See this article in the Guardian which opens with a report that the four big carriers in the UK didn't like us playing them off each other:

Many mobile phone company executives are unimpressed with the way the Californian computer group has conducted businesses this side of the Atlantic, although similar tactics were used in the US.

A charge that I addressed this way:

"We took the approach of wanting to get to know the different partners and the different possibilities and to see where there was the best fit. Partnerships take a lot of work - you want to go out on a few dates before you get married. Yes, we dated a few people but didn't get married... and so there were a few unhappy girlfriends out there."

Translation:

Boo friggin hoo, you big British pussies. Get your panties out of your crack.

Woz cut the iPhone line: The true story comes out

Sadly, it's an ugly tale. See here. A guy who was in line at the store where Woz got his iPhone refutes the Woz version of events:

Worst of all is his claim that 'the folks already in line were honored to have me there and immediately granted me the first spot in the line.' I love you Woz ... but that is absolutely untrue. ... I held off writing this post for two months, but I think it's important to recognize that 'being special' doesn't make you special, and if getting in with the Apple Store and helping out by making badges is enough for them to let you in front then that's all well and good (Disneyland does the same thing, letting VIPs cut to the front of lines) but it's not okay to then tell the press that we invited Woz-and-company to take our spots out of deference, because that's just not how it went down, and I want to set the record straight.

Unfortunately, this story is fake

See here. Funny piece claiming that in SP1 for Vista they will forget about patching bugs and instead will simply install XP on the user's machine. Nice.

Mark Cuban for HP

Much love to Dear Reader David who sent in this link reminding us that before he became a rabid Apple fanboy, Mark Cuban was a spokesmodel for HP. What happened? One word: Vista.

We're thrilled about this European smackdown on the Borg

Honestly, it's long overdue, and we're especially encouraged by Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes (photo) saying that users are "suffering at the hands of Microsoft" and that she'd like to see a "significant drop" in Microsoft's operating-system market share. We've proposed a great way for Europe to accomplish this and I'm happy to say that so far they seem to be listening to us. Which is more than I can say for the U.S. government which is still stuck with this quaint idea that governments shouldn't decide how much market share any one company should have in any one market. Like somehow it would be some great sin to say, from now on, Apple gets fifty percent and Microsoft gets fifty percent, and may the best man win.

The U.S. bozos are just wedded to this ridiculous 19th-century notion that the market can just decide what it wants and that customers know best and that if we just leave things alone they will work out for the best. Please. These politicians worship the friggin almighty market and it's so naive I don't know where to begin. Look at the situation. We've had a superior offering -- and I mean far superior -- for nearly a decade. But we're hardly gaining any market share. If you want to know what irks the Valley about Microsoft it's that all of us have been making much better products than what Microsoft makes, but the market keeps "choosing" the Borg. (I put "choosing" in quotes because in fact what users have is only an illusion of choice.)

The great thing about Europeans is that they see through this crazy rhetoric and they're more than willing to have the government step in and decide how things should be. Some people call it a "nanny state" but my feeling is, why is that considered a bad thing? What's wrong with nannies? Look at Mary Poppins. Place was a mess before she got there. As for all this spin about how now other companies are going to be in trouble in Europe, including Apple, let's just say that we've figured out a little strategy for coping with these folks, and it involves a little something called the iPhone. Bokay? Peace out. (Photo: Bert Sweep, Free Market Weekly.)

Woz is so proud of his new girlfriend

So Woz is all proud of himself because he's dating a quasi-celebrity. And he's doing this thing where he calls everyone he knows and pretends he's just calling to chat about nothing in particular and then he sort of drops Kathy Griffin's name, as if in passing. He called me last night in London and sort of rambled for a while about doing the iPhone in Europe and then he goes, "Yeah, you know the iPhone really is a great product, Steve. I got one for Kathy and she loves it." So I know what he wants me to say but instead I start telling him about the iPod Touch and asking what he thinks. He says, "Oh, it looks really cool. One of Kathy's friends was saying she'd rather have that than the iPhone." Again, I let him twist a bit and ask him about the new Nano and would he like me to send him a few. He says, "Yeah, one for me and one for Kathy. Things are getting pretty serious with her so I guess I should get her a Nano, right? It's the least I can do."

So finally I can't torment him any longer and I go, "Who's Kathy?" He's all psyched and he goes, "Dude, Kathy Griffin? The girl on TV? She's an actress. I'm totally dating her." I go, Really? Kathy Griffith? I've never heard of her. Is she related to Andy Griffith? Has she been on shows or something? He says, "It's Griffin, not Griffith. You've seen her, for sure. Red hair? She does stand-up. She's pretty famous. And pretty hot, too. But that's not why I'm into her. Anyway, yeah, we've been dating and I think it's going to get serious. She does a lot of comedy and I think that's why we hit it off. She's really brainy, and we've both got the same crazy sense of humor, you know? She says she's never met a guy as funny as I am. Or as rich. That's a joke. Get it? Like she's only dating me for my money. I'll tell you, Steve, she's the best, seriously."

What could I say? I told him I was happy for him. And I am, I guess. But look, Kathy Griffin, I'm warning you: If you hurt Woz, or take advantage of him, you'll answer to me. I mean it. (Photo: Marc Areola, NewsMax.)

I'm in London, and loaded for bear

I love it here, honestly. I've always felt strangely at home here, as if maybe I lived here in some past life or something. Like, from the first time I ever visited, I knew exactly how to get around the city and never needed a map. People say it's confusing but it's always seemed perfectly organized to me. And tomorrow I am going to blow this town wide open. I can't say what we're announcing, obviously. But it's big. The paparazzi are already crawling all over me. Bono just came in and says there's a crowd outside Claridge's because they all think I'm staying there even though I'm not. And people are lining up outside our store on Regent Street. BBC says police are expecting fifty thousand people, possibly more. Unreal. Bono says we should go over to Claridge's, rent a room, and dangle a doll off the balcony just to freak people out. It's almost midnight and I can't sleep. So maybe we'll do it. Peace out.

Captions?

Oh. My. God. It's on, yo. Woz escorted Kathy Griffin to the Emmys last night. Much coverage on this one, including here on Gizmodo.

Free fake iPod Touch to the best 2-part caption. Please just do it in comments. The interns in Krasnodar are busy on a side project today and can't handle uploading lots of photo files. Bokay? (Photo: Boris Vian, US Weekly.)

Much love, Mark Cuban

My dear friend Mark Cuban has written a moving tribute to the Mac. See here. In the stirring, elegant prose for which he has become famous, Cuban describes his own personal journey from Windows to Mac. This gentle, soft-spoken man is exactly the kind of person we envision when we try to picture a Mac user. Namaste, Mark Cuban. I honor the place where you and my computer become one. (Photo: Gilles Deleuze, Maxim.)

Stallman speaks: Blah blah freedom mwah patents blah Microsoft mwah evil blah blah

King of the freetards is starting to sound like a broken record. Check out this interview where he says, uh, the same stuff he's already said a million times. Microsoft is evil; patents are evil; Torvalds is a tool. Why do people continue to interview this dyspeptic coot?

Then again, you have to be impressed by the widespread adoption of Saint Richard's new GPLv3. I mean, see the list of adopters here. In just four months they've managed to line up hundreds of really important projects, like "Goggles Music Manager" "Groinc the simple network sniffer," "YeastsIdentification," (very useful at freetard conventions), "Zapto Richtext Editor (ZRE)," and "ZipSnap."

Well it's only a matter of time before all those big companies that sat on the GPLv3 drafting committees jump on board too. HP, IBM, Sun. And just loook at the love and admiration that RMS is getting on Slashdot, for example in this string. Truly the proprietary model is in its final death throes. "Viva la revolucion!" as the tenured professors in Cambridge say. (Photo: Burt Hammer, El Pais.)

$100 laptop: Now $200, and delayed again

See here. Few small problems. Apparently they can't get the user interface software working right. And countries aren't placing orders. And the manufacturing partner won't give the same discounts for tiny orders as they could for the big order that Herr Professor Nicholas Negroponte originally promised.

Frankly I'm shocked to see these guys having problems. I mean, a brand new hardware design, a new screen technology, a customized Linux operating system, a one-off user interface, and the customers are the poorest nations in the world, and they'll be paying with government money which means they have to get politicians to vote on orders, and they'll have to place huge orders with no pilot programs, and the kids will have these things tossed in their laps and be expected to write code and do all their own maintenance, and the whole project will be run by woolly academics who have never even worked in a real company let alone run one. What could possibly go wrong?

Remember all those big, splashy, gushing, goofy, stupid, incredibly naive stories in all the major publications about the Hundred Dollar Laptop? Remember the cover story in the NY Times Magazine about how this was going to save the world? Remember the insanely stupid 60 Minutes piece? Ever wonder why nobody, and I mean nobody, ever stopped to think about whether the whole thing could actually work? Or even to question how it was going to work? Did you notice that nobody looked at the business realities? Did anyone even consider looking at Negroponte's disastrous track record and his utter lack of experience? Did anyone point out what a ridiculous waste of space the entire MIT Media Lab has been? Of course not. Partly it's because no reporter wanted to pee on Negroponte's shoes and get branded as a meany and a kid-hater and a racist by the noisy freetards who backed this silly project.

But there's another reason nobody scrutinized this project and it's much more scary. The truth is, the average filthy hack knows even less about business than the average MIT professor. They simply don't even know what questions to ask. Just like the professors, the hacks have never worked in a company. They've never dealt with suppliers. They've never haggled over prices. They've never developed a product. They've never taken a programming course, let alone shipped a piece of commercial code. They have no idea. But why let facts get in the way of a great story? We're going to give laptops to all the poor children, and change the world, and these laptops will be better than anything you can get from Apple or Microsoft and they'll only cost a hundred dollars each. Wow! Putting these hacks together with these professors and letting them sell this train wreck in the media was an incredibly dangerous idea. Or incredibly hilarious, depending on your point of view.

Now what I wonder is this. Do you think the New York Times Magazine and 60 Minutes and all the others who touted this disaster will go take a second look and hold Negroponte's feet to the fire? Nah. Not anytime soon anyway. If they do anything it will be long after the whole project has failed and Negroponte will have worked up a long list of people to blame -- the politicians in Third World countries, the manufacturers, the component suppliers, the competitors. ("They tried ... to compete against us. Gasp! Can you imagine? What kind of monsters are these people?") Or maybe Intel and Microsoft, since he's already teed them up as the bad guys in previous coverage.

Somehow, trust me, the whole thing will be presented as a sad tragedy, and Double-N will be the hero who struggled against all odds but could not overcome the forces of evil that amassed against him. Much better story than saying he was a daffy professor who bullshitted his way into a project that never made any sense in the first place, and predictably failed. (Photo: Burt Hammer, MIT Media Lab.)

I hate Bill Maher, but you know what? This time he's right.

This is what I really wanted to say when the pussies started whingeing about the iPhone price cut. But instead they made me put my friggin name on that non-apology apology. I told Katie Cotton, you wait and see, customers are like toddlers, you give them a little on this, they're going to come back whining about something else. Sure enough, now the friggin crybabies are bitching because they don't like the terms of the rebate, and they're publishing articles like this one where a dude from BusinessWeak says it's "completely lame" that he can't use his $100 rebate to buy songs on iTunes or an iTunes gift card. Lame? You know what's lame? Lame is being a grown man and complaining in public about a few restrictions that are put on the hundred-dollar gift that someone just gave you -- especially since, and here's the kicker, the author of this article admits in the final paragraph that, um, he doesn't actually own an iPhone. So he's just prattling to hear himself prattle. Dammit! I friggin told my people this would happen.

