I'm told there is some kind of large sporting event taking place this weekend

I was just down in Caffe Mac eating some sushi with my own special wasabi that is only available to me and not served to anyone else in the entire company -- I just love eating it in public and reminding the proles how special I am -- and I noticed that many of the proles seemed to be talking about some big sporting competition that will happen in the next few days. Football, apparently. I don't much care for the game -- I'm more into European sports like cycling and cross-country skiing, and I still think it's outrageous that we don't have tai chi on television in this country the way they do in every country in Asia -- but after lunch I was talking to Phil Schiller and he says this big battle of steroid-fueled mutants will draw a huge audience and it represents an enormous advertising opportunity and a chance to get our message to millions of moronic imbeciles who will very likely be drunk and easily persuaded into buying our products.

I don't know. I love the idea of having lots of stupid people gathered in one place at the same time, but didn't we just do that? I mean when was Macworld? A couple weeks ago? Plus I really don't see the average yahoo being all exicted by the beauty of MacBook Air. I'm taking wait-and-see on it at this point.

My old back injury is flaring up again, and it's all Hillary Clinton's fault

I've been a little out of it lately. An old back injury has flared up and I've been in incredible pain despite thrice-a-day yoga workouts with Jony Ive (above) and Connie, our yoga instructor. Milton, my herbalist and chiropractic practitioner, checked me out this morning and says he thinks it's a slipped disc, but Jeanie Falcone, my karmic repatterning journeywork therapist, says it's a response to some of the bad vibes stirred up by the recent hostilities in the Democratic primary.

Mostly it's been the race-baiting by the Clintstones which really upsets me because I have this huge personal commitment to diversity plus conflict in general really upsets me because I'm super Zen and super sensitive and Jeanie says I shouldn't even be paying attention to politics because it's all about negative energy and it drains my chi. She's right, but I got so drawn in by Obama and then so upset by what the Clintstones are doing to him and I know I shouldn't watch the debate tonight but I'm going to anyway because I won't be able to stay away.

Anyway this has all resulted in some incredible spasms in my lower back which left me unable to work for these past few days. My apologies.

Ta very much, now hand over more money, please

Regarding this U2 smash-and-grab attempt, please consider the following:

"How to Dismantle an Atom Bomb" was released in 2004. In 2002 they did a greatest hits album and before that, in 2000, was "All That You Can't Leave Behind." Before that was a greatest hits album in 1998 and before that was "Pop" which was recorded in 1996 and released in 1997. So in the past 12 years they've done two albums. And nothing since 2004.

Sure there's the 3-D movie, some reissues and remasters. And, oh right, they're "working on new material." Sure they are. If you count pints of Guinness as "new material," because that's the only thing they're working on, believe me. That and groupies.

So let's face it. They're coasting. They've got piles of money, houses all over the world, private jets, everything they could ever need and a lot that they don't, and now they want more. More, more, more. Now that's a song I'd like to hear them sing. Maybe it could be the title of their next album. Or gimme gimme gimme.

Bono's manager says Bono does all the work and I get all the money. Frankly I don't have a problem with that arrangement.

Basically Paul McGuinness (above, right) is calling me a thief. It's been all over the news. He gave a big speech at some conference in Cannes. See one story about it here. Money quote: "McGuinness challenged Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple, to 'apply his ingenuity' to solving the music industry crisis. ... `These are very clever people and a lot of fun to work with,' McGuinness said about the technology and Internet community in Silicon Valley. `But they've been extremely socially irresponsible.'"

You can see the full text of his speech here.

Now look. I know Paul McGuinness. I've done business with him. He loves to tell everyone the story of how we sat down and made a deal on the back of a napkin. In one version of it he says that when he followed up a few weeks later I tried to change the terms and give myself a bigger slice but he whipped out his napkin and I was busted.

Whatever. I have no recollection of any such meeting. I will tell you that Paul was out in the Valley recently sniffing around and taking meetings and trying to figure out how this whole Interwebs thing works and where the money goes. I will also tell you that the Irish have a term called "a cute hoor" and Paul is definitely a prime example. Note, for example, that he says it's not that U2 wants more money -- it's that I am being socially irresponsible. My goodness. Really?

The fact is that by the age of twelve your average Northsider from Dublin has forgotten more ways to skin you on a deal than any of us regular folks will ever know. And this speech by Paul McGuinness is a classic Northsider ploy. They play the victim. They dance around crying poor and moaning about the dole and the famine and meanwhile they're cleaning out your pockets. Luckily for us the whole thing is blowing up in their faces and they're getting savaged in the blogosphere.

What Paul needs to understand is that bands, like companies, have a normal lifespan and that U2 has gone well past its sell-by date. That's just the reality here. Because let's be honest. The truth is that Bono isn't much of a singer, and Edge isn't much of a guitarist, and Larry and Adam stopped getting better on their instruments back in about 1983. So these are four guys with a little bit of talent who got extremely lucky and were extremely shrewd and have milked their modest abilities for well more than they were ever worth.

Fine. Good for them. I'm happy for them. But to say that Apple is taking advantage of them is just ridiculous. Do you have any idea how hard it is to set up a store like iTunes? Or to design and build iPods? Does Paul McGuinness know that? Does he realize how many hundreds or even thousands of people are involved in making that whole system work correctly, from end to end? All the progammers and designers and engineers? All the user interface people? Not to mention the business people who cut the deals and interface with the talent and keep all the contracts up to date?

All of those people have to eat. None of them is getting rich. Well, except me. And maybe a few top guys right underneath me. But basically you've got thousands of hardworking people just making an honest living keeping this whole Internet distribution model alive and running.

Then you've got four retards from Dublin and their manager. Because ask yourself this. How much work do you think really went into writing any of those songs? Take it from me, I've hung out with Bono and the other guys and I've seen them when they're drunk and I've heard them tell the stories. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" was written in ninety minutes when they were fucking around in their little rehearsal space. Started out with a drum beat, then some bass, then Edge threw some bullshit plink-plink guitar on it and Bono started shouting whatever came into his head. "Boy" and "October" were all just old stuff they'd written when they were in high school.

The entire "Atom Bomb" album took about a month from start to finish. I know because I was there when they were slapping it together. But now they think they aren't getting paid enough. Well, I've got an idea. Maybe U2 could just make their own Internet, with their own routers and operating system, and they could code up their own store, and build their own iPods, and keep all the money for themselves. I think I'll call Paul McGuinness right now and suggest that.

A picture is worth ... well, you know

Much love to dear reader Brinke who sent in this photo and swears it's genuine, not Photoshopped.

Some dude thinks he can reverse engineer my amazing keynote style

See this appalling story from BusinessWeek in which some guy says he's identified the 10 key things that make my speeches so amazing. He says frigtards can simply apply these 10 lessons and start giving speeches just like mine. Well, not so fast, there, frigtards. First of all, Mark Zuckerberg has been trying for years, and he's even hired my trainers and consultants, and he still can't do it. Also, the list provided in the article leaves out some really important stuff, like the high colonics, the meditation, the beard colorist, the neuro-linguistic programming trigger words and the hypnosis. Yeah. But other than that he's pretty close.

OLPC freetards can't handle logistics

Apparently the big brains running OLPC can't manage to ship the machines on time and now people like the editor of PC World are bitching because their precious XO machines still haven't arrived a mere three months after they placed their orders. Which means, of course, that the people complaining are racists. And they hate kids. And they hate freedom. And they're probably getting paid by Intel and Microsoft.

Because, in the mindset of the freetard, the problem with these delayed shipments isn't OLPC. In fact, OLPC's super-smart MIT logistics and supply chain experts have totally reinvented the entire concept of how a supply chain and distribution network operates. It's another one of the huge advances that this OLPC project represents.

The problem is just that Western customers are accustomed to doing things in a certain way and they have a set of built-in biases which lead them to believe that getting a product very quickly after you've ordered it is a sign of competence. In fact that "quick order" is a sign of wastefulness because it means the manufacturer has stocked product in warehouses and invested lots of unnecessary effort in things like tracking software and shipping labels and transportation by sea, air and land. OLPC has eliminated almost all of those unnecessary steps.

Negroponte and his team have offered to share their new distribution model with Intel and others but naturally the commercial computer vendors believe they know best. Typical.

About this "Hang in there" memo

So maybe you've heard about this memo to Apple employees that went out under my name a few days ago in which I told everyone to stay cool about the stock slump and "hang in there." Now look. It's true we've lost a lot of market value. But this totally was not my memo. Katie wrote it. She says it's important because a lot of you are out there whining about your stock portfolios getting hammered. Well here's the thing. I am personally down almost $400 million. Do you hear me crying about it? No. You do not. Do you know why? Because I have completely soundproof walls around my office. You can't hear me crying, or kicking and screaming, or throwing tantrums, or threatening to sue people or fire people. You can't hear anything. But the truth is, if this thing gets much worse I'm going out looking for people to blame. Heads will roll, ladies and gentlemen. Trust me on that.

Dear readers, she MUST be stopped

Much love to our Art Director, Jason, for this wonderful bit of Photoshop work. There's a week to go until Super Tuesday and I am not exaggerating when I say this to you -- the future of our nation hangs in the balance. I mean I never thought I'd agree with anything Teddy Kennedy said or did, but today it happened. The big moron somehow got his blood alcohol level down to three times the legal limit and pulled himself out of his perma-coma long enough to stand up and give a speech endorsing my good friend Barry Obama. Unfortunately, the polls still show the She-Beast leading Barry in most of the big important states. Which is why I'm now pulling out the trump card, the one I did not want to play but now feel I must: Apple employees and Apple faithful, I'm ordering you to vote for Obama. Okay? It's important. If you need to know more about why I'm doing this, see this article which says Hillary v. Obama is analogous to Microsoft v. Apple. That's right. Obama is Apple. He's one of us.

How to turn your home into an Apple store

To those of you who already have Mac museums in your basement, this is your next logical step. David Pogue already has started work on his.

More anti-Mac propaganda

Apple faithful, this story has me so mad I'm shaking. It's yet more of the same old anti-Mac stuff about how people who use Macs are these stuck-up snobs who are "more assured of their superiority, less modest and more open than the general population."

Look. Just because we want a machine that just works, and doesn't crash, and oh, by the way, happens to look good too; and just because we're willing and able to pay a little bit more to obtain this high-quality machine -- somehow this makes us smug and superior? Well, it's always the same old story, folks. You appreciate something that's a little bit better, people say you're a snob.

We're lodging a formal complaint with the outfit that conducted the study.

MacBook Paper

Much love to dear reader John and TUAW for this one. I know I'll be first in line to buy one.

We found some of those missing iPhones

See here. Some dopes in New York stole 300 of them and sold them on the black market. Now we just need to account for the other 669,700 units. We're on it. One place we're looking: Vietnam. They're selling unlocked authentic iPhones all over Asia.

Bono still coasting on my genius

See here. He had a big meeting with the Emperor of Japan, and he gave the guy a red iPod. Gates was there too, along with Tony Blair. I try to imagine those three buffoons zipping around the globe together, like some kind of band of lame-ass superheroes. Gives me the willies.

