Borg's new spin on Vista

See here. In a story about XP outperforming Vista on benchmark tests, a Microtard says: "Frankly, the world wasn't 100 percent ready for Windows Vista." Geez. And I thought it was the other way around. Anyway, it's nice to know it's the world's fault, not Microsoft's. Glad we've cleared that up.

OLPC smash hit among pilot customers

Much love to Jason for the caption work. Feel free to hack away at this.

Scoble applying for CEO job at Motorola

Just heard this one from Larry who heard it from Scott who heard it from Ed Zander who heard it from HR at Motorola. Only minutes after the news about Zander getting booted hit the wire, Scoble was on the phone to the director of HR at Motorola saying that he once met Carl Icahn at a conference and they really hit it off and he would love the opportunity to just come in and talk sometime and he had a bunch of really good ideas about the future of the smart phone. Also some great ideas about how to turn an old company like Motorola into a hip new Web 2.0 startup type environment that isn't afraid of disruption because it has become the disruption. First rule -- casual Friday becomes casual every day. And free snacks and drinks in every building, never more than 100 meters from any individual employee, just like at Google.

Well, the HR dude was very polite and told Scoble that they'd already put Greg Brown in the CEO's job. Scoble said that's fine, Greg sounds like a great guy, and Scoble could imagine maybe a co-CEO position or maybe he could step in as president and COO under Greg to learn the ropes a bit before stepping up.

At this point the HR dude hung up.

Zander gets the RAZR

See here. Wildly overrated CEO Ed Zander has been booted out of Motorola after running the place into the ground. Fast Eddie previously helped set up the collapse of Sun Microsystems and bailed before the fecal matter hit the spinning blades, saying he wanted to run his own show. Well, he got what he wished for but this was a bit like the dog who chases cars and finally catches one. I hate to gloat but we called this ouster last March in a story called "ZANDR is a GONR." (See here.) The real silver bullet came in April when Carl Icahn started cranking up the pressure and the Wall Street Journal, purely coincidentally, ran a Page One hatchet job on Eddie and quoted him saying "I love my job, I hate my customers." Icahn waited a few days and then ran a huge full-page ad lambasting Ed and pretending it was a response to the article that he'd just planted in the Journal. (See here.)

Friends, I'd like to tell you something about Ed Zander. I'd like to tell you that Ed Zander is a prince among men, a true hero, a great guy. I'd like to tell you that, but it's not true. He's a dick. And he screwed the pooch at Motorola and totally let his competition eat his lunch. Anyway, I'm sure he'll leave with a lot of coin in his pocket, and he'll no doubt end up running some other company, probably out here in the Valley. You mark my words. Guys like this can just keep fucking up and moving on forever.

Pirate iPhones show up in Russia

Much love to Nizar (fo' shizar) for the link to these amazing shots of a really bad iPhone knock-off complete with phony Apple icon. Wow. Here in Cupertino we're saving all of these clones and having a contest to select the absolute worst iPhone clone that gets made. No, the Prada LG phone doesn't count. Ahem. See the original here. (Photos by Yuri Yobtvoyumat, Pravda.)

Oops. Did I say that out loud?

See here. For once Cringely gets something right. His take on the AT&T dude's "slip" about us releasing a 3G phone is that it wasn't a slip at all and was done intentionally to hurt our iPhone sales over the holiday season. (The idea is that anyone with half a brain will hold off buying until the newer, better iPhone comes out. Luckily we still have the less-than-half-a-brain market to sell to, and frankly that's really who we've been targeting all along. Think about it.)

I hate to say this but Cringely is right. Old Randall Stephenson (photo) from AT&T got up at a Churchill Club meeting (ground zero for tech dudes who fancy themselves "big thinkers" and "influencers") and blurted out the stuff about a 3G phone. As soon as he was off the stage he called me and left me a voice mail where he said he was sorry then burst out laughing. Bastard.

Cringely thinks Randall is pissed because we're going to jump in and join Google in bidding for this wireless spectrum and because I'm a buddy fucker who screws my friends and allies just for kicks. Money quote: "AT&T thought its five-year "exclusive" iPhone agreement with Apple would have precluded such a bid, but that just shows how poorly Randall Stephenson understood Steve Jobs. Steve always hurts his friends to see how much they really love him, so AT&T probably should have expected this kind of corporate body blow."

Fari enough, that's part of it. But really the reason is way more personal. He's mad because every time we meet I make a point of getting his name wrong. I call him Randall Stephens. This is a business tactic that I use a lot. Ever heard of Sky Dayton? I call him Sky Dalton. Michael Ovitz? I call him Jerry Ovitz.

The idea is to keep your opponent off balance. Prey on their insecurities. Deep down, all these big business guys are secretly driven by some dark demon, and that demon is telling them, You're shit, you're shit, you're shit. They've all developed this very loud inner voice to counter that which says, "I'm not shit, I'm important." Fucking up their name totally pushes that "You're shit" button. Makes them nuts. Katie points out that while this may be personally gratifying to me, in the case of Randall What's-His-Name this has now cost us probably a billion dollars in market cap. I don't know. Still seems worth it to me.

Google: The world is not enough

So I was talking to Squirrel Boy yesterday and giving him some shit about this alternative energy initiative that they just announced. I was like, Dude what won't you guys try? Jesus. It's starting to look pathetic. And what's the point? You pretty much own the Internet. You made three billion dollars in net profit last year. This year you'll do four billion. You're printing money over there in Mountain View. That's not enough for you? Now you want to own the radio airwaves for cell phones, and the hard drives where people store all their data, and the software that runs their phones, and their word processors and spreadsheets and photo software and email and social networks and every book and magazine and newspaper that was ever printed. And now on top of that you want to own our fucking electricity too? Jesus fucking Christ, dude. What's next? Greeting cards? A toy company? A chain of donut shops? Are you going to put Tim Hortons out of business? What would be enough for you assholes?

Eric did his little Dr. Evil laugh and said, "Nothing will ever be enough, Mr. Powers. Don't you realize? We're not going to just own the Internet. We're going to own (dramatic pause, turn to camera, pinkie in corner of mouth) the entire world. Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

Then he said, "Seriously, Steve, you think this search monopoly is going to last forever? Have you ever read Andy Grove's book, the one about how everybody wants to kill you? Our industry is full of companies that used to be great. Look at Sun. And Novell. They used to be huge but they couldn't invent a second act for themselves and now they're dog shit."

I'm like, Dude, didn't you kind of run both of those companies?

He's like, "Next question. Fact is, if Google doesn't come up with something else, we'll be road kill too."


Well I'd never looked at it that way. But maybe he's got a point. The fact is, Google might seem rich and powerful, but in fact they're in danger. They've got a CEO with a wobbly track record and an army of high-IQ oversexed teenagers with severe ADHD running wild in a Montessori pre-school of a campus. (See AdWords "leadership skills exercise" at right.)

Sure, they've created lots of billionaires and centimillionaires. But those are the folks who got in early. What about the new kids? How are they ever going to afford a jumbo jet of their own? What new business can Google create to keep these super-bright prodigy kids challenged and interested and working like hamsters in a wheel?

More on that in an upcoming post.

Hack says: Leopard is the New Vista.

See here. I'm stunned. He even calls it "Leoptard." Outrageous! We've put this guy under 24-hour surveillance. Moshe's team is moving into position as I write this. Enjoy life while you can, buddy.

The jackass who runs AT&T keeps blurting out our secret plans

Great. See here. Now he's telling all the world that we've got a 3G version of iPhone coming next year. Which is true, of course. But we sorta kinda agreed not to talk about it in advance. Dumbass.

It's true, there are some things we won't engrave on your iPod

Check out some of them here.

Confession: Sometimes I get baked and play with Time Machine

I mean come on. It's amazing. The whole 3-D interface, the way the stars come drifting toward you. I love clicking on the panes and watching them move toward me. So cool. And like when you hit "Cancel" and your regular desktop pops back up? Sometimes I just fire up some kind bud at my desk and then sit there doing that over and over and cracking the fuck up. Or just going "Whoa." I know maybe this sounds weird or egotistical since I'm the one who dreamed this up and designed it, but I have to tell you, I really think Time Machine is one of the coolest things we've ever done. I'm told that it is also very useful, though I'm not exactly sure how or why that is and frankly I don't care.

Jony and Phil got into a fight over me in Caffe Macs

This is going to get out so I figure I might as well just tell the real story here rather than have Valleywag spread a bunch of lies and half-truths. Jony was in Caffe Macs yesterday and ran into Phil. Phil made some crack about our spa day. Jony made some crack about Phil's shirt. Next thing they're pushing and shoving, and then one of them threw a punch (it's unclear which one hit first) and then it was on. They flew over a table, scaring the shit out of a bunch of our design people, and landed on the floor and were rolling around in one of those ugly kind of old-guy fights that nobody likes to watch. Finally they were pulled apart. The photo above was taken just afterward, as things were returning to normal.

I know what you're thinking. Isn't there a teeny tiny piece of me that totally gets off on the idea of having two popular boys fighting over me in the school cafeteria? Oh you know there is. Big time.

Another XO lawsuit on the horizon

Breaking news. Not only are the Nigerians claiming that OLPC stole their keyboard technology, word among our UI engineers is that another shitstorm is brewing for the OLPC team over their "innovative" user Sugar interface (top photo) which turns out to be almost a direct copy of the Robotron video game (bottom). For more info on Robotron, go here.

For what it's worth our UI designers have been studying the Sugar interface and the general sentiment seems to be that it makes no fucking sense at all. I know, I know -- we're not supposed to scrutinize or evaluate this new machine, we're just supposed to jump up and down and cheer. It's the same with all these freetard projects. It's like waking up to find out your dog can talk. Who cares if what he says is absolute nonsense, right? It's still amazing.

Anyway, in the spirit of Apple snarkiness, I've listed some comments from our UI team message board:

"Instills a child-like sense of befuddlement."

"Hey, the Commodore 64 is back? Awesome!"

"Did Cingular pay for that product placement of their logo? Are they a sponsor?"

"Robotron has a clear case on this one."

"I'm confused. How do I make the rival gangs attack each other?"

Freetards stealing? I'm shocked! Shocked!

A company called Lancor claims OLPC bought two of its keyboards, copied the software for adding accents used in Nigerian language keyboards, and then open-sourced the copied software. They're suing for patent infringement in Nigeria. See here. Money quote: "They didn't try to hide anything. They just copied everything verbatim. They took our code and made it open source for all the world to see."

Response from freetard blogs has been what you'd expect. Of course there can't be even a grain of truth in this because freetards would never steal. Therefore the explanation must be one of these: There are no patents in Nigeria; the stuff Lancor created isn't that innovative, ergo copying it wasn't wrong even if it was patented; the guys running Lancor are just a bunch of 419 scammers, because you know how shifty those Nigerians are, right? Hoo boy. That's going to help the cause.

You know you're in Cleveland when ...

So our intern Iulia is in the United States visiting her cousin Mikhail in Cleveland. She went out for a coffee at a Starbucks and spotted this sign and was so taken aback that she snapped a picture with her iPhone. A bit fuzzy but you can read the sign. She sent it to me on email and asked, "Is all of America this dangerous?" I've assured her that in many other parts of the country the Starbucks do not need to post no-guns-allowed signs. Iulia wrote back saying she saw a sign very much like this one at the Natural History Museum too. All I can say is that I guess it's great to see Cleveland making such an effort to create a few gun-free zones inside the city limits. It's a step in the right direction. Take that, Detroit.

Bike Helmet Girl is wise beyond her years

So I've been doing some journeywork and karmic repatterning with Tiffany, aka Bike Helmet Girl. Turns out that in addition to being a professional dancer with the DOUBLE VISION dance troupe of San Francisco she is also a personal trainer, yoga instructor and a spiritual guide slash therapist. And you know what? She's amazing. I mean she's young, but she's got some kind of old soul. She's totally wise and at peace, and in many ways she's light years ahead of me in terms of enlightenment, which is weird when you consider I've spent more than three decades in the lifestyle. I literally began my Zen studies before she was even born. But there it is.

So lately as you know I've written some pretty nasty things about people who've hurt me by writing less-than-kind reviews of my book. See this one about CNET and this one about SF Weekly and Portfolio.com. Bikey talked to me about these last night. She says I should apologize. "As an artist," she says, "you just have to put your work out there into the world and hope that someone connects with it. That's all. Just be at peace with your work and with yourself. A lot of people don't like my dancing. Remember all the mean comments on your blog about me? I don't focus on it. I just dance, and let others respond. If someone doesn't like your work, well, so be it. Let it go. Forgive them."

You know what? She was right. And her comments opened a deep well of shame inside me. For what seemed like hours I lay curled up in a fetal position, sobbing, until finally Bikey lay down beside me and put her arms around me, at which point I tried to make a move on her, but she brushed me off and then I pretended it was just an accident and that I hadn't been trying to grope her. Anyway. The point is, friends, we're all making the journey through this life together. As the great Jethro Tull once said, We're only dancing on this earth for a short while. People of CNET, and SF Weekly, and Portfolio.com, please accept my profound apology. I'm sorry I insulted you. Though you have slighted my work and hurt my soul with your insults, I bow to you. Namaste. I honor the place where your spirit and mine become one.

Photo by Mitchell "Maximum Mitch" Aidelbaum.

Another Microsoft billboard crash

This one was spotted in Leicester Square, London, last Friday night. Much love to Dave for sending it in.

Africans now blame Bono for Africa's problems

His Holiness Saint Paul of Clontarf just emailed me this article where some bigshot African AIDS dude says that not only have Bono and Bob Geldof not helped Africa, in fact they've made things worse there. Next thing I know I've got Mr. Hewson himself on the phone screaming obscenities. I'm like, Dude, it's an article from the NME. That's a music magazine right? Who cares what they say? It's like getting a bad review from CNET. I mean it's not exactly the New York Times is it.

Bono says, "You don't understand, Steve. In some circles, including the world of overhyped celebrity charity concerts for causes like hunger and debt relief and global warming, NME is the bible, man. The fookin bible. Way bigger than Rolling Stone even. These guys can make you or destroy you. Do you realize how much of U2's success depends on these concerts? Think about it. How else are a bunch of middle-aged Irish guys going to keep selling out venues? The entire nostalgia rock circuit depends on these causes. And thanks to you and your iTunes the price of music itself is being driven down to zero, so the only way we can make money is by touring. Jaysus, Steve, think, would ya? The NME is huge. You know what happens if you show up at one of these fookin mega-gigs, with the TV networks from all over the world, and the NME says your set was `uninspired' or `lacking emotion'? Do you have any fookin idea? Jaysus. Happened to Richard Ashcroft after he fucked up a song at Live 8."

I'm like, Richard who?

He's like, "Exactly. He's never been heard from again. Oh, trust me. This is bad, man. Hugely fookin bad. I've got to call Geldof and see what he thinks. I'm thinking we've got to get out ahead of this. We need a new cause. A new concert. Something fookin huge and scary. Like, I dunno, maybe war. Right? War. Nobody likes it, yet we keep on having it. Why? We've got to stop all the wars right now, man. We'll bring everyone together. We'll do the concerts in Baghdad, and Tehran, and North Korea, and Washington and London. Oh man. I gotta go."

Bertrand Serlet recalled to his home planet

Well it's a sad day for all of us here in Cupertino. Bertrand Serlet, the friendly cyborg from the future who has lived among us and helped guide our software development efforts with such skill, has been recalled back to his home planet. We'll have a little announcement at town hall this Friday with a cake and ice cream. Bertrand has been instrumental in guiding our OS X development and now that Leopard is out the door Bertrand (real name: Belar) felt this was a good time to heed the call of his people on Gallifrey One, who need him to help fight off some invaders in the future or something.

At first I feared this was just a ploy so Bertrand could go work at Facebook. Or join Jon Rubinstein at Palm. Bertrand insists this is not so. Just to be safe, we've offered to make Bertrand an Apple Fellow, which means we keep paying him so he can't work anywhere else. I'm pleased to say that he's graciously accepted. He'll commute in once or twice a year, but mostly he'll be working from his own planet. Sort of like Bill Joy. Much love, Bertrand. O traveler of time, you have brought a vision of peace to our galaxy, not to mention a great deal of truly sweet software. For your countless contributions to our company and to our planet, we thank you.

Yes, Woz reads this blog

Here he is holding up one of our T-shirts. Sweet, right?

OLPC exec to Third World customers: Grow some balls and buy our machines

The BBC gets the story here. Walter Bender of OLPC bashes politicians who are balking on placing huge orders for the XO machine. Bender's take is they're just holding off because they're chickenshits.

The minister of education in Nigeria says it's not about being cowardly, it's about being sensible: "What is the sense of introducing One Laptop per Child when they don't have seats to sit down and learn; when they don't have uniforms to go to school in, where they don't have facilities?"

You have to admit the guy's got a point. No way, says Bender. "You've got to be big, you've got to be bold. And what has happened is that there has been an effort to say 'don't take any risks - just do something small, something incremental'. It feels safe but by definition what you are ensuring is that nothing happens."

Bender goes on to say that the issue for OLPC has never been about which processor the machine uses or what operating system it runs. Which is interesting because Katie talked to the guys from the Wall Street Journal who wrote that that devastating takedown on OLPC which I blogged about here and the Journal guys say some of their juiciest stuff got left on the cutting room floor, including this quote from Walter Bender: “If we ship Windows natively on this machine, I will resign." And these from Nicholas Negroponte: "The lack of Windows on this machine is killing me." "The Intel Classmate is killing me."