People, listen. It's just money. Money is shit. It's beside the point. If you're trying to decide whether to buy our products based on how much they cost -- if you're sitting down comparing an iMac to a comparably equipped Dell to see which one costs more -- well, let me just say this: You should not be buying our products. You don't get it. You don't understand us. And you won't be happy. Go away. Go buy from someone else. Truly, you'll be better off, and so will we. There. I said it.

Switchers testify in Wall Street Journal

Check out this wonderful article where a reporter at the Journal said he was pondering switching from Windows to Mac, and he asked people for advice and got swamped with mail from folks who switched and were, well, "happy" is not a big enough word. Articles like these, with real people telling real stories, are worth more than all of our advertising. Meanwhile loads of folks are sending me links to that Randall Stross story in the New York Times in which an analyst named Roger Kay is quoted saying we have 3% market share and that we've missed our opportunity to gain share during the Vista stumble. The theory is that Vista is about to pick up steam and our brief moment in the sun is almost over. I'm not going to link to the story because it's complete hogwash and was absolutely not vetted and cleared by Apple public relations. But I will say this. I'm just terribly tired of hearing people spout these made-up market share numbers. But if that's how they want to play it, fine. We'll make up our own figures and cite them over and over until they start to seem true. (Just like they do on Fox News.) So, from here on out, I'm saying we have 30% market share. And we're gaining. Bokay? That's the official word.

Gates says I'm paranoid

He just called me and he's like, "Jobso, honestly, you nuts down there in the Valley are the most paranoid freaks I've ever met in my life. And not just the tinfoil hat types like Dave Winer, but even the mainstream guys like you. Honestly, Steve. Trust me on this. There are no spies working at Google. There are no Microsoft people trolling your blog. You need to get a grip. The PC wars are over, and you lost. The whole world knows this. The only one who doesn't know this is you. You're like one of those Japanese soldiers living on an island who doesn't know World War II is over, and so he's still fighting the war. Fair enough, you've gained a couple of market share points. I'm happy for you. Whatever. But you'll never have more than ten percent share. Ever. It's not even because we're so great and you're not or whatever. That's got nothing to do with it. It's just math. It's just a fact. You'll never crack ten percent. If you're happy with that, so are we. When the monopoly freaks crawl out of the woodwork we can point to the fact that you're gaining share. Who knows? Maybe we even like you gaining some share. Maybe we're even letting it happen on purpose. Ever thought of that? Now there's a good one for you conspiracy freaks to mull over. I'm joking. Relax. And cool the rhetoric, okay? It's one thing to compete. It's another to make up lies about your competition. I should know, right? Peace out. We're not spying on you or trolling you or breaking into your computers at night. We're just not. Okay. Bye now." (Photo: Frank Shaw, Waggener Edstrom.)

Borg operatives are trolling this blog

So our interns in Krasnodar, Iulia and Natasha, became suspicious of some of the pro-Borg comments that suddenly began rolling in to the strings recently. They were like, Jobso, something unusual is happening, because surely there are not actual human beings who would sing the praises of Vista, are there?

So we ran a test. They asked me to post a few anti-Borg items and let them track the comments. Not sure how they do this because as you know I'm mathlexic and hate numbers and I'm totally a visual thinker. But they did it. Loads of stuff rolling in from Seattle area, and lots from Redmond, specifically. And a few from the Borg's PR minions at their outside agency. Don't worry, Beastmaster. We're not going to moderate them out. We let them through. Free country and all. Plus it creates a fun new game for the Apple faithful. See if you can figure out which statements came from hired guns.

Free fake refurbished iPod Classic (we've got lots of them coming back in for repair) to anyone who can spot them all. Good luck.

Is it just me or are Canadians kind of whiny?

Larry is fuming about the Google deal with NASA

You've probably heard about this deal where NASA is going to let the Google guys land their jets at Moffett Field. If not, see here. Larry's furious because he's been trying to get the exact same deal for years, and he's offered them way more money than Google is going to pay, and yet NASA has been blowing him off, won't even talk about it. I ran into him today at our Pilates class and he looked ready to tear someone's face off. "Jobso," he said, "I swear to God I'm about this close to spilling the beans on the Black Building at Google. I swear to God. I actually picked up the phone today and dialed Markoff at the Times but when he picked up I chickened out and hung up. But one of these days I'm doing to do it. I swear. Those little pricks!"


FYI the so-called "Black Building" at Google is the one where supposedly a bunch of NSA and CIA spies all work. I say supposedly because as far as I know the place doesn't actually exist. It's just one of those urban myths that swirl around in the Valley. Which is what I told Larry, but he just busted out laughing and said, "Buddy, of course it exists. It totally exists. I've been in there. Okay? The CIA and the NSA are my customers, remember? They use my software. Jesus. Google is crawling with spooks. Has been from the start. Why do you think they did the deal in China? Think, man. Think. The government is using Google to spy on the Chinese. Jesus. There's so much creepy stuff going on in there you wouldn't believe it. It's a front, basically. Like one of those fake grocery stores where it's really a bookie joint but they keep the shelves stocked with canned goods so it looks legit. Man oh man. Jobso, you're a smart guy, but you're awfully naive sometimes, you know that?"

I pointed out to Larry that even if what he's saying is true, he'd be crazy to spill the beans. "I know," he said. "I know. I'm not going to do it. Doesn't mean I wouldn't love to. Those kids just piss me off, honestly. They really do."

Anyway we managed to focus in on our breathing and fluidity exercises, and afterward I took him out for a smoothie and that seemed to put him in a better mood.

Vista continues to underwhelm

See this article from CNET. A new report from NPD claims sales of boxed copies of Vista blow compared to sales of XP in its early days. Yes, despite the Borg's claims that Vista is doing way better than XP, in fact the opposite is true. Money quote on Vista: "It's just not doing well," says an analyst. Microsoft response: Yes it is, yes it is, yes it is, yes it is, and we're going to keep saying that until you shut up shut up SHUT UP it's doing great and we're the best and you all suck, mwah!!!!!"

Good news is, people are waking up. But honestly I can't believe that six years into OS X we still have less than 10% share in PCs. We've got all these poor Windows users stuck in hell, and we're reaching out to them with ice water, and they won't take it. Why is this? Could it be that they really don't know how much better we are? I mean, we've got the ads on TV. We've got all those stores. We've got word of mouth. Windows users, if you're reading this, listen to me: Spend an afternoon in one of our stores. Get someone to explain OS X to you. Better yet, just make a tiny leap of faith. Buy one of our machines and live with it for a few months and then see how you feel. I promise you, you will never -- I mean never -- regret it.

Rupert is going to the mattresses too

See here. The honcho at News Corp. says his execs are going to be total pricks when they sit down to renegotiate their deal with us. Money quote: "I assume the negotiations (with Apple) will be prickly, dicey and contentious like all negotiations should be."

Sigh. You see the worldview we're up against? These guys believe everything should be a battle. All we want to do is bring peace, love and content to the world. One good thing about stories like this is that our customers get a glimpse of what bullshit we have to put up with in order to restore their sense of childlike wonder. Honestly, this job is costing me my soul. (Photo: Burt Hammer, Evil Bastard magazine.)

eWeek: Borg is breaking into your computer at night

See here. They ran some tests and found out Microsoft is secretly sneaking into machines at night and putting updates into them. Outrage! Yet another reason to buy a Mac. As if you needed one.

I hate to say it, but Gruber is right about ringtones

See his article blasting us for charging extra for ringtones, headlined, "The Ringtone Racket." You know what? He's right. I've made a big deal about how any business that's based on screwing customers or forcing customers to do things they don't want to do is doomed to failure. Now here we are, taking part in just that kind of behavior. And yeah, we can use the excuse that the record labels are making us do this, but you know what? That's lame. If I were a customer I'd be the first to call bullshit on that.

Money quote from Gruber: "Faced with the choice between doing what’s right for customers or charging them money for something they shouldn’t need to pay for, Apple chose the latter. There is no middle ground. And any business that hinges on your customers 'not knowing any better' is a bad business."

Namaste, John Gruber. I honor the place where you and I become one. Perhaps, if enough people complain, we will drop this policy at some point in the future and make ringtones free. And maybe, at that point, we will offer anyone who paid 99 cents for a ringtone a retroactive partial rebate in the form of a fifty-cent store credit. I've got Phil Schiller working on this right now. Peace out.

Correction

Recently I linked to a video about Australian soccer players wanting iPhones (see here). That post contained numerous errors. The athletes pictured in the video are from New Zealand, not Australia. They play rugby, not soccer. The video was translated into French, not Spanish. FSJ regrets the errors and thanks the many, many people who wrote in to point them out.

To see the same video now translated from Zealandese to English, go here. Gist is these guys want iPhone in their country right now and if they don't get it they are threatening to harm El Jobso. Not cool, Zealandians. Not cool. Violence never solves anything, as Gandhi taught us. You of all people should know that right?

FSF revoking MLP's Lifetime Achievement Award

Much love to Dear Reader Derek for sending us this statement that Peter Brown of the Free Software Foundation sent out to freetard mailing lists this morning:

"Obviously the community of freedom is deeply saddened and disappointed by Sun's decision to join Microsoft and sell un-free Windows software. In the recent past Sun has worked closely with the Free Software Foundation and the free community to help develop the specifications for the GPLv3. We've been hopeful that Sun would endorse the GPLv3 and adopt it for Sun products including Java and Solaris. Clearly now Sun has decided to move in a different direction and has declared itself to be an enemy of freedom. We think this is a wrong decision and one that will prove disastrous for Sun. To show our displeasure the Free Software Foundation has revoked the Lifetime Achievement Award which we had intended to present to Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz during our Software Freedom Day festivities in Boston on 15 September 2007.

"We urge all friends of software freedom to boycott Sun products including all applications that use the Java programming language. We furthermore urge members and friends to encourage their employers to remove all Sun equipment from their data centers and to replace that equipment with products that do not restrict freedom. Additionally, the Software Freedom Law Center has begun an investigation into certain allegations of malfeasance by Sun. If these are found to be true, SFLC and FSF will pursue remedies to these violations up to and including legal action to bring Sun into compliance. More information is available on our Web site, www.fsf.org. Thank you."

Sun's ever-changing strategy

They say change is the only constant out here in the Valley, but the guys at Sun have taken that maxim to a new level, as Ars Technica points out in this article. (Chart: Ars Technica.)

"And now this is where I stick my head when it's time to get my instructions from Redmond ..."

Just got an email from MLP and he says it's okay to share it with my readers so here goes. I found it stunning in its radical transparency.

"Jobso,

"My dude, I love your blog, and even enjoy the funny pictures you do of me, but you're missing the point on this Windows deal. So let me explain. Our industry is heading toward an enormous convulsion as we shift toward a utility computing model. Instead of selling to thousands of big enterprise customers and millions of SMBs, we'll be selling to a very small number (like maybe a few dozen) of global utility computing operators. That contraction will cause great pain among IT providers as our customer base rapidly shrinks. Buying power will be concentrated in the hands of a few savvy and powerful customers who will demand low prices and quickly drive the cost of any new innovation toward zero, so that the generously wide new-product profit curve we've been accustomed to, and which we've used to fund new development, will be radically foreshortened. Instead of selling excess capacity and unnecessary duplication to thousands of witless IT managers who pay too much for our products, we'll be selling at thin margins to operators who will wring every bit of capacity out of their systems.

"The upshot of this is that IT vendors will also consolidate and only a few large IT vendors will survive. We hoped to be one of them and have talked a good game about how we would do that. Privately, however, we've known for some time that this is impossible. Sun needs to be sold. We don't have the breadth to survive in this new environment. We've been shopping the company hard. That's been Scott's job. But the list of potential buyers is pretty small. We've had loads of out-of-the-box type conversations with players like Wipro and some European power utilities (they see computer utility operation as a natural evolution). But let's be honest. Our best fit is IBM. We know it. They know it. We'e been in and out of talks. The issue is price. Not long ago we thought we had a deal, but at the last minute they balked on us. Classic IBM tactic, one they use when they're snapping up small consulting firms; right at the last minute they walk away and then come back but only at half price. But we're not going for it.