Randall Stross dares to disagree with me

See this story from the New York Times where Randall cites my recent quote dismissing the Amazon Kindle and then says I'm wrong. My take is that Kindle is a pointless product because nobody reads anymore. Randall says I've got my head up my ass because the book industry does $15 billion a year in the United States on sales of 408 million books. He says the Kindle, or something like it, will do to the book business what iPod did to the music business. Well, let's check and see how Kindle is doing a year from now. My bet is they won't even be selling it anymore.

Caption contest

Much love to Brett for sending in a link to this photo. What the heck are these dudes discussing? Could they be comparing an iMac to the OLPC XO machine? Have fun, Crankers.

Meredith Vieira licks my three-pound wonder unit

Much love to the many readers who have sent in this lovefest on the MacBook Air from the Today show. In case you're wondering, yes, Meredith and I go way back. And yes, we dated a couple times, back in the Eighties. And yes, she wanted to jump me, but I passed. Nevertheless, every once in a while she still drunk-dials me, looking for action. Last week at MacWorld she booty-texted me from the St. Regis at 1 in the morning. Crazy. But I love her. I really do.

Negroponte blasts Bono's Red campaign

Money quote from this story about the Beastmaster's "creative capitalism" idea and his involvement with Bono's Red campaign: "To date, Red has provided $50 million to a global fund for treating AIDS and malaria, and nearly 2 million people in Africa are receiving `life-saving' drugs today, Gates said."

Negroponte's response? He's furious because that $50 million could have been used to buy OLPC's XO laptops, and he's really pissed that Gates is getting involved with Bono instead of focusing all his attention on OLPC. Says the Double-N: "Fighting AIDS and malaria is all well and good, but what is the point of curing diseases if children can't learn about the world and explore the Internet? A lot of people just have their priorities backwards. If the children had laptops they could do the research and cure AIDS and malaria by themselves. People are just stuck in the same old way of thinking. Which is a pity, honestly."

Obama kicking ass again. Hooray.

Just talked to Barry and he says he's walking on air after pimp-slapping Hillary in South Carolina today. He got 55% of the vote, twice what Hillary got. See here. We're doing some drinking and dancing at the Jobs Pod this evening. Now the question is whether Bill Clinton's disgusting attempts to paint Obama as the "black candidate" (in the latest case by comparing him to Jesse Jackson) will hurt Obama in other states. Personally I think Obama transcends race and that Bill's tactics will blow up in his face. I also don't think people are as racist as Bill seems to believe they are. But maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part. One good sign is that Hillary now is back-pedaling and saying Bubba went too far in attacking Obama. Nice to see the Clintons looking a little scared and disorganized, isn't it?

Dems shocked -- shocked! -- to discover Bill Clinton is a bastard.

As you know, I've never liked the Clintstones. And as a committed lifelong super liberal I was stunned and saddened by the way the Democratic party establishment circled the wagons and people like Sidney Blumenthal, Lanny Davis, James Carville and Paul Begala (photo above) bent themselves into pretzels to defend Bill during the Lewinsky thing and swallowed his lies and looked the other way when he and Hellary smeared Monica Lewinsky and all the other women Bill had abused over the years.

But is it not kind of hilarious to see the Democratics huffing and puffing about Bill now that he's going after one of their own? Like the radio talk show host who's fuming because he says Bill Clinton a liar and an embarrassment. Or check out this story where John Kerry says Bill does not have a right to "abuse the truth" which is Kerry's way of calling Bill a liar except poor old Kerry is such a pussy that he's just physically incapable of ever saying anything that directly. (Which is why the Clintons just laugh at him right to his face.) Then there's today's gem from Bob Herbert in the Times where he says the Clintons are engaging in "slimy maneuvers" and "lowlife tactics." Who knew? Slimy lowlife politics from the Clintons? Shocking! Herbert, to his credit, was blasting the Clintons back in 1998.

But still. Come on. Folks, are you just now realizing who the Clintons are and what they're all about? If so, well, better late than never. And God bless Obama for finally making this all clear for the frigtards. Sadly, the truth may still not do any good. Even worse, wait and see what happens if Hellary gets the nomination. You think Kerry will stand up to her then? Nope. He'll fall right in line behind her. They all will. Which is exactly what the Clintons are counting on.

So we're missing a few hundred thousand iPhones. What's the big deal?

So this dude on Wall Street named Toni Sacconaghi is out playing Sherlock Holmes and suggesting that the "4 million iPhones sold" figure that I touted at Macworld is bullshit. See the Fortune story about this here.

Toni reckons AT&T has only activated 2 million phones, and we've sold 350,000 in Europe and maybe we've sold 750,000 to people who unlocked them and didn't activate on AT&T, which leaves 670,000 iPhones that we can't account for. So he has got out his pipe and funny hat and is scouring the globe trying to find the missing iPhones.

Apple faithful, trust me on this. The phones are not lost. Okay? I just saw them, like, I don't know, last week. Or was it just before Macworld? Tim Cook is trying to find the paperwork because he says he knows we shipped them and he can totally remember seeing the invoices but now he can't remember where he put them but he swears they're around here someplace. Ja'Red is on the job too.

All joking aside, let me tell you what this is really all about. Toni Sacconaghi thinks our stock is overpriced. He's trying to knock down the shares so his predictions will come true. Probably there are some shorts in the market who are spreading this stuff too. And it's working. We're down to $133. They'd like to drive it down even more. I know what you're wondering. Why do they hate us? Well, it's the old story. They hate us for our freedom. They hate us because we're so good, and our goodness drives them insane with jealousy.

As for all these rumors about how demand for iPhone isn't as strong as we'd like and thousands of iPhones are all sitting in a warehouse because there's no sell-through because the fanboys and early adopters have already early adopted and there's no one buying them anymore and it's not really a mainstream product? Please. How would we even do that? Like maybe we'd tell our European carriers that if they want to win the iPhone franchise they have to pre-order hundreds of thousands of units and stick them in a warehouse so we can notch them up as sold and recognize the revenue now even though the carriers haven't sold them through to customers and might never sell them? Really? You really think we'd do that? You think we'd set ourselves up for that kind of catastrophe? Come on. Be real.

The truth is, there is phenomenal demand for iPhone. We can't make them fast enough. In fact iPhone is the strongest selling product of any kind ever introduced ever in all of history, bar none. I mean, it's a phone, a Web browser and a music player, all in one device. People said that couldn't be done. Then we did it. We're still super excited about that. We're just super excited about iPhone and we're totally excited that the rest of the world shares our excitement. Because that's exciting. And we love excitement. It's what we're about. We're an exciting company. And that's really exciting.

I know what you're thinking. Why not just break out the numbers and share more information and tell Toni Sacconaghi and his pals on Wall Street exactly where all the iPhones are? Well, we're not going to do that. We're not going to break out any numbers or share any more information on this topic or try to explain how we arrived at the 4 million figure. We're just not going to do it, so stop asking. Mostly because we're just so busy making these darn iPhones and we can't take time away from that. Plus we're also developing the Next Big Thing which is totally so amazing and you are not even going to believe it and I'm sorry but we just don't have time to stop doing that amazing Nobel-quality work to mop up a few crumbs for the bastards on Wall Street. I'm sorry, but it's beneath us. It just is. And don't trot out the old thing about shareholders having a right to know, blah blah. That's bullshit. It's my company, and if you don't like the way I run it, sell your fucking shares. Okay? We straight on that?

Anyway you're just going to have to take my word for it on this iPhone thing. Just like with the options backdating thing. We did our own investigation, and we turned up no wrongdoing. Okay? So trust us. We're the good guys. We're the ones who are saving the world from Microsoft. If you want to be angry, get angry at them. Have you seen our ads about Vista? Come on, people. Focus.

For those of you who really need some extra help swallowing this, just gaze into the hypno-image above and remember our mantra: Microsoft bad, Apple good. Microsoft liars, Apple honest. Microsoft monopoly, Apple freedom. Microsoft secretive, Apple open.

Feel better? Me too. Peace.

If you're going to leave, leave. But don't go around bitching about us.

See this sad blog post where an engineer who just left Apple after 16 years says he doesn't like the way we manage our public image. Money quote: "Ever since the return of Steve Jobs, the company has been pretty maniacal about micro-managing its visible face, to make it as smooth and featureless as an iPod’s backside. (In my darker moments I’ve compared it to the brutal whiteness of “THX-1138”.) It’s deeply ironic: For a company that famously celebrates individuality and Thinking Different, Apple has in the past decade kept its image remarkably impersonal."

Fear not. Moshe has been dispatched.

Goatberg smackdown on MacBook Air

See here. Gist of Walt's article: Yes the Air is sleek and beautiful, but it lacks features most road warriors want, like an optical drive, removable battery and more USB ports. Money quote: "If you rely on spare batteries, expect the usual array of ports, or like to play DVDs on planes, this isn't the computer to buy."

Fair enough. Walt is pissed because we didn't bring him in early on this one, and he only got to see the machine a few days ago.

As for the "lack of features" complaint, all I can say is you should have seen the machine I wanted to build. There were zero USB ports. Zero anything on the outside, actually. Also zero storage. The screen was virtual, and the keyboard was a hologram that floated in the air. All you had was a microprocessor and some RAM and a copy of OS X stuffed into a gorgeous little brushed aluminum case the size of a matchbox with a tiny projector to shoot out the virtual screen. Weight: One ounce. Our engineers said it couldn't be done. Needless to say those guys are now gone, and a new team is working on it. We'll get it done. Trust me.

Pope blasts media in pathetic attempt to boost his own pageviews

Well it's the oldest trick in the book. Want to get some attention? Bash the media. They'll all come running. Which is exactly what the pope is doing. See here. Pope Benedict XVIVIXXXMFCL has gone on a trolling expedition and issued a fatwa [shurely "essay"? ed.] on the press, under the title, "The Media: At the Crossroads between Self-Promotion and Service." Pope says of the media that "in order to attract listeners and increase the size of audiences, it does not hesitate at times to have recourse to vulgarity and violence, and to overstep the mark."

Seriously? The Roman Catholic Church, sponsor of the Inquisition and weekly distributor of flesh and blood to millions worldwide, is wringing its hands about violence? Really? And they're also concerned about vulgarity? Really? Have you seen this dude's classy red shoes? For that matter, have you ever seen the Vatican? Or St. Peter's? These are the people who are lecturing us about vulgarity? A bunch of rich gay Italian dudes who raised zillions of dollars by swindling the world's poorest, dumbest people, then squandered the money building Liberace's dream palace in Rome? Oh, and they're also upset because we like to buy iPods and watch dirty movies? And because we don't care if gay people want to marry each other?

Dear Pope Benedict: Blow me, you prissy old queen.

(Photo courtesy of Burt Hammer, Chickenhawk magazine.)

Beastmaster gets honorary doctorate, dorky hat

See the full story here. This happened in Sweden. I swear they gave him the hat as a joke and the poor dipshit didn't get it. Or maybe this is just how people dress up there in the Alps.

Anyway, this cries out for captions. Crank away.