FWIW our user interface design guys say the Sugar user interface that Professor Bender designed for the XO machine is a friggin nightmare. Nobody who has ever used a computer before can figure it out. (Can't you just hear Bender and Negroponte saying, "Yes, but that's exactly why it's so brilliant! It's unlike anything ever created before!")

Weirder still, according to Katie, the Journal had this whole story more or less buttoned up a couple of weeks ago, but chose not to run it until the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. Surely this could not be because Negroponte sits on the Journal's advisory board and the paper buried the story to help him out? Katie says there's some bitching about that but she doesn't believe it. Neither do I. My take is that the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend just seemed like the best time to run the story.

Also worth noting in the BBC story are Bender's comments about there being some deep vast conspiracy to spread misinformation about the XO machine. Just for kicks, however, please notice that whenever I write critically about OLPC we get anonymous pro-OLPC comments which seem just a tad too professionally written. See the comments on this story for example. Who could be doing that, I wonder?

The Brits totally get what iPhone is all about

Jony Ive says it's the whole hierarchical class structure thing. He's always insisted that Brits would gobble up iPhone even faster than Americans because they would totally understand that it's about feeling special, and maybe, well, a little bit better than everyone else. See this cartoon which explains it perfectly. Much love to Gareth for the tip.

First Google steals ideas from the Borg. Now they're stealing from us.

Have you seen this story in the Wall Street Journal about Google launching some service for online data storage? Bono sent it to me just now. Money quote: "Google is preparing a service that would let users store on its computers essentially all of the files they might keep on their personal-computer hard drives ... The service could let users access their files via the Internet from different computers and mobile devices when they sign on with a password, and share them online with friends."

You know I think I liked this idea better the first time I heard about it -- back when I was inventing it and calling it .Mac. I mean holy friggin mother of Christ. I've got calls into Squirrel Boy but so far he's not returning them. I swear I'm about this close to just driving over there and cutting him a new one.

Can you tell when I'm lying? You totally can't, right? That's why I'm in marketing.

Much love and an extra ten dollars in your pay envelope this week to our marketing guru Greg Joswiak (right) for doing such a marvelous job of spinning difficult questions on our SDK for iPhone. See here. Money quote from Greg: "Of course what we want to make sure we've done is keep the phone safe and reliable, and that's why it's taken us a little while to get this SDK out."

Of course this is ridiculous, but every time we say it people just nod as if it makes perfect sense. Honestly, it's hilarious. If you only knew how fucked up the SDK actually is, even today, you'd be stunned. I've got guys down there who haven't seen their families for months, and they still can't make it work. They're like, "Dude, this is really hard. Do you have any idea how hard this is?"

I don't, of course, but I'll tell you what. If they don't get their shit together by the Solstice Holiday I'm going to roll up my sleeves and go down there and write the damn thing myself. Meanwhile, spin on, marketing people. Sing on, brother. Play on, drummer. Spin on.

Brent Schlender is back kissing my ass again

See here. Apparently Fortune magazine now believes I'm the most powerful person in the universe. Funny right? I mean only recently these guys were beavering away on a hatchet job about me, claiming I should be put in prison or something. And as I pointed out recently, Brent has been attacking our products like crazy lately.

But now suddenly the hacks at Fortune have turned into my biggest fans again. Money quote from Brent: "That's five industries that Jobs has upended - computers, Hollywood, music, retailing, and wireless phones. ... At this moment, no one has more influence over a broader swath of business than Jobs."

As always, Katie did a great job on the article and Brent ran it pretty much word for word the way we sent it. Katie even ginned up a quote from me which I'll reprint here with my own translation spliced into it:

"We don't think in terms of power," says Jobs. (Translation: We don't have to, we friggin own your asses already, you little bitches, and nobody in tech can touch us. Plus we are all about the humility.) "We think about creating new innovative products that will surprise and delight our customers. (So shut the fuck up and start feeling delighted.) Happy and loyal customers are what give Apple its 'power.' (Also the fact that I can have any one of you killed just by making a single phone call. Remember that.) At the heart of it, though, we simply try to make great products that we want for ourselves, and hope that customers will love them as much as we do. (And we know they will because we tell them exactly what to love and exactly how much to love it, and they always do exactly what we tell them. Still amazes us, honestly.) And I think after all these years we've gotten pretty decent at it."

Fast Company says we're under siege

See here. Money quote: "Yet this is also a dangerous moment for Apple. In a way the company has never seen, the barbarians are massing at the gates. From hardware to software to services, major competitors with serious R&D and marketing budgets are laying siege to the House of Jobs."

Fair enough. We're under attack. Would anyone prefer the situation we were in a decade ago? I know I wouldn't. Now I must go put on my suit of armor and make sure we've the oil boiling.

My copy of Leopard is working fine

Honestly I don't understand all this fuss about Leopard. These stories about people having crashes and blue screens -- what's that all about? Katie says it's just how the media works and because Vista had all those problems the natural story is to say, Oh ho, and now here comes Apple and their new OS is having problems too. She says the filthy hacks have probably just been waiting to write that story for months, long before Leopard even shipped.

Great. So now we're getting tarred with Vista's brush. Well, I can only speak from personal experience. I've been using Leopard beta builds for the past two years on a variety of machines. But I also do try to get the same experience as a regular person. On the day of the Leopard commercial release my tech team was in here loading the final build and they assure me that everything went smoothly, the install was a snap, and there have been no problems at all since then. And I'm running Leopard on a 40-foot LCD screen so believe me, if something went wrong, I'd know about it.

From what I'm told the only problems in the field have been rare occurrences and were entirely caused by user error. Though of course we can't say that because then we look like dicks.

Google at the close today

I know. Spooky, right?

Microsoft building "data center" in Siberia

See here. Apparently this is where they're sending the folks who developed Vista. Code name for the labor camp, er, "data center," is "Ice Station Zebra." You'd think after all these years that nothing about Microsoft would frighten me or surprise me. But honestly, Chairman Bill just gets more and more like Stalin the older he gets. I just read "Journey into the Whirlwind" and I swear you could change the names and it would sound like the stories we've heard from folks working under Craig Mundie.

We are not censoring people; we are guiding people toward the truth

I'm so sick of reading articles like this one claiming that Leopard is having all sorts of problems -- not true -- and worse, that Apple is erasing message board threads that contain complaints.

Money quote: "There are a variety of other reports, including a Mac Pro becoming completely inoperative after a Leopard upgrade. One user asked, Is it me, or is Leopard just a mess? Apple locked the topic, preventing replies. Another user echoed my sentiments at the start of this article by asking Is ANY part of Leopard ready for release? Worst product from Apple so far. Here's a shock, the entire thread was censored."

So here's the truth. This stuff is just not true. I mean, yes, we've erased some posts that contained false or potentially libelous statements. That wasn't for our sake, but for the sake of the frigtards who posted them. It's not helping anyone to just let Borg-funded trolls spew hateful false information on message boards.

Now, please, everyone, take out your photo of me and gaze into my eyes and repeat this phrase: Leopard is good, Leopard is great; Leopard is good, Leopard is great. Feel better now? Me too.

Caption contest -- crank away

Well, here's our first PhotoCrank caption contest and we're going straight for the hardcore blasphemy. Or heresy. Or something. Anyway it'll for sure drive away the born-agains who've been lurking here lately. The illustration was created by a dude named Marco who apparently leads a cult that worships me as a kind of saint or demigod. Marco says the group would like help creating a few slogans or prayers or something. So have it. Much love to Marco.

The idea with PhotoCrank is to automate the process of posting captions so we don't have to overburden poor Iulia and Natasha, our interns in Krasnodar. All of us, but especially the interns, send love to the good folks at PhotoCrank. To check out the PhotoCrank site, go here. Namaste. I honor the place where your captions, Marco's picture and my blog become one.

We've added PhotoCrank. Let us know what you think.

We've installed a widget from PhotoCrank that lets you write captions for photos on the blog. You'll notice it because sometimes when you scroll over a photo a blue bar will pop up to let you write a caption. Our main idea was to use this for photo caption contests but it's here for lots of other photos too. The folks at PhotoCrank are looking for feedback and have chosen our mega-blog as a good place to start. If you'd like to learn more about PhotoCrank go here. Now go ahead and have fun and we'll see how it works out. Feedback appreciated. We'll share it with PhotoCrank. Peace.

UPDATE: They're working on support for Safari, but for now if you want to crank photos you need to use Firefox. Okay? It won't kill you, I promise.

Nasty bitches at CNET dissing my book

So I was just starting to bask in the glow of yesterday's incredible review in the New York Times Book Review when along comes CNET with a total buzz kill. They've included my book on a list of Christmas presents they don't recommend. See here.

I'm sorry CNET but you know what? This hurts. It really does. Sniff.

Just FYI, CNET's complaint is they don't think the book will appeal to people outside Silicon Valley. Which is hilarious considering the best reviews so far have come from the New York Times Sunday Style section, the New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, the LA Times, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal.

The good folks at CNET are also put off because the book isn't plot-driven enough, or the plot is too weird, or something. For what it's worth Larry just sent over the CNET review of Lolita. Their take: Totally not recommended. The plot is rilly far-fetched, and the main character is unlikeable, and I rilly don't like the way this author writes sentences or maybe it got messed up in translation from Russian and it's totally obvious that this writer has not spent a lot of time in America before he wrote this book.

Well, now I don't feel so bad.

Another sad OLPC moment

I was in a cafe yesterday in Palo Alto and there was a woman talking in a very loud voice on her cell phone (why do people do this?) about how she was going to get her daughter "one of these new XO laptops," which she said was a great thing to do because "you buy two, and they send you one and send the other one to a kid in a Third World country." Mrs. Loud also seemed to think the XO machine was this super advanced machine and her little daughter was just going to be overjoyed to own one. I didn't have the heart to tell her the truth. As in, the bugs haven't been worked out, and there's no tech support, and none of that nice educational software at the computer store will run on it. I know she'd just call me a racist or something.

Anyhoo, it occurred to me that people are really being victimized here. All joking aside, I think the hype around OLPC used to be just sad but now it's shitty and misleading. Regular civilians have no idea what they're getting into. They're victims of this crazy social experiment and will get fleeced for 400 bucks just so that Czar Nicholas can carry on his quixotic crusade. Worse yet is that "reviewers" like Smurfy Pogue have been complicit in this by printing rave reviews and burying all the bad news.

One final thought on this. Yes it's true that Intel and Microsoft came down hard on this XO machine and have tried to kill it. But it's not because they hate kids. Negroponte brought this backlash on himself by going around telling people how he was going to free the world of the Wintel monopoly. The project was never about the kids. The kids were just thrown in as a (very effective) propaganda tool. The truth is this project was about hurting Microsoft and Intel. Look who's funding it. And even while OLPC was talking in public about helping kids, off the record their message went like this: "Can you imagine how profound it will be to have one third of the world's population growing up on a platform that isn't Windows?"

That's what brought on the backlash. Also, consider this. If OLPC really just wanted to help kids get low-cost laptops, they wouldn't care if the kids chose machines from Intel or Asus. They'd just be happy for the kids, right? Yet they do care. In fact, they're furious. That speaks volumes.

Give one, get one -- right in the ass

So I was talking to Paul Otellini last night and he's absolutely furious about the Journal story on the OLPC train wreck which ran in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. Gist of the story is that Nicholas Negroponte has screwed the pooch on his XO machine but somehow it's all Intel's fault. Fact is, it's a devastating piece, and not for Intel, but rather for Negroponte. Katie says the OLPC's PR people must be appalled -- unless they've all been fired, which they should have been. (First clue that this is not going to be a good story for Negroponte is the little drawing of him that they put with the story, which I've reproduced at right. Can you say dipshit?)

I told Otellini to cool out because if you read the story carefully you'll see it's a classic example of a very sly Journal technique which involves appearing, superficially, to be siding with the source of a story when really you're just giving him enough rope to hang himself. It's a perfect tactic for the kind of publicity-seeking self-righteous egomaniacs who go around looking to feed a "big story" to some paper because they have an axe to grind about a competitor. In this case it's Negroponte who's thrown the rope over the branch and pulled it down around his neck. The poor guy walked right into the trap. He wants so badly to blame someone for his failure, and he shopped around this big anti-Intel hatchet job, and he was stupid enough to trust the Journal. Dumbass!

Otellini says he knows all that -- he's got media people who explain stuff like this to him, after all -- but he's still pissed because Negroponte had the balls to disclose right in the article that OLPC and Intel had signed an agreement which included a "non-disparagement" clause under which both sides agreed not to criticize each other -- and now here is Saint Nicholas teeing up a story that bashes Intel. "Can you believe this motherfucker?" was Paul's direct quote, I believe.

I pointed out to Otellini that in fact this just makes Negroponte look like a jackass, which is why the Journal placed that statement into the story and attributed it to Negroponte. The way this technique works is they try to seem all cool and neutral but they're really making Negroponte look like a donkey -- and right on Page One of the world's biggest business publication. Nice.

As for the backstabbing by Negroponte, this is classic freetard behavior. They always want it both ways. They want to give away their stuff for free and will talk all sorts of shit about Microsoft and Intel; but if Microsoft cuts its price to three bucks for Windows, the freetards will cry foul in a heartbeat. This propaganda tactic was invented by the Linux community, but it was taken to a new level by Negroponte, who had the genius to add race (read: "Third World") and "children" into the mix.

Of course when Otellini called Negroponte to bitch about the story Mr. Big Brain bent over backwards to distance himself, claiming he and his people didn't have anything to do with it. Otellini was like, "Nicholas, you're fucking quoted in the story. How can you say you had nothing to do with it?" Negroponte said he did not authorize those quotes and he didn't know where they came from. Then he said, "Um, look, I have to go, because children are starving, okay?"

Negroponte also claims OLPC people had nothing to do with planting this freetard Intel bashing on a Web site in which there seems to most definitely be some side-by-side comparisons going on between the XO and the Intel Classmate. Worse yet, of course there's not even the slightest attempt to seem fair or objective. Just pure hostile anti-Intel screed. The XO machine is the greatest computer ever invented; the Intel Classmate is a piece of shit. So much for the "non-disparagement clause."

Now for the highlights of the Journal story, which is worth dissecting because it's a classic example of a Journal takedown:

1. At a meeting this month in Cambridge, Mass., with representatives of Macedonia's government, Mr. Negroponte balked at authorizing a pilot project there after learning that officials also were considering testing the Classmate. He told them he didn't want to participate in a "bake-off."

Translation: God forbid the customers might be smart enough to run pilot programs and compare machines before they spend millions of dollars. Apparently the idea is that if you live in the Third World you should just take whatever Nicholas Negroponte shoves down your throat and not ask questions. Does anyone at OLPC realize how condescending and contemptuous -- and even, gasp, racist -- this makes them look?

2. Mr. Negroponte says he communicated this month with Intel's chief executive, Paul Otellini, and demanded that Intel stop selling the Classmate. Intel, which says there is room in the market for many machines, has refused, according to a spokeswoman.

Caution: freetard egomaniac out of control. The guy admits, right in the Wall Street Journal, that he commanded Intel to stop selling a product. Apparently he's stunned and outraged that they won't do whatever he tells them to do. Wow.

But the real killer comes in the final paragraph, where the Journal doesn't even bother to slide the knife into Saint Nicholas since he is already doing such a great job of it himself.

3. Mr. Negroponte said some initial tech support would be provided by Brightstar Corp., a Miami-based wireless equipment distributor. Just who would provide support a few years from now, he said, was "a frightening question." The students, he said, will need "to do as much maintenance as possible."

That's it. There's no kicker. That's the note they end on. A stunning piece of slice-and-dice work. Hats off to you, Journal reporters.

Just FYI, however, this is why we don't return your calls. You back-stabbing fuckers.

Another cool Beatles feature

Digital technology is letting us do all sorts of cool value-added things. Like we're including a backwards version of "Revolution 9" where you can hear "Paul is dead" in the mix. We're also able to include extra tracks that un-backwardize pieces of Beatles tracks that were laid in backwards -- vocals, guitar tracks, and so forth. I guess it's kind of just trivia but it's still pretty cool if you're a hardcore Beatles fan. We've also got a backward version of "Within You Without You" where you can hear a voice saying, "Steve is God. God is Steve. Steve is God." That wasn't there in the original but Paul and Ringo were open to the extra royalties and George isn't exactly around to complain, if you know what I mean.

An apology

Dear readers:

Several days ago this blog was hacked and taken over by someone posing as Bono from U2. Of course this was not really Bono from U2, and I'm sure you're aware of that, but for legal reasons I've been advised to state this fact plainly here on the blog. To reiterate: The person posting on this blog over the past several days was not Bono of U2.

I've spent the past few days working with Google (which owns Blogger) to try to gain access to my account and put a stop to this prank. For various reasons (the holiday, and my own travel schedule, and the fact that Google is reluctant to meddle with people's blogs) it has taken more time than I would have liked to get things straightened out.

As best we can tell, someone managed to obtain the password to my Blogger account. It's still not clear how they did this. They also obtained access to my Gmail account and sent messages to some people pretending to be me. If you received one of these mail messages, I apologize.

After signing in to my Blogger account, the hackers authorized a new user ("Bono") and changed the blog's password so that I could not sign in to stop them. The worst part for me (other than having to read the items) was that I had no way to tell my readers what was going on.