"So how do we bring them back to the table? This is where the Borg comes in. There is only one thing that IBM cares about and that's the Borg. They've spent the past fifteen years serving as a private patron for any initiative that could cause grief to the Borg. Java, ODF, Open Office, Linux. They're a bit, shall we say, myopic about this. Like, obsessed. Like we were there recently and they didn't know you guys were still in business. No offense because you know I'm a huge Mac fan. I'm just saying. All they want to talk about is the Borg. Steve Mills sits there rolling ball bearings in his hands and mumbling about Gates.

"So our talks broke down. Scott says, What's the one thing that will bring them back to the table? The answer is we make it look like we're getting in bed with the Borg, that we're surrendering. We make it clear to IBM that we don't want to do this, that it's very distasteful to us but we have no choice, and that if they were to buy us we would, of course, shut down the Windows server program. That's what the Original Borg is obsessed with now. They've surrendered in PCs and sold off the division. Next battle is the low-end server. They've put billions into propping up Linux in that market only to find out, in the most recent IDC numbers, that Windows is actually growing faster than Linux in that space, and on a much larger base. That's right. Windows is gaining market share. Linux had it easy when the game was about winning away Unix customers with a promise of 90% cost reduction. Now those deals are all done and the Linux guys are going up against Windows and there's no cost advantage. Same for us with Solaris on Intel. There's no real cost advantage against Windows. Pennies, maybe. But nothing that can swing a deal. The only advantage Linux has is some kind of religious thing but most IT managers are atheists. And some of them, believe it or not, actually like Windows.

"Anyway. That's the game. IBM sees the tide rising. PCs are already swamped and underwater, totally gone. Low-end servers are going. They need us. But they're cheap. So we make a big deal about how we're joining up with the Borg, and pray to God that IBM buys us. We're pretty sure they'll do it. It's worth a lot to them to keep the Borg from gaining any more market share. And please don't hate us on this. It's all part of a plan, and I think it's going to work. We have not sold out the rebel alliance. We will live to see the Borg destroyed. Together, with you on the desktop, and us and IBM and Red Hat and Novell on the server, we will win this war. Feel free to publish this email. I'll be saying something very much like this on my own blog, once it gets cleared by PR. Much love, as you guys say. Namaste. Peace out."

Walt Mossberg, enemy of freedom

So the freetards badgered Goatberg into doing a review of Ubuntu preloaded on a Dell laptop. Walt says it still ain't ready for prime time. See his write-up here. His quibbles? Little things like it couldn't play music and video unless he downloaded codecs, some of which were labled as "bad" or "ugly." And the PC couldn't recognize his camera and his iPod without being rebooted a few times. Videos played like shit, "with lots of flickering and freezing." And there's no built-in software for playing DVDs. But otherwise it rocked. (Photo: Burt Hammer, All Things G.)

Dear EFF: Yes, it's true, we're evil, greedy bastards and we want to take away your freedom.

So the Electronic Frontier Foundation has put out this hatchet job blasting us and saying that we're evil and bad and nasty and greedy and want to rob everyone of their freedoms and force all of our customers into a world of Apple slavery. Oooh, EFF, you got us! Damn you, EFF! How do you do it? You see right through me. If it weren't for you my scheme to take over the world could go forward as planned. Because it's true. We're evil. I'm evil. Very, very evil. When I'm in my car, driving? And I see a squirrel or a cat in the road? I swerve and try to hit it. It's true. I can't help myself. It gets me off. In fact, I'm not a normal human being. I'm Satan. I've come to live among you so that I can turn you into mindless zombies with my iPod and DRM.

Little back story here. This whole thing started over our incredibly cool new program that lets you turn a song into a ringtone for only 99 cents -- as long as you've already bought the song for 99 cents. The second 99 cents is the cost of cutting out a short snippet from the full song which you already bought and paid for. EFF says we're charging a dollar per ringtone, which is a factual error, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a correction. These guys clearly have an axe to grind and they're not going to let the facts get in the way of their anti-Apple jihad. But how can you believe anything they say when they can't even get their basic facts straight? Total shills for Microsoft.

Anyway, it could be worse. At least we didn't invent the word ringle.

FWIW, I don't like DRM either. I'm doing what I can to get rid of it. To see my earlier thoughts on DRM, read this. (Photo: Bernd Hammer, Lair & Garden.)

Blast from the past

Apple faithful, every once in a while, when you're bitching because of a $200 price cut on the most amazing consumer electronics device ever created, it's probably a good idea to step back and consider where we were just a decade ago. Toward that end, let me draw your attention to the June 1997 edition of Wired magazine in which renowned editor James Daly and a panel of other experts proposed 101 ways to save Apple. It's worth a peek, if only for a little chuckle. Or a good cry. Whatever. I ask you this: Read it and remember. And then tell me again about how pissed you are over the iPhone. Bokay? See here. Much love to Marc for sending this in. Namaste.

More evil from AcidGurl

Beastmaster Bill and My Little Pony as Siegfried & Roy. I think I get it. Photo by AcidGurl. Flickr page is here.

Some people have way too much time on their hands

Some idiot made a copy of our Web site with space ships zapping iPods. See here. My guess is it's Woz.

Australians angry about iPhone

Apparently a team of Australian soccer players did some kind of protest before a match and did a chant demanding iPhones. See the video here. There's a translation into Spanish but I can't read it. They were chanting in some kind of Australian language and the translation is in Spanish, for reasons I can't understand. One of our guys who does speak Spanish tells me they're saying they really want an iPhone right away. Honestly the global demand for iPhone is so incredible. We're really taken aback by it. Australians, we'll have something for you as soon as we can. Good luck with the soccer, or "football," as you call it.

UPDATE: For some reason the link to the video is really, really slow. Sorry.

Macworld corrects Computerworld's mistakes

See this brilliant article which shoots down in flames the article from some Computerworld guy claiming that we're the new Microsoft. We first demanded that Computerworld retract the original article. They refused. We threatened to stop talking to them. They pointed out that we already don't talk to them. We threatened to pull our ads. They pointed out that we don't advertise with them. What's a CEO to do? We went over their heads to the powers at IDG, which owns Computerworld, and threatened to go nuclear on them. They responded correctly by instructing Macworld to fix Computerworld's bad work and set the record straight. To be sure, it's a shameful day for Computerworld, and the whole thing certainly makes them look bad. But it had to be done. Much love, Macworld. Keep up the fine work.

This is not funny

Okay, I get it. I'm the big bad evil guy now. Right? To Bernd, who sent this in: Look out your window. Right now. See that man across the street? His name is Moshe. Take a good look at him. His face is the last thing you are ever going to see.

This rumor about using the store credit

So one of our operatives was at the Boston Mac Users Group meeting at MIT last night and apparently there's a rumor going around that if you actually take advantage of our $100 iPhone rebate offer we will put your name on a blacklist and find a way to punish you later. Like by moving you to the back of the queue when the lines start forming for Leopard. Or we'll drag our feet on your orders and put your name at the bottom of the list for back-ordered Macs. I just want to be perfectly clear on this. This rumor is absolutely not true. We would never do that to our early adopters. Even if you are kind of whiny and probably deserve a little punishment. Just kidding.

Captions?

SM: "How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?"
SB: "Who said you could talk?"

Sun's day of shame

Hoo boy. Sun is becoming a Windows OEM. They will sell Windows on Sun servers. I'm not making this up. See here. So much for taking the road less traveled. They're keeping Scooter in a straitjacket, locked up in a room at the Four Seasons Silicon Valley, until the press conference is over. Sun's new slogan: "Just like Dell, but without the stigma of low price."

UPDATE: In my haste yesterday I forgot to credit the photo above. It was created by a reader who goes by the name AcidGurl. Flickr page is here.

Enough with the iPhone analysis stories already

Jesus. Will you hacks please stop analyzing this whole price cut thing to death? Please? There's yet another one of these stories here. To their credit they did at least quote an analyst saying the only sane thing I've read so far about all this: "This is the way the cell business works - it's the way it has always worked. I don't understand where all the complaining is coming from." Then there's this one from TheStreet.com which says "Apple Got It Right" and points out that iPhone is kicking ass in the smart phone market. And this one by Herb Greenberg saying Apple is run by humans, not space aliens. Meanwhile some other guys say that the people who run carriers are frigtards and that I hate all of them and my speech last week was filled with loads of cryptic "fuck you" messages to AT&T and all the rest of them. These guys speculate that I'm already sick of the cell phone industry. Let me ask you something. Isn't everyone?

Please, filthy hacks, let this story go. Bokay? We cut the price. We said we're sorry. We gave back some money. It's over. Move along.

This chick is getting out of hand

She's gone from fan to stalker. I'm sorry. It's true. See the video here. Now here's the quandary and maybe some business ethicist can answer it for me. I know it's wrong for us to use women's bodies to sell our products. Is it also wrong for this woman to use our products to sell her body? Seems to me there may be copyright or trademark issues. Our lawyers are looking into it.

Photo courtesy of iJustine. To see the original, go to her flickr page. And if you really want a stomach-churning treat, scroll down to comments and check out the photos by the commenter who calls herself "superstar Nikki." Warning: Not safe for work.

We're raising our iPhone sales targets

Maybe it's the peyote talking but I don't care. We're going for it. I know we said we'd do 10 million units by end of 2008. Fact is we're now shooting for double that. You heard me. 20 million units by end of 2008. With 50% market share in smart phones, 25% market share of the overall cell phone market. To be honest, that's what our real target has been all along, internally. We just low-balled it to play it safe. Well, Katie is going to kill me, but I don't care. The truth is the truth. We rule!

I'm in the Tassajara room listening to Lothar and the Hand People, and it always makes me cry.

Sleazy sales guys at EMC? Say it ain't so.

Big story on Page One of the Wall Street Journal today about EMC's ex-jock salestards harassing women by making dirty jokes and taking clients to strip bars. See here. The piece is done in the prissy finger-wagging tut-tut scolding style that has become a Journal trademark. Locker-room antics? Sales representatives going to strip clubs? My goodness. Surely not the sort of establishments that an American businessman should frequent.

But there's something weird about the story and that's the timing. Why now? The lawsuit they're mainly reporting on was filed in 2004, in Chicago. Yes, they try to make it seem timely by saying that there's a hearing scheduled for Sept. 17. But come on. That's just the Journal's way of trying to put a "why now?" somewhere near the top of the story. (It's in the fifth paragraph, before the jump.)

So let's think about how this story ended up in the paper today. Somehow some intrepid reporter just happened to be combing through court records in Chicago and came across this lawsuit? Um, maybe.

Forgive me for being cynical, but let's pursue a different possibility. Let's say you're the lawyer who's representing some women who used to work at EMC and who think they weren't paid enough. And you notice that EMC has really bounced back and is doing well these days, and by golly they just got even richer thanks to that VMware IPO. Maybe you figure they've got loads of money right now and the one thing they really don't want would be some bad publicity with juicy embarrassing details about strip clubs and boy-boy sales guys telling raunchy jokes and behaving like glorified car salesmen -- just the kind of image that EMC has been trying to shed in the past few years as they've (supposedly) moved away from twisting arms and slamming ever big hardware boxes into customer sites and into the touchy-feely business of consulting around "information lifecycle management."

So maybe you press for a ridiculously large settlement and when EMC balks you race to the Wall Street Journal and feed them a big Page One story about the moronic, sexual harassing, former B.C. hockey players who now work as salestards at EMC and spend huge amounts of money taking clients to strip clubs and hiring strippers for parties where someone licked whip cream off some young lady's boobs and oh my goodness can you believe a sales guy would behave like that?