Holy crap, check this out

Our engineers have been passing around this video showing a 3-D system that a guy at Carnegie Mellon has developed using a Nintendo Wii. Check it out. It's really cool. Not as cool as MacBook Air or iPhone. But pretty cool.

AT&T's earnings jump, thanks to us

See here. I just called their CEO, whose name escapes me, so that he could thank me. When he was finished kissing my ass I told him to stop calling me and wasting my time, and hung up.

Scoble and Bono: BFF in Davos

Here's video from Davos showing my dear ex-friend Bono gasbagging as usual while Robert Scoble gazes on in awe and points some kind of cell phone at him. One question: How the hell did Scoble get to Davos? Who sent him there? Second question: Is it not amazing that these two modest, humble, self-effacing fellows have finally found each other? Had to happen, didn't it.

Meanwhile, check out this nauseating photo and story about Bono teaming up with Microsoft and Dell on this (RED) initiative. Lots of folks have been writing in to me about this. See, here's the thing. Bono doesn't like me anymore. Started during the options backdating thing, when I threw our former CFO, Fred Anderson, under a bus. Fred and Bono are pals; they're also business partners. So Bono got all huffy and said I was a dick for screwing over Fred. I was like, Dude, it's not personal, it's business. Fred's a big kid. He knows the drill. It's his turn to take one for the team. Well, Bono is kind of a n00b when it comes to business. He thinks running a company is like being in a band or something. He starts going on about how the record label bugged U2 for years to get rid of their drummer, Larry, because, truth be told, he's not that good a drummer, plus he's kind of unattractive. But Bono said no, we're keeping Larry. And he thinks this makes him some kind of hero. I was like Dude, you're talking about some drummer in a rock band. I'm talking about billions of dollars in market cap. Bit of a difference here.

Oh well. Bono doesn't get it. So now he's pals with the Beastmaster. Fine. Let them be friends. See if I care. Sniff.

This guy has way too much time on his hands

Someone has created software that turns iPhone into a miniature guitar. So now you can go places and annoy people without having to carry an actual guitar. Nice, right?

Al Gore says he's terrified for Obama

Had dinner with Al last night and he's like, "Man oh man, I can't believe the way Barack is going after the Clintons. At first I thought this guy must have the biggest pair of brass balls I've ever seen but lately I'm starting to think that it's not that, it's that he just doesn't know who he's dealing with. You think that could be true? Like he's never heard of Vince Foster?"

I'm like, Dude, please tell me I'm not hearing what I think I'm hearing.

Al's like, "Trust me, I spent eight years living in close proximity to these people and I can assure you, Tipper and I were terrified the entire time. You know how people talk about someone who'll stop at nothing? That's the Clintons. They run the party. They own it. And one thing they made perfectly clear was that this is going to be Hillary's year. We all got the word. Kerry got a call. So did I. Stay the fuck out of the race. Frankly, I didn't need the call, and they knew it, but they made it anyway. It's how they do things. Sure, they'd allow nutbags like Kucinich to run and make it look like a race. Edwards got to stay in so that Hillary would have a smarmy lawyer type prick to beat up on stage, which always goes over big with the man-haters who make up the core of her base. Plus he had the wife being sick thing to give him an out. Basically the deal was that if Edwards really started getting some momentum they'd give him a choice -- bow out saying your wife needed you, or end up in a park, ruled a suicide.

"You do realize that they undermined my campaign and Kerry's campaign so that we'd have eight years of Monkey Boy in the White House and everybody would be sick of the Republicans and begging for a Democrat? You realize that, right? I mean imagine if I'd won in 2000 and served eight years. You think Hillary could be running on my wind? Worse yet, imagine Kerry had won in 2004. He'd be running now for re-election as an incumbent. They totally destroyed his campaign. That Swift Boat stuff? It's got the Clintons all over it. Kerry knows it, too. That's why he's backing Obama. There's a whole bunch of us who'd just love to see the Clintons knocked off. But none of us really dares to take them on. We like being alive a little too much, you know?

"But then along came Obama. I can't believe he didn't get the phone call. So he knows the deal. He's not supposed to be there. He's definitely not supposed to win. Really, honestly, I fear for the guy. Because frankly, I really like him. He's smart. He's funny. He means well. Great wife and kids. Just a really, really nice young family. I'd love to see him in the White House. Heck, I'd love to be his vice president. I just pray that he knows what he's doing. Who knows? Maybe he does. Maybe he's figured out how to stop these evil bastards. I hope so. Because someone needs to."

Then the dessert came -- I had my usual cup of hot water, with lemon -- and the conversation moved along to Al's new venture, which is this Kleiner-funded company that's buying up all this land in the mountains and building these big compounds up there for when the global warming floods start and the coastal regions get destroyed. High-elevation fortified housing, it's called. HEFs is the nickname. Basically big bunkers up in the Rockies that are super expensive and basically look like really nice ski houses but can be converted into bunkers when the muggles get washed out of their houses and there's no food and no fuel and they all come scrambling up into the mountains because they've heard the rich folks are up there with supplies. Fifty million a pop for a starter home but you'll have a huge food stockpile and walls that can't be pierced by rockets. Active defense -- which means machine guns, rocket launchers, a weapons cache, plus a security team to operate the gear -- costs extra but is totally worth it, Al says.

"We're already taking orders," Al says. "Tipper and I are building ours in Idaho. We'd love to have you as neighbors. It's gonna be bad, Steve. Real bad. I know it's hard to imagine but I've seen the charts and the graphs and we're talking about a global catastrophe. Picture it. You've got millions of displaced persons flooded out of their homes, and they're out there on the roads. They're starving. There's people dying. The power grid is down. The ATMs have stopped working. It's like Mad Max. Or that Cormac McCarthy novel. Have you read that book? It's amazing."

I told him of course I'd read that Cormac McCarthy book though of course I haven't and neither has Al and my theory is that nobody actually reads Cormac McCarthy books they just buy them and pretend to read them because honestly they're fucking impossible to read since the guy doesn't use punctuation and he writes these run-on sentences that just go on and on and he uses all these weird big words that nobody understands and it's like reading goddamn Shakespeare who is another one that I swear nobody actually reads they just say they did and then they watch the Kenneth Branagh movie instead.

World's hairiest man seeks love online

Check out the story here. When I first saw the headline I thought they were talking about Richard Stallman's ad on Craigslist. Nope. It's this monkey man dude from China, Yu Zhenhuan, who says, "I feel like King Kong, hideous, but with a soft and tender heart." No word on whether he'll date a woman who uses proprietary software. My sense is he's probably open to just about anything.

MacHeads the Movie

Check out the trailer for this new movie here. You'll recognize the usual cast of characters: Shawn King (Your Mac Life), Leander Kahney (Cult of Mac), Andy Ihnatko (Not Fake Steve), Guy Kawasaki (shown above, meeting with all his direct reports), and some freaky lady who lives in a bus (second photo) and who I think might be Esther Dyson but I'm not sure. I know what you're thinking and yes they begged me to be in this movie, but I gave them my usual answer: A hundred grand per minute, or siooma, kids. They chose siooma. Hard to tell from the trailer but the gist of the movie seems to be that Apple has changed and become all evil and corporate, even though the "community" are still these wonderful peace-loving hippies. My fave line comes right at the end when some guy says, "Apple? They could care less." Actually, what you meant to say, Mr. Nitwit, is that Apple couldn't care less. And it's true. We could not. I mean it would be physically impossible for us to care any less about these freaks than we do now. Don't believe me? Ask Woz how long it's been since I called him.

The stock is getting killed. I've instructed Peter Oppenheimer to start dishing out options.

Jesus. We're down to $140 before the open in New York. That's down from $155 at the close yesterday. Few weeks ago we were flirting with $200. I just called Peter Oppenheimer and told him to get into position with the options machine and be ready to begin firing on my order. We're going to wait and see how bad things get today. I think this might be a golden opportunity for a handful of top insiders to make some quick money. Ideally we'd like to see the stock get down below $100. Keep your fingers crossed! Daddy needs a bigger jet.

Caption contest

What could the boyos be thinking? Any ideas?

Crazy Ron Paul has stolen our ad

See the video here. It's bad enough the crazy Paulites were all over Macworld handing out flyers. Now they've stolen our "Here's to the crazy ones" ad and put Ron Paul in at the end of it. Jesus. We are so going to shut this bullshit down. I'm not even joking.

Earnings: Nothing to worry about, folks

Look. We blew out our numbers for the quarter. We earned $1.76 per share and the goons on the street were only expecting $1.62. And yes, we guided conservatively for next quarter. We're trying to be prudent. Spring is a rough quarter. Everybody's catching their breath after the holidays. We'll probably blow out our numbers but we still figured why not lower everyone's expectations? Can't hurt. Well, the stock is getting killed. Which I guess would bother me if I were the kind of CEO who manages the stock price instead of the company. Or who knows or cares what the stock price actually is on any given day. But I don't. I never look. I just come in and do my yoga and drink a smoothie and then do what I think is right for the company. I make the products that I want to buy for myself. My management style is based on the Beatles. No lie. Do you think they ever cared about their stock price? No. They just wrote the best songs they could. That's what I do. Only it's not songs, it's products. But you get the idea. The rest can just sort itself out.

Hit Me On My iPhone

Much love to George for this one. Jonny and the boys in design have been dancing to this all day.

Oxymoron of the Week

From eWeek: The 25 Most Influential People at IBM. I mean, they have to be kidding, right? The slideshow depicts a lineup of IBM lifers. It looks like an ad for Depends. Or Polident. Nobody in the entire industry has ever heard of any of these guys. Number 10 on the list is so influential that eWeek couldn't find a photo for him. Yeah. He's a big swinging dick all right. Trust me, these old bastards are lucky if they can influence their bladders to sneak a little pee past their swollen prostates.

Meanwhile in other IBM news I've got my own little bone to pick with the Original Borg. Last week the retards who do marketing for Lotus Notes, IBM's ass-ugly email system, went around bragging that they were about to announce a version of Notes that runs on iPhone. Supposedly they were going to announce this at their big LotusFear conference this week.

Well that put me through the fucking roof. As I pointed out to my guys last week, What the fuck are these inbred morons doing announcing something to do with iPhone without clearing it with us first? Shut the motherfuckers down. Like, now. And who the fuck ever said they could put their software on my Jesus phone in the first place? Putting Notes on iPhone is like getting out a piece of exquisite Wedgwood china and using it to serve a steaming pile of dog shit. Have you ever seen Notes? It's not software, it's a form of punishment. Companies that use Notes have to staff not only a help desk but also a suicide prevention center -- it's that bad. Even the poor bastards at IBM, who are forced to use it, do nothing but complain.

So a bunch of our ninjas flew out to Cambridge and rounded up these morons from Lotus marketing and bitch-slapped them until they cried for mercy. Today the Big Brains at Lotus PR put out a statement saying the whole Notes-on-iPhone claim was just a bad dream, and Notes for iPhone is not ready yet. Real slick.

Buried down low in the latest story, however, is a real gem of a quote: "Kevin McIsaac, an analyst at research firm IBRS, said he's not sure Lotus Notes will have a large impact on enterprise adoption of the device. `I can't really imagine someone who's really hip and cool--like an iPhone user--wanting to use Lotus Notes,' he said."