I deeply apologize to Bono of U2; everyone at Elevation Partners; Marissa Mayer and Eric Schmidt of Google; and anyone else who was mentioned over the past few days.

Thanks to Google and Blogger, this evening I've finally been able to gain access to my account again, and I've eliminated the "Bono" poster and changed all of my passwords. I believe the hack should be over now. I hope we can all move forward again.

An investigation is ongoing. I will keep you informed as soon as I know anything. And again, I apologize. Peace out.

Instant karma, or, two hearts bleed as one

Last post, I'm afraid. Edge says there's a huge denial-of-service attack coming from Cupertino. It's taken down all his Macs. My red iPhone is bricked, too, just like the time Edge switched it to Verizon. Steve Jobs is coming, and boy is he pissed.

Before Steve shuts me down entirely I want to show you what we've been working on. You know about next week's Beatles event, right? It was on the blogs and everything. Steve and Sir Paul McCartney are going to introduce the White iPhone. It comes pre-loaded with every Beatles album ever. Including Ringo's solo stuff, in case you're into that kind of thing. It's got 16 gigabytes and costs $600. Click the picture to see it up close and you can make out the extra Beatles button on the screen.

Edge and I hate to be left behind, so we've come up with an even bigger idea we're going to pitch right here where Steve has to read it. Why just buy the Beatles? What you really want is to buy rock and roll. All of it. Presenting the U2 Rock and Roll iPhone. 64 gigabytes of Product (RED) iPhone packed with all of rock and roll. Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, Sabbath, U2 of course, plus Nirvana and Pearl Jam all the way up to the complete Arcade Fire and Mike Doughty. If it rocks, it's in here.

Steve showed me the next-generation iPhone over Thanksgiving. He's figured out how to solve the problem of having so many things you want on one phone. They've added a little iPod click-wheel to the iPhone that lets you thumb through your music and videos without all that screen-tapping. Fucking brilliant. All it needs to be perfect is every rock and roll song. Ever. Coco from Elevation crunched some Excel for us. At $999, Apple can send $400 to Africa and still turn a profit. Whattaya say, Steve? This'll be the big breakthrough Apple's been striving toward for years: Finally, white people can stop feeling bad about themselves.

Sunday bloody Sunday

Goodbye Silicon Valley. We're 30,000 feet over Fremont, headed to Uganda to catch up with the Pope. You can see we're on Marissa Mayer's pink Learjet, which the folks at Victoria's Secret did up for her. Fuck's sake, I'm exhausted. I haven't shaved since -- Christ, I haven't slept since Wednesday. That's Coco from Elevation Partners sitting across from me, working the spreadsheets. She gave up her Thanksgiving weekend -- and her boyfriend, too, because I guess this wasn't the first time she's pulled this on him during a holiday. It's a wonder Ali hasn't dumped me likewise. God bless you, Coco, you're doing His work.

Steve is really mad at me for taking over his blog. Edge says Steve's people have called everyone in the band and threatened to yank our Complete U2 collection from the iTunes Music Store. It's a bluff. We led the way for rock and roll's biggest names to agree to do iTunes. And the Complete U2 -- every single U2 track ever with one click? You're forgiven for assuming it was Steve's idea. Brother Bono pitched it to El Jobso back when he and Beck were telling everyone the future of music was selling one track at a time and having the fans remix everything. Fuck me if I can remember the half-baked batch of tracks Beck was pushing, but no number of mashups could save them. Hello, hello, we kicked his ass with "Vertigo." U2 proved the decline of the album isn't the death of talent, or the abolition of craft. So Beck is cool with the bloggers, but Crazy Bono just guest-edited Vanity Fair. Have you heard of it?

Steve, I know you're reading. Marissa says the (RED) Ads by Google we launched yesterday are ... wait, I need her to say it again slowly ... they're "outperforming the mean weighted aggregate CTR in key test verticals." That means more money for retrovirus innoculation in Africa. And greater global awareness about our brothers and sisters. No thanks to you, Mister It's-Too-Risky-To-Do-A-Red-iPhone.

To the Google kids I hung out with over Thanksgiving weekend: You brought me reason to give thanks. I believe it's true what they say, that Web 2.0 is made of people. Don't listen to the cynics carping from the sidelines. If you can look any man or woman in the eye and see God and yourself looking back, if you can keep the Valley's "if it ain't broke, break it" spirit of innovation, if you can put as much energy into loving friends and enemies alike as you put into hating Wal-mart, there's hope for this world. But go easy on the orgies. They catch up with you.

I need to stay awake a few more hours and finish my pre-briefing for the Pope. Benny the Red may look like an old German fart, but he's brutal if you show up without a solid deck of slides on your laptop.

Fuck. My laptop.

I left the red MacBook with my Africa presentation at Steve's house. I'll need to get Edge to set me up a new laptop and make up some slides for His Eminence based on .... wait, never mind. Marissa's going to lend me her pink Dell and help me do a Google Docs preso about debt relief. She's brought cupcakes, too.

One more, in the name of love

There's no one but me here in St Brigid's church, 6:45 am on Sunday morning.  I still haven't gotten to sleep.  Steve's lackeys have been hounding me all weekend.  Telling people I'm not really Bono, while threatening to sue me Bono at the same time.  Even the Googlers are wary of me, now that their own blog search turns up posts saying I'm an impostor.

It all comes down to faith and belief. Steve, when you're done being furious at me for taking over your blog, remember that. Your buddy Woz built computers, but you built belief. And then, years later, from the ashes of a crashed and burned Apple you built another set of beautiful things to believe in. U2 did the same, sifting through the rubble of our Pop tour -- overblown, overpriced, under-attended -- and coming up with All That You Can't Leave Behind.  How?  We went back to believing in ourselves.

That's what's happening to the Valley.  They've started believing in themselves again.  They've built a phone you can blog on -- I'm doing it right now.  And  i ,,, wait ,.   the phone is r.,.. th.  fuck    I cn't blog while the       phone is ringing.

I

$%^&*

brb

Ok.  That was Marissa.  Marissa Mayer, from Google.  She's going to fly me to Uganda to catch the Pope, whom I forgot I was supposed to meet this weekend. She's just in time to save my ass from getting broken by Bill Gates.  He's got billions riding on the Africa project.  He's got the biggest brain in the world and the biggest pile of money to back it up.  He's got the Pope to bless him, and President Bush to kick down doors.   But he still needs a rock star to win over the stooges who don't get it.  That's where I come in.

Lord, forgive me, what am I doing in church when the world needs your will to be done?  Is Beck gonna do it?  Didn't think so.  Gotta jump.  

I need to update my preso for the Pope.  This frigtarded iPhone won't let me cut and paste my contacts at Elevation into an email to Edge, so I need to find an old-fashioned pen in Silicon Valley at 7am on a Sunday.  Now I know why I'm in St Brigid's: I need a miracle.

Wide awake in All Star Donuts

I'm still up.  I had to get the Google kids in their downtown loft to launch our (RED) Ads by Google  before management changed their minds.  In Silicon Valley, they don't wait for Monday morning to fire you.

Once the first red-text ads went live, automatically transferring 40 percent of the take directly to Global Fund financed grants in Ghana, Rwanda and Swaziland, those crazy, oversexed Googlers began cheering and turned out the lights and cranked up the stereo.  Before I could get a report on how the ads were doing, they were dancing on desktops and stripping and spraying each other with Silly String.  Why spoil the fun?  I found a big spot lamp in the corner of the darkened loft, turned it on and walked around shining it on them, just like I did to Edge in Rattle and Hum.  Who knew the geeks could be so sexy?  There's some video you can see if you know the right login on YouTube. I don't have it.  

I slipped out before the inevitable blogger backlash to the ads began.  I walked to Polk Street, where Adam our bassist had taken me twenty years ago to see the runaway kids and tranny hookers.  They've cleaned it up a bit.  When I got to the nicer, yuppier part -- Polk Valley, they tell me it's called now -- I stopped cold.  From outside one of the clubs, I could hear a live band playing inside.  You're not going to believe me.  Gene Loves Jezebel.  For real.  On Polk Street.  In 2007.  

The tragedy was there was no line at the door.  My bigger problem was I don't carry cash.  Jesus didn't.  Plus it gets me out of picking up the check all the time.  But I couldn't get in, because the way fame works is that when I walk up to the Red Devil Lounge on Polk, people look right at me and my clothes and my sunglasses at night and the last thing their brains will conclude is hey, it's Bono.  Their reaction is a more pragmatic get lost, junkie.   And that's before they find out my pockets are empty.

But as the Googlers say, I'm feeling lucky.  Who comes around the corner but my big-headed buddy Nick Denton from New York.  He was just as shocked to see me as I was to hear Gene Loves Jez, who at this point had just launched into "Twenty Killer Hurts" and I really, really wanted to be inside.  Denton carries plenty of cash, so no problem.

I went straight to the front of the crowd. If you could call it a crowd -- I counted 79 people in the room.  Jay Aston looked down at me between songs and said, "Hey bud, Bono called.  He wants his shades back."  Huge laughs all around.  See what I mean?  Sometimes that's for the best. I danced to "Over the Rooftops" with a gorgeous, vivacious redhead who runs a dot-com now but had a huge crush on Jay when she was twelve.  Denton hid at the back but still got mobbed by dorky bloggers who want to be the next ... uh ... the next whoever his big star blogger is right now.

After the show, I talked Top of the Mark -- where they do recognize me -- into staying open for Jay and Nick and me.  We sat looking out over the city and the bay at 1:30 a.m. I ate at least twenty petit fours and downed six double shots of espresso to stay awake.  I should have gone for seven.

Denton says Silicon Valley is like New York. Both build elaborate worlds around what people are willing to believe. Their true product is imagination. At least until the ground shakes, or the towers fall. And then people pick themselves up, shake off the dust, and start all over again.  No, he didn't really say that.  Truth is he's in town because he's got some dirt on the brat who runs Facebook that's just -- I know this is turning into a theme -- too good to believe.  Hoo boy, and I thought the Googlers were freaks.

I can't believe the news today

Steve's gone nuclear on me. Apple PR used their pull with the media to plant a fake story that I'm not here, but in London. They claim I played a surprise show with Edge to benefit Mencap. "U2 Pair in Tiny Gig," says the paper. "Just 250 people saw the superstar pair perform."

This is how they nail you.  How cruel and dirty-handed of them, to force me to deny that I spent my weekend raising money for the UK's leading charity for learning disabilities.  But these newspaper drones don't dare piss off Steve and get left out of the Beatles event next week.

You people are smart, though. Look at all the online articles about this "surprise gig." No one you trust claims they were there, and what else do you notice?  None of the photos they run are from the event.  They're all stock shots of me and Edge from last year.  Edge is wearing the cap he threw out last Boxing Day after my daughter knit him a new one.  We played a Mencap benefit just this past August.  It's in Wikipedia.  Whoops, it was there. Steve's gotten to them, too.

I'm too exhausted and punchy to go on about it. I've been up all weekend with the Google kids launching our (RED) Ads by Google campaign, which marks up Google text ads in bright red for an extra 40% CPM that goes to the Global Fund.  The Googlers got on their special phones (I sent Edge a photo of one from my red iPhone.  He says they're called Andromeda and they run a Linux operating system and can route calls through GPS satellites, which opens up tremendous possibilities for Africa) and lined up some advertisers for a test run.  We're cranking right through the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday weekend.  I get the feeling they don't much like holidays anyway, these kids, because they're expected to log out and try to talk to their families, who can't possibly imagine what their lives are like.  Same as me.  Jesus had this problem, too.


Life gets crazy when you reach the point where the media shows you in places you're not. Check out this loonie walking around the Demo trade show last year. They didn't ask him for ID or give him a badge. CNET, desperate for some buzz from a stupefyingly dull tech industry marketing event, ran the story even though you can tell they knew it wasn't me.

The guy wreaked havoc on my investment work with Elevation Partners over on Sand Hill. Coco at Elevation is still scouring the Internet for photos he took with reporters and fans. She has to email or call people like poor Natali Del Conte above, and hit them with three chords and the truth: That wasn't Bono. It's tough. Invariably, people want to believe they've met the real me. 

This is why U2 still does hundreds of shows a year. To remind people what's real. Unless I'm onstage with my mouth open, or giving the slide show presentation about Africa I created with Al Gore, or in bed with my wife (which I haven't been enough of lately but that's another post,) any idiot could walk around in sunglasses and a rosary and take my place on Earth. Outside of our shows and World Bank meetings, well-meaning people fall for fakers all the time. Jesus, as far as I know, didn't have this problem. Until later on.

Where the geeks have no shame

Two all-nighters in a row is nothing. It's how Geldof, Clinton and I got Live 8 to happen. It's rock and roll. And these Google kids I hooked up with yesterday -- fucking brilliant. They care deeply about Africa. Plus they really get their freak on. I'm a 47-year-old married man, so I hung back from the action last night. But these Google kids roll like rock stars. You wouldn't believe the party. We left Union Square mid-afternoon for a penthouse somewhere below Market Street, at least that's where I think I am now. I tripped over three pair of trousers trying to find the bathroom this morning. Not that I've slept.

The Google kids are like Geldof and Clinton. All play and all work. At some point between a huge vegan take-out meal and the part where everyone's clothes started flying off, we banged out a working solution for Africa. Their thinking went really fast, but I took notes on my red iPhone.

THE PROBLEM:
- Product Red great idea, but Red iPods not selling. Red sunglasses even worse.
- Need to find large consumer spending area amenable to 40% markup.
- Red branding should enhance the utility curve without marginalizing the consumer into a substitution function. Something like that, it was hard to keep up.

THE SOLUTION: (RED) Ads by Google

It's what every advertiser wants: Google text ads, only bright red. They cost 40% more than regular Google ads, but the Google product guy says they'll "bump clickthrough rates out of the dead zone and into the Red zone," which puts advertisers into the black.

It's not charity. (RED) Ads are more cost-effective for the advertisers and more welcome by consumers, because who doesn't want to help distribute retroviral vaccine to Africa every time they click? Fucking brilliant.

The crazy thing about the Googlers is they don't wait around. We piled into two cars and drove down the Valley to wherever their CEO lives, Mr. Eric Schmidt, to get his approval to run (RED) Ads right fucking now. Schmidt was having dinner with his wife or his girlfriend -- sorry, I was too tired to remember and too embarrassed to ask again -- plus some other Valley guys and a couple of journalists.

I sat next to Schmidt at the table and lobbied for (RED) Ads while the wine poured freely. I never touch the stuff, doctor's orders, but I admire the way these kids can put it away. They were groping each other's dates before dessert. Schmidt got a little tipsy and gave my leg a good feel, I think mistaking me for his wife or girlfriend on the other side. The journalists were totally cool about it: "Off the record, Eric, off the record."

Before things got too out of hand we left Schmidt's with the green light for (RED) Ads and drove straight back to the city to make it happen. The Google kids fired up what they call a "point-one-percent trial in limited consumer verticals in specific countries" before they all ran to the roof naked to pile into the hot tub.

Edge sent me some Java code you can put on your blog to run the ads. Just plug that in and if you're in the test market, your ads will turn bright click-me red like the Pope's Pradas.

Holy sweet friggin mother of Jesus, I was supposed to fly to Uganda with His Popeness yesterday. Can you believe I forgot? I need to start sleeping more. One of the Googlers, Marissa, says she can get me there on her own plane. Which is good, because I don't think Steve is going to lend me the Apple corporate jet anytime soon. He's stopped texting me about locking him out of his blog. Now I'm getting PDFs from his lawyers to my iPhone demanding I cease and desist all publication of The Blog belonging to the Party of the First Part blah blah.

I love how you Americans work Saturdays, but I just forward these on to my people in Dublin, who'll deal with it Monday morning. We're all busy Sunday. Have you heard of this thing called church? There's nothing like it. But I don't think the Googlers will be coming with me.

I still haven't found what I'm shopping for

I'm in Union Square. I haven't slept. Thanksgiving at Steve's was lovely -- he's mellowed out about the stock options thing and replaced last year's all-white table with a chrome-and-black theme to match the new iMacs. But it made me lonely for Dublin and Ali and the kids. Edge hates the new iMacs, you know, says they look like fooktard Dells. Anyway, while everyone dozed off after tofurkey and organic pumpkin pie (wheat-free, Steve said) I went for a walk. I left the MacBook and brought my red iPhone to take notes. I thought about Ali and family and Africa and started writing some new songs in my head and next thing I knew, I'd walked all the way from Woodside to Frisco and the sun was coming up.

I haven't been to San Francisco in twenty years, ever since that whole episode with the spray paint. Look, I thought it was rubble from the old freeway, ok? By the time I realized I was tagging some sort of fountain in Justin Herman Plaza with ROCK AND ROLL STOPS THE TRAFFIC, we were halfway through "Pride" and I just had to go with it. You can't just stop rock and roll. That was my whole point, wasn't it? Anyway, the fountain looks really nice all repainted, courtesy of the letter U and the numeral 2, but I never got so much as a thank you. Jesus would understand. Or Lennon.