Let me ask you something. Have you ever worked in a company? Have you ever known a sales guy? Are you shocked to find out that they tell dirty jokes and go to strip clubs? Do you think the guy who wrote this article for the Journal has ever met any of the guys who sells ads for the Journal? Do you think maybe newspaper ad sales reps ever partake of alcoholic beverages in the presence of scantily clad women? Ahem.

Okay. Enough. For what it's worth, the story does contain some marvelous flackery by EMC's pitbull spokesman, Mark Fredrickson, including, way down in the story, the following gem:

At a 2006 annual sales meeting at the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, three scantily clothed showgirls came out on stage, turned around and bent over to show the initials EMC painted on their rear ends, says a former employee ... Mr. Fredrickson says the initials EMC were on the showgirls' thighs, not their derrières.

Glad he cleared that up.

MLP called me last night

I was high as a kite when he called and there was huge noise all around me and Al was vomiting at this point so I didn't get the whole thing straight. But Jonathan was returning my call to him where I left him a message saying what the fuck are you doing making another deal with the Borg? Jonathan says not to worry because today's announcement is going to help restore Sun's leadership position and reinforce its singular focus on high-performance computing, and storage, and Java, and free software. Then he went off on some weird tangent about Scooter and how brilliant he is and how he's such a huge asset to Sun and everyone at the company views him as this huge hero and visionary, this guy who saw early on that software is just a feature of hardware and that the network is the computer. Also -- and I may have imagined this because I was tripping -- but I woke up with this weird memory of Jonathan telling me that Sun's new slogan is going to be, "We put the free in free software." But I also remember him saying, "Sun: We Give It Away." But all of that might have just been the peyote talking. So basically I have no idea what they're going to announce and to be honest I'm not sure why I should even care. But I'm still buzzing on the peyote and can't sleep even though I'm not really hallucinating anymore. I hate this part of the trip where you're just all edgy and sizzling but the walls aren't breathing anymore and you're not really seeing any color trails and you just really want to go to sleep but your mind won't let you. Oh well. Back to the yoga mat for a rest. Peace out.

Wild times at Apple last night

One thing I love about this company is that we might be a bunch of Type A hard-charging take-no-prisoners people -- but we also know how to party. And we party just as hard as we compete. So last night we threw a huge bash on the campus to celebrate hitting the 1 million sales mark on iPhone way ahead of schedule. So much for all this B.S. from Woz and others about our sales being slow and us needing to cut prices to make our numbers. Nope. Sales of iPhone are blowing through every record ever set by any device at any price point. Amazing. At this rate we are going to hit 2 million by the end of the year, easy. Maybe twice that, if we can ramp up the supply chain to meet demand.

Anyway, last night we got everyone out on the lawn, gave out free booze and peyote, and set a giant cell phone tower on fire to represent the way we are about to torch the entire cell industry and change the world forever. Intense symbolism. And yes, we got hit with a huge fine from the Cupertino Fire Department, but you know what? It was worth it. Everyone was blown away. Lots of freaky body painting and nudity going on. I've always believed that you don't really know someone until you've tripped together. Last night I really got to know Al Gore and I must say, he's an awesome human being with a truly elevated spirit. Much love, Al.

Sun and Microsoft making announcement tomorrow

Some kind of press event at 10 a.m. Pacific time Wednesday. Low-level execs, no Ballmer or Pony, so probably not a big deal. They just put it out to the hacks in the press, who immediately reported in to our PR department, as they are required to do under terms of their contracts with us. No idea what the hell the Borg and the Pony have cooked up. But Katie says even if it's a small deal MLP must be nuts to be getting in bed with the Beastmaster. She says whatever goodwill My Little Pony has managed to get from the freetards will be gone by this time tomorrow. Just wait for the howls. We're already monitoring Slashdot.

Is "Piper Jaffray" even a real company?

Because somehow I doubt it considering that this "analyst" of theirs is using a name from an old TV show. Why the hell does Gene Munster have such an incredible hard-on for me? What's he got against the iPhone? See here. It's just another Apple hater. Jealous bitch.

I'm sick to death over this ad

Vonage, look. Hear me on this. I know you're in trouble. Your business sucks, and you're getting a little desperate. But it is wrong to exploit women to sell products. It is wrong to use sex to sell products. Bokay? And no, it's not somehow nicer if you speak French and call it a branlette espagnole. It's still wrong. Furthermore, this disgusting Web site of yours is offensive and nasty and should be taken down immediately. Folks, where's the outrage? Where are the bloggers on this? You know who else should be ashamed? All these lame-ass B-list celebs who whored themselves out at this party and pretended they really give a shit about Vonage. A pox upon you, I say!

To my readers who are upset about having to look at this, I'm sorry. But the only way to deal with these things is to call people out and shame them. Yes, it's awful. But we must do it. We must look at it. Stare at it. Get angry. Get worked up. Then do something! Take action! Now will someone please get me a box of Kleenex? Thank you.

Dear cell phone industry: Prepare to die

Guy on CNET says that we could kill the cell phone industry if we wanted to. Just buy up wireless spectrum and give it out to iPhone users at no cost or low cost. Run our own system and refuse to let any other phone companies ride our waves. Wipe out the cable companies too while we're at it by offering free Internet access. This sounds like a great idea and I've passed it along to Peter Oppenheimer. He says he'll get back to me on it today. Now will someone please get me a friggin chai latte? Thank you.

But wait, there's more

Man oh man. Sun is unleashing the friggin dogs of war this week. MLP was in New York talking to financial analysts and announced another huge initiative: from now on, Sun is going to focus on storage rather than computing. That's right. Storage. Sun is now a storage company. But also a high-performance computing company. Because companies are increasingly in need of high-performance computing, which means they'll be turning to Sun. Which is why the company's stock symbol is now JAVA, as a way to reinforce that focus on storage. Or high-performance computing. Or something. Geddit? See the whole rambling mess here.

Honestly, you can't make this stuff up. Here are two MLP comments, verbatim, from the story:

1. "If you look at the number of challenges we've had to face, probably the single most important albatross that we've kind of put away is the brand of the company. And that was because the financial reputation of the company was not so hot, technology reputation was not so hot and we weren't delivering the kind of results that shareholders and big investors want. From my vantage point, we've put that to bed. We're now at a point where now we're talking about, how fast can we grow, not 'are you going to be around?' That's a huge shift for us."

2. "The market opportunity is vastly larger than our capacity to go after it. We could do business with 100 percent of the marketplace — we tend to win the deals we show up in front of, at a very, very high rate. The problem is we're not going to go hire on 300,000 people to go after it."

Get the straitjacket. But approach with caution. (Photo: Burt Hammer, DSM-IV)

Watch out, HP and IBM -- Sun is about to unleash a new slogan

Watch out. This is change-the-industry rock-the-Valley kind of stuff. Like, one day the world is this way; and the next day it's some other way. Sun is about to take the wraps off a top-secret program that My Little Pony says is going to turn this company around and make it once again the dominant provider of hardware in the world. As incredible as it may seem, Sun is about to roll out a new slogan. And from what we're told, this one is going to be a killer. Like, huge. Like, game over. IBM and HP won't even know what hit them. From what we're told the new slogan is going to be Java-related and open-sourced, released under the GPLv3. Huge stuff. Though right now it's still in beta.

We've been hearing about this for a while. Our operating system guys are pretty plugged in to the Unix community and apparently there's been loads of buzz on message boards about something huge coming out of Sun. We figured it was maybe a new version of Solaris with some Linux hooks or maybe another major important new processor that would change the world like the Niagara chip did.

Turns out we were thinking too small. It's not a chip or an operating system or a new server. It's a friggin slogan. Jesus. Talk about huge. Just shows you again the kind of powerful imagination and leadership that set Sun apart from its rivals. Word is that MLP brought in a slogan team and logo team from McKinsey six months ago and these folks have been pounding away on ideas. Jonathan himself has been personally involved. Best of all they've taken Scooter out of the penalty box and turned him loose on this too. I've been wondering why we haven't heard anything from Scooter lately. I figured maybe he'd thrown in the towel. Nope. He's been deep at work in the slogan lab at Sun, with his sleeves rolled up, hitting the white board. He's determined to turn this company around. And this time he and MLP are making the biggest bet in Sun's history. They've spent $100 million developing the slogan and logo and plan to spend another $100 million on a massive media blitz to get the message out there.

Nobody knows what the slogan actually says yet but apparently Scott has been saying this is going to be bigger than his two previous hit slogans: "The network is the computer," and "We put the dot in dotcom." Pretty hard to believe these guys could outdo themselves again but if there's one thing I've learned it's that you should never, ever bet against Sun. Plus, Scooter is not the kind of guy who exaggerates or blusters so I'm taking him at his word. If he can pull this off I'd say it's a return to the glory days, for sure.

Apparently there's a tie-in to the new JAVA ticker symbol. That's what the symbol change was all about. We all misread it as being just some stupid hollow gesture. No. It's part of a master plan. From what we're hearing MLP has been bounding around headquarters with this huge shit-eating grin on his face because he knows he's about to crush his competition with the greatest, bestest, most ass-kicking slogan ever. Just look at him in that photo. Can't you see how confident he looks?

I sent MLP an email suggesting he could use, "Dude, we invented Java. Have you heard of it?" To be sure, we have a trademark on the expression but we'd license it to Sun, no problem. He wrote back thanking me politely but telling me they're all set. God I can't wait to see what they've cooked up. You have to hand it to Sun. They're the best slogan and sound-bite guys in the biz. Always have been. Much love, guys. (Photo: Burt Hammer, Groovytail Magazine.)

Hey Woz? Put a sock in it, bokay?

Now he's mouthing off to the press that we cut the price of iPhone because we have too much inventory. See here. Money quote: "My opinion about why they did it is that they have a large inventory and they are set up to build more than they have sold by a bit and they have to keep things moving." Katie Cotton assures me that nobody is going to believe Woz on this. She says our official company line about wanting to restore a sense of childlike wonder to the holiday season is much more believable. Apple faithful, we're telling you the truth on this one. No really. I mean it. Seriously. I really do. There's huge demand for iPhone, so much we can barely keep up. That's why we lowered the price. If anything, the new lower price should slow down demand a bit until we can crank up a couple of extra factories and catch up with the rampant demand. Once we've got some inventory built up then we'll raise the price again. (Just stop. Ed.)

Meanwhile Woz is now finding new ways to make an embarrassment of himself and further cement his position as the Billy Carter of Silicon Valley, like with this video where he's selling his Nissan and giving the money to charity. So sad. (Photo: Burt Hammer, Musclebear Magazine.)

Everybody's an expert

Check out Mr. Big Brain in the New York Times with his big economic analysis of our iPhone pricing here. Worse, though, is Seth Gonad's excruciating piece here where he suggests other things we should have done. Like these:

* Free exclusive ringtones, commissioned from Bob Dylan and U2, only available to the people who already had a phone. (This is my favorite because it announces to your friends--every time the phone rings--that you got in early).
* Free pass to get to the head of the line next time a new hot product comes out.
* Ability to buy a specially colored iPod, or an iPod with limited edition music that no one else can buy.

Where to begin? People actually pay money for books that this man writes. People listen to what he says and repeat things he says as if they make sense. How can this be? What madness has overtaken the world?

For the record, some professor of philosophy who writes a blog on business ethics says we didn't do anything wrong, and all these whiners should just shut up. Did I mention that he's a professor? Yeah. At a college. So there.

Canadian bureaucrats don't get it

See here. We wanted to remove three parking meters in front of our new store in Montreal. We offered to pay the city the same amount they could collect from those meters. Answer: No. Reason: We've never done this before.

I am not making this up.

More anti-iPhone backlash

Come on. We know someone professional is funding this stuff. Three guesses, anyone?