Amen to that, my brother.

Meanwhile, in the "Definition of Sad" category, check this out -- some marketing fuckwit from Lotus is live blogging the Lotus conference. Big news like this:

7:52 AM A shoutout to Colleen Campbell, Lotus Marketing program director, sitting next to me here in the second row while Sandra Marcus is dancing in front of me! Is this a conference or a party?!?!


I know, right?!?! It's amazing!!!!????!?!?!?! It's not even 8 in the morning and we are rockin it!?!?! We r Lotus n we r 2 kewl!?!

What really saddens me, however, is the idea that somewhere out in some forlorn sad corner of the world someone is actually following this live blog and actually cares what Lotus announces and maybe even wishes he could be there in Orlando to experience the rock concert excitement in person.

To those people I say this: I will pray for your souls.

Some analyst says we're exposed

See this story in Forbes. Some dude on Wall Street says, "We believe Apple is disproportionately exposed to a potential slowdown in U.S. consumer spending." And they say iPod sales aren't growing much anymore. Please. If anything, a downturn in the economy will help us. People will be so miserable when they lose their jobs and lose their houses that they'll need something to cheer them up. More than ever, they'll need products to restore a sense of childlike wonder to their empty, meaningless lives. Plus the morons who run the government are already talking about one of those "economic stimulus" packages which basically means, "We're going to give everybody some pocket money." Guess what the frigtards always buy first when they get some crazy money from the government? Little hint: It ain't food. Or clothing. Give up? It's crystal meth. But right after that, it's electronics. I think we're really well positioned.

Canadian puppet says he invented MacBook Air

This is outrageous. Some guy claims he invented MacBook Air two years ago. Our legal affairs department is looking into this.

Zucker comes crawling back

Check it out here. The head of NBC, who not long ago was blowing us off and pulling out of iTunes, now says he loves Apple and wants to be in business with us. Money quote: "Zucker may ready to 'pucker' up to Apple ..."

Oh, he'll pucker all right.

Warning: This is not an authorized Apple product.

See here. Some kids have developed a manila folder notebook sleeve for the MacBook Air, and they're selling them for $29.95 online. Problem is, they haven't even approached us to participate in our accessories program. That's the one where companies pay us millions of dollars for the right to put an Apple sticker on their product. And, um, if they're lucky enough to get carried in our stores, they give us 68% of the retail price of the product. It's a great deal and we're really excited about this program.

My advice: Do not buy this unauthorized AirMail manila folder sleeve. Meanwhile our lawyers are on the job trying to bring them into compliance.

Happy MLK Day

As you know if you've ever seen any of our advertisements featuring attractive people of color dancing in silhouette or the ones with Miles Davis and Jackie Robinson, diversity is hugely important to us at Apple. So we're really excited about the MLK Day holiday. It's one of the biggest days of the year for us. To kick off the celebration, on Friday afternoon Katie gathered together all of our African-American employees for a big group photo (above) and a small party afterward with a special cake and some soft drinks. Janelle Post and Dave Roberts are two of our most valued employees, and I'm proud to say that having them on board puts us at the very top end of the curve among Silicon Valley companies when it comes to hiring African-Americans.

I know Janelle and Dave were kind of disappointed that I couldn't attend the party in person but it was Friday afternoon and I'd been at an off-site and I was just thinking about what the traffic was going to look like later in the day and I knew if I came all the way back to Cupertino it was going to take me two hours to get home and I just thought, You know what? They'll understand. And I'm sure they did, because actions speak louder than words and frankly I think Apple's commitment to diversity speaks for itself. Despite what you might have heard from people like Jesse Jackson, we're a leading employer of African-Americans in the Valley and we totally value the MLK Day holiday.

Speaking of which, it's true that we officially call tomorrow a day off, but whether you actually take the day off is totally up to you. I say that because I know so many Apple employees really put a huge emphasis on their work and really want to see Apple succeed and because of that they don't like to take time off. So if you do want to come in, that's fine. I know that I for one will totally be in the office because I just can't ever afford to miss a day. However if you're not one of those people who really cares about Apple, and you want to just stay home and do nothing even though you're totally not even African-American, that's totally cool too. You're free to stay home. We'll be keeping track of which people badge in, just for our own records. Peace out and enjoy the holiday.

CORRECTION: Dear Leader made a mistake in the above item. Turns out we do NOT give anyone MLK Day as a holiday. The holiday was given up so that people could have a week off between Christmas and New Year's. I know what you're thinking: Wasn't that Christmas holiday a reward for all the hard work last year? Isn't it kind of crappy to make people give up future holidays in exchange for a Christmas break? Um, all I can say on that is obviously you don't work at Apple. Now back to work, idiots.

Turns out Robert Frost is dead. And he was a total prick. Which makes him perfect for our ad campaigns.

So I had Katie look into this Robert Frost poet that Java Gal was raving about. I was hoping we could set up a meeting with him because as you know I like to hang out with fellow artists and share ideas with them and find out what drives them and why they love our computers so much. And frankly most of them say afterward that they learn way more from these meetings than I do, which is very cool. Anyway, Katie went looking for him on Facebook and MySpace and couldn't find him. Then I gave her Allen Ginsberg's cell phone number so she could check and see if he knew this Frost guy, but it turns out Ginsberg is dead. Who knew? Well, just now I heard from Katie (yeah, I made her spend her Sunday doing this) that Frost is dead too. What is it with these poets dropping dead? Katie made a bunch of phone calls and traded all this email with people she knows who work in academia she's found out out that Frost isn't just dead, he's totally dead. Like he's been dead since the early 1960s.

But here's the thing. Turns out this guy was like a completely grumpy curmudgeonly old prick. And you know that saying people use about "taking the road less traveled"? That was him. Which means he's perfect for one of our "think different" ads where we talk about the crazy ones and the troublemakers. Plus, since he's been dead so long, I'm pretty sure we can use his photo without paying anyone a dime. Nice right? We're going to get on it right away.

Negroponte: "We have been more like a terrorist group."

That's a real quote from Nicholas Negroponte from a video interview he did at CES. See the BBC article about it here. And see the original video here. Seriously, who does this guy's PR? Do they actually write this stuff for him? If not, do they at least check it out before he says it? I sort of imagine them all sitting there cringing every time he starts to speak.

Full quote is this: "2008, for us, is a big change because up to now we have been more like a terrorist group, threatening to do something and making big claims. 2008 is where we become not a revolution but a civilisation [sic, it's the BBC, ed.] and we actually roll out laptops within countries." Stick with the video a while and you'll get another howler -- now he says that OLPC did not throw Intel out and did not want Intel to leave. Even though, just a couple weeks ago, he went around saying that that was exactly what happened, and that Intel had been on "probation" with OLPC and, like a strict headmaster that he seems to think he is, Saint Nicholas had been given no choice but to expel that troublemaker Intel.

Oh, and now Double-N says OLPC would love to see many different laptops made for kids, including the Intel Classmate, and that OLPC never insisted that Intel stop promoting the Classmate. You straight on that? It never happened. And if you say it did, you're against the kids. And against freedom. Or something.

For the record, Intel does not "make" the Classmate. Intel publishes a reference spec, and hardware OEMs in various countries use that spec to build a machine for schools in their country. Which, oddly enough, creates jobs for the parents of the kids who will use the machines. What a wacky idea, right?

Photo above shows Negroponte and Richard M. Stallman discussing their plans to destroy Microsoft and Intel.

Unboxing the MacBook Air

Check it out. Guaranteed to make you drool.

Who says people in the Valley don't know anything about literature?

One thing that really bugs me is the way people who don't live in the Valley love to say we're all a bunch of arrogant egomaniacal uncultured overpaid idiots who have some kind of incredibly narrow worldview and think the entire world revolves around our computers and software and chips and spend all our time windsurfing and mountain biking and don't know anything about art or literature or music or politics or world affairs. The truth is the Bay Area in general and the Valley in particular are full of probably the most interesting and super intelligent people with super interesting interests and incredibly diverse backgrounds.

As if to make this point, here comes our dear friend, Java Gal, the Sun Microsystems marketing person, expounding upon the work of Robert Frost. Or, as she puts it, "There's this poet? His name is Robert Frost. I don't actually really like him all that much." She goes on to describe this really super obscure poem by Robert Frost which she says is called "a walk by the woods, or the woods on a snowy evening? I forget what it's called." Anyway she really seems to understand the poem because she says there's this line about "miles to go before I sleep" and she says she can totally relate to that, because it's Friday evening and instead of relaxing and watching a movie, she has to work on her super important Sun Microsystems marketing stuff, which is like totally what Robert Frost was writing about, so even though she doesn't think Robert Frost is all that good, in this case she would have to say that this poem is actually pretty good, because it is really exactly what her own life is like at this moment, and that's what really good poems do, they remind you of your actual life, but in words that rhyme.

Personally I am not familiar with this Frost poet, but I think it's really cool that people here read so much literature and are able to integrate it into their daily lives and create this wonderful interface between art and science. So I may have to check this Frost guy out, though probably not, because I'm always super busy, plus I'm more of a Khalil Gibran fan myself.

We had a really nice visit with John Markoff from the Times

I hadn't seen John Markoff from the New York Times in ages, so it was great to catch up with him at Macworld and give him an exclusive interview. (Photo above shows John conducting the interview, with Katie assisting him.) We also spent some time going over John's hypno-programming and re-auditing him and getting him back to a Clear state. Anyway it appears to have worked fine because John produced this fine piece of journalism based on his interview with me where he says my "passion for personal computing comes through." Thanks, John. Katie says she's sorry about the bruises.

News flash: Grown man able to operate XO machine.

Check out this photo from Valleywag showing some freetard socialist pecking away on an XO laptop while some moron films the event and others stand looking on in amazement. Folks, if your machine is so fucked up that the fact that someone can do stuff on it is itself a newsworthy event, you know you've got problems. You can see the whole article here on Valleywag about how all the bloggers at Macworld were salivating over this butt-ugly XO machine that some freetard brought to the show with him -- despite the fact that our Air notebook was only a hundred yards away in the Apple booth.

Frankly I think this photo is just crying out for PhotoCrank captions.

Borg shaking down social networking companies

Josh Quittner of Fortune gets the story here. Apparently Microsoft is putting the screws to social networks that want to support Microsoft's messenger software. It's classic Remond behavior. And people say we're arrogant? Please.

I swear I saw this kid at Macworld

Great TV interview with a kid in Australia who destroyed his neighborhood with an out-of-control party. We're pretty sure he's a Mac user. You'll see why. Mike Bungee, our Pac-Rim director, is already trying to track him down and hire him to work in one of our stores. Either that or in our PR department, if he wants to move to Cupertino. He's got the perfect attitude.

Why Hillary must be stopped

Check out this insightful piece on how the Clintons are cynically reaching out to racists as they battle Obama. Money quote: "They want to nudge—even provoke—Barack Obama into becoming the “black” candidate rather than the healing, unity candidate. They want black supporters to raise their voices on his behalf—preferably the Al Sharpton types who will shrilly cry “racism” and thus exacerbate the divide." Writer goes on to say that the Clintons may not actually be racists themselves; but they'll gladly pander to racism if it will get the Beast elected. The horror.