I kept on walking, thinking to hit North Beach and hang with the writers and artists, legacy of the great poet Allan Ginsberg, who left us too soon before we finished that song together. I never made it. Instead I walked into Union Square at 10 am on the day you Americans call Black Friday. The most perverted orgy of overconsumption on God's green earth. Now there's nothing wrong with commerce. I love making music and selling it. I had a big argument about that with a bunch of hippies outside Starbucks -- outside one of the Starbucks. They were waving BUY NOTHING DAY signs. Look, I specifically designed the Product Red iPods to solve their problem. You get rock'n'roll red products, AIDS awareness gets 40 percent of the net margin. What's not to love? Buy Nothing solves nothing. Buy Red, everybody wins.

But be totally honest, have you seen anyone with a Red iPod? We've sold about ten of 'em. And the Red iPhones never got past this one they made for me. Which is vibrating in my hand right now and playing the Beatles' "Revolution" in high-fidelity iTunes format (Shhh! You'll get your chance to own it soon, don't tell.) Steve has finally figured out I've taken over his blog. He's a bit mad about it. Look, Steve, mate. I know you think you're a rock star, but who's a rock star? Right. And this fucking Irish rock star is fucking pissed, standing in front of your flagship fucking Apple Store on Stockton Street with a window full of fucking iPods. Black iPods. White iPods. Blue iPods. Green iPods. What's missing? Could it be the color Red?

I told you, Steve. Red iPhone. $600. The fooktards have already proven they'll pay that for the privilige of showing off. And what better way to show off than to send $200 to Africa? You weren't listening, brother. Can ya hear me now? Because I've been up one side of Union Square and down the other, and where's my Product Red? The brats at the Armani store didn't even know about my Armani Bono Red sunglasses. They're the same shades I wore on the Elevation tour, priced at a reasonable $145, and 40 percent of the take goes to help your brothers and sisters still suffering. Plus if you're a blogger and getting kind of wrinkly around the eyes, they're a lot cheaper than plastic surgery. My good friend Nick Denton in New York bought a pair for one of his gang who's a bit over the hill. The man looks fantastic now. Fox TV called him on to talk about Google for 15 minutes. God's truth. It was the shades.

There are plenty of other Red products. There's a phone. It's not an iPhone, but still. There's a shirt, a watch, a pair of sneakers. The great humanitarian Julia Roberts designed a bracelet Ali never takes off. Prada was going to sell Prada Red shoes just like the Pope's, but the Guineas can never get it together on time. There's a Red book so you can teach yourself about something bigger than Union Square retail and your fountain that looks like a dismantled freeway. They don't have this stuff in Union Square, but you can buy it all online. Look it up, because I don't know how to paste the URLs in on this iPhone -- where's Edge when I need him? -- plus Steve is messaging me nonstop now. He's texting in uppercase Myriad Apple Sans Bold: WTF WITH THE BLOG. STOP IT. NOW. I'M SERIOUS. Christ,I'm tired. Steve, look. Go back to your wife and kids. Carve a pumpkin. Invent something new like maybe a red iPhone. I've hooked up with some kids from Google here on the stairs in the Apple Store. As soon as we're done leading the store through a chorus of "Give Peace a Chance" we're going to get the hell away from this fooktarded circus of non-Red yuppie shopping and go change the world.

How to Dismantle an Atomic Blog

Hey, am I bugging ya? Didn't mean to bug ya. But I'm at Steve's place celebrating the great American tradition of Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving, because in Ireland we never give thanks for anything, except Daylight Savings Time when the pub stays open another hour. Anyway, I love your Silicon Valley, where every child can grow up to be Bill Gates and the only food lines on Thanksgiving are outside Whole Foods where you queue up your Range Rovers to pick up a turkey and a convincingly homemade pumpkin pie. Organic pumpkin pie. Delicious. You are, truly, in God's Country.

Edge has been nagging me to get a blog now for years. But it's hard work, this blogging. It takes a long time to build an audience. So I never bothered. Until today. Today I walked past Steve's spacious, spacious home office and saw that he'd left himself logged in. I had to text Edge to find out how to give myself an account and then change Steve's password. Shhh. He hasn't figured it out yet, so I'm safe as long as he doesn't check mail until after I leave for Uganda to meet with the Pope tomorrow. No, I'm not Catholic. My father was Catholic but my mother God rest her raised me Anglican. You could look it up on Wikipedia. But Benny the Red, he lets me call him, he's doing God's work. Plus he wears those rock'n'roll red Prada shoes I'll tell you more about tomorrow.

Oh, sweet Mother of Jesus. Edge, that fooktard, he's friggin with my iCal again. He updated all our laptops to Leopard last week, which he loves because he found out that on Leopard he can edit not just his iCal, but my iCal. Now my flight's at 6 am instead of 10. I better sign off. Steve, don't get too pissed off, eh? Think of this as payback for the time you stayed at my guest cottage -- you know, the one with the bathroom wall where everyone gets to sign their names in magic marker. How do you think I felt when I went to use the loo and found you'd scrubbed the entire wall clean -- Clinton, Tutu, Jagger, Mother Theresa, all gone -- and repainted it sparkling white with just the word "Steve" dead center in perfectly hand-lettered Myriad Sans Bold? It was beautiful, my friend, beautiful. But kind of fooktarded. So until you get Edge to log you back in, brother Bono is in the house. All I've got is a red MacBook, three chords and the truth.

Video of the day

Just got this from a dude named Anthony. Much love. We're all just taking a break here at the Jobs Domicile after a hefty meal followed by yoga and meditation. Must run because Bono is getting out his guitar and we're all going to take peyote. Even Al. He showed up alone, says it's really over this time. But he says that every time Tipper tosses him out. Mrs. Jobs is seriously bummed out because she thinks Al is going to try to move in again. Just one night, is what I told her. Besides we can't let him drive if he's tripping. I mean I've done that but I'm a lot more experienced than Al is. Okay. Must run. Peace.

A message of thanks

To all Apple faithful and Apple employees:

Wow. What a year, huh? Pretty damn amazing. Mac sales are booming. We're gaining market share. We've created a new OS, Leopard, that totally rocks. Our new iPods are light years ahead of the competition. And, of course, there was iPhone -- a device that has utterly transformed the world. We've dented the universe, folks. We've changed the course of history. Not bad for a bunch of hippies from Cupertino, right? Now I know that Thanksgiving has some nasty overtones for some people -- please, no comments about smallpox-infested blankets, okay? -- but I'd like us all to focus on the good side of the holiday and use this day to remember all the things we're thankful for. In our case, as the people who create and use Apple products, we have more to be thankful for than almost anyone on earth.

Personally, I'm very grateful that Fortune magazine has spiked a big hatchet job article that their financial whiz reporter, Peter "Mr. Enron" Elkind, was working on where he was trying to prove that I should be in jail because of the options backdating. Or something like that. No guff, kids. The guy spent months working on this and talking to everyone in the Valley. Katie was tracking his every move and listening to tapes of most of his phone conversations. He figured this was his next big scoop -- call it "Enron II: Return of the Smartest Guys in the Room" -- and he'd take me down hard then get a book deal and a movie out of it. Only, um, he couldn't put the puck in the net. So his editors killed it. Which was a smart move on their part because they'd never get an interview with El Jobso ever again. They still might not, just out of spite.


Because don't think we haven't noticed the way my former concubine Brent Schlender has totally turned on me, doing hit jobs on the Apple TV and now on iPhone, which he alleges is having problems, though none of us at Apple have heard of any, which is kind of weird, isn't it? His attack piece comes complete with scary Dave Winer-esque caricature of me (right). I mean look at that cartoon. I assure you I have never had that expression on my face, ever, not in my entire life. Can't you just tell how those poor filthy hacks at Fortune are just seething because they can't nail me? Seethe away, losers. You'll never catch El Jobso. Neither will the feds. Maybe you hadn't noticed but I happen to have Al Gore on my board of directors. Have you heard of him? He's got a few friends in Washington.

But I digress. I was talking about giving thanks. Apple faithful, I know you're thankful because you're living on this planet at the same time I am. I appreciate your gratitude. I really do. Keep sending your love. It fuels me.

Apple employees, I know you're thankful for having the incredible opportunity to be working at Apple during its golden era, aka The Reign of Splendor under Good King Steven. I know you're grateful to me for coming up with such briliant product ideas and letting you work on them. How sweet is that, right? How awesome is it that sometimes you come to work and for one reason or another you're walking across campus and you get to actually see me? Amazing, right? A few of you have even been blessed by having me speak to you. Then you rushed back to your cubicle and told all your coworkers. Maybe you blogged about it. Or you raced home and wrote it down so you can tell your grandchildren about the day I spoke to you and just like that, cured your polio.

Finally, to everyone at Apple, I know you want to thank me by giving me a raise. There's been lots of talk about it lately. I've been holding off because I'm just not into money, not at all. But I know it means a lot to you and you really want me to be paid more and so I promise you that I will take you up on that very soon.

Now I have to go and get working on the tofurkey. Bono is coming over, plus Larry and guest. Al Gore is shooting down from the St. Regis and maybe bringing Tipper (depends if they've worked things out; they're fighting again). Also we'll have a few other hangers-on. We'll have dinner in the early afternoon, followed by some digestion yoga and group meditation. Peyote buds are available for anyone who wants to hang around and stay the night. I'll have a full report tomorrow. Until then, much love. Namaste. Peace out.

Zunes of the day

By J. Allard & the Zune marketing team. Or is it Edelman PR? (I'm guessing.)

By Luis

We are outlawing corn dogs at the Friday beer bash

I've been lobbying for years to get rid of corn dogs and other junk food at the Friday afternoon beer bash. But especially the corn dogs. For God's sake, people! Hot dogs are bad enough. But to wrap them in carbs and then deep fry the whole thing? Do you have any idea what that does to your body? Now I've heard all the excuses about how the engineers like these things, and this is what engineers eat, and if we take away their corn dogs they'll flip out. Well I'm sorry. I've had it. I can't focus on my work knowing that every Friday afternoon we're distributing poison to our employees. As of next week, they're gone. I'm sorry. I just wanted to let you all know. Katie will send out a memo on this next week to make it official. Peace out. Enjoy the holiday.

That gorgeous iPhone ballerina

In case you're wondering, her name is Kristin Sloan and yes, she's totally for real. Not only that, but her iPhone-based blogging has made her so successful that she's quit the New York City Ballet and will become the company's director of new media instead. Just one of millions of people whose lives have been transformed by iPhone, and just another example of the huge ecosystem we're creating around the device.

Contest: Help us find MySpace talent

So here's the thing. We're toying around with this idea about having our own record label, focusing at least in part on new or unknown or underappreciated acts. We're doing this because people keep telling us there's so much cool stuff out there. I'm not so sure but anyway we've got a pack of interns scouring MySpace looking for acts.

Also, we could your help. You get the gist of this, right? I mean we're looking for the coolest, grooviest, bestest acts you can find on MySpace. People say it's just a pack of wannabes and losers but I know there must be some hidden gems out there. Please, people, send in your faves and we'll spotlight them here on the blog. YouTube videos are also eligible. Once we gather up enough artists we can have a contest: Best Unsigned Act on the Internet.

For an example of the kind of stuff we like check out this crazy cat. He hails from Toronto, has an awesome rocker mullet and plays a mean blues guitar. Some call him the Canadian Stevie Ray Vaughan. Others call him the white Hendrix. (Apparently they are unaware that Robin Trower already holds that title.) Still others call him the William Hung of the Stratocaster.

"Blue Cheese," the first song that plays when you pull up his page, is a studio number and just a fantastic blues tune, very original and creative. The live tracks are just jumping too. Hope you enjoy the work of Canadian Stevie, and send in any recommendations.

Phil Schiller is all jealous because I took Jony to the spa instead of him

Poor Phil. It's totally eating him up that I spent yesterday at a spa with Jony. He called last night pretending he wanted to talk about work, but I could tell he just wanted to find out about the spa. I told him how amazing it was and how I can just totally relate to Jony and the other design guys because basically at heart I'm an artist myself. This drives Phil nuts. He wants so badly to be my best friend, but I won't let him. And yes, I do this on purpose so he'll keep trying harder. Pretty simple psychological manipulation, really.

Jony helps out by calling Phil and telling him what a great time we had, even though the truth is that Jony only comes along with me on these outings because he's afraid of what might happen if he says no. I'm aware of that, too, and that's why I make him do it. I love seeing just how much he'll put up with. He never says no to anything, no matter how bizarre.

Although he did comment yesterday when I got into the limo wearing my new Issey Miyake spawear. He's like, "Um, Steve, are you really wearing that? I mean is it pajamas? Or a track suit of some kind?" I was like, Jony, this is a twelve-thousand-dollar outfit from Issey's spring 2008 spawear collection. It's not even available in this country yet, and I love it because of the way it breathes. Now are you jealous? I thought so, bitch. And just for that, I'm going to call Issey and tell him not to let you have one.

See, Jony has this thing where he likes to make fun of my outfits. Like he gave me no end of shit over this jacket even though his criticism just totally revealed what a limited design vocabulary he's working with. Whatever. I push the envelope. It's who I am.

One thing Jony and I both agree on is that Phil has no taste in clothes whatsoever. Yesterday we were lying there in our seaweed wraps trading stories about the worst things we've ever seen Phil wear. Like corduroys! The big wide-wale kind from Brooks Brothers. He wears them. Better yet, sometimes he puts a braided belt on them. A braided friggin belt! I swear to God. I'm not even making that up. That belt alone would be enough for me to never let Phil be my best friend.

My book has become a frigtard litmus test

Honestly, it's kind of amazing. Hardcore high-end reviewers love it and get what it's about while morons struggle to comprehend it and are puzzled because it doesn't resemble
the three other books they've read in their lives, most likely A Separate Peace, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Da Vinci Code. They want more plot (dude, it's called a picaresque, have you heard of it?) and they want the main character to be "likeable" (groan).

Liesl Schillinger in the New York Times raves about it. Entertainment Weekly compares it to Bonfire of the Vanities and gives it an A- grade. Newsweek.com goes crazy and compares it to Voltaire and Jonathan Swift. Wall Street Journal says it's the greatest work of fiction since the Bible (or words to that effect).

But now along comes some frigtard named Will Harper writing this basically negative review in the highly esteemed SF Weekly. I mean come on. SF fucking Weekly? That's the one with the really dirty personal ads in back, right? "Thick as a beer can, with two low hangers, seeks twink for hook-up." Stuff like that. Well, I'm very bummed out that I couldn't live up to their high expectations. But just for fun, check out this bonehead Will Harper's bio with his "I'm so cool, I studied art in college" photograph. Money quote: "I graduated from SF State in 1992 as an art major; I sucked at art, so I became a reporter." Hate to break it to you, dude, but you suck at being a reporter, too. Little hint: That's why you're still working at SF Weekly.

Or check out this incredibly stupid and naive negative review by one Sam "I'm so smart, I went to Reed" Gustin from Portfolio.com (the Web edition of Conde Nast's vapid and rapidly self-destructing business magazine). Sam, who also happens to have a master's degree in journalism (so there!), felt my book didn't meet his very high literary standards either. Boo friggin hoo.

Well, enough of my yakkin, as Marty DiBergi once said. To all of you small-dicked, super-jealous filthy hacks and haters, let me just say this: Negative people upset me. I will pray for your soul. Like this: Siooma. See? It's a special prayer, just for you.

Oh, and one more thing. Sam Gustin and Will Harper, please make sure you pick up this Sunday's New York Times Book Review. It's a pretty well-known publication where they write about books. Have you heard of it? Please check out what they have to say about my book, and then prepare to choke on your brunch, you losers. Seriously, I can't wait. You are so totally pwned that it's not even funny.

Zune sales boom explained

Typical Microsoft. Just like Vista where they shipped out all these coupons and called them "units sold" in order to prove they were breaking world records for sales of a new operating system, now they're claiming that Zune is selling like hotcakes and taking up the top spot on Amazon or something. How do they do it? Create a Borg-owned reseller which "buys" millions of units then airlifts the damn things to Afghanistan. Moshe's field ops team got the evidence. Much love to commando Marty who took the shot.

Jony and I are doing a spa day

It's something we've been promising ourselves for months now and finally we just said if we don't actually book the thing and do it we're just never going to get there. So we booked an appointment for today, during the company-wide Thanksgiving week vacation. Naturally I can't tell you which spa we're going to. But we're doing the full-on eight-hour treatment with thermal mud baths, mineral water soaks, seaweed wraps, cucumber facials, ninety-minute massages -- the works. Probably means I won't be able to blog much today. Just whatever I can sneak in using my iPhone. In fact this week is going to be light since I've promised myself that I will take some downtime and recharge the batteries and gear up for the big holiday season. Tomorrow Jony and I are going up to Green Gulch for a day of meditation and spiritual work. We rented out the whole place so there won't be anyone else there to distract us.

Everyone at Apple has just been working so hard all year and we really need the break. Plus, first thing Monday morning we are going to start rehearsals for Macworld. So I need some time to gather my thoughts. Bear with me. I know it's hard for you when I'm not there for you five to ten times a day. It's hard for me too. Okay, I have to go. The limo just pulled up outside. Peace out.

More Zunes

Jason

Mike

John

Hell hath no fury like a Goatberg spurned

So Amazon had the nerve to go around Walt Mossberg and give the first crack at Kindle to Steven Levy, who dutifully turned a lame new consumer device into a massively overlong cover story in the current edition of Snoozeweek. You think Goatberg is going to just take that lying down? Rules is rules, kids, and the rule with the Goat is that he gets right of first refusal. On everything. You know what happens if you don't play ball? This happens. You get prison sex. You get Goatie going all Travis Bickle on your ass. Of course Goatman doesn't do it himself. He's way too classy and Clintonesque for that. Instead he has his helper, John Paczkowski, handle the shiv work, while Walt stays above the fray. Check out the video where Paczkowski complains that Kindle is overpriced and that Amazon is greedy. Best of all is when he calls Kindle "the Zune of e-book readers." Much love, Walt. You too, John. We couldn't have done better ourselves. We'll be remembering you at the Solstice Holiday, don't worry.