Warning: Don't take your iPhone out of the country

If you do you'll get stung for a huge bill because your God Phone will be making a zillion calls to update its email. You heard me. Check out what happened to this frigtard and this frigtard. And thousands more like them. Ha! Just want you to know there's no weaseling out of these bills by playing dumb, either. We've got you by the short hairs, losers! Because it's right in the contract, way down in the teeny-tiny print that you need a magnifying glass to read. All perfectly legal. So go ahead and file your little lawsuits and whine to the media. You're still going to pay the bill.

Regarding that Lisa rebate

Many of you have sent in links to this article claiming we are offering $7,000 rebates to people who bought Apple Lisa computers back in the day and then got hammered when we released the Mac for way less money not long after. I want you to know that I appreciate so many people sending me this link, but I want to assure you that this story is false. Okay? No refunds for Lisa owners. Sorry. I know it's a good idea. But there's a statute of limitations on this kind of thing and we're long past it. (Photo: Burt Hammer, Hammer Agency.)

CNN asks why people love Apple

CNN tries to explain why people love Apple so much. Is it that our products actually work? Could it be that they're actually nice to look at? Could it be that Apple understands design, and knows that "design" goes beyond the shape of the case and the color of the plastic? Nah. It's just that we're great at hype. Right? See here.

Check out this "Mac sucks" web site

Dear Reader Ioannis sent me a link to this site with a suggestion that Bill Gates is probably behind it. Well, friends, we've got Moshe and his team working on it. More as this develops.

Much love, Saul Hansell

Ace journo from the New York Times has seen right through our iPhone price drop ploy. See here. He's figured it out. The whole thing is about making more money and yes, as he puts it, I'm kind of crass. Money quote: "We are so used to cryptic and seemingly disingenuous communication out of Apple that we miss it when Mr. Jobs says crassly what most businessmen try to hide: Apple lowered the price of the iPhone because it wants to make lots more money by selling boatloads of them this Christmas."

Thanks, Saul, for what I'm choosing to believe is a very positive article about me. FWIW, I loved you in Zoolander.

UPDATE: Hansell just emailed me and said, "I friggin' worship you, man!"

Jerry Yang, bold man of action

Don't tell me you really thought things were going to get better at Yahoo after they tossed out Terry Semel and handed the company back to Jerry Yang. What's that? You did? Well, sorry to disappoint you. First bad sign was that Jerry, who presumably had been somewhat familiar with the company before replacing Semel, said he still needed 100 days to find out what the hell needed to be done. Now he has figured that out and his answer is this: Not much. No, seriously. That's the word in the Wall Street Journal this morning, in an article saying Yang has decided to pursue a "cautious course" and that "a major overhaul is unlikely." No sense linking to the Journal squib but luckily the Reuters Bangalore bureau is on the job with a knock-off. See here. Best part is the statement that Yahoo provided to the Journal: "Jerry Yang and Sue Decker are committed to making significant changes to the way Yahoo operates, and to sharpening its focus on key initiatives that will enable the company to improve its performance and strengthen its position as the most open, vibrant online marketplace for consumers, advertisers and publishers."

Whew. That's going to send the stock soaring, right? Maybe they'll bring in some consultants from McKinsey or IBM Global Services who can "custom-design a strategic vision aimed at achieving synergies, unlocking value and leveraging assets across multiple brands and platforms with an emphasis on growth, cost containment and unleashing a plan of action that can identify and solve real business pain points." Or maybe they should buy Facebook. Or something. (Photo: Burt Hammer, Hammer Agency.)

More backlash, but still not enough

Okay, so Katie's plan is kind of working, and we're getting some bad press that makes us look weak and out of touch. Like this one by some guy on TheStreet.com, who says we're facing a "cold Christmas." Or this one by David Carr in the New York Times, headlined, "Steve Jobs: iCame, iSaw, iCaved." Both nasty and negative, but still not big and bad enough. Stay with us on this one. We're working on it.

IBM now complains about our correction

So yesterday I ran a correction (here) to an item I'd done previously about IBM's new big commitment to Facebook. (See that story here.) This was in response to IBM's PR team complaining that I'd used the term "collaborative innovation" when in fact what IBM hopes to achieve is "innovative collaboration." I promptly posted a correction and said that I regretted the error.

Now IBM is demanding a correction to the correction plus a retraction of the original item and an apology. And IBM's legal team has gotten involved. They say the phrase "innovative collaboration" is trademarked by IBM and that any use of the term must be cleared by IBM. They want us to pay them for using the term without permission. We asked how much and they said the figure is proprietary and we'll have to sign NDAs to find out. They're filing a secondary complaint which argues that even if their trademark is deemed invalid, we still violated IBM procedure by publishing proprietary information without IBM's permission. Also, they allege the proprietary information we published contained "numerous factual errors," although they won't tell us what they are unless we sign NDAs.

Our lawyers believe this is payback for us dropping the Power processors and switching to Intel. Jesus, it's only Monday and I'm exhausted already.

Al's getting hoisted by the PETAtards

See this story. Comes from a British paper but there's still a 25% chance that some of it is true. Apparently the PETA weenies are pissed because Al eats meat and they say meat is the number one cause of global warming. They're planning to protest outside one of his speeches. Poor Al. I must say, as a longtime shunner of meat, I'm kind of siding with the protesters on this one. I can tell you that when Al was staying with us recently his personal output of greenhouse gases was prodigious. Though according to Jon Ive that actually isn't the issue. The issue, he says, is that raising all those animals causes global warming. Nothing to do with individual flatulence. So I guess maybe it's kind of unfair to go after Al. (Photo: Burt Hammer, Hammer Agency.)

Correction

Well the PR team at the O.B. (Original Borg) did a conference call with our PR squad to complain about this article where I describe IBM's plan to invest $1 billion into Facebook-centric business ventures. IBM insists that I post a correction for describing IBM's Facebook-related initiative as "collaborative innovation." The actual name for this initiative is "innovative collaboration." FSJ regrets the error.

News flash: Borg using Linux

Kind of. It's on a bus. And it's in a router. But still. Kind of cool, right? See here.

True story

So I'm getting a little desperate on this Beatles thing. And I know I should know better, but whatever, I decided to call Ringo. I knew he couldn't do anything to help. The poor guy makes Ozzy Osbourne look like a genius. But anyway, I call him up, I ask him if he has any idea how the talks are progressing on his end, what's the latest, and so forth. He tells me -- I am not making this up -- he tells me, "Yeah, you know, I think the latest thing we've been talking about is maybe we're just going to sit out this whole digital thing and wait for whatever comes next. I mean we're so late at this point maybe we should just skip it and wait for the next thing."

I'm like, Dude, what's the next thing? He says, "I don't know. You're the computer nerd. You tell me." I tell him that as far as I'm aware there isn't any next thing after digital downloads. He goes, "Aren't you supposed to know stuff like this? And if you don't know what the next thing is, how am I supposed to know?" I go, Ringo, I don't think there is going to be anything next after this. He goes, "Oh there's always something next, innit? We had the vinyl records, and then the cassettes and the eight tracks, and the CDs, and now there's your iTunes, but really I think we've missed that one. We've just waited too long. So we might as well just try to jump forward and get on that other thing." I'm like, What other thing? He goes, "Whatever it is that's coming next. I don't know. You should talk to Paul. I think he knows. By the way, I keep getting this error message on my computer. Do you know what that means? How do I fix that?" (Photo courtesy of Burt Hammer, Hammer Agency.)

Thanks, Charlie Sorrel of Wired magazine

I swear I'm not related to this guy and we're not best friends and we've never met. But he says some nice things about my book here. Amazon is now taking pre-orders. And I swear if you buy now and the publisher cuts the price in two months, I'll make sure they give you some kind of in-store credit or something. Bokay? No risk for being an early adopter.

Gates: Welcome to my nightmare, old pal

So Kermit the Beastmaster just emailed me the PC World story and then called laughing his ass off. "So we're filing a complaint with the DOJ," he says. "We've got Real Networks and Roxio and all the record labels and movie studios joining up with us. Plus AMD and IBM and Sony and Samsung and Nokia and Motorola and the bankruptcy trustees for Tower Records. Free Software Foundation is filing an amicus brief. EU antitrust guys are going to testify. Some guy from Denmark or something. No idea. Anyhoo. Sun's getting involved, too, for reasons I don't understand, except I think Scooter doesn't like to get left out of anything like this and we're letting him come along because we don't want to hurt his feelings. Just wanted you to be the first to know, okay? Enjoy your time in the clown chair. I'm sure you will. Just as much as I did. Hey, maybe they can get David Boies to handle your case too. Trust me, he's a jackass. And look, don't take this personally okay? Because it's not personal. I don't even care if we win. Frankly I don't think we've even got a legitimate case. But who cares. I just feel like I owe you one. And let's face it, I've got more money than I know what to do with, and I just want to fuck with your head for a few years. Okay? Okay. See you in court. I love you too. Buh-bye. Mwah."

Attention Katie: Warp speed on that correction course

Well, here it is. In PC World, penned by a guy from Computerworld. Whatever. They're saying Apple is the new Borg. Yikes. See here. Thing is, there's a difference between an evil tyrant and a benevolent tyrant. Our job is to make sure people understand that difference. For example, when we introduce iPod Touch and strip it of most of its useful features except for the one that lets you connect via WiFi in Starbucks and buy songs from our store -- see, that's benevolent. At least I think that's what benevolent means. Maybe I should look it up.

Katie has a plan

I must say, Katie Cotton is probably one of the most brilliant communications strategists out there. She's come up with a brilliant plan for countering the contentards in Hollywood so we can beat them at their own game. No, we don't hire Anthony Pellicano to dig up dirt. We don't blast away with our own made-up stories. We do the opposite. We fall back. We pull an Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The thing is, Katie says, Apple is scaring the shit out of people these days. In certain markets we're pretty much a Borg-style monopoly and the only reason nobody has freaked out yet is that people don't look at music as a business. But let's face it -- it is a business, and we own it. We now tell all of the record labels how much they can charge for songs. We set the price for online downloads, which in turn controls the price for physical CDs too. Soon, if we get our way, we'll be in the same position with movies and TV shows.

Now, to be sure, we deserve this. We're the ones who saw the opportunity, who took the risk, who built the online store, who executed flawlessly, even while everyone else was trying and failing to do the same thing. But still. Katie says, "We need to reassure people that we're not some big hairy scary bad guy." I'm like, "But we are a big hairy scary bad guy aren't we?" She assures me that yes, we are, but we need to seem like we're not. Very, very clever, that Katie.

So what we need, Katie says, is a big story in some big publication that really shows us being humbled and learning from our mistakes. Yes, this rebate is a step in the right direction, and makes us look like pussies, like weaklings, like softies, which is what we need. But we need something more. Something big. We need someone to really beat the snot out of us. Then the Hollywood guys won't be so afraid and they'll walk right into our ... er, they'll step up and do the right thing and agree to partner with us.

Katie says we need a story like the one the Borg planted in Fortune a few weeks back talking about Microsoft getting mugged in China. I said maybe we can get Walt to do it but Katie says he's not mean enough. She's got a call in to Nick Wingfield. Apparently I may actually have to do an interview with him. In person. Yes, we'll get to write his questions in advance, but still it kind of sickens me. I've told Katie I'm only doing it if we talk through glass. I'm not sitting in the same room with that guy and breathing his air. I'm just not. (Photo by Dear Reader Shawn.)

The smear campaign begins

Variety reports today that, according to unnamed sources in the movie and TV business, the real reason for the breakup with NBC is that Apple is trying to slash the price of TV show downloads to 99 cents from $1.99. In other words, we're the bad guys, and we've misled everyone by suggesting that the breakup came about because NBC wants to raise prices to $4.99. See the smear job here.