Re: the Violent Blue controversy -- you just do NOT walk up and touch me. Ever. You just don't.

So you've probably heard all about this crazy woman who calls herself Violent Blue and how she's going around complaining that she tried to get me to pose for a photo with her and I told her that she was rude. Oh, and Katie snickered and rolled her eyes. You can see Ms. Porno's version of what happened here on her Web site. If you want to know what really happened, read on.

Yes, she did want to have her photo taken with me. But first of all, come on. You don't just walk up to me when I'm standing in some public place and just speak to me. Everyone knows that. Moreover, this was Macworld, and I'm standing on the show floor. Does that seem like the kind of situation where I'm looking to interact with people?

Worse yet, this woman touched me. She admits as much, saying she "lightly touched" my arm. In the civilized world this is known as a violation of personal boundaries, and according to our legal team (because yes we've had to bring them in on this) the "lightly touched" constitutes a form of assault. In fact Violent Blue is lucky we didn't have her arrested right there on the spot.

Instead, I let her off easy. I told her, very politely, that she was rude. Then I very politely turned my back to her. Now she's using this incident to play the victim and have her fifteen seconds of fame. Which, I guarantee you, was the whole plan from the get-go. It's like Katie always says about the press: You can't win. They're out to get you, and whether you talk to them or ignore them they're going to make you look bad. So you might as well just kick them in the nuts and stomp on their heads and move on.

Naturally good old Scoble got himself involved in the Violent Blue thing, since he was right there on the spot with his camera, filming away. Coincidence? I don't think so. Supposedly there's a video here on a site called Qik which I think should have been called Slo. Click play and wait ten minutes and maybe you'll see the clip.

Meanwhile, we are considering a civil lawsuit against Violent Blue for assault and attempted battery plus defamation. I gave a police report in San Francisco last night and had photographs taken of the incredibly deep black bruise on my arm. More info as this develops.

Stallman doing the Soulja Boy dance

Yes, dear friends, it's our own beloved Richard M. Stallman, the king of all freetards, doing that Soulja Boy dance on what looks like the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass. Go, RMS! Superman dat ho! It appears that RMS has some free time on his hands these days now that GPLv3 is finished, and so he's out doing dance classes and trying to meet the ladies. Not sure if he knows what the phrase "Superman a ho" actually means. Much love to Larry for the link.

Much love, iJustine and other girl who is not iJustine

Check out this video of iJustine camping out overnight to be first in the door at Macworld. She and her hot friend are reading my book and laughing their incredibly sweet asses off. Much love, ladies. Sorry I did not have a chance to see you in person during the show. I had a very nice penthouse suite at the W with gorgeous white robes made of incredibly soft Egyptian cotton. That's right. Robes. Always in fashion.

By the way, little bit of trivia about this video. Maybe you're wondering why there's nobody else in line? Well, the ladies were actually camped out outside the wrong door. The line was forming on the other side of the building. Perfect, right?

To see the original version of this, go to iJustine's page.

Thank you, and much love

Dear Apple Faithful,

This letter is intended for the thousands of you who are here at the Macworld conference and to the millions who are here with us in spirit. From all of us at Apple, I want to say: You're welcome. And, thank you. Thank you for sharing our excitement about our revolutionary new game-changing products that have already, in just 24 hours, permanently altered the landscape of the computing market and rehaped the entire world's economy. The reaction to the glowing reviews in today's press have been astounding, beyond anything we could have imagined when we wrote those reviews several weeks ago.

Time Capsule, aka Product X, is one of those products that just seems so obvious once you've seen it yet you never would have dreamed of it before. Right? A high-speed router coupled a storage device? Again, we're thinking different. The new iPhone software is totally breaking new ground and our GPS functionality is far and away the best and most advanced GPS technology available from anyone on the planet. Basically it's the same stuff that the CIA uses to track terrorists from satellites in outer space, and now we're making it available to you at no cost. The new Apple TV? So amazing and scary that we're expecting many of our competitors to just toss in the towel and leave the business so they don't have to be humiliated by us as we steamroll over them.

And then there is Air. I don't like to call it a product, because to me it's more than that. To me it's a vision. My vision. It's a statement. My statement. It's a no-compromise laptop that has the fastest processor ever invented, the most RAM available on any computer in the world, the best keyboard, the best screen, and the longest battery life of any laptop ever made, plus it's thinner and lighter than any computer ever created in all of history. How do we do it? How do we make the fastest, most feature-packed laptop but put it into a tiny package and give it such amazing battery life? I like to think of it as magic. And so should you. That's all you need to know. We did it. And it's magic.

Finally I want to thank everyone in the audience yesterday for gasping and moaning every time I announced something. Really appreciated this, as always. I was especially grateful when the flickr feed didn't work and we were standing there with a giant blank screen and you all cheered and clapped like mindless zombies anyway. Yes! That is the spirit of our community! Also the wild cheers and gasping panting orgasmic growls when I walked you through the iTunes movie rental process? Fantastic job. Who would think that with just a few clicks of a button you could rent or buy a movie from the Interwebs, and you wouldn't even need to use a PC? Can you fucking believe it? Well, it's beyond rocket science, but we did it.

Finally to all of the Apple engineers who worked on these fantastic earth-shattering products I want to send out a heartfelt thanks. Movie rentals on iTunes? This is Arno Penzias type stuff. A subnotebook with no optical drive that only weighs 3 pounds? How the fuck can we even do it? I mean we're defying the laws of physics. A router with storage that backs up all the Macs in your house? This is a man-on-the-moon level invention. To all those who say that America no longer leads in advanced research and technology, let the news go forth: We do lead. Apple leads. And the rest of you follow. Without fail, like cows with rings in your nose, you follow. I love you all. Peace out.

Twitter is getting crushed -- sorry

Having trouble posting live via Twitter. This is what happens when you use non-Apple software.

Switching to Twitter-- FakeSteveTwit

To get the live blog, go to my Twitter feed--

FakeSteveTwit.

See you there.

Schedule change: Today's group suicide moved up to 3 p.m.

Attention all conference attendees -- due to a scheduling conflict we've had to push today's ritual mass suicide up to 3 p.m. instead of 4 p.m. as it is listed in your program. Please take note of this and plan accordingly if you intend to participate. The doors will close exactly at 3 p.m. and latecomers will not be admitted. Suicidants are advised to remove all watches and jewelry before arriving, and to wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothes. White robes not required, but they definitely add to the experience. Kool-Aid and body bags will be provided by Apple.

Macworld party report

You know it's Macworld week when the usual batch of San Francisco posers abandon the nightclubs in SOMA and are replaced by people like the two cyborg lifecasters in the photo above. These two dudes above were at a Gizmodo party. They'd never met so we introduced them and got them to pose for a picture together. They both spend their entire lives walking around with cameras clipped to their heads streaming live feeds so they can share their empty meaningless lives with the entire world. By the way, the red eye on the tall guy is not a camera effect -- that's really what his eye looks like. Otherwise they're both very, very good replicants, barely distinguishable from actual humans. Red eye dude told us he has not slept since Saturday and plans to stay awake through the entire conference, streaming video of every fucking second to his Web site. Says he stays awake using caffeine tablets. No side effects, he says, except "they kind of make me twitchy."

Undaunted by its shameful performance at CES, disgraced gadget blog Gizmodo hosted a party at Harlot, a club on Minna. Here's Brian Lam of Gizmodo. I believe he's saying, "Guilty as charged, Your Honor."


Owen Thomas of Valeywag (right, with scarf inexplicably wrapped around neck) attended the Gizmodo party and spent the whole night bugging Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek (left, scarfless) for a job.


Some company called Coghead tried to coast on our wind by announcing version 2.0 of their product last night and having a party at a Mexican restaurant near the Moscone Center. This is two of their execs wishing they worked at Apple. Sorry, dudes. Not cool enough. But keep trying.


Nick Denton look-alike and supreme blogger Pete Cashmore of Mashable (left in photo below) crashed the Coghead party and graciously complained about the quality of the Mexican food. By the way, Pete is from Scotland. Ahem. Maybe you are wondering, as we were, just what the fuck is Mashable? Mashable, Pete informed us indignantly, is "the eighth-largest blog in the world, man. We're bigger than GigaOm." Sorry dude. Our bad.

The madness begins

Here are the first shots of the Macworld madness, taken at 5 a.m. local time this morning. Hundreds of Apple faithful have been camping out in the streets around Moscone Center since last night. The brisk morning air is redolent with the odor of reefer, patchouli oil and nerd body funk. TV trucks are parked outside interviewing idiots and asking them what we're going to announce today. The Starbucks on 4th Street has a line halfway down the block. Even the filthy hacks in the press corps have started lining up early. There's pizza, Krispy Kreme donuts and lots of coffee. Sleeping bags and mats and folding chairs and pieces of cardboard, piles of fat geeks sprawled on the pavement -- it looks like a homeless convention. Overall I think it's about the ugliest single group of human beings I've ever seen in one place.

In the regular attendee line, a group of about 40 spoiled Google brats (above and below), with their typical sense of entitlement, showed up early, pitched a huge tent at the front, then took turns rotating in and out of line all night, working in shifts. When the doors open they're all going to crash in together -- and they think this is perfectly okay. The fucks. Moshe will deal with you all later.



Controlled substances appear to have been plentiful. This guy works at Google and claims he was just "sleepy." Nice hair, Morrissey.



Naturally there was a dude in the front of the line playing Guitar Hero on a MacBook and being very solemn about the whole thing. You knew there would be, right?

Fake Steve's Fake Keynote

Please tune in for live coverage of the keynote.

This is not the real keynote outline

Maybe you've seen stories like this one from TechCrunch about the keynote outline that got "leaked" onto Wikipedia. Please. It's not even close. But as fakes go, it's a good one. Tip of the cap to Katie for fueling the media frenzy.

Must run. My colorist, Annalisa, is here. Then I'm off for my spearmint high colonic followed by a ninety-minute massage and seaweed wrap, an hour of yoga, an hour of meditation with my roshi, a final pre-keynote meal of miso soup and two spoonfuls of organic honey from Tibet, and a good's night sleep in my transportable float tank, which is already waiting for me deep inside the Moscone Center. Peace out, Apple faithful. See you in the morning when I'll be blowing your minds.

Dear Gizmodo: Don't even think about fucking with the screens at our show

So you might have heard about this big kerfuffle at CES where some reporters from Gizmodo went around blasting out TV screens with some kind of little remote control device and then filming themselves doing it. Now one of them has been banned for life from CES and Gizmodo editor Brian Lam (photo) has penned this lame defense saying that blasting out screens at a trade show is a form of civil disobedience and I guess is right up there with MLK at Selma or something. I will address Brian's essay below but before I do I just want to send out this warning to Gizmodo and anyone else who might be thinking about blasting out TV screens at Macworld: Think twice, losers. Because we will not be banning you from our show. We'll be fucking tasering you right there on the floor. Then, when you're lying there on the floor in shock, we'll carry you off the floor and put you on a plane and rendition your ass to someplace so awful you'll be praying for death. I mean it.