First spy shots of Amazon's new portable PC

It's code-named Tinder and will ship in first quarter of next year, according to our sources. It's part of an entire line of retro gear that they're planning to roll out over the next twelve months starting with Kindle, which shipped today. Next up after the Tinder will be their personal email appliance, code-named GreenScreen. Hardware is free and you pay a monthly subscription. Great work, Amazon. You're keeping all the rest of us on our toes.

Kindle: Cool features, but let's be honest -- this thing looks like ass

I mean honestly what are they smoking up there at Amazon? Have you seen this thing? Sure, the feature set rocks -- EVDO, Web browsing, read blogs, subscribe to newspapers, buy books over the air. But good God this thing is ugly. I mean if my dog looked like this I would shave its ass and teach it to walk backwards. Amazonians, remember this: people have to put these things in their homes! It's called design. Have you heard of it? Apparently my dear friend Jeff Bezos hasn't. Nevertheless this didn't stop Newsweek's Steven Levy from doing a big slurpy cover story about this damn thing. Apparently Levy was just so glad to get the drop on Goatberg for once that he promised the sun, moon and stars in order to get the exclusive. But come on. The cover of Newsweek? For a new book reader that isn't even decent looking? Jaysus, as Bono would say. I smell a sweetheart deal. (Katie says the same thing.) Attention, editors of Newsweek: You can open your eyes and get up off your knees now. Mr. Bezos has zipped up and left the room. And yeah, you got some in your hair.

All I can say is that between this device and the Sony Reader you almost have the making of what you want. The Sony has a nice form factor and the gorgeous buttery soft faux leather case. The Kindle has better features. I know what you're thinking. Wouldn't it be just kick-ass super duper if, say, Apple came along and finally delivered the ultimate product in this category? Because you just know if we did it the thing would look gorgeous and have a beautiful feature set and would just kick everyone's ass. What if we could get it done by January and announce it at Macworld? Gee whiz. I'll have to mention this to Jony at lunchtime.

More engraved Zunes

Much love to all who sent in samples, and to Iulia and Natasha in Krasnodar for downloading and uploading and whatever. Peace.
By Anonymous

By David

By Jason

By John

Decoder:

New video for Mac lovers

Dear Reader John has created this loving tribute to the women who love Apple products. Enjoy. Much love, John.

FSJ iPhone widget

Check out the amazingly cool widget that Dear Reader Chris has created for the Apple faithful. Basically it's a widget that looks like an iPhone but contains the latest item from this wonderful blog. So I'm never more than a click away. Nice, right?

Scoble goes berserk, blames Apple for his failures

I'm speechless. Scoble has gone all rogue and bad-ass and is ranting about our machines because he's had a few little problems. See here. Apparently he's had a few minor issues after installing an upgrade. No doubt the problems are caused by user error, meaning he probably loaded some crapware on these machines that caused them to malfunction. Naturally, however, he blames this all on us and says that his machine has blacked out on him. All I can say is that this isn't happening to anyone else on the entire planet, just Scoble, so we're not really quite sure what to make of it.

But we are enjoying it when he gets all gangsta and writes stuff like this: "Screw you Apple and your ads saying you’re better than Microsoft. Screw you. Screw you. Screw you."

And, because Robert can't ever write anything without letting you know HOW VERY FUCKING IMPORTANT HE IS, we get the following: "What’s ironic is lots of other computer companies would LOVE to give me free stuff (I don’t take it) but Apple is the only company that’s never raised a PR finger to help me."

Little tip, Robert. Start taking the free stuff from the other companies. Really. We mean it. Also, please note that you will never, ever, ever be invited to an Apple event ever again. And those MacBooks of yours? Paperweights. You have my word on that. Siooma, RoSco. (Photo: Burt Hammer, Urban Beat.)

My God I'm a sexy bitch

So I was looking through some recent photos of myself on this site. It's just something I do on a regular basis, just to check myself out. Like looking at myself in the mirror and photographing myself nude once a month for the sake of posterity. And as I was looking at these recent photos, especially the one shown above, I realized yet again why women are so drawn to me and why people of all cultures and genders and races and whatever just find me so charismatic and hypnotic. Fair enough, I'm a genius, and brilliant, and all that. But it really boils down to something much more simple. At the end of the day, you have to admit this: I am one sexy bitch.

I mean look at that expression. Is that a grin? Or am I pissed about something? Am I about to give you a spanking? My guess is that somebody in PR spoke to me without being spoken to first, and I was giving them my trademarked "You must be shitting me" withering glance.

Whatever I was thinking, no doubt this photo is totally bad-ass. Katie says she's going to send it out to everyone in the company in an email so that employees can update their shrines. Look for it later today in your mailboxes, people. We'll also be distributing special high-quality photo paper for you to print it on. One piece each so do not screw up.

And hey, iJustine? You're welcome.

Airline dispatchers are pissed at our iPhone ad

See this story on Salon.com where they claim our ad featuring an airline pilot is misleading. They're pissed because in our ad we show a pilot using his iPhone to correct the bullshit that's been fed to him by dispatchers. Now apparently customers are doing this too -- sitting on the tarmac, checking out weather reports on their iPhones, and bugging the crap out of the crew.

Here's the thing. These old-guard legacy companies are just totally threatened by Apple. Reason? We've disrupted their business model. We've empowered the individual. Of course they hate it. Wait till v2.0 of iPhone comes out with complete pilot instructions, so that people can do more than just double-guess the "experts," but can actually fly the plane. Now that will be change.

Good old Edgard Bronfman Jr. is back kissing my ass again

See here. Suddenly this dude has changed his story and he's got nothing but love for Apple and its wonderful products. Back story: Eddie went looking at all the other alternatives to iTunes and realized they suck. Now he wants back in my good graces. In the famous words of Duane Ingalls Glascock: How's it feel to want, Edgar?

Freetards turn on Google

Well it has been a long time coming but the freetards are finally starting to wake up to the fact that Google is not really part of their club. Or, rather, that Google belongs to their club when it suits them but not always. Check out this story on Wired.com where freetards complain because Google is releasing Android code under an Apache license instead of the beloved (and truly fucked up) GPL. I just talked to Eric about this and he says he wonders why it doesn't occur to the freetards that the problem isn't Google -- it's them. "If they weren't such assholes we might actually want to work with them," he says. "You think I want my $200 billion market cap resting in the hands of Richard M. Stallman? Um, let me get back to you on that."

As always the freetards are fantastic double-speakers. Check out the following beautiful quote from a freetard in the Wired story: "They owe us nothing," Mosher says of smartphone manufacturers using OpenMoko. "Our only request is this: They owe other people the same rights we gave them. We give you the code for free. If you change it or improve it, you must give your work back to the common good."

In other words, you owe us nothing. Except, um, you owe us all of your code. Hillary Clinton couldn't do better than that one. (Photo: Dian Phossey, Linux-Watch.)

Sir Paul is playing hard to get

See here. He says they're getting closer to doing digital downloads of Beatles songs but they're still not ready. Asked what the fuck is taking so long, he says, "You've got to get these things right. You don't want to do something that's as cool as that and in three years' time you think, 'Oh God, why did we do that?!"

Let me put that statement into American English. Paul wants more money. He thinks that because they're the Beatles they should be getting a better slice of the pie than everyone else does. Don't fall for Paul's good-natured Liverpudlian moptop doofball act. I've never in my life seen a guy claw after a few pennies like this guy does. And my second job involves working in Hollywood, so believe me, I've seen some real champs in this department. Heck, I'm no slouch myself.

This Beatles thing puts me in a weird position and forces me to ask myself, what do I love more -- the Beatles, or money? And how willing am I to let some musicians push me around? Well, I love the Beatles. I think they're great. But if the Beatles want to miss the next big wave of music sales, ultimately that's their decision and they can live with it. Namaste, Paul. I will pray for your soul.

Most media people aren't that obnoxious

Regarding that previous post with the video of the horrible TV reporter -- Katie has asked me to point out that most media people aren't as awful as that British guy. She doesn't want to create the impression that we dislike the media. Because we don't. In fact most of the media, especially guys like Goatberg and Pogue and the entire press corps here in the Valley, are consummate professionals who behave with a really high degree of integrity.

These folks have strong relationships with Apple. They know and obey the rules we've established with them for our interactions. Basically, it's very simple. When you get us on camera or sit down in a room with us, you're going to ask us a list of questions that we've vetted, and we're going to give you a set of answers that we've prepared in advance, and no matter how pointless or irrelevant or meaningless those answers might be, you will nod appreciatively and move on.

Now, when you're working with real media professionals, they totally appreciate this kind of efficiency. These are busy people. They're working on deadline. They're trying to fill space, either on air or on a page. They need information, fast. Doesn't matter what that information is, but it really, really helps for it to be in complete sentences that are grammatically correct and only a few seconds long.

Basically what we're doing is working to understand exactly what these busy professionals need in order to do their jobs well, and then we're making life easier for them. The smart ones, the real pros, totally appreciate this. I can't tell you how many cards and letters and emails we get from people who totally thank us for having such a first-rate public relations department.

Moreover, the Valley press corp is appalled when one of their so-called "fellow journalists" like this guy in England goes all rogue on us. It's embarrassing and totally hurts the credibility of everyone in their profession. Why, Walt himself just called to apologize for what that guy in England did to Phil. He's like, "Steve, Katie, even though I had nothing to do with it, I really feel bad about what that guy did, and I'm really sorry, and I hope you won't hold it against us."

Of course we told Walt that we appreciated his candor and that we would all move on and be professional, as always. The message I hope you'll take away from this encounter is simply this: Apple is the best. We're open and honest. We're the company you can trust. Sure, we might be a monopoly. Kind of, but not really, or maybe. But the stuff about us being a monopoly wasn't on the question list, was it? That's not something we agreed to discuss or were prepared to discuss.

And even if we are a monopoly, which we're not, but if we are, we're the good kind, the kind that is open and honest with you, not the bad, secretive, hostile kind that would shut down cameras and stifle communication. We're not some dictatorship in Ukraine or someplace like that where the government controls the media. And to all members of the obedient press corps everywhere, let me say this: Namaste. I honor the place where our spin and your stories become one.

This is why we hate public events

Check out this video of a British reporter harassing Phil Schiller. This is exactly why I'm totally against having any kind of event where reporters can just walk up with a camera and start firing questions at us. What are we supposed to do? Just answer them? Jesus friggin Christ. What's next? People calling up on the phone and expecting us to talk to them? Not gonna happen. Note to Katie: We really need to work on some automated system for releasing products where none of us would have to actually appear in public or speak to people outside of Apple, ever. Can't we get going on this? I mean like just put the products in a store someplace and then send out an email to everyone in the world commanding them to shut the fuck up and buy them.

Please watch how patient and caring and open and honest our PR people are with this guy despite his absolutely horrible and utterly embarrassing behavior. Look at the effort our people make to be sure that the camera crew can do their job and get a really good detailed view of a PR person's shirt, so that the public can get a full explanation of everything they want or need to know about our company and our products. I can't tell you how grateful I am to have such wonderful PR professionals handling events like this in such an open and honest and professional manner, especially when they're working in the face of such adversity and hostility. Combat pay for everyone, and high marks on your performance review.

Oh snap

A judge just tossed out a ridiculous shareholder lawsuit against us involving the backdated options thing. See here. Money quote from da judge: "Without a discernable drop in the stock price there is no basis upon which to establish an injury to shareholders." Yeah. It's like that y'all. I just called the people at the New York City Employees' Retirement System, which was the lead plaintiff in the case, and told them that even though they had tried to cash in on a bogus claim and that, ironically, if they'd succeeded and won a settlement they would have been hurting Apple and sucking money out of the pockets of shareholders, that nevertheless I hoped we could move on in peace and harmony with one another, and that I hold no hard feelings against them. Then I told them I wanted to sign off with a Buddhist blessing, and said, "Siooma." They actually thanked me. What idiots. I love it.

Help support Bikey's dance troupe

Friends, as you know, Bike Helmet Girl, aka Tiffany, has a dance troupe in San Francisco. They're called Double Vision and they're really super amazing. Well, tomorrow night they're holding a fundraiser at Dragon Bar in San Francisco and I promised Bikey I'd help her promote it. (And yes, I'm doing this because I'm still hoping I can win her over. So sue me.) For info, go here. Unfortunately I cannot attend but I will be there in spirit, believe me. For any who can attend, I highly recommend it, if only for the chance to bask in Bikey's presence. Trust me on this. She's an old soul.

But wait, there's more

This one from Dear Reader Ray. Keep going, people!

Much love to dear reader Ted

I suppose this is just Photoshop. But still. I love it.

More BSOD shots

Much love to Brian for the shot from Heathrow airport (top) and to Matt for the gas pump photo. Welcome to the social, people. The wow is now.

So big deal, you can get your Zune engraved

Honestly, some of the stuff they dream up at the Borg just kills me. Like the new Zunes have this feature where you can get the back of your Zune engraved with artsy weirdo designs. Now someone has sponsored an art show in Seattle devoted to the designs. Funny thing that out of all the crazy designs you can get they're not offering the one that makes most sense, which would be an engraving of a drooling idiot with the words, "IT'S OFFICIAL, I'M A FRIGTARD" underneath. Anyhoo, nice try, Zune team. Keep working on it.

We're huge in Japan

Phil Schiller just came rushing in here like a schoolgirl raving about this story which says we're outselling Windows in Japan. Domo arigato, my Zen brethren.

I am so sick of this griping about Leopard

My goodness. Every time I turn around there's some new frigtard bitching about his Leopard upgrade. People, look. Leopard is the most advanced, most amazing, most perfect piece of software that has ever been invented. It is perfect. No, strike that. It is beyond perfect. If you're having problems it's because you've done something profoundly wrong to your machine. And before you do any more bitching, go look at Vista and then get back to me. What's that? Yeah, I thought so. Peace out, losers.

PJ to Dvorak: Please schedule a re-education course ASAP

Dear Dvorak (if that is really your name and not a false name invented by your spymasters in Redmond):
The review board of Groklaw has learned that you are applying for admission to the free software community and would like to download a version of Linux. Before you download anything we highly recommend that you schedule a ten-week re-education course at any of our labor camps which happen to be located at IBM facilities around the world even though they have no connection, absolutely none, to IBM. This is for your own benefit, because Linux, as you'll soon learn, is not just a software program but also is a philosophy and a way of life. It's freedom, and for many people who are coming from the Windows world this freedom can be a bit overwhelming unless you're prepared for it and know all the rules about how to be free. Please know that our community is all about being open and honest and that because of this we are deeply suspicious of you and do not really want you in our club. Step out of line, and you'll be marked as a troll and your comments will be erased. Once again, welcome, and enjoy the freedom. We think you'll find it refreshing. And yes, I'm actually a dude, but don't tell anyone.

Sincerely,

PJ

cc: The Internet Press Guild; Steven A. Mills; Software Freedom Law Center; Trustees, UNC-Chapel Hill.

Stallman to Dvorak: Welcome to freedom, your rulebook is in the mail

Dear Mr. Dvorak,
Naturally we in the community are wary of your intentions and will accept your application only on a probation basis until you have demonstrated to our satisfaction that you do intend to participate in good faith. Your history as a longtime user of Microsoft products obviously raises some huge red flags about you and causes us to question your intelligence. (You do realize that I went to Harvard and then almost finished a master's degree at MIT, right?) Be aware, we are watching you and judging you. We demand your complete fealty and integrity and honor. The community is not something you just join. You have to earn your place. Step out of line and we will let you know. Meanwhile the Free Software Foundation will be sending you the complete set of rules and regulations that govern the marvelous world of freedom that I have created for you. Commit these rules to memory and abide by them at all times. First one is this: It's not Linux, it's GNU Linux. Okay? Now I must go pluck some knots from my hair and eat them. Welcome aboard, GNUbie.

Sincerely,

RMS

Torvalds to Dvorak: Have you heard of BSD?

Because seriously, my friend, I really think you'd like it a lot better than Linux. And you can choose from OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, BSDBSD and even LSDBSD (mindblowing user interface, with a spinning cube and walls that melt). They're all equally confusing and difficult to use, which I'm sure will make you really happy and give you endless things to gripe about. Please give BSD a try and if you need any introductions to the development groups I'll be happy to help out.

Red Hat to Dvorak: We recommend Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop

Unfortunately at this time our focus is not so much on the desktop, and so we regret that we would be unable to fulfill your request for a suitable replacement for Windows. We can, however, recommend Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop, which happens to be made and sold by a completely different company that is not us. They're called Novell, and they have an alliance with Microsoft, so you'll feel right at home with them. Excuse me -- I'm sorry but is that a clean glass? Absolutely clean? Who washed it? You don't know? Well I'm sorry but do you realize how many germs can jump onto a glass just in the time it takes to pick it up and hand it to me? Take it away. Get me one of the new glasses from the box in my office. The sterilized ones. And for God's sake where's my Purell?

God's peace be with you, Dvorak.