We knew this would happen when we started dealing with the Hollywood guys. It's how they roll. They screw you in private and then try to smear you with leaked stories full of lies. This story in particular was one that Zucker told us his guys were cooking up. He handed out copies of it to us the last time we met with them. He's like, Play ball, or this thing shows up in Variety, word for word. Oh well. Katie and Steve say we can handle this kind of stuff no problem. They say we're still winning the battle for hearts and minds of consumers.

"Just keep handing out those Benjamins," Phil Schiller says. He's running around all psyched up about this rebate program. Says it's the best idea we've ever had. He's more excited than Larry Craig in an airport men's room. Says we should have thought of this years ago. Wants to start adding a hundred bucks to the list price of everything and then giving it back to customers later. I told him we'll think about it and get back to him. ("We" means "me," but it sounds fancier when we put it in the first person passive pluperfect or whatever.)

IBM to announce $1 billion commitment to Facebook

Not sure when they're going to announce this but apparently the O.B. (Original Borg) has decided that Second Life is over and now the new hot new thing is Facebook. They are going to assign fourteen thousand IBM programmers and a hundred thousand IBM business partners to the task of creating applications for Facebook, with a commitment to spend one billion dollars over the next two years on Facebook-related business ventures. First up: a version of Lotus Notes that runs on Facebook. Also, IBM Global Services has created a Facebook consulting practice to help big companies develop strategies for moving onto Facebook, teaching them how to use Facebook to gain competitive advantage over the other companies that IBM is also assisting with Facebook-related engagements. Ad copy says the practice will be "aimed at achieving synergies, unlocking value and leveraging assets across multiple brands and platforms with an emphasis on growth, cost containment and unleashing a plan of action that can identify and solve real business pain points."

Internally, IBM is instructing all employees to create Facebook pages and to begin using Facebook as a tool for what it calls "collaborative innovation," with a goal of becoming, by the end of this year, the largest corporate user of Facebook in the world. IBMers will begin inviting all business partners to join their Facebook friend networks. Palmisano already has a page and is friending like crazy from what we're told. On the hardware front, IBM will announce a large donation of RISC-based Linux servers to power the Facebook data center, and at the same time introducing a new Facebook-branded RISC server (code name "Facebox") specially designed to power the next generation of social networking, Web 2.0 Internet properties. Zuckerberg and Palmisano (photo) to appear together on stage to announce the deal. Quote from Palmisano in the press release which we've obtained: "Just as with On Demand, and Linux, and Second Life, this new Facebook venture is not just about chasing fads or jumping on the hype. This is about IBM being a thought leader, an innovator, a creative force in the industry, guiding our clients into the future. The future is tomorrow, but we are there today." (Photo by Burt Hammer for the American Museum of Natural History.)

Larry's bold idea

So Larry called last night and told me I'm the world's biggest pussy for caving in on this iPhone rebate idea. I tried to tell him that it was secretly our plan all along and how it's really super clever because we get to bring these iTards back into the stores all over again to spend their hundred bucks. And he's like, Jobso, babe, it's me you're talking to right? It's Larry. Your friend. Don't spin me, pal. Okay? Nobody cuts the price on a product unless they have to. All right? It's like Economics 101 or something. I don't know. I didn't finish college either. But I'm sure it's in a textbook somewhere. Nobody cuts prices just for fun. Or just because they think it's a cool idea. Man oh man.

I tried again to convince him that this was all part of some great master plan and that the rebate is this real stroke of marketing genius, and he's like, Dude, you're getting soft in your old age, you know that? Jesus. Are you really Steve Jobs or is some kind of impostor doing your job? I'm starting to think that rumor about you leaving the country and hiring a body double to play you is true. Is it?

Then Larry tells me that if we're really going to stick with this rebate on iPhone, we ought to make up for it by announcing a retroactive price hike on the Mac Mini, and everyone who bought one of the new models that we introduced a few weeks ago is going to get their credit card billed for an extra hundred bucks because it turns out we priced the product too low and we just figured that out and sorry but it's something we have to do. He's like, Brilliant, right?

Just look at him up there in that photo. Smug prick. Thinks he's so cool, right?

He was still cackling when I hung up.

(Photo by Brad Vink for Air & Space.)

O, Cringely

The poor guy really thinks he understands me. He really likes to play analyst. See here. Money quotes: "Steve has a love-hate relationship with, well, everyone. ... Steve slapped his customers around a bit ... Steve deliberately alienated his best customers ... Steve does things like this because he can ... It’s a lot about ego and a little about business, though with Steve Jobs they are hard to differentiate."

Oh, Mark, you see right through me.

This comes with the $100 rebate

Wear it with pride, sphincters. You deserve it. T-shirt courtesy of Vinnie, who steers us to this link.

Happy now, bitches?

So we're giving you back a hundred bucks on your iPhone. See here. Frankly I wanted to give back more but the board voted against me. We're also going to announce a reparations program for anyone who ever bought a Newton or Cube which will include not only the price of the product but extra compensation for mental damages you may have suffered while using the product. Oh, and anyone who got iLife 08 but doesn't like the new iMovie as much as the old version (cough Pogue cough) just write me an email and I'll send you seventy-nine bucks. Bokay? We square? Peace out.

Now imagine I had four of these chips. No wait. Imagine I broke this chip into four pieces. No wait.

Another cunning strategic move by the world's greatest CEO. Sun says they're going to do a 1-for-4 reverse stock split, which will goose the stock price from $5 a share to $20. See here. From what I'm hearing Jonathan just learned about reverse splits last week and thought it was the coolest idea ever, especially since his bonus is tied to the stock price. Originally he wanted to do a 1-for-100 split. "We'll be hot like Google," is what he told his board. Lehman, the CFO, pulled him aside for a chat and explained that the company won't really be worth more money. "It's like in Spinal Tap, with the amp that goes to eleven," Lehman said. "It's not louder. It just goes to eleven." Schwartz said he knew that, he wasn't stupid, but he wasn't going to sit around debating this because he's not some wishy-washy namby-pamby wussy who needs to mull stuff over, he's a hard-driving man of action, an executive who knows what needs to be done and makes decisions and sticks to them, and maybe that makes him unpopular but that's what makes somebody a leader, and that's what this company needs right now, a real, honest-to-goodness leader who dares to make the tough calls and place the big bets and take the big risks.

Word is the market is responding really well to the idea. Especially the shorts. They're calling MLP "Nigel Tufnel." They say he's the gift that keeps on giving. You know what? I agree.

Apple voted "best place to work" for PR people

So says some guy from Advertising Age here. Money quote: "It's a cushy job because as a public relations person at Apple, you don't have to deal with the media at all. ... No risk of carpal tunnel, either, because answering e-mail is optional too! Those few times you do have to involve yourself with a reporter? Well it's time for mental fun and games. Figure out ways to chew up their time without really being helpful. Things you can ask and/or demand: What is your story about? Can you write out all the questions you might possibly want to ask? Give us all of your information. Yes. All of it. And, by the way, we may or may not respond to let you know we don't have a comment."

As Katie Cotton (photo) said to me, Frankly, this guy sounds like he's got a chip on his shoulder. Definitely biased. Definitely out to get us. Sounds to me like he had the story written before he even did his reporting. So why should we talk to him? I agree with Katie: He's dead to us. (Photo courtesy of Dear Reader Shawn.)

Protests have begun

Remember this dame? Well, she's back, and she's brought her little doll with her, only this time she's pissed. This is her standing in the angry mob outside my house this morning, going, "Steve Jobs! Steve Jobs! I know you're in there! Can you see me? Can you see what I'm doing to this doll? Same thing you've done to us! Okay? I've got three fingers up there, Jobso! Three! Can you feel it? Does it hurt? You crook! You bastard! You criminal! I want my two-hundred-dollar rebate! Do you hear me? I'll buy a Zune! And a Dell! I'll do it! I swear to God I'll do it!"

Damn. Last night they were out there holding a candlelight vigil and singing "We Shall Overcome." To hell with it. I'm calling the police.

(Photo by Barry Lunger for MoveOn.org.)

Um, hi, I'm calling to see about these two-hundred-dollar rebates? Or maybe some free minutes or something?

Nice to see Woz is still wearing his iPhone T-shirt and his iPhone line badge as a souvenir. But a rebate? Fuggedaboutit, dickwad. (Photo courtesy of Burt Hammer, Musclebear Magazine.)

Remember the magic?

Remember how excited you felt when you left the store and the Apple employees were cheering you and you felt like the king of the world, the coolest guy on the block, because you were first -- not second, not third, but first -- to obtain the precious God Phone? Because you cared enough to wait in line for days? And okay, now you realize the real reason why those Apple employees were cheering for you -- and why they were kind of snickering at you too. Now you're freaking out, thinking some jackass blogger is going to re-use this photo and put some caption on it like this: "Look at me! I'm a moron! I'm an iTard! I paid $600 for this phone and waited in line for days, and now they're practically giving them away!"

Okay. I guess maybe you feel dirty. Like you went out with some hunky frat guy and you slept with him on the first date and then he never called you back. Right? You feel used. You feel stupid. Like you got tricked. Like you're not really that special after all. And now the honeymoon is over and you're realizing that yes, the screen is cool, but the keyboard sucks and the call quality blows and it's really not that good as a phone and the EDGE network is useless and the battery runs out in two hours and AT&T customer service is non-existent and you don't really use it much anymore and you almost feel embarrassed when you take it out in public and so, at the end of the day, what have you got, really? You've got a big heavy object that screams, "Hello world! I'm a pretentious, fad-chasing dipshit!"

Well, we've got a plan to restore some of that magic you felt on Day One. No, not a $200 rebate. And no, we're not going to let you return the phone or cancel your plan with AT&T. But here's what we're going to do. It's a sticker. Bring in your receipt to any Apple store or AT&T store and show that you paid full price for your iPhone, and we'll give you a sticker that says, "Original iPhone." Very small, very classy, black on black, made of super high quality plastic with a glossy finish. Something you'll be proud to put on your iPhone so everyone will know that you're not just any iPhone user; you're one of the super smart, super cool early adopters who paid full price. You see? We've got you covered. I know what you want to tell me. What can I say? You're welcome. I love you too. And you are special. I mean it. (Photo by Simon Ritchie, courtesy of Attention Seeker magazine.)

Dear early iPhone adopters: Yeah, we fucked you

Sorry, but it's true. We baited you in with a high price (the one thing no Apple fanboy can resist) and sure enough you fell for it just like we knew you would. But hey, you iTards were the ones lining up and camping out for a week to get a phone even though there was no shortage of them. You were the ones raving about what a bargain the phone was at $600 and how you'd gladly have paid more. Who can blame us for taking advantage of you? Anyway, please consider something: This price cut is actually all your fault. If more of you had purchased these things at the $600 price point, we wouldn't need to mark them down, would we? Come on, Apple faithful. Think. You let us down big time on this one. Not as badly as you've let us down on Apple TV, but still. We put a mass market luxury product out there, with innovative user interface technology and more hype than the friggin first man on the moon, and still you failed to come through for us. Now you're whining about a rebate? Or a free copy of Leopard? At this point I'm not sure you deserve Leopard, not at any price.

Anyway, it's been a pretty good week. We're screwing everyone in sight. We screwed you. We screwed AT&T. We screwed NBC. Man oh man. I feel like Ron Jeremy. Or is it Bill Gates? If we make it to the end of this week without angry picketers chanting outside our campus I'll be shocked. Peace out, suckas. (Photo by Jozef Merkin, courtesy of Cosmopolitan.)

News flash: Peter Kafka of Silicon Alley Insider called this whole thing

See here where the Alley Insider explains that today's Apple announcements are a snub to AT&T. They were the first -- the first, do you hear me! -- to figure out the huge implications of today's Apple news. God almighty. They see right through me. Well, dudes, you're right. You deserve the praise. These guys at AI -- starting from the head honcho, world-renowned stock analyst Henry Blodget, right down the line -- are just the sharpest, most insightful guys in business journalism today. They're the new Valleywag, the new Gawker. Right up there in that league anyway.