Brian's argument seems to be that Gizmodo's rebellious pranksters are real journalists and the rest of the filthy hacks are just a herd of sheep who do whatever we vendors tell them in order to keep getting access to our products and those of other vendors. Says Brian: "Every tech journalist has to decide whether or not he's writing for companies or for readers." Brian seems to think that if hacks just rewrite press releases and regurgitate the info we give them that somehow they're not legitimate journalists. I disagree. What is the point of turning this wonderful symbiotic relationship between vendors and hacks (access, articles, advertising) into some kind of adversarial relationship? Why can't we all just get along? At Apple we hire the finest writers and thinkers we can and set them to the incredibly difficult task of explaining our amazing products and guiding customers and media people alike to a deeper understanding of why these products are so exceptional. Why wouldn't the best reporters in the field take advantage of this service? They'd be foolish not to. And why make an enemy of us? What's the point? Because you think you're "serving readers" and giving them "the truth," whatever that is? Friends, I kind of resent that statement, because it implies that the story as we vendors tell it is not the truth. That people at Apple are liars. That we consciously set out to mislead the outside world or give them bad information. We all know that's not true. We wouldn't still be here in business after thirty years if we were doing stuff like that, would we?

If you want the God's honest truth, it's this: Nobody needs the media. They really serve no useful purpose. They know it, and we know it. We can tell our story much better than they can, and we do exactly that, every day of the week. Nonetheless, the media refuses to go away -- not because they have some big holy mission, but because there's money to be made at what they do. From our perspective it doesn't hurt to have a venue that appears to be independent and objective and trustworthy. So we form an unholy bargain with them. We never discuss this bargain openly with them, but sooner or later the scales fall from everyone's eyes and we all know exactly how the deal works. It's like this: We keep the hacks alive by buying ads from them, and we let them preen and preach about their sacred calling and we even pretend that they really are objective and intelligent and that we totally respect them, even as we utterly control them and totally shape their coverage of us; then to add a final layer of irony we pay them to let us reprint their rave reviews on our Web site, and we pretend that these puff pieces actually count for something, even though we the truth is we practically wrote them ourselves.

Brian Lam seems to think there's something wrong with this. Oh well. He's young. He'll learn.

Zuckerborg scores big on 60 Minutes

Boy Wonder was on 60 Minutes this weekend and totally fucked it up, apparently. I wouldn't know because I don't watch television but you can see the TechCrunch analysis here. Apparently he was completely canned and just recited corporate bullshit like a robot and then when caught off guard responds like a smarmy defensive little prick. Zuckerborg, you really need to come up with your own shtick instead of just copying me and Gates. I mean it.

Pointless but worth it

Darth Vader calls Microsoft tech support. You might have heard this already. If so, no need to press "Play." For everyone else, enjoy.

Snipers in position above Moscone Center

Moshe's teams are moving into position in the buildings around Moscone. Katie and I took a chopper ride this morning to inspect the outposts and gun placements. Naturally I had some suggestions for how things could be done better -- I didn't like the lack of symmetry in the way the snipers were arranged. Moshe gave me some lame excuse about how they were limited by the layout of the buildings in the area and they don't have eight identical buildings in perfect symmetry around Moscone. We're bringing up a construction crew from Cupertino to build some extension ramps on local rooftops so we can get a perfect eight-point circumference. Otherwise things are fine except the SmartWater in Katie's cooler backpack was at least three degrees colder than it's supposed to be and I had to glare at her in silence for about thirty minutes as punishment. Great thing about Katie is she's been with me for a long time and really understands me and she knows when she's done something wrong and deserves to get yelled at or glared at. She knows it's her fault. And she knows that this is Macworld and everything needs to be perfect. Well, namaste, Apple faithful. I honor the place where your admission fees and my greatness become one. Already the city of love is filling up with aging overweight graybearded hippies. They're hanging out in the bar at the W sipping sophisticated beverages and acting like they're the coolest people in the entire world. Which, let's face it, they are. I love it.

Woz thinks this is a joke about him -- and he's pissed

Little back story here. Way back a hundred years or so ago when we were in the garage, Woz had a few little issues with flatulence. I mean the guy lived in a garage and never worked out and ate nothing but burritos and Big Macs. Worse yet, his patented attack is the SBD -- silent but deadly. So you'd get no warning horn alerting you to leave the area. You'd just be sitting there, working, and suddenly this smell would hit you. We used to call it Chernobyl. You'd have to clear the garage. Woz would just sit there snickering. Anyway, after a while nobody wanted to work around Woz or even hang around with him because he'd do this anywhere -- in the car, in a restaurant, at the movies. Didn't care. And Randy Wigginton used to have this saying whenever Woz would be spotted coming toward us. He'd say, "There's something in the air."

But Woz, I swear to God this slogan has nothing to do with you. We're doing wireless sync on iPod and iPhone, that's all. Oops. Did I just say that out loud?

Ja'red is on the mend

Sincere thanks to everyone who wrote in asking about Ja'red. He's up at the Green Gulch Zen Center and doing fine. Nothing like a few days of fasting and meditation to set things right. I visited him this morning and he made me promise to never send him off the Apple campus ever again. He says working at Apple is like living in a monastery and after all these months he now has become used to the calm, the quiet, the Zen balance. He says he's just not able to cope with the rest of the world. Even malls make him break out in hives. I told him I understand because I suffer the same thing, and I promised him no more assignments away from Cupertino. Then I showed him Product X. Only 15 people at Apple have seen it. He gazed at it for a long time. Then his eyes welled up and he was overwhelmed and he couldn't talk. It was like that thing that happens to people in museums when they see great art. I forget the name of the condition. Stengel syndrome or something. Anyway, Product X really cheered Ja'red up and he'll be back in the mothership this week. Peace out.

I'm going to try live-blogging during the keynote

Have you ever sat there during a keynote and wondered what Dear Leader was really thinking even as he was restoring a sense of childlike wonder to your life? Well, I'm going to try to help you find out, by blogging here on this blog even as I'm doing the keynote. Impossible, you say? That's what my events people said too. I told them it's our job to make the impossible possible, and if they couldn't make this happen they were all out of jobs. Well, we got it done. Involves a tiny brain-sensor placed just behind my ear -- you can't even notice it. It looks just like the one all our PR people wear, the one we use to tell them what to say, over and over and over again. Only in my case the signals will be traveling out instead of in. A receiver off-stage will pick up the signals and convert them to spoken words which Ja'Red will hear in a pair of headphones. Then he'll type them up into blog posts. We've been testing it out during rehearsals and I'll admit, it's not perfect. But I'm confident we can get it going by Tuesday. For the folks at home, it'll be a way of finding out what's being announced. For the folks in the audience with EVDO cards, it'll be, well, a kind of performance art. Hope you'll tune in.

Can anyone organize a Tuesday night event?

I know it's last minute but I'm going to be at Macworld and a few people have suggested some kind of FSJ get-together on Tuesday night. Can anyone facilitate? I'm going to be traveling all day tomorrow so won't have chance to make arrangements. Just need a location that will put up with us, I guess. Someone must have some connections. Let me know if anything pops up and I'll promote it here on the blog.

Can only be Tuesday night, however. Others are already booked up. Sorry.

Keynote bingo

Frankly I find keynote bingo irritating. Totally breaks my concentration. I've asked Katie and Moshe to see if we can do something about this. They say people have a First Amendment right to shout out "Bingo!" in a crowded auditorium. I'm like, Dude, even in my auditorium? Katie says that strictly speaking I don't own the Moscone Center. I explained to her that in fact I own the entire world, and all of you just live in it.

Anyway, if you're the type who goes for Keynote Bingo, see here.

Check this shit out

The crazy bastards at Indie Tech have created a gorgeous Fake Steve Jobs T-shirt. You can buy them on their site. They sent me a few samples and I must say they're very comfortable and attractive. Way better at drawing chicks than my Axe body spray. And that's saying something. Perfect for Macworld though it's probably too late to get one for the show. Nevertheless, these guys do have the official blessing of FSJ, having passed our rigorous compliance program and paid us an enormous though undisclosed amount of money. Just kidding. But they seem like nice guys. So pony up, you cheap bastards. While you're at it you might considering buying five or ten copies of my book. It's guaranteed to restore a sense of childlike wonder. For me anyway.

Another Macworld challenge

What will be the "One more thing" this year? Free fake black mock turtleneck to anyone who guesses right.

The suspense is killing you, right?

So I was just hanging out in the executive sweat lodge with Jonny and we were laughing about how all the fanboys are just salivating and drooling and peeing in their pants this week wondering what we're going to announce next week. Jonny says that in the world of an Apple true believer this week, the week before Macworld, is either the best week of the year, or the worst, or both. He says you're all like a bunch of kids on Christmas Eve, all amped up on sugary treats and unable to sleep. Apparently a shitload of kooks have already started landing at SFO today, with more flocking in all weekend.

Well, I can't tell you what the big surprise is. But as I've said before, it's big. And it's a surprise. It's something you'd never have imagined, not in a million years. It is going to change the world. Like, from now on, all of history will be divided into two eras -- the time before this product was unveiled, and then the rest of time. It's the future. Only, as John Edwards says, tomorrow begins today. Or Tuesday. Whatever. You get it.

So anyway. Just for kicks, Jonny says we should ask everyone to take a guess. Go ahead. Take your best guess. What is Product X? Free fake copy of it to anyone who guesses correctly.

Macworld celebrity checklist

Joy of Tech has the entire roster here. Yes, it's true. I'll be at the show. Please track me down and say hello. Unless you're Daniel Eran Dilger, in which case don't bother taking your head out of your ass and trying to speak. Just keep on walking.

Gizmodo admits blasting out TV screens at CES

Bastard bloggers! See Brian Lam's fake apology and the original clip of screens getting blasted here.

Come and get it, ladies

It's Richard M. Stallman showing off his "fluent" Spanish and his singing abilities, crooning his original composition, The Free Software Song. We figured since Stallman is placing ads on Craiglist maybe we could help him out a bit.

Kiss of death?

Man oh man. I saw this happen and right away I called Barry (that's what folks like me who are close to him and have his personal cell phone number call him). I was like, Dude, are you nuts? Kerry is poison. He's the Ghost of Christmas Past. He's Captain Buzz Kill. Every liberal in America sees him and cringes. It's like running into someone on the street who reminds you of some awful time in your life that you thought you'd forgotten, and then you have to go home and take a handful of Ativan to tamp down the panic attack. You should be staying as far away from that guy as possible.

Barry said that he really, really appreciated my valuable input on this, and he really thinks I'm a great CEO and really know a lot about consumer electronics and computers and such things, but that I'm not exactly an expert on politics whereas Barack has been in politics for more than a decade and this is what he does for a living and by the way he also happens to have attended this place called Harvard Law School and have I heard of it? Yeah. Obama can be a bit of a dick sometimes.