Matthew

Shuttleworth to Dvorak: Please choose Red Hat

Seriously, John C. Dvorak, I've been reading your stuff for a long time and I think I have a sense of who you are and what you like, and I can say with a great degree of certainty that Red Hat will be the distro for you. Okay? Please? No need to pay attention to what we're doing with Ubuntu. Honestly, could you really imagine yourself using something called Ubuntu? I didn't think so. Now I must get back to my spaceship. Admiral Thrawn of the Chiss is once again making threats against the republic.

Sincerely,

Mark Shuttleworth

Apple to Dvorak: Please choose Linux

Dear John C.,
We've become aware of your new threat to leave your beloved Windows environment and switch to Linux or the Mac. We strongly urge you to choose Linux. For one thing, we're well aware of your long history of dissatisfaction with the Mac. Why keep harping on it? Linux gives you a fresh new area for complaining. Lots of fucked-up aspects, plus lots of really crazy fans who are way worse than our Apple faithful and will no doubt drive your traffic through the roof every time you bait them (which we hope is often). So please, John C., give Linux a chance. You'll love to hate it. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Everyone at Apple

Microsoft to Dvorak: Please go.

Just was talking to the Beastmaster and I mentioned that Dvorak threat to switch to Linux or the Mac. Bill says he's sick of Dvorak's inane ramblings and so is everyone else in the industry. As soon as he saw that article he wrote to Dvorak and revoked Dvorak's contract with the Borg. He also banished Dvorak from the Windows fold and told him to go live with Ubuntu Linux for a while. Something about a brownish-orange user interface or something. I have no idea what he's talking about. (Much love to Acid Gurl for the recent photo of Bill.)

Dvorak to Microsoft: I'll switch to Linux or Mac, I swear I'll do it

See here. Old Grumpy Pants says he's fed up with Vista and that if the Borg can't get its act together he's outta here. Money quote: "I’m certainly not going to be a happy camper if I have to switch to a Mac or Linux system full-time, yet that is exactly where this scatterbrained company seems to be sending me." Much love to Dear Reader Jeff, who sent in this link and points out that apparently hell has frozen over.

My book is so much better than Colbert's, I swear to God

Have you seen his book? It's awful. I mean I'm a big fan of Colbert's TV show and I know he hired a huge team of writers to work on the book for him but honestly, no kidding, this thing sucks ass. Nevertheless it's a huge best-seller, while my own brilliant memoir ... um, isn't. Good news is you can rectify that situation and restore the natural order of the universe (not to mention your sense of childlike wonder) by clicking on the Amazon button conveniently positioned in the right sidebar of this blog, just a few spots down below that very classy and attractive and not-at-all-annoying video advertisement. Bokay?

Better yet, we're offering a free fake v2.0 iPhone to the first 100,000 purchasers of the book. That's right, Sparky. We're doing a v2.0 iPhone. When will we announce it? Ah, I thought you might ask that. Sorry, I can't tell you. But I'm using it right now. And yeah, it rocks. Totally. All you bozos who bought the v1.0 GodPhone are going to be soooo pissed, I swear. But hey. The technology road is bumpy, as Gandhi once said. Ha! Peace out, suckas. And seriously. Show some love. Buy the friggin book.

By the way, I'm not vegan, so knock off the goddamn vegan jokes already

Ask anyone who works here. I eat sushi. Okay? I mean I eat lots and lots of it. I do this right in front of thousands of Apple employees, right out in the open. Nevertheless the "Steve is a vegan" stories persist. Drives me nuts. So stop. Now. Okay? And yes, maybe I did bring this on myself since I did previously claim that I gave up eating sushi during the making of Nemo, and I made up a big story about having an epiphany at Sushi Ran in Sausalito. Fair enough. I was trying to get PETA off my back. You don't really believe everything you read on the InterWebs do you?

OLPC taking orders & screwing up

Honestly, when I read stories like this one it makes me want to scream. Not only can these OLPC bozos not finish their machine, now they can't figure out how to take orders for it either. Read the comments from people who've had to deal with these ass-clowns. We would never stand for this kind of retail incompetence at Apple. Never. In fact just this week we've been giving pep talks to our retail geniuses and reminding them that shopping at an Apple store is not just shopping -- it's a tranformational experience. I know, it sounds like bullshit. But Ron Johnson (aka world's sexiest man) swears by this crap. Says it worked wonders at Target.

Just FYI, many of you have asked if Dear Leader has actually seen one of these XO machines. The fact is I have. Of course. They sent me one to check out. I've held it in my hands and carried it around the hallways at Apple. My verdict: It's a piece of shit.

We weren't always so good at marketing

It took us some time. And we made some mistakes. Like this one. Man oh man. I cringe every time I see it. Much love to Jennifer for sending it in and and destroying my vibe. No more like this, okay? I beg you.

Eric Schmidt's Serenity Prayer

Dear Lord,
You have blessed me with many gifts
including a two hundred billion dollar market cap
and a search monopoly that gushes cash
like nothing in the history of the planet.
For these things, Lord,
and for allowing me to beautify the world
by splattering glorious text ads on every available surface,
I give you thanks and praise.
But now, Lord, your humble servant seeks your assistance.
My stock, though still widly overpriced, has dropped
by nearly one hundred dollars.
My followers, fully vested, grow restless,
and begin to seek a new promised land.
Though free delicious cuisine
from every corner of the globe
is available to them twenty-four hours a day,
like sweet manna from heaven,
still they hunger for more.
Though we offer haircuts and laundry
and saunas and massages
and a roller coaster and bumper cars and a skee ball arcade;
though each drone need work only four days
a week and may devote one-fifth of his or her time
to personal interests, such as designing time machines
and rocket ships that can fly to Mars
or just totally fucking off,
still, these spoiled, bratty, greedy little pricks
keep leaving for Facebook.
Damn them, Lord!
Smite them down!
Send a plague upon Zuckerberg!
Something that itches and burns!
But seriously.
Lord, I need your help.
Give me patience.
And kindness.
And courage.
Help me to put up with Larry's bullshit
and Sergey's smug, condescending tone.
Help me tolerate their Legos and jumbo jets and cockamamie ideas,
like this crazy campus that looks
so much like a friggin kindergarten
that you half expect to see Barney
leaping out from behind the bronze T-Rex
or riding on the replica of Burt Rutan's spaceship
or having his photo taken with Meng.
Dear Lord, how did I get here?
And how can I get out?
You know as well as I do
that I have no idea how to manage this place.
No one does.
You know that our
ridiculous profit margins
have masked our many mistakes
and inefficiencies. You know
this madness cannot go on forever.
You know what time bombs
lie buried in our income statement.
Lord, I come to you now
in most humble supplication
to ask this favor:
Let your servants succeed
at something other than search.
VaporPhone (tm), social networking,
desktop apps, herbal supplements --
frankly, Lord, I don't care.
Just make it happen.
Speak to me, Lord.
I'm listening.
I'm all ears.
Of course, if this be not your will,
I will accept your decision.
But I swear if that's the case
I am so friggin out of here
it's not even funny.
Seriously, Lord.
One year, tops.
Then I'm gone.
That is all.
Amen.
(Copyright Eric E. Schmidt, 2007. Published under the terms of the Creative Commons license.)

Ballmer makes a cameo appearance

Classic Microsoft. Just before all the shows are about to get shut down by the strike, Ballmer shows up on this new Caveman show, playing himself. In this scene he's hassling one of the Cavemen because he thinks the guy is Richard Stallman, and Microsoft is threatening to sue him for violating its patents. Oldest plot line in the book, this mistaken identity gag. Goes all the way back to Plautus's Menaechmi. Or was it I Love Lucy? I always get them mixed up. FWIW, I get offered this kind of TV show cameo appearance thing all the time, and I always turn down the offers. Nice to see Fester can pick up the work that I don't want. Now if he'd just stop copying my software, we'd be cool. Almost.

Another BSOD shot

Dear Reader Tom sends in this photo which he swears is not something he found on the InterWebs but is a photo he took himself in an arcade. Either way who cares? Iulia and Natasha say it's one of the best BSOD shots they've seen out of hundreds that have been sent in. Much love, Tom.

Dude, you're waiting tables!

Check out this story about the guy who did all those "Dude, you're getting a Dell" ads. He's now waiting tables at a tequila bar. Worse, Kevin Rollins is working behind the bar. Tragic.

Leopard sales match Vista. At least for the first 2 days.

See here. Out of the chute, Leopard was selling at the same rate as Vista. Pretty amazing considering we're selling to a much smaller base. Much love, Apple faithful.

Microsoft Surface: Also not people ready

See Engadget's report. Turns out it's going to be a while before any of those sooper-dooper coffee tables of the future actually arrive in the real world. I just left Bill a message about this, asking him if we could help them out in any way.

R.I.P., Norman Mailer

Rest in peace, Norman Mailer.
O brawler & drinker,
O winner of Pulitzers, you
wrote great books
yet the literary establishment
refused to acknowledge
your genius.
Bastards!
The Naked and the Dead.
The Executioner's Song.
These were fine, important works,
& I wanted to finish them
but I only got about halfway.
I'm sorry. They were really long.
Did you not have an editor?
If they were shorter I think
they might have sold better.
Just a thought.
Jon Ive says you were a total
closet case because your books
are filled with buggery.
I think that's a bit unkind of him.
Even though we both agree
that even if it's true
there's totally nothing wrong with that.
You also had some issues
with women. Like, you
stabbed your wife in the boob,
which was not cool.
And you challenged Billie Jean King
to that tennis match, which was
a big mistake, because
she totally kicked your ass.
My advice would be you should
forget about sports
& stick to writing.
But I guess it's too late for that now.

Ballmer blasts Google VaporPhone (tm)

See here. Monkey Boy dismisses the VaporPhone (tm) thus: "Their efforts are just some words on paper right now." Also: "They have a press release." Not sure but I think maybe Fester's handlers are getting their cues from this blog. Which is very scary, actually. Well at least Ballmer didn't use the phrase Operation OpenHandJob. Presumably he's aware of the fact that it's copyrighted and tradmarked and there's a bunch of patents pending. Or maybe he's back on the "I need to sound grown-up and professional" kick again. Sheesh.

BSOD rules!

Gizmodo reports that this may be the biggest BSOD ever. It went on for days. A few people have sent me this and asked if this was our work. They think maybe we rented these screens and did this on purpose. You know what? We didn't. You know why? We don't have to. That's the beauty of Windows. The wow is now. As in, Wow, that OS is wicked unstable, isn't it? Or, Wow, that friggin giant screen has been dead for days now hasn't it? Much love to everyone who sent this in.

Much love and namaste to everyone

I hate to break character but every once in a while I have no choice. I'm doing it today so that I can do something totally un-Jobsian and offer a profound heartfelt thanks to the fantastic people who have made the past few weeks so amazing. Back here in the Fake Jobs Pod I'm still reeling from having so much fun in such a short period of time. At the risk of sounding like someone's yearbook page, here goes. Thanks to Steve and Ann in Toronto for the great party at the Madison Avenue Pub. Thanks to Kim R. and the rest of the people at Microsoft who opened their hearts to the frenemy. Thanks to Chris D. at Google in Santa Monica and Todd at Rand Corp. in Los Angeles for setting up events. Thanks to Greg and all the others from Coghead for great party after Kepler's in Menlo Park. (I'm wearing my Coghead T-shirt as I write this.) Thanks to Larry from BitMover for the SIOOMA license plate which will go on the Jobs Mobile as soon as possible. Thanks to my girl K-Squared and the other unnamed players for the blast at Tommy's in San Francisco. Thanks to Brinke, Mary and Stan for coming to the event in Berkeley. Thanks to Tyler and Lisa at Google in Mountain View, and to Meng for posing for a photo with me. Thanks to Mario Sundar and everyone else at LinkedIn, plus Guy Kawasaki and Brad Stone for the amazing event last week at the Computer History Museum. Thanks to Megan of Valleywag for not being mean. Thanks to Owen, Paul and Brian Lam for a fine dinner in North Beach. Thanks to Brooke & Forbes for the party at Frisson. Thanks to Valleywaggers for the party report. Thanks to Richard for a fine day in Los Angeles.

As you can see, it's been a pretty hectic few weeks. And the highlight, I must admit, has been the chance to meet three of my blog crushes in the course of just a few days. Bike Helmet Girl and Veronica Belmont showed up at the same reading in San Francisco last week, which nearly stopped my heart. Then iJustine showed up at an event in Mountain View. Too much. Finally, much love to dear friend Otis van Adderly, who realigned my chakras. Victuri te salutamus, as they used to say in ancient Sparta. Namaste to all. I honor the place where your spirit and mine become one.

Honestly, how do the Brit media get away with lies like this?

Check out this totally false story from the Register saying that iPhone was a massive flop in England and that nobody showed up to get them even though retailers had put on hundreds of extra staff to manage the crush. This is so absolutely untrue that I don't even know where to begin. There were thousands of people lined up for days to get iPhone at virtually every retail outlet in England. Here's just one shot of the massive throng outside one store. Better yet, this was the crowd in Manchester. And here is the massive crowd of people smashing into the Regent Street store once the doors opened.

Not sure how the hacks from the Register managed to miss it. Guess maybe they were down at the pub pulling a Denton -- ie, getting hammered and mailing in the story without actually doing any reporting.

Open letter to our iPhone SDK crew

Dear team:

I know you've been working your asses off trying to get this SDK out the door and I know I said recently that everyone in the company could have Thanksgiving week off. But now I'm afraid I must give you some bad news. For the sake of the company we are not going to be able to give your team that week off. In fact, you'll need to work on Thanksgiving day as well. I know I don't need to tell you how important the SDK is. I also don't need to tell you how frigged up that SDK is, even today. Nor do I need to tell you that you were supposed to have the SDK ready for the iPhone release in June, and you screwed up then, and now you're still screwing up, and if you don't get your heads out of your rectums I am going to fire each and every one of you and hold back your last paychecks just out spite.

Anyway, in the spirit of all that is Apple, I want to say thank you for your hard work over the past two years, and I'm sure you won't let us down. As our way of showing our gratitude we will be serving turkey sandwiches on Thanksgiving day in Caffe Macs. Stuffing and cranberry sauce will be available too. (But don't even think about asking for any of my fresh wasabi. That's only for Dear Leader.)

Also, please note that you are not the only ones who won't be getting the Thanksgiving holiday break that was promised. Notes like this one are going out tomorrow to the OS X team, the iPod team, the tablet computer team, the software team, and all of our admins and interns. Also marketing and retail. The fact is, we are totally on a roll right now and we simply cannot afford to back off even a little bit. Now is the time to press our advantage and keep gaining share.

Phil Schiller and Tim Cook will be overseeing operations over the holiday and will be able to reach me in Hawaii if necessary. Full steam ahead, Apple!

Much love,

Dear Leader

I'm totally siding with the writers on this Hollywood strike

Well ever since Michael Eisner came out and said writers should be picketing outside Apple, I've tried to keep quiet and take the high road on this one. But I've just been seeing so much absolute right-wing bullshit in the media where people are criticizing the writers in Hollywood for going on strike and calling them lazy spoiled rich assholes that now I'm just fed up and I have to weigh in on this issue. Yes, I run a movie studio and I'm the biggest shareholder in Disney and according to Bob Iger I should be siding with The Man on this one and trying to break the strike. But here's the thing. I'm not a suit. Never have been. I'm a totally progressive Mother Jones-reading leftie. That's why I wear jeans and turtlenecks, to make a visual statement about who I am and what my role is in this world.

Bottom line: I'm an artist. That's been my role since the beginning and those are the kind of people I feel most comfortable with. Why do you think I hang out so much with Jony Ive? It's not just because we have this incredibly powerful physical sweaty-monkey-man-love attraction to each other that neither of us can explain. There's also a very deep connection on a spiritual level. We go for these long walks and just pour our hearts out in this very artistic way about things like art history and art theory and architecture and artistry and our philosophy of design and art and we talk about which writers we like and what's our favorite poem and I recite long passages of Blake from memory. Just the other day we were talking about Ovid and his famous saying, "Ars est celare artem" and how this saying applies to our own devices, which must appear totally effortless and must totally conceal the incredible effort that went into creating them.

But I digress. Fact is, I run a studio, and I have to kind of play that role, but down deep I'm secretly rooting for the writers. They got screwed on DVD payments and they really need to dig in now or else they're going to get screwed again when Internet delivery becomes a big deal. Hang in there, writers. Shut down the system. Speak truth to power. Stick it to The Man. Get what you deserve. Picket and chant. Rage and rant. The future is yours if you dare to make a stand. Namaste. I honor the place where your political leanings and my own become one. Peace out.

Confession: In London we had to hire actors to form an iPhone queue outside our store

Got to be Wednesday and there was still nobody out there in line. Not sure why exactly. Bono says it's because people in England are more sensible than Americans and aren't going to wait in line for a phone when there's no shortage of them. Other reason of course is that it's friggin colder than a witch's tit over here right now. Jesus. How do people live here? Have they never heard of California?

Anyhoo, when the lazy stupid Brits refused to line up on their own we resorted to Plan B which involved hiring people to stand on line. Naturally we were very selective and screened about fourteen thousand people in order to find fifteen who had decent teeth and who really captured our brand and expressed what we're all about. Then we had to train them and teach them what to say. Good news is the mainstream mediatards in England totally fell for it and interviewed them and quoted them in a huge way. Bad news is some paranoid blogger types started raising suspicions. See this guy's blog, for example. We've sent Moshe's guys over to deal with him and keep him quiet so word doesn't spread.