Just in case you didn't realize how incredibly brilliant they are, AI writer Dan Frommer points out that his boss Peter Kafka correctly predicted a week ago that the Beatles iTunes deal was a no-go. Frommer even links to the article where Kafka made his amazing prediction so you can see it. Now look. Peter's kind of proud of himself on this one. He's still calling all his friends to crow about how he got it right. Katie Cotton says he's been bugging her all day, saying, Now can I have a press pass? Huh? Now will you take us seriously? Now will you invite us to your events? Answer: Um, no. Neither will Google. Look, guys. You're nice guys. You're doing some good stuff. But come on. You're three guys with a Web site. You managed to raise some money from a couple of Henry's rich friends, and you're having some fun. Get a grip. (Photo by Jake Malone, courtesy of Tiger Beat.)

NBC and Amazon

Also in the news today -- though perhaps overlooked in the monstrous tidal wave of information that Apple released -- is the fact that NBC is now hopping into bed with Amazon. See here. NBC says Amazon offers them "greater flexibility in the pricing and packaging of video downloads." Translation: Amazon will let us screw people. Alternative translation: Amazon was willing to get screwed on this deal to steal a big partner from Apple. Whatever. We view Unbox as an un-competitor. Customers will view them as un-fair and un-appealing. Yes, I know Motley Fool claims this is a huge victory for Amazon. We'll see.

Be afraid

It's true. I'm a very, very bad man. Much love to Aditya for sending these in.

Okay, so you just bought an iPhone and now you're pissed

I know. It hurts. You showed your faith in Apple and bought early. Heck, maybe you waited in line. And this is how we say thanks? We cut the friggin price on you? Well, if it's any consolation, you're not half as pissed as Stan Sigman (photo) from AT&T Wireless. We just stole away his music downloads with our WiFi music store, and wiped out his ringtone sales by offering them ourselves. Stan's admin, Bryan McSimmins, has been calling my office every three minutes for the past hour. Ja'Red says he can hear Sigman in the background smashing things and swearing. This just in. Now Bryan McSimmins says he'll hold until Mr. Jobs become available. Little message to you, Bryan McSimmins: Keep holding. (Photo by Chuck Mangina for Cat Fancy magazine.)

Darling, I'm sorry I lied to you. I promise I'll never do it again. Seriously. Now put down the lamp.

So, no Beatles. And no touch-screen hard-disk iPod. Believe me, lover, when I tell you that I wanted to give you these things. I still want to give them to you. Can you forgive me? Please? I will get them for you someday. I promise. What's that? Oh. Right. The douchebag Starbucks guy. I know. What can I say? He was forced upon me. Yes, he ruined the vibe and destroyed the karma. Lousy fit for an Apple event. Like a Mormon in a coffee shop. You're right. I'm sorry. I know. I know. Stop yelling, okay? Please stop yelling. You don't need to yell. Well I'm sorry but you are yelling. Okay, you raised your voice. Not the same as yelling. Fair enough. I hear you. Yes. I do. I said I'm sorry. What else can I do? Should I just keep saying "I'm sorry" over and over for the rest of my life? Would that do it? What? You think I don't mean it? Jesus. I mean it. Okay? I mean it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry we slashed the price of an iPhone by two hundred bucks, and introduced a video Nano and an iPod with a touch screen and a WiFi iTunes store. I'm sorry I even went out there today. I should have stayed in bed. I'm sorry I was ever born. Okay? Is that enough for you? What's that? We shouldn't have put the event in the Moscone Center, because that just got everyone's hopes up and misled everyone into thinking we were announcing something huge? Jesus. Okay. Next time we'll just have it at a Wendy's, down in back. I'm sorry. I said I'm sorry. I'm not being sarcastic. Okay, you're right. That was sarcastic. I'm sorry for that too. I am. I mean it. I do. I'm sorry. Just please stop yelling. Okay? Or raising your voice. Right. Not yelling. But please. Calm down. I'll make it up to you, I promise. I swear I will. Just give me another chance.

Today we change the world -- again

Apple faithful: Namaste. Much love. It is five in the morning here in California as I write this. Outside my windows, in the predawn darkness, birds are starting to sing in the garden. The sky is turning gray. I have been up all night, energy coursing through my body. I'm totally electric. I'm vibrating at the frequency of the highest astral plane, thinking about what we are going to unleash upon the world on this day, September 5, 2007 -- a date that will live in history. Yes, it is big. It is huge. It is profound. But the words big and huge and profound are not sufficient to describe this event. No words, in fact, can contain the magnitude of today. Seismic? Still not big enough.

It's not just a video iPod. It's not just a stumpy Nano. It's not just the greatest band in the history of the world declaring fealty to King Jobs like Vercingetorix casting himself down before Caesar. (What, you think it's just a coincidence that Paul McCartney is making a special announcement on BBC 1 at the same time our show begins? Please.) No. It's more than that. It's the day, today, when the future of the media industry is revealed, when scales fall from the eyes of the movie companies and TV networks and they realize the trap into which they've been led and from which, now, it is too late for them to escape. Alea iacta est, as they say in French. Today is the day when the entire world realizes that the true lord and ruler of the planet resides not in Redmond but in Cupertino. iPhone? A mere distraction. A sideshow meant to appease the movie and TV companies -- it's just a phone, innit? -- and draw attention from the truly devastating product that was to come.

Today, history is made. Fifty years from now people will look back and mark this date as the turning point when the shackles of 20th-century media and telephony and film and TV and print were thrown off, shrugged away like so much heavy useless armor. And you, Apple faithful, will tell your grandchildren that you were there to see it. You lined up at the Apple store on Day One, your hands trembling, and purchased this magnificent device and recognized, even then, that what you were touching was the future. You will tell how you were there on the day when freedom -- yes! glorious freedom! -- burst into the world like sunlight into a darkened cave. Freedom. Say it out loud. Freedom. What a word. What a concept. A new kind of freedom, the kind where you lock yourself into the world of an enlightened despot, the greatest figure of our age, the Walt Disney of the 21st century, and bask in the glory of what I give you. My freedom. My world. My greatness. Multitouch coupled to disk drive coupled to WiFi coupled to Safari coupled to OS X. Imagine it! Dream it! Then dare to do it!

Oops. Gotta go. Breezeann, our house manager, says the smoothies are ready, and the colonic tech is here for my final flush. See you at Moscone. Namaste. Much love. Peace out.

(Photo by Incontinentia Buttox, Vatican News Service.)

Joy of Tech, I friggin love you guys

See this comic. Maybe it's old, and if so, I'm sorry. It's still good. Much love to Bruce for sending it my way.

UPDATE: Link has been changed. Bokay?

Suck it, Palm. Suck it hard.

So they've killed the Foleo. Big surprise. I knew it was a dud as soon as they unveiled it at the D show. So did everyone else at the conference, including Goatberg, though he didn't let on. He just assigned the write-up to one of his guys so he wouldn't have to do the dirty work. Word is that McNamee and Bono and the rest of the boys at Elevation had something to do with the mercy killing. I called Bono to check but he's on a retreat at some monastery in Thailand and can't be reached. Which I guess means that yeah, he did have something to do with it. Thing about Bono is, he really takes this stuff personally. He hates conflict, and he hates making hard decisions, especially ones where people get laid off or disappointed or whatever. So after something like this he has to retreat from the world and cleanse his soul. McNamee, on the other hand, totally gets off on this stuff. He was out partying at Chantilly last night and laughing his ass off, telling everyone how he did his "taking the monster out of its cage" routine and made Jeff Hawkins cry like a little girl.

Meanwhile, I know what you're wondering. Did I take pleasure from reading Palm CEO Ed Colligan's groveling blog post where he explained why he was killing the Foleo? Okay. Truth is, I did. A lot. I called McNamee and told him he should cancel the rest of the Palm product line too and save me the trouble of having to kill it piece by piece. He told me to get stuffed. Well, I'm sorry, but it's true. Apple faithful, we are steamrolling over these guys, one by one. The next year is going to be really ugly. Or really beautiful, depending on your point of view.

(Photo by Hans-Olaf Gutmanssdottir, courtesy of Linux-Watch.com.)

For Christ's sake, Al, sound off like you've got a pair

Don't get me wrong. I love Al. But honestly sometimes he's the most timid, cautious, finger-in-the-air candy-ass I've ever known. Now he's got Tipper floating a trial balloon in Vanity Fair. See the Drudge story on it here. Money quote: "Tipper also says that Al has made no moves that would suggest a run for the presidency, but adds that if he turned to her one night and said he had to run, she’d get on board, and they’d discuss how to approach it this time around, given what they’ve learned."

Man oh man. I just called him and I'm like, Dude, you know I love you, but if you want to be president, and you should want to be president, because you'd be a great president, well then stand up like a man and do it. Don't have your friggin wife drop hints in some socialite celebrity magazine. Don't take polls or do focus groups or try to figure out what people want you to say and whether they'll vote for you instead of Bitchary and what you'll need to do to reposition yourself. Jesus! Do you not realize that this kind of pussyfooting is exactly what killed you last time? Dammit, brother, if you want to run for president, grow some balls and run for president. If not, then just shut the hell up and stop bugging us. Bokay? You're making me nuts with this.

(Photo paid for by Norman Hsu, courtesy of DNC.)

The wow is now. As in, Wow! This thing is going up in flames!

Another Dell has gone up in flames. And the world becomes a tiny bit better. Yes. Indeed. I can sense a disturbance in the force. When I first saw this photo I thought maybe someone had just got sick of dealing with Windows and torched the thing on purpose, sort of a ritual cremation. I still think that kind of thing could happen. Big trend for 2008. Wait and see. Folks in offices setting their PCs on fire and then calmly picking up the phone and telling IT that they need a Mac -- right fucking now. Much love to Engadget for nailing this one. (Photo courtesy of Charles Twink.)

Cramer says Sony et al should "just give up"

Stop trying to compete with Apple, Big Jim says in this video. Money quote: "Apple is just too powerful. And I, Jim Cramer, am an idiot who does not deserve to lick Steve Jobs's shoes." Okay, that second part I made up. So sue me. But he did say the recent $200 price target on our stock was appropriate. I'm not kidding. Go buy some. You'll be glad you did. (Photo by Martin Sphincter for Maxim.)

The saddest video I have seen in a long time

Check this out. Mark Zuckerberg of Fakebook trying to imitate me, and failing. Clearly they've had him studying my keynotes. Clearly he needs to do more homework. And look, I realize the kid is only fourteen, so maybe it's not cool to make fun of him, but still. This is what passes for a CEO in the world of Web 2.0? See here. Warning: This is really painful. Like, cringe-worthy. You may not be able to watch the whole thing. I couldn't. Much love to Dear Reader Isaac for sending in the tip.

News flash: iPhone sales are kicking butt

See a story about the research report here. We're outselling Treo, BlackBerry and all other smart phones. Apple shareholders, I know what you're thinking. You're welcome.

Come together?

I know this video isn't new but it's kind of cool and I figured it might be appropriate to post today, if you know what I mean. Not saying it's gonna happen. After all, the crack hacks at Silicon Alley Insider have already reported here that it ain't gonna happen. But who knows? Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I'm not telling, that's for sure.

Dear Howard Stringer: Bring it, bitch

Howard Stringer of Sony says they're going to make a big push into the U.S. market for video downloads and go head-to-head with Apple. See the WSJ story here. This news comes in the wake of our rift with NBC. It's Sony's way of saying, "Hey guys, remember us? Over here? Sony? Big name in the last century. Still in business. Still want to be your partner. Call us, bokay?" Oh well. Looks like we'll have to back up the Hummer and drive over them again. (Photo by David Manning, Ridgefield Press.)