I don't know. I still think Kerry is like ass cancer. You just don't want him around, not under any circumstances. I hope at least they don't have him traveling around with Obama and scaring the shit out of kids in the crowd. Plus you just know he's angling for a vice president spot. Now that is a terrifying idea.

Stallman seeks girlfriend on Craigslist

Is this a hoax? It's been rocketing all over the Internet today -- a personal ad by Richard M. Stallman on Craigslist. See here. It looks real, except he fails to mention some of his quirks -- like eating his own hair and sticking flowers up his nose and calling it "nose sex." Then again, the guy lives in Cambridge, where this sort of behavior is not unheard of. Much love to the many tipsters who sent this in today. Free fake iPhone to anyone who responds to the ad and gets a response from RMS.

Ja'Red is in a detox facility

Poor kid. We sent him to CES and he just got overwhelmed. He's a fragile soul, very delicate and pure. The exposure to cigarette smoke and loud noise, the lack of vegan food, no meditation center in his hotel, the women who've done such terrible things to their bodies with plastic surgery -- well it all added up and Mayzie, his assistant, finally had to take him to the airport in a wheelchair. I knew things were bad when he called me on Tuesday saying he was roaming in the crowd getting bumped and jostled and he kept looking at all these people who were using phones that were not iPhones and just wondering, Why? Why? Why? And then he just sat down on the floor and began to cry.

We are going to blow your mind next week

I can't get into details but we have something really big and really super surprising for you next week. I'm not talking about the flashbook or the new software for iPhone or the movie rentals on iTunes. I'm talking about something else. Something nobody has even speculated about. Something nobody could even imagine. We think it's a game changer. And we're all really, really excited about it.

However, our rehearsals are still not where they need to be. So I'll be going into hardcore seclusion mode for the rest of the day today. I've told the staff and crew: Nobody goes home until we get this right. And nobody goes to the bathroom unless they get permission from me. Believe me, that gets people's attention.

The daily Poison

The entire show has taken a huge lurch downward (or upward, depending on your perspective) with the opening today of the Adult Video conference in the expo center at the Sands. The porn stars and other assorted sleazeballs began arriving last night and the corridor that connects the Venetian to the Sands has now taken on the atmosphere of a circus with armies of geeks colliding with armies of freaks. I've seen more ridiculously huge fake tits in the last half hour than I've seen in my entire life. I was drinking my lunch at Pinot at the Venetian when I saw a midget leather boy riding on the shoulders of a blonde giantess; they were strolling toward the casino. Or maybe that's the after-effects of the peyote from last night.

The psychedelics were obtained at a Nokia cocktail reception and began to kick in just as I arrived for an outrageously swank dinner at Aureole in Mandalay Bay with a group of PR women from San Francisco who seemed to be convinced that I'm actually a journalist and might even write about their awful clients. The wine flowed and we all ordered lobster but when mine arrived I was really starting to get off on the peyote and I freaked out and just sat there staring at it. The poor flacks tried to talk about their clients for a while but then someone steered the conversation quickly downward and we spent the rest of the evening drunkenly discussing such things as shockers, blumpkins, balloon knots, leather cheerios and angry dolphins, the last of which one of the ladies was kind enough to perform for us. She was convincing in a way that led me to believe she'd had real-life experience.

Dinner led to gambling, in this case craps at Mandalay Bay. After an hour of that I was up nearly a thousand dollars and then all of us, hacks and flacks, piled into Albert's minivan cab and we gambled our way through the Bellagio, Caesars and the MGM Grand while doing tequila shots. Was approached by a call girl and declined her offer but paid her one hundred dollars to talk to me for fifteen minutes and bring me luck. She told me she'd flown in from Vancouver for the show. Turns out hookers from all over North America travel in for CES, and some of the ladies make more in this one week than they make in two months of ordinary work. I asked this woman how many johns she would see by time the show was up. She told me. The number was terrifying.


The last thing I remember I was playing blackjack and losing badly. I woke up in my room this morning, but have no idea how I got there. Worse yet, I'd lost my shoes. I called Albert, gave him my size, and thirty minutes later he returned with a pair of Nike sneakers that almost fit.

What else? The show itself is awful. Nothing, and I mean nothing, worth seeing. I ran into Moshe this morning and he's shell-shocked by the constant screaming awful music that's blasting everywhere, indoors and outdoors, without any way to find relief. He says the only time he's ever seen this before was in Israeli prisons where they used loud music to torture prisoners. He says no human can stand more than a day of this. Yet here we all are, more than a hundred and fifty thousand of us, staggering around like zombies after three days of abuse.

The Asians have been especially hard hit. They're dropping like flies. Koreans are strewn around the hallways passed out in the same blue suits they've had on since arriving on Sunday. I've been told that a great number of them do not even bother to rent rooms and instead simply sleep in their booths. Or in hallways. They're everywhere. It's like Dawn of the Dead. In the press room the guys from Gizmodo have been playing terrible jokes on passed-out foreigners, putting their hands in bowls of warm water, taking pictures of them holding rude signs, putting lipstick on them -- not cool.

I realized this morning as I staggered through the show floor with my head spinning that the show itself is a metaphor for the future of the digital home -- and guess what? The future is not a place you're going to want to visit. The future, in fact, is going to be a fucking nightmare, a total clusterfuck with everybody from Nokia to Seagate to Comcast to Verizon to Microsoft to Netgear launching overlapping products and overlapping services and everyone claiming they're going to bring all of the zillions of pieces together into some kind of magical coherent whole.

Everybody talks about how you're going to just move from one screen to another and take all your phone calls and data and videos and music with you wherever you go. The reality is that everybody is pushing only pieces of the puzzle, just ingredients in what is looking more and more like a highly fucked up stew. Hodgepodge city. Everyone agrees that physical media -- DVDs and CDs -- are dead, and battles like SACD v. DVD-A and Blu-ray v. HD-DVD are pointless. Everyone agrees that electronic distribution is the future. But nobody can figure out how the fuck this is going to happen.

The whole situation is crying out for someone to come in and make sense of it the way Apple made sense of digital music with iTunes and iPods. Lesson there was simple: People will give up freedom and sign away their souls if you can make a system that works. Whoever figures this one out is going to make a holy shitload of money.

Our Apple spies have been working the floor hard and shutting down anyone who's showing iPod accessories without permission. Caught some grumbling about this in the Mandalay Bay casino last night. Took photos of the complainers with my iPhone and we can ID them when I get back.

Highlight of the show for me is that someone -- I won't say who -- has been going around the show floor with a hidden device that shuts off TV screens. They're standing in the crowd, blasting displays and befuddling the booth idiots. The perps film themselves doing this and are compiling a movie. I've seen some of the raw footage. It's amazing. Bam goes the screen at a gamer booth. Bam goes the screen at a Motorola press conference. Bam-bam-bam goes an entire wall in the Panasonic booth, thirty screens snapping to black. Best thing I've seen here.

Speaking of the Beast

In this case I mean the other Beast, Mr. Bill. Apparently he has infiltrated the OLPC project and convinced the freetards to make their XO machine a dual-boot Linux-Windows device. See here. Says Negroponte: "We're working very hard to do both."

In this they are probably just caving to customer demands. No doubt some of the countries that are balking on XO told Saint Nicholas that they might actually consider his machine -- if it ran Windows. Because much as the freetards might hate to admit it, real customers (even those in Third World countries) want to have Windows because that's what everybody else has. (Except the truly blessed who run OS X, but let's face it -- we're not made for the masses.)

Problem is, Negroponte's right-hand man, Walter Bender, supposedly recently said he would quit if the machine shipped with Windows. So the drama unfolds.

By the way I did actually meet personally with Negroponte back when this whole project was starting out. We were offering to help and offering to make a version of OS X for his box. I told him how education is one of my big interests and I shared some ideas I had about how kids learn. You know what he said? "I've spent my entire career in academia. I'm not here to get ideas on education from a dropout."

(FSJ FICTION ALERT: This last paragraph is made up. Please don't write letters to Negroponte or Dear Leader about this.)

The beast is alive

No, I'm not talking about the parasite in Johnny Poison's intestines, though from what I've heard that too remains alive. No, in this case I'm talking about the parasite that has infiltrated our culture and is fighting to remain lodged in our innards, feeding on us, despite the valiant efforts of Dr. Obama to remove her. As parasites go, she's good. You must admit it. She's a tough one. The crying in the coffee shop? She sold it. She made it look real.

Nevertheless, I wonder: How does someone go from being 13 points down in the last polls to a three-point victory in the actual voting? Damn you, Clintons! It's like the bad old days all over again.

Is this a hoax?

Much love to dear reader Fernando who alerted us to this alleged campaign by police in the south of Wales where they claim teenagers are getting run down by cars when they step out into the road while wearing iPods. Please tell me this is not real. If it is, we're going to fly over there and shut those bozos down. I mean it.

Chicago law prof blasts OLPC

See here. A law prof from University of Chicago, which I've heard is a pretty good school and perhaps possibly even in the same class as MIT, says that OLPC makes no sense and that Saint Nicholas has his very large head firmly positioned inside his big charitable ass. Or something like that. Best part is toward the end where he tells you all the things you could do with $400 bucks besides buying 2 craptops. For example, for $20 you can buy enough maize to feed a family of four in Ethiopia for six months.

Money quotes:

"Nonprofits that make products no one wants don’t deserve any praise, even if they don’t take a profit."

"Real charitable organizations can buy computers from companies like Intel and donate them to children in poor countries if they think that’s a good idea; there is no reason why they should buy worse computers from a nonprofit company. ... In the same way, nonprofits buy food, tractors, seeds, and other goods from for-profit companies, and then donate them to poor people in poor countries. Why should laptops be any different from these other products?"

The latter point strikes at the central problem with OLPC -- the goal was never so much to help kids as it was to show how clever a bunch of academics could be. It was about ego, and showing off. It was a bunch of amateurs claiming they could do a better job of designing and building a personal computer than all of the companies that have been in this business for thirty years. Why else set out to reinvent the personal computer? Well, they reinvented it all right.

I'm very proud of our diversity at Apple

And I'm also really proud of the fact that we're not the kind of company that just makes empty-gesture type appointments in order to create the illusion of being more diverse. Why just this week we announced the addition of an Asian woman to our board of directors, bringing our total number of non-white-male directors to one. And it's no big deal. I mean it's just something we did and we're not saying it's anything special or unique and we're not out looking for praise for being so diverse. So much for the glass ceiling at Apple right? Anyhoo, Andrea Jung, the CEO of Avon, is uniquely qualified to guide a consumer electronics and digital media company. And yeah, I know she maybe kinda looks like a dude. But trust me, we've had her checked. She's all woman. And all Asian. Jerry York says that's called a twofer.

Turn around bitch, I got a use for you

Much love to dear reader Jarred for sending in this photo which just screams out for a caption contest. Yes, it's Beastmaster jamming with Slash at CES. Have fun. It's so easy, baby.

Beastmaster gets all passive-aggressive on my ass

Check out his Engadget interview here where he does the classic trick of pretending to be saying nice things about me but if you really listen he's actually taking the piss out of me. Money quotes:

"I am very sincere that Steve has unique skills that I just don't have at all and it's been phenomenal to see how he has been able to make a difference with what he's done."