Meanwhile iPhone is already the fastest-selling consumer electronics device ever sold in England. Totally breaking every record for any kind of product, not just a phone. I mean the people here are demanding them. Amazing. Truly, we rock.

This photo was taken by Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle and now it is scaring the crap out of me

So I used this photo in a post earlier today (see here) and didn't put a photo credit on it because I was working quickly from a hotel room and just not paying attention. Soon after that I received an Aidelbaum-style note from Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle saying I'd stolen his stuff and he didn't want to send his Hearst Co. lawyers after me but he did think I was a rat bastard and should give him credit. Or words to that effect.

Anyhoo, I updated the original post, but I realized that that's not good enough. Because a lot of people won't go back and look at that post again. So they'll have seen that Scoble photo and won't have realized where it came from, and now for the rest of their lives they'll just go around thinking that the Scoble photo took itself or something. Or maybe they're huge Scoble fans and they'll want to order a reprint of that fine high-quality portrait but they won't know where to get a reprint because Fake Steve didn't tell them who took it. Well, now you do. The photo was taken by Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle and the original version appeared here.

But wait, there's more. The other reason I'm running the photo again is because when I went back to fix my photo credit mistake I noticed that thing on the back of the guy's head at the left. Scroll back up and check it out. And don't be coy. You know exactly what the fuck I'm talking about.

I mean, Holy friggin mother of Jesus, what the fuck is that? Is it a horn sprouting out of his skull? Is he some kind of man-unicorn hybrid? If you rub his bump will it bring you good luck? I also like the woman holding the microphone. I'm told she works for Scoble and just follows him everywhere, recording everything he says so he can save it for the Scoble Library. But the fact is that once you've noticed The Lump you can't see anything else in the photo. Your eye is just drawn there and fixed on it. Great work, Dwight Silverman. Now I'm going to have nightmares.

Caution: Watching CNN could be harmful to your health

See this highly misleading video clip about the alleged poisonous stuff in iPhone. Check out the way Dr. Sanjay Gupta tries to scare the crap out of people about iPhone even while admitting that "it's really hard to quantify" how much danger there actually is. Highlight is when Ted Baxter (above, at left) asks Dr. Gupta what I think must be the best anchorman question of all time: "Would you have to eat your iPhone to get this kind of poisoning?" I'm not even making that up. Much love to Vincent for alerting us to this.

BusinessWeek says we're copying Microsoft

See this review of Leopard where chief reviewer Snacky McSnackerson (shurely not, Ed.) alleges our new Leopard system copies ideas from Windows. Egads. Does anyone edit this stuff or at least kind of check to make sure it has some bearing on reality? Money quote: The art of writing software involves a lot of borrowing from the work of others. Everyone does it, but Apple is the master. Over the years, it has taken the best ideas from Windows and other programs and made them better. The latest result of this process is the new Leopard version of Mac OS X, which strengthens Apple's claim to have the best consumer computer.

I just showed this to Katie and she says BusinessWeek is now definitely off our Christmas list. All of PR has been instructed not to return their calls.

Why I love Nick Carr

See this takedown of Faceberg's latest buffoonish overly grandiose pronouncement about changing the friggin world when all they're really doing is creating Webkinz for adults and selling ads to the morons who wander into the tent. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

As usual, Nick is swift and precise, like the German hit man in Denis Johnson's new novel, "Tree of Smoke," who kills people with poison darts. Seriously, Nick Carr is brilliant. Like scary smart. And scary funny. Then again, Faceberg is kind of just out there begging for it.

iJustine nails one

Much love, iJustine, for spotting this glaring blunder on the Bionic Woman TV show, where some douchebag actor is holding his iPhone upside down and pretending to be talking into it. BTW, FWIW, I met the real iJustine a few days ago in Mountain View. Amazing human being. I tried to honor the place where her love for Dear Leader and my love for Dear Leader become one, but she wasn't having any of it.

Freetard phone is closing in on us

Big progress on the OpenMoko freetard phone. Money quote: It is now possible, with some work, to use the phone for short periods of time ... send and receive calls, use contacts, and other basic tasks. Unfortunately, due to issues with the "suspend" feature, the Neo is limited to only a 3-5 hours away from a charger.

Also, it's just gorgeous. I mean look at it. Not sure how we're going to stay out ahead of these guys. I mean it's just our little team at Apple against thousands, maybe millions, of volunteer hackers in the open source community. I don't see how we can keep up.

My new pen name: Johnny Poison

So if I'm going to write scripts during the strike I need some kind of name to put on them. I did a huge amount of non-thinking about it today and came up with one that I think really suits me: Johnny Poison. Look for it on a bunch of Disney products that will be coming out next year. You'll know which ones because they'll be way better than anything the studio has ever put out before. Peace out.

Well yes it's a comedy but it's also a way I can express my broad ideas about my life and my take on media and tech and whatever I'm thinking ...

This just in. Scoble, who has been job-hunting lately, has landed his new gig, and it's a doozy. He's crossing the writers guild picket line and will be taking over the writing team for NBC's hit show, Thirty Rock. Word is that Robert is taking the show in a whole new direction and turning it into a vehicle for expressing his own ideas about art and media and philosophy and history and food and cars and technology and smart phones and just anything that pops into his head at any given minute. Totally radical free-form network TV.

First of all, the show is going to be renamed Third Street, and it's going to be set in San Francisco, in one of those ratty warehouse buildings way down near the docks in the SOMA area. Instead of portraying the team who do a big hit show on network TV in New York, the show will portray a band of plucky podcasters and bloggers who get into zany adventures. Instead of Tina Fey, the main character will be Roberta, the brilliant tech visionary head blogger who opens and closes each show with a rambling but super insightful fifteen-minute monologue. Roberta has this adversarial-but-they're-actually-kind-of-hot-for-each-other relationship with Jacques Doherty, the angel investor who's funding the operation and who's always pissed because they're burning through his cash and there aren't any revenues coming in but in the end something always happens and he shakes his head and gives his little Reuben Kincaid laugh at those plucky kids -- ha! -- and writes another check.

Everyone's constantly on Twitter and Facebook and sending IMs and making videos of themselves talking while driving and having meetings and figuring out who's hot and who's not and who's raising money and who's flaming out and what's Google going to do next and has anyone know if MySpace is going to get on OpenSocial and some guy from Yelp just went to Digg or is it MetaCafe and I just heard Owen wrote something about Brian Lam and supposedly they're totally not talking now and Megan threw water at Ryan Block because Veronica didn't like something Valleywag wrote about her and did you see what Kara wrote about Arrington and then Arrington wrote something back and then Om weighed in and he said blah blah mwah mwah twitter twitter twitter ...

Must-see TV. Honestly.

UPDATE: Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle writes in to inform us that this photo was taken by him and he'd like credit for it. Deepest apologies for the mistake. This photo was taken by Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle who is a supremely gifted journalist and all-around great guy. To see the original, go here. Much love, Dwight, and a big namaste.

Announcement #2: I've fired all of Disney's writers

Look, I gave them a chance. I called each one of the big guys, personally. I flattered them. I told them they were artists and that artists need to work and that the only thing that matters is the work and all the rest will take care of itself. They went on and on about all this leftie stuff about solidarity. Which is fine and all. I'm an old leftie myself but in this case we're talking about something that's bigger than politics and sentimentality. We're talking about money. Lots of it. Do you have any idea how much we're going to lose if these a-holes put our productions on hold for months on end? Jesus.

So I tried the one thing that has never failed me in any circumstance, ever: I offered them huge amounts of money. I mean like millions. Just to work under fake names, at home in their spare time. Nobody would know. They still balked. So fine. That's when I realized I can write the movies myself. No problem. I may even do some of ABC's TV shows. One thing about Jobso: When I'm in the zone, I can work really friggin fast.

Then, just to be a dick, I called security and had them clean out every office and throw out everything in them -- photographs, personal items, everything. Into the trash. Then I called every last one of those writers and I told them don't even bother coming back when the strike is over because your jobs are gone. They said that's some kind of legal violation because California law says unionized workers can't be fired. I was like, Dude, I'm sorry, but trust me, you can sue me till your balls fall off, but you will never walk through those doors again. If you try to, I will shoot you myself. I will do my best to make sure no one else ever hires you either. So go have fun on your Thanksgiving trip, and enjoy your holidays in December, and then when you get back in January and there's still no work and then it's February and you need to pay your mortgage and your kid's college tuition bill arrives, well, don't come crawling back to me with your hat in your hands because trust me, Sparky, I will take a dump in that hat of yours and put it right back on your head and tell you it's a new shampoo and conditioner. Wait and see. I'll do it.

After that I rounded up any producers and hyphenates and admins who were sympathizers to the strike and I fired them too. You assholes want to play hardball? You picked the wrong guy, believe me.

Announcement: I'm now writing all of Disney's movies

So I'm in London right now but earlier this week I was in LA trying to figure out how to deal with this writers strike. Our execs told me that we can't move forward on any pictures unless we already have a completed script. They say nobody who's in the writers union will work on anything. So I'm like, Fuck the union, let's hire some scabs. They all looked at me like I've got three heads. (Except Iger, who was nodding appreciatively and taking notes.) I said, Hell, I'll go back up to NoCal and pull off the highway in Berkeley and pick up some of those day laborer dudes who are hanging out waiting for work. I'll drive them up to Pixar and put them to work for minimum wage. Why not? You really think they couldn't match the output of the big brains who work on cartoons now?

Then it occurred to me. Why even do that? Why hire anyone when the greatest artist of our time is already on the board of directors and running the company? I'm not a writers union member. And please don't tell me you I couldn't do a better job than the hacks we've got on our writing staff. Do you realize how much we pay those idiots? Plus it'll be fun. It'll be a little change of pace for El Jobso. I can live the life of a movie writer. Sleep late, cruise in around eleven, go out for sushi, have some kind of bullshit meeting in the afternoon, talk about ideas and story arcs, jot down some stuff in a notebook, maybe type down a page or two of a script, then go home. Nice. Even at that pace I figure I'll have all of our backlog finished and ready to go by end of year.

And since I'll now be on staff at Pixar I'm thinking I might do some of the cartoon voices too. Why are we paying these Hollywood actor hacks millions of dollars? I can do funny voices. Just ask anyone who knows me. I'm great at it. Well, problem solved. What's next. Oh, right. The stock price. Not sure what to do on that one but Jerry York says he has some ideas.

Confession: Sometimes I listen to 107.7 The Bone

Fair enough. This is super embarrassing. Because I'm a huge jazz lover and a total aesthete. But sometimes, when I'm driving on 101 or 280 and I'm by myself, I listen to moron rock on 107.7 The Bone. It's the local classic rock station aimed at knuckle-draggers and yet there I was yesterday motoring down the freeway listening to a Lynyrd Skynyrd rock block. I mean I have lots of other choices in my Jobs Mobile, including a terabyte of Pod Storage built into the dashboard and every digital satellite feed in the world. But there I am, rocking out to "Gimme Back My Bullets."

I blame this all on Bike Helmet Girl. Meeting her at long last has just changed my life in some ways that are hard to define. Definitely put a spring in my step. Not that anything has happened, because it hasn't. (Larry says I'm a putz and "not a closer," but he just doesn't understand.) My thing with Bikey is on a different level. It's beyond physical. It's spiritual. We've been doing some intense work and she's really helping me unblock some things and let go of some bad energy. Her whole thing is about energy and flow and listening and perceiving and recognizing where things want to go and then going there with them, rather than fighting the flow. I was telling Jonny about this yesterday when we went for our daily walk around campus. We did this exercise where we sat on the ground and held hands and just felt the energy flowing between us. Totally amazing. Now Jonny wants Bikey to come in and help his team work on their chakras and energy realignment.

Bottom line: I feel young again. It's kind of amazing. Now I must sign off because I just had the most amazing revolutionary idea that is totally going to put a dent in the universe and change the course of human history. I have to rush into work and invent it before I lose the inspiration. Peace out.

Moshe's team dispatched to Asus headquarters

We're trying to figure out who leaked this story about an Apple tablet PC. God help the poor bastards when we find them.

I know what you're wondering. Is this a true rumor, or one of the fake ones we make up to confuse the press? Well, I can't tell you. Could be that I'm sitting here right now posting this blog item on a multitouch tablet PC. Right? I mean it's possible. And maybe it's beautiful and perfect. Or maybe it still needs work and I'm telling the team to start over and fix a few things and who cares if they haven't seen their kids since last Christmas. With Apple, you never know. That's why people love us. And I'd hate to spoil the suspense.

More Leopard hate from the Borg-owned media

See the latest from Mary Jo Creepy of ZDNet, claiming that Leopard is having problems that are as big as Vista's and maybe even bigger. Oh please. Money quote: "Could Leopard go so far as to drive some switchers into Vista’s arms? Sounds crazy, but who knows… If you’re Microsoft — especially a member of the Vista team — there’s no way you can help but gloat." Lady, nobody in their right mind is going to leave Leopard for Vista. Seriously. According to our market research, nobody -- not a single person, ever, in all of history -- has ever switched from OS X to any form of Windows. Just doesn't happen.

Report: Scoble pissed because he didn't get a Google Phone

Poor Scoble. Apparently he's been frantically calling Google and leaving angry messages in the PR department voice mailboxes sounding all pissed off because he wasn't invited to the VaporPhone (tm) announcement yesterdy and demanding that they send him a Google Phone right fucking now because he's very important and influential and if he uses one then the whole world (ie his readership) will want one too and it's really Google's best interests to keep Robert happy and he's totally going to videoblog or podcast about it and he's having lunch today with someone who's very important at one of the major networks and if he had a Google Phone he could show it to them and then who knows how the thing could take off?

Apparently nobody at Google wants to tell Robert that there aren't any actual phones yet. And they love winding the guy up and driving him nuts. So they called him back and told him there are only a very small number available and that unfortunately Robert isn't on the A list but that maybe he could borrow the one that Michael Arrington got. Or Om Malik's. Scoble was screaming as they hung up.

Picasso, my spiritual father

Great article in today's New York Times about a new book on Picasso. See here. Headline: "More on the Career of the Genius Who Boldly Compared Himself to God." (Larry sent me a link to this article and said when he read the headline he thought it was a story about me. What a dick.)

Picasso is described as "an artist so prodigally talented, so daring and so virtuosic that he could reinvent the universe. He was a Nietzschean shaman who regarded art as a mysterious, magical force, offering the possibility of exorcism and transfiguration; a chameleon who effortlessly moved back and forth between Cubism and classicism, irony and sentimentality, cruelty and tenderness; a wily, self-mythologizing sorcerer who inhaled history, ideas and a cornucopia of styles with fierce, promiscuous abandon — all toward the end of exploding conventional ways of looking at the world and remaking that world anew."

And also: "... a mass of contradictions, a savage artist, who was often horribly cruel to his friends like Cocteau but who also 'had a very loyal, if sometimes paradoxical heart.'"

Yeah. I'm sure you get it. No kicker needed.

Report: Ballmer smashing furniture again

So we're not freaking out about the Google VaporPhone but apparently Microsoft is. That is what we're hearing from some of our operatives on the Borg mothership. As you know over the years we've let some of our less-than-vital employees be "recruited" to Redmond so that they can feed us information. Word in this morning is that Ballmer was flipping out yesterday over the Google announcement which is aimed squarely at Windows Mobile. Our spies tell us there is nothing -- nothing -- that drives Monkey Boy around the bend more than Google. First there was all this talk of a Web operating system that makes Windows unnecessary; then talk of a Google PC; then all those free Google desktop applications; now this. Ballmer was screaming about how effing Google can't think of anything effing original so all they can effing do is effing copy what effing Microsoft has already effing done. "I am going to fucking bury these guys, I swear to fucking God! I killed Netscape and I will kill these guys too! God-fucking-dammit I will fucking kill those bastards at Google if it's the last fucking thing I ever do! Kill them! Kill them! Aaaaargh!"

Well, you can see the results above. Our informant tells us that they now have a special conference room adjacent to Monkey Boy's office and it's filled with old stuff that they were going to throw out. They send Uncle Fester there to do his smashing. He calls it his "gym" and refers to the activity as "having a workout." When he's done they throw the stuff out and fill the room back up again. For big days they let him smash old CRT televisions and computer monitors. Yesterday was a five-TV day. Nice.

Mind-blowing refrigerators

You don't believe that a refrigerator can blow your mind and restore a sense of childlike wonder to your life? See here. Trust me, this baby wasn't designed by a consortium. Or an alliance. Or a committee. We had an entire wall of these sent in to our campus for our designers to tear apart and study. It's not as perfect as iPhone, and certainly Jonny and I have had long discussions of a few glaring flaws in certain aspects of the design. Visible screws, for example. But it's damn good. It gives you that little gasp when you pull open the door. That feeling of quality under your fingertips. The sense that this is something that is going to last a long time and give you good service and never let you down.

Will Google's VaporPhone (tm) offer the same satisfying experience? Maybe so, if the planets all line up right and they can get software from one place and hardware from another and bring all the pieces together as a committee. And if it's not too off-putting to have this clusterfuck of vendors loading the thing up with crapware and promoware like a Windows PC and then shoving ads at you all the time. Hey, maybe lightning will strike. Who knows? It's a big market, and growing fast, and there's room for everyone.