Damn right we are suing someone over this

Some friggin toy company has come out with a doll named after Katie Cotton, our head of PR. Apparently the doll comes with a phone that she doesn't answer, and she's got a string on the back of her head; you pull it and she says, "We have no comment. We have no comment. We have no comment." Not funny, people. Especially since the doll looks nothing like Katie Cotton and way too much like iJustine. Much love to Paul for bringing this travesty to our attention. (Photo courtesy of Walter Monheit.)

A fable about NBC

It's from Mike "Hurra" Cane, a dear friend of the blog. A story in pictures about the stupidity of NBC. See it here.

Simpsonizers

Here are some Simpsonized characters you might enjoy. Much love to the readers who created them and sent them in.

El Jobso, by Zoli.


Monkey Boy Ballmer, by Christopher.


My Little Pony, by Michael.


Homer Zucker, by Brad.

In case you missed it

Sony's music store is dead. See here. Basically the story says that Sony came to digital music first, but we beat their ass anyway. Much love to Lars for the tip.

Another big sloppy wet kiss for the Borg

Check it out here. The New York Times runs a piece on Microsoft's cloud computing effort today and it reads like a friggin two-page advertisement for the Beastmaster. Reading about all the wonderful things that the Microsoft Live service is going to do and how seamlessly it's going to synch up with Windows Vista, well, you'd almost believe that this system is really going to work. But I mean, come on. You know it's not going to work. It's a classic Borg-style hodge-podge clusterfuck, with pieces that all have different user interfaces and different pulldown menus and all sorts of configuration hassles. Only now instead of just messing up your desktop they've messed up a bunch of servers and back-end systems too, so what used to be just a soul-destroying experience managing a Windows PC now gets magnified by, oh, the size of the Internet. Lord!

Trust me on this. Nothing in Windows Live will work the way they say it will. And when you complain they'll tell you the problem isn't with Windows Live, that the system works fine, that people are loving it, that the acceptance has been amazing, better than they projected, subscriber rates are the fastest they've ever seen, and if you've got problems it must be because you're doing something wrong or maybe it's the version of Windows you're using and have you installed the latest Service Pack and maybe you should connect in with your computer so the Borgtards can verify that the software on your PC is legal and authorized and paid-for because probably you're a software pirate or you've installed the software on too many PCs and you need to buy a new copy of Vista.

Or maybe you'll just go online trying to find help so you can fix things yourself. And when you do you'll find some brain-dead "knowledge base" with mind-numbing instructions that turn out, even after you've read them, not to make any sense, because the people who wrote the FAQs were describing an earlier version of the software, or simply weren't paying attention, or were as pissed off and confused as you are after realizing that in fact the software actually doesn't fucking work, or worse yet, they were just bored and underpaid and decided it would be fun to fuck with your head by giving you instructions that nobody can understand. Maybe they have competitions to see who can be the most inscrutable. I don't know.


One thing I do know is how the Borg develops software. Imagine a hundred separate teams of Keebler elves all smoking crack and then being told to sit down in different parts of the world, without being able to communicate with each other, and dream up new cookie flavors, and you've got an idea how the Borg created Windows Live. Then a bunch of generic, soulless, humorless lab-produced MBA replicants (photo) who don't know anything about technology and only went to Microsoft because they didn't get offers from Procter and Gamble are put into a conference room and told to create some marketing plan for this pile of dog shit. Dream up a slogan and a name and some advertisements that will mislead people into thinking that Windows Live is all one big wonderful suite of software that was developed from the ground up to work as an organic whole, even though the pieces are all being rolled out at different times in different locations on different websites.

Then, mirabile dictu, as they say in ancient Greek, up pops a story in New York Times a few days ahead of release telling you exactly what Microsoft is going to tell you later in the week, so that when you hear it then, for the second time, it almost sounds true. You get it? The deal with the Borg (and with us, for that matter) is that if you want to be first with the story, then you have to write exactly what we tell you. The power of this as a communications tool, of course, is that then we get to set the agenda. Whoever goes first does the biggest story and gets the most space because he can brag to his editor that he's got an "exclusive." So we promise an exclusive and we eat up all of that precious real estate on the front page of the business section, and then when the rest of the mediatards sit down to write their stories later in the week most of them will be too busy to do any real reporting so they'll just repeat what they read in the first guy's story.

But even by the extremely low standards of the New York Times this one is pretty mind-blowing. I mean there are puff pieces, and then there are puff pieces, and then there are stories like this one, where afterward the guy whose name goes on the story feels like he's got to shower a few times with lye soap before he can get enough of the Beastmaster's stink off him to go back into the office and look at his colleagues, and even then he knows that some prick (probably Brad Stone) is going to come over and tell him that he's still got a little bit of Bill's jizz in his hair. Thing is, Markoff is a friend of mine. I like him. I'll even actually sometimes exchange fake IMs with him (not me, personally, but Katie Cotton pretending to be me). He's a good guy. He's a hard-working, diligent, tough-nosed investigative journalist. So I know his byline is on this story, but seriously, what I want to know is, who actually wrote this? Katie Cotton says it was Frank Shaw, the Beastmaster's head PR guy. Katie used some linguistic analysis tool to compare Frank's writing on his blog to the writing in this story and says the similarities just leap out at you. Well, Frank Shaw, nice work. Really. You're one of the greats. (Photo by Michel Felch, courtesy of Microsoft.)

A boring rant

In the interest of keeping items brief I've cut the previous post and put the boring stuff here. Enjoy. Or don't enjoy, as the case may be. Skip over it. Whatever.

It's not just Disney and ABC that are out of touch. Look at the management team at NBC Universal. Look at the GE board of directors. Do these people scare the living shit out of you? They sure scare the hell out of me. They're all buffed and polished and about a hundred and fourteen years old. They look like cadavers who've been done up by the world's best funeral home makeup artist. A lot of them are just GE lifers who did time in plastics and then airplane engines and then somehow got dropped into the TV group.

Here's what I tell them. Friends, you run a television network. Now let's think about this. What the fuck is a television network? It's a system of affiliates designed to help carry a broadcast signal across the wide continent of America on airwaves and into television sets owned by millions of people. In essence, you are in the distribution business. In the second half of the twentieth century you had the great good fortune to be granted a kind of limited monopoly over the distribution of a very valuable commodity. There were only so many airwaves, hence only so many networks. There were way more advertisers than there were channels to carry their advertising. So you sat there with your choke-hold on the garden hose, controlling the flow of programming and getting fatter and fatter and fatter.

It was a wonderful system. For you anyway. Except that it had one huge flaw. Which is that for you guys, the middlemen, to get rich, you needed to fuck over the people at both ends of the value chain -- the consumers who had no choice in what they watched and spent years being fed mountains of dog shit, and the producers of content who were at your mercy and had to negotiate with this tiny number of networks who operated, let's be honest here, as a kind of cartel.

It's over now. Your business model was a historical anomaly built on scarcity of a valuable resource and the willingness of a small group of network operators to not slit each other's throats and to collaborate in exploiting the content producers. Sort of like the Five Families in New York. Wars are bad for business.

You know what the new network is? It's me. I don't think people have quite figured this out yet, but just as Pixar was once a medical imaging company until I decided to make it into something completely different -- ie, the most important entertainment company of the 21st century -- so Apple is not really a computer company anymore, or even a consumer electronics company. We're a network. We take content and distribute it out to millions of people, who play it on handhelds (sold by me) and computer screens (ditto) and yes, maybe, sometimes, on actual TV sets. At one end of the value chain, the consumer end, people have already voted. They like my system better than yours.

At the other end it's trickier. We don't deal directly with the content producers. Instead, we have to deal with these network gatekeepers. But why? What value are they adding? As far as I can see the only thing the networks add is an extra step and a big scoop off the margin.

The producers of content don't like the TV network system but can't quite see the way across the divide into my digital world. Some musical artists, like Prince, are figuring it out, but they're isolated examples. Trust me, however, when I tell you that TV and movie people will figure it out too. These are not stupid people. And they are not un-greedy. Which means their desire for more money and more control and more freedom will lead them to apply their energy into figuring out how to get out of the plantation the TV networks have created for them. They will break free. Mark my words.

The talented ones will go first. Bad news for you, TV networks. You'll be stuck with the shittiest creators, the timid ones who don't dare cross the chasm. Your shows will get worse and worse. Your sitcoms will grow lamer, if that's possible. Your reality shows will grow stupider.

What's left? You've already gutted your news divisions, which was a truly moronic move since that was the only place where you really could continue to add value. Your news shows will continue to devolve into not-really-news Fox-style argument shows where retarded bullies like Bill O'Reilly come on the air and shout at people because some gangsta rapper has a deal with Pepsi, or argue with straw men about whether we should put more troops into Iraq. Where once we had Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, we'll instead have John Gibson and Sean Hannity ranting about patriotism and calling people names. All heat, no light. Well done, TV networks. When you finally die, the world will celebrate. Because you'll deserve it. Totally.

For now, when these bastards come threatening me and demanding that I join them in fucking over consumers and also allow them to grab a bigger slice of the pie, my standard response remains this: Siooma, ass-munchers. Siooma.

Disney, don't even think about it

So you would think, since I'm on the Disney board and pretty much run the place, and because I'm the most powerful figure in technology and entertainment, a colossus bestride the narrow worlds of Silicon Valley and Hollywood -- you'd think, given all this, that Disney would back me on this fight with NBC. Unfortunately, over the weekend, a low level of grumbling and drum beating inside the Mouse House managed to make its way to the board level, and some of these frigtards actually made me fly down there and address their "concerns" and discuss the merits of bundling and raising prices and whether it's really in Disney's best interest to have someone on their board (me) who is also such an important business partner and isn't there a conflict of interest here and how do we know Jobso is doing what's best for Disney and how can he be negotiating with Disney by day and then making decisions for Disney by night, blah blah mwah mwah.

In other words, screw you, Jobso, we want to bundle our crap with our good stuff and raise our prices too.

In other words, Jobso, we know you're on the board, but the fact is, we've got more in common with NBC than we do with Apple.

First, let me say please check out the frigtards who make up the Disney board of directors. Chairman is a guy whose background is P&G. Then, in alphabetical order, we have Susan Arnold, another P&G robot, and John Bryson, who runs a power utility. John Chen runs Sybase, a software company that died 10 years ago but nobody has the heart to tell Chen. Judy Estrin from Cisco, no comment except to say that her nickname in the Valley is Judy Estrogen. Bob Iger, an ABC lifer. Fred Langhammer runs a cosmetics company. Aylwin Lewis runs Sears and, um, again no comment because I can't possibly imagine any other reason why he's on the board at Disney, honestly I can't. Monica Lozano's big claim to fame is that she speaks near-fluent Spanish. Robert Matschullat is a banker who worked for a booze company. Orin Smith worked at Deloitte and then Starbucks.

These are the people who are going to guide Disney into the digital era? Come on. It's a bunch of old white dudes with a few non-OWDs thrown in for window dressing. I mean, seriously, the word old doesn't begin to describe this room. Jesus. First time I walked into the board room I thought it was a reunion of the extras from "Love Boat." Half of these people wear Depends. No, I'm not going to tell you which ones. But trust me, we keep the meetings short.

I stood there yesterday looking at these stuffed shirts and then thinking about that crowd of teenagers I was watching in Glasgow earlier in the week (I go to all the store openings, in disguise) and I could not imagine two groups of people who could be less able to understand one another. I had this amazing epiphany. I mean these people running networks have just sat up there in their board rooms and conference rooms and private jets for so long that they've become completely untethered. They have no idea about how kids today want to consume media. Let me correct that. The issue is not how kids want to consume media, but how they are demanding media should be delivered.

So what happened at Disney yesterday? Basically I kept it short. I re-hypnotized those frigtards and told them they should not even think