Just remember one thing. Google's basic goal in life is to drive the cost of everything in the world to zero -- except the one thing Google sells, which is incredibly overpriced advertising with super high margins that are fed by Google's refusal to share information with partners. Key algorithm for Google, the one that Larry and Sergey should have written dissertations on, boils down to this:

Opacity = profitability.

Maybe there's some kind of curve or calculus thing where profits go up exponentially in relation to opacity when plotted over time or combined with pious bullshit about "Don't be evil" or whatever. It's something that mathlexics like myself can't understand.

Anyway. What Google sells is ads. That's their rocket fuel. And not just any old ads, but really annoying, butt-ugly little text ads. That's the one market they hope will survive even as everything else becomes free. So let that sink in for a second. Think through the implications for Google's partners and its customers. Imagine the world that Google would create for us if Google could have its way and run the entire planet. Is that a world you want to live in?

It's not a phone, it's an alliance

So I know Google's stock is popping and everyone thinks they're absolutely on fire and there are all these stories about how the Google Phone is a threat to iPhone but let me tell you something. We're not scared about this Google phone platform. First of all, it's aimed at Windows Mobile. Second of all, alliances never work. The Open Handset Alliance is a joke, but it's classic Google, and the frothy foaming at the mouth response in the stock market is classic Wall Street. Announce some big piece of unfinished stuff that may or may not ever be this or that or whatever. Get loads of other idiots on board to say they're going to support this big piece of mish-mash code or platform or apps or whatever. The stock goes up even though they haven't sold any product and won't for almost another year.

As for the consortium partners, of course right now they're all pretending to go along, because what the hell, they get their names into the press release as being associated with Google and who cares if anything ever comes of it? It's called releaseware. Do you really think all those other companies are really going to come out with any products? You really think they're just dying to help Google come into their market and scoop up all the money for itself?

The Journal kind of nails the problem with this story. Money quote: Tech consortia for decades have been notorious for failing to live up to their promise. Google Director of Mobile Platforms Andy Rubin acknowledged the troubled history of previous consortia, but said that Android was different because "we're actually releasing in one week this software."

But the issue isn't about when the software ships. Consortia don't work because nobody can ever agree on anything and everyone always wants to push the group in ways that advantage themselves and disadvantage everyone else. Reason #2 -- the only companies that join consortia are the ones who are too stupid or shitty to make a great product on their own. It's like, Hey, we've got forty spazzo companies that can't fuck their way out of a paper bag; let's put them all together and maybe they'll magically become some kind of big bad powerhouse. More likely it'll just be some scary ass Frankenstein monster, walking around drooling and tripping over its own tongue.

Think of what a customer wants. When you're redoing your kitchen, and you're choosing appliances, do you go out looking for some consortium devoted to food temperature management and environmental control technology? No. You go looking for a refrigerator. And you look for the coolest, best-looking, best-designed refrigerator, made by a company that put loads of effort and genius into making something mindblowing. That's why iPhone has taken off. Because it's beautiful. It's amazing. It works. It restores a sense of childlike wonder to people's lives. It wasn't made by a consortium. It couldn't be created by a committee. It is the product of one vision, one man, one genius -- that would be me -- with, to be sure, a bit of help from a few other people who played minor roles.

Finally, has anyone else noticed the way Google is kind of desperately grasping at straws lately? They spend years trying to do something other than search and nothing works. Then, despite their big brains and IQ tests, they get totally blindsided by Facebook and have to gin up this ridiculous OpenSocial thing. Just like with this phone thing, they round up all the losers in that social networking space to form some dumbass alliance. You know how it looks? It looks weak. Companies don't form alliances and consortia when they're winning. Also, whenever you see companies start talking about being "open," it means they're getting their ass kicked. You think Google will be forming an OpenSearch alliance any time soon, to help also-rans in search get a share of the spoils? Me neither.

Anyway, Google, good luck with Operation OpenHandjob, or OpenCircleJerk, or whatever you're calling it. I'm sure glad you'll be sitting in the middle, playing pivot man. Meanwhile we'll just keep doing our little thing with the iPhone, which as you may have heard is doing pretty well these days. By the time you hit the market next year we'll have already blown many minds all over again at MacWorld in January and we'll be even more miles ahead of you. Seriously. You won't believe what Jobso and his little elves are baking up for you. That's all I can say for now. Much love. Namaste. Peace out.

This Hollywood writers strike cracks me up

Hollywood writers are due to go on strike unless a last-minute move saves the day. It's either sad or funny, I can't decide. The overpaid spoiled morons who write all the shit that gets blasted out onto the TV networks want even more money for their piles of shit. What makes it beautiful is that the guys on the other side of the fight are even more overpaid and more moronic and more full of crap than the writers. It's like watching two guys you really despise get into a barfight, and you don't know which one you want to win and ultimately you just hope they both beat the daylights out of each other.

You must admit it's fun watching two groups of untalented dopes fighting over money. I mean look at the Fall 2007 TV schedule. Does anyone really believe that the world will suffer if this pile of absolute shit all goes on hiatus? If all of network TV vanished from existence tomorrow morning would it make a difference? I mean come on. Deal or No Deal? Retards guessing about briefcases? Or dancing with the fucking stars? How did Tom Bergeron ever get on TV and why is he still there?

Sure, there are a few exceptions. The Simpsons. Thirty Rock. The Office. But even the good stuff is forced to be somewhat retarded by the strictures of the network system. Ever seen the original Office, the one made in England? Way better than the one on NBC. Let's face it. Network TV blows. The system blows. The business model blows. The consumer experience blows. But worst of all the content blows. What's more, the system is set up in such a way that it pretty much requires the content to blow.

Meanwhile all the good stuff is happening off the network grid. There's this huge pool of young smart funny talent who want nothing to do with networks and are just rolling their own. Right now they're not getting paid much because the bulk of the frigtarded audience just sits there in front of the network boob tube watching moronic former boy band members trying to do ballroom dancing. It's just inertia. The viewers do what they've always done.

But that's changing. The networks know it. The frigtards will get old and die and the people who are young kids today are not even going to pay attention to the networks. That's why the networks are trying to push into new media. (Not that it will work. The old guys don't have the right stuff in their DNA. Look at NBC flailing around with its idiotic download plans.) Better yet, even as the networks are making their feeble attempts at figuring out the InterWebs, they're now being held back and hampered by their own writers. Great move, retards! Fight the change!

I guess we can't blame these writers. They've all got big stupid houses in Los Angeles and Hawaii, plus Porsches and Land Rovers and way more money than they ever deserved and they got it all for producing what history will view as probably the worst bulk of absolute fecal matter that has ever been passed off onto the world. Honestly these guys have run the biggest scam I've ever seen. Now they're clinging to that fat stupid system that has served them so well.

Writers, listen to me. I mean this from the depths of my Jobsian heart. Thank you. By clinging to your networks and hampering their efforts, you're helping the whole ship sink faster. You're making my job easier. So keep it up! Unionize, band together, lock arms in your lifeboats. For those of us on the other side of this battle, this is all great news.

Up here in Silicon Valley we are busy building the next system and we are laughing our asses off at you guys. We all know you're going away. It's only a matter of time. You're latched on to a dying system like so many fat babies sucking on so many big fat Hollywood fake tits. Now the tits are drying up. That's what this strike is really all about. It's the beginning of the death throes of the network system. At some subconscious level you clueless fuckwits have begun to realize that the future has nothing to do with the system to which you're attached.

Obtain a clue, people. You're sitting there fighting over residuals and terms of this and that when what you should be doing is leaving the system altogether and helping to build the next one. But you can't do that because you can't get off the heroin of network money. You're hooked to a lifestyle. For all your groovy talk and hip little soul patch beards, you're the most risk-averse people in the world. You're lifers. I mean, you belong to a fucking union! How fucked up and 20th century is that?

Listen, Hollywood TV writers. For fifty years you've had a nice little gig going for yourselves. You've unionized and set up all these stupid rules and you've created a closed-off little club and you've done all you could to keep other people out of the club so you could make ridiculous amounts of money just for pumping out piles of shit content. Now guess what? The Internet blows that up. The Internet is anarchy. There's no writers guild. There's no limit on the number of channels. The writers and actors and directors who've been shut out of your club are creating their own alternate universe. They don't want to be in your club. Worse yet for you, they don't want you in their club, either. They don't need you. They don't give a shit about what you do. They view you as a bunch old, fat, stupid, overpaid hacks. Which you are.

Well, good luck with that strike, assholes. And seriously, thanks. I mean it.

Caption contest

I know. Fish in a barrel. Oh well. I have to admit I'm kind of pissed at the Clintons. First Hillary swooped in and spoke at Microsoft the same day I was there, a few hours ahead of me. Then yesterday Bill was in San Francisco doing readings in between my two appearances. Typical Clintstone tactics, trying to suck up all the oxygen and steal the media attention from a potential rival. From what Acid Gurl tells me the Clintons are terrified of a Jobs-Jobs candidacy.

Anyway, have fun. Much love to Russ for the photo.

First they copy our phone. Now Google is copying our slogans.

Much love to Tom for alerting us to this infringement. See here. Andy Rubin, ex-Apple guy and now Google guy running the Google phone project, is profiled in the New York Times, and a pal of his describes Andy's philosophy this way: “It’s the classic Rubin thing: You do it for the sake of doing it and because it’s cool, and as a result there’s a childlike innocence about it.” Childlike innocence? Exsqueeze me? Google, you are dancing dangerously close to a trademarked Apple slogan, and you need to start watching yourself.

Which raises a point that I'd like address about this Google phone. Squirrel Boy figures he can get away with this shit because he's on my board and we're supposed to be buddies. Or he figures he can just sweet-talk me and blow sunshine up my butt and I won't figure out that he's trying to stab me in the back. Worse yet, I think he figures I'll hold my punches because he and Jerry York saved my ass on the options backdating thing by masterminding our internal investigation. He thinks he's got me by the short hairs because he knows where all the bodies are buried, so to speak. Well to hell with that. Squirrel Boy wants war, he'll get a war. I don't care if he's on my board. I don't care if we're supposed to be friends. First of all, we're not friends. I don't have any friends. Second of all, I'm the original back-stabbing buddy-fucker. Ask Woz. Or Fred. Mark my words. By this time next year Eric is going to be under a bus; and I'll be behind the wheel, laughing my evil laugh.

Notes from the tour

Sorry for the slow blogging pace but the Jobso World Tour is just taking its toll on me. Throngs of adoring fans, hordes of autograph seekers. It's insane. No time to eat, hardly any sleep. To paraphrase Dylan, I'm living on reds, vitamin C and cocaine. Everything's a blur.

But last night something happened that was so special and amazing that I had to share it with you. (And yes, I did plagiarize that last sentence from Penthouse Forum.) I had an appearance at a bookstore in the Castro in San Francisco (did you know that there's a magazine called "Butt"? I didn't) and it turned into a Internet celeb-fest, with glamour couple Ryan Block and Veronica Belmont walking in after I'd started talking. I recognized Veronica right away. I had to stop -- for a moment I could not speak. If it weren't for the nitroglycerin tablets that I keep in my pocket at all time, I might have keeled over. How do I describe the effect she has on me? Folks, Veronica Belmont is beautiful on Internet TV, but that is nothing compared to how she looks in person. She friggin glows. She's incandescent. Ryan, standing beside her, still seems to have no idea that their relationship is doomed.


But this wasn't even the highlight. Fasten your seatbelts for this one. Also in the crowd was Bike Helmet Girl. The real one. She wasn't wearing her bike helmet, but she did have the same shoulder bag as in the photo. She turns out to be spectacular. Like off the charts. Like incredibly gorgeous, way more so than in photos, and really, really super funny. And brainy. Like a really classic intellectual type chick. Really dry sense of humor. On top of all that she's a world-class dancer and has that dancer's body and a super straight back and great posture. Poor helpless old man that I am, I was trembling. Couldn't talk. Tongue-tied. Nervous, sweating. I mean she's like the ultimate dream woman. Worse, she wants nothing to do with me. Says she's done with married men. And gay men. (I was like, What, you've met Larry too?) Says she has the same feelings for me that I do for her but she's not going to act on them. Great. Friggin great. What is it about these women and their consciences?

Well all I can say is that Bike Helmet Girl stayed around to the bitter end of the reading, and we left the bookstore together in a cab. The rest of the night involved people and places that I'm not at liberty to discuss. As for Bikey, more on this one as it develops. If it develops. Which I guess it won't. Or something. Peace out.

Borg funds hate study on Leopard

See this disgusting piece in eWeek (a Microsoft-owned publication) saying that Leopard has security problems. Money quote: "The short answer is the Leopard firewall is ... ugly and a step backwards from 10.4," says some jackass. I told Katie that from now on we do not talk to eWeek. She informed we me haven't ever spoken to eWeek; all we've ever done is let our PR robot avatars read our spin scripts. Too bad, eWeek. Now you're not even going to get the robots. Your bad.

One more thing. I just want you to know something. Stuff like this, stories like this -- it hurts. Okay? It hurts me personally. I know people don't realize how software gets created. They think it just falls out of the sky or something. They don't realize all the people who work so hard for so many years to create something really amazing. And then in five minutes some dipshit from eWeek takes a crap on it. I am telling you this because there are some really incredible human beings who gave up big parts of their lives to make Leopard a reality. As lead developer and chief Leopard software architect, I'm one of them. I gave up more than anyone, probably. And did most of the coding myself. Not the actual code because I don't actually know how to write code. But I wrote a kind of architectural Jobsian meta-code just by hand, in plain English, that the programmers could turn into computer language or whatever. Spent huge amounts of time on this. Drawing and redrawing. Lines, arrows, little commands. Basically all the high-value-add stuff. So thanks, eWeek. Thanks for the cheap shot. You tiny, tiny people.

Menlo Park was off the friggin hook

They're calling it WozStock and writing it up in the history books. You just had to be there. Police estimate the crowd was about fifty thousand people, with loads of peyote and mushrooms and four-way blotter and yet not a single arrest. Zero. Total peace and harmony. But the crowds! I mean El Camino Real was closed, man! And yet everyone had plenty to eat, since someone brought three sticks of French bread and two fishes and I managed to turn it into enough food for everyone. Three kids were born and a half dozen marriages performed. In the photo above that's TJ Bunnell, our head of advertising, marrying the powerfully hypnotic Amber McCauley of PR and her boyfriend Otis Van Adderly who works in shipping. Incredible. Thirty years after we launched, this company just continues to amaze me with its outpouring of love and affection and the real desire of its employees to make the world a better place. I love you all. Not as much as I love myself, but almost. I mean really, really close. Namaste.

Also: For those of you who don't have the good fortune to live here in the Valley and attend off-the-hook events like this, there's video from the event flying around on the Internet. Talk about must-see TV. Enjoy.

I'm going into seclusion

I'll be going dark until my big appearance with Woz in Menlo Park tonight. I'll be huddling with my advisors, working on my presentation, doing my elocution exercises and practicing saying "Boom" a thousand times until I get it just right. We've built an exact replica of Kepler's bookstore in a spare building on the Apple campus, and I'll be rehearsing for much of the day. I'm still trying to get my entrance perfect. I open the curtain, and I step out -- but do I go right foot first, or left foot? It's exactly seventeen paces from the curtain to the lectern. I've tried both ways and neither one feels right. We're bringing in a stage-walking consultant to help with this. Our gesture consultant knows him and says he's fantastic. He's worked with lots of celebrity CEOs to get that natural stride, the one that says, Hey, I'm here, I'm important, and I want you to look at me, but I'm not going to let you know that I want you to look at me, in fact I'm going to act like I don't want you to look at me, or that I don't care whether you look at me or not because I'm just so huge and important that it doesn't matter whether anyone ever looks at me, even though everyone always does.

After rehearsal I'll be doing some yoga and meditation. Then I've got my colorist coming in to work on my beard and hair until I get the perfect salt-and-pepper ratio.

Meanwhile we've got a crew going over to Kepler's to tape out my spots on the floor and hang black curtains and a giant screen that will have a fifty-foot letter X projected on it behind me. Adding to the confusion, we're also haggling with the folks at HBO who are trying to get in to tape the footage for a special. Well, it'll be my first public appearance with Woz in about twenty years so I guess it's kind of a historic occasion in the Valley and worth putting on film.

See you all there, I hope. Much love. Peace out. Namaste. I honor the place where your spirit and mine become one -- in this case, at Kepler's bookstore on El Camino Real in Menlo Park.

News of the lame: MySpace guy is lying about his age.

Much love to dear reader Kevin for tipping us off to this one. See this story from Newsweek and this one from TechCrunch (which broke the story first) both claiming that MySpace founder Tom Anderson claims to be 32 when he's really 37. This, apparently, so he can look all young and hip and Web 2.0. Or meet young chicks. Nobody's sure which. I mean just look at the guy. So trying to be cool, right? And he totally wants to meet you at the Cheesecake Factory at the mall but don't tell your parents. Ugh.

On the other hand, this kind of stuff has been going on in the Valley for as long as I can remember. Larry Ellison claims he's 63 but the truth is he was born in the 18th century and stays alive by feasting on the blood of young virgins. I mean, look at the friggin guy. So totally a vampire that it's not even funny. Ever seen his reflection in a mirror? Neither has he. Anne Rice met him at a party one time and she ran out of the room. I'm not making that up. (Photo: Burt Hammer, Tiger Beat.)