"Oh, I like Steve. And I've always been extremely complimentary of the impact he's had on the industry. ... So Steve and I are virtually the same age -- he's a little bit older, he got into it about three years after we had done the original personal computer stuff -- and he was my sixteenth customer for the BASIC interpreter."

"I came out and I actually worked more with Woz -- Steve wasn't a hands-on engineer involved in that thing -- because Woz had been trying to do his own BASIC but just couldn't get it done."

Much love to MyCats for the tip.

We really are super excited about our new products

And we really really could not wait to announce the new MacPro and the new Xserve server. I know people are skeptical about our timing and as Johnny Poison told us some people think it looks bad but honestly we're not making this up. We came in yesterday and had a meeting and found out these products were done and ready to go, and we said, Hey, why not? Why hold them back a week if they're ready to go today? They brought in the engineers and gave me a demo and I said, Fine, okay, let's do it tomorrow. I know it's CES week but honestly I wasn't even aware of that when I made the decision. I really really pay no attention to CES. None at all. Even if I did pay attention to it I wouldn't let events like that shape what we do at Apple. We march to our own beat. We think different. We're not one of those companies that's all driven by marketing and spin and hype. We just go to work each day and make the best products we can, the products that we want to use ourselves, and when those products are ready we put them out to the market and hope that other people love them as much as we do [enough, we get it, Ed.]

David Lynch iPhone commercial

Frankly, I'm not much of a fan of his movies anyway. So I guess we're even.

Joy of Tech defends OLPC

See here. They've got Chris Crocker defending Nicholas Negroponte. Sweet.

The daily Poison

As I write this I am using an EVDO card and sitting on the floor in the hallway outside the CES press room, having been banished from that hallowed space for violating the "no food or beverages" rule when I was caught sneaking a sip of Cuervo from my flask. No worries since the press room is overcrowded and smells like ass. It's the Europeans. The hallway is also crowded, butt to bellybutton, with filthy hacks crouched on the floor snarfing their horrible free lunches from paper plates. Oh, the humanity! I can barely look at the swill that's being served to the hacks, let alone attempt to eat it. Anyway I am now on a starvation diet trying to kill the bastard parasite whose presence in my intestines has been confirmed. Not to get too graphic but put it this way -- there has been a sighting.

I spent most of last night in the company of some Sony engineers from Japan playing blackjack at the Venetian. We were winning and the Sony dudes were drinking even harder than I was and celebrating the death of HD-DVD (everyone here says it' s now officially dead) and raving about their new OLED 11-inch screen which sells for $2,500 in the States. Spielberg and Seinfeld have both put in requests personally via Howard Stringer and will be receiving units from the first shipment of 400 coming into the States. Occurs to me -- a ridiculously overpriced and not entirely useful product that sells out because it looks cool and there's lots of hype? Sounds perfect for us. I collected business cards from the Japanese some of whom said they might be willing to share information. Moshe is working on them today. The Japanese by the way claim to have loads of experience with parasites and said hot sake was the way to go and so at three in the morning I found myself downing a bottle of near-boiling sake while my companions cheered and cursed the devil inside me. Johnny-san, guaranteed you pass this evil being by morning, they told me. They lied.

Also joining Operation Tapeworm were Luz-Maria and her friend Margaret who arrived near dawn and suggested that instead of killing the parasite one should attempt to lure him out. Sweets were said to be the favored food of these beasts so an ice cream sundae was procured from room service and strategically positioned you-know-where. Luz-Maria and Margaret lit candles and knelt on either side of me chanting prayers in Spanish and waiting. Nothing. The bastard is too smart! He knows I'm after him. We gave up, finally, and smoked a joint and ate the sundae and the girls did their thing with the four-handed massage and we all agreed we could try again tonight. I need to get this thing out of me before I get back to San Francisco -- as you know, Piers, my life partner, is incredibly squeamish. I want to spare him this horror.

What else? I slept my usual three hours, woke feeling Frank Booth, the parasite, stirring inside me. Immediately hoovered my breakfast -- three fat lines -- on my iPhone. Did you know the glass on that device is just perfect for this? Then shared a cab to the convention center with two dudes from Pioneer who were also incredibly excited about the demise of Toshiba's HD-DVD, saying the whole industry has hated this stupid standards war and has been praying for someone to just put a knife in the heart of one of these things so we can all just move forward blah blah. Turns out Pioneer makes Blu-ray players for Sony. Who knew? Pioneer guys also were talking about Apple announcing these new products today and they were laughing saying Apple looks like a bunch of punk-ass bitches and who gives a shit about some new 8-core MacPro and a new server and does anyone actually buy Apple servers and who the fuck cares about Apple in general and sure last year the iPhone stole everyone's thunder here but Apple is really starting to smoke its own Kool-Aid if they think the whole world is gonna stop turning every time Steve Jobs pops out a fart out there in Cupertino.

My takeaway? Announcing the products today was a profound mistake and makes us look insecure. And the whole thing about "We're just so excited that we had to roll these out right away" is something not even the biggest frigtard in the world would swallow, let alone Apple fanboys. My sense is there's been a sea change and that at some level people are just kind of sick of our bullshit and need us to shut the fuck up and start being nice again or at least stop looking people in the eye and straight-out lying to them. I mean if we're going to lie then we should make an effort to dream up believable lies. We really have to stop treating customers like retards. Just my two cents on this.

On the way to the center, riding with the Pioneer guys, we saw a very sad-looking hooker, a girl no more than 25 but already wrecked by crack or crystal meth, sitting on a curb in a miniskirt outside a convenience store, eating an ice cream cone. We were sitting at a red light. She waved to us. I waved back. She threw me a kiss. I almost cried. Then the light turned green and we zoomed off to the show.

FSJ poll shows Scoble beating Clinton in New Hampshire

Results of our latest poll after the close: Robert "King of all Bloggers" Scoble takes second place with 470 votes versus 317 for Hillary Clinton. Oh, and Obama got 1853. Not good news for Mrs. Clinton, I'd say. Scoble reported to be in talks with Bob Shrum, recruiting campaign team via Facebook and trying to devise a strategy for South Carolina. Weighing a bid as a third-party candidate. I'm told he put out a really classy speech on Twitter last night. Video announcement of his decision to enter the campaign expected this morning. Much love, Scoble.

Hillary's going down in flames. I couldn't be happier.

They're now predicting a double-digit win for Obama. See this story from Drudge saying she might even pull out of the race if she gets spanked too badly in New Hampshire. I just called Obama and told him what he already knew -- now is the moment to go for the throat. Hillary has been seen crying. And the Washington Post is mocking her in a video, calling her "fired up and ready to bore." Honestly, when I think about the way this dame tried to throw her weight around out here in the Valley when she thought she had a lock on the nomination, it makes me sick. I'm proud to have been the first one to stand up to her bullying.

Bono, you are dead to me. And by the way, stop poaching my engineers.

You've probably heard by now that my ex-friend Bono appeared in the video for the Beastmaster's farewell keynote last night at CES. Sure, there were other losers involved. Jon Stewart. Slash. Spielberg. Obama and Hillary. But those aren't people I've ever been friends with. So a lot of folks have been emailing me asking if I feel betrayed by Bono. Truth is, Bono and I had a falling out quite a while ago. Started when I threw Fred Anderson under a bus on the options backdating thing, and then got worse when Palm, which Bono part owns, hired Jon Rubinstein, our former iPod and iPhone guru. And it's been getting worse since. Like, the week before Christmas the SOBs at Palm hired another of our big guns from engineering, a guy named Mike Bell, who's been with us for 15 or 16 years and has worked on all sorts of products. Now he's going to run product development at Palm. We're kicking and screaming and threatening legal action. Legally we can't do anything -- California doesn't allow non-compete clauses -- but we can still make their lives miserable by suing them and tying them up in court and seeking injunctions. And we might do it. I'm not kidding. I mean you know that we're not a litigious company, we're all about peace and love and thinking different, and all we really care about is making the world a better place by creating products that people like Gandhi might use. But I swear to friggin God if Palm doesn't stop poaching our guys I'm going to go over there and burn the friggin place down to the ground myself.

Another freetard outrage

Much love to dear reader Holger for alerting us to this one. I'm sickened by this. What is wrong with these people? You know isn't it enough that they give this software away free? How much more incentive do they need? Free fake iPhone if you can correctly guess which one is Pamela Jones of Groklaw. To see the original go here.

Sorry about the confusion

Bit of a mess here on the blog this morning. Johnny has been trying to blog from his iPhone and says it keeps fucking up on him. Hence the blank post. I just called him to chew him out and explained to him that the problem could not be with iPhone and must be with him. He says it's the slow EDGE networking stuff. I reminded him that our EDGE networking is not slow; in fact it is the fastest networking available on any smart phone, and we're really excited about the performance of iPhone.

Meanwhile some updates from Johnny.

1. Internet connection in the press room has gone down. No wifi, no wired connections. Nada. Zilch. Hacks pissed off. Very impressive performance from the folks running a high-tech trade show.

2. Motorola held a roundtable about the future of video and mobile telephony and set-top boxes or something. The future, anyway. Johnny attended and says the food sucked, and there was no alcohol, and it was a panel of extremely old guys in suits talking about the convergence of TV and computers and the Internet. Says just looking at these guys you can realize why Motorola is so fucked. And why just replacing Zander isn't going to be enough.

3. Supposedly Dvorak was spotted on sidewalk outside north hall receiving CPR. We're not sure if this one is true. Johnny says the guy looked like Dvorak but that might just have been wishful thinking. And Johnny is operating in a somewhat altered state.

FWIW, some folks have written in complaining about Johnny's drug use. Not much I can tell you except that drugs have really helped a lot of people expand their consciousness, and Johnny is one of the most expanded minds at Apple.

Medical alert

Pulse rate 180. Bathed in sweat. Seeking alcohol to bring heart rate back down.

High noon

It's just noon and the eight-ball is gone thanks to my pal Julian from the BBC and 2 members of his camera crew. Great to see old friends but what is it about Brits and their shameless hoovering of other people's drugs? Albert is dropping me at north hall for a lunch meeting with REDACTED then he is going out to score again. I gave him 2 grand and told him just get as much as he can.

Tasers!

Just saw 2 Russians in shiny suits tasered by a black lady sheriff for trying to jump the monorail gate. Awesome. Now on train staring at dandruff on French dude's shoulders. Not awesome. Peace out.

A bulletin from Moshe

Team is installed. Operation Cold Sore in full operation. Listening devices installed at Microsoft and Sony suites. We are compiling list of products that claim iPod compatibility without paying for Apple approval. Subpoenas to be served tomorrow. Special ops working to undermine network connections to booths of HP, Dell and Lenovo. Where possible we will compromise display machines themselves.

Meanwhile in Bay Area Microsoft spokesblogger Om Malik is recovering from heart attack and has been made aware of how this happened; promises to change his ways and start loving Apple. Biological agents ready to go on other Microsoft shills. Waiting for signal from you.

CES -- first impressions

I flew in late and missed the Beastmaster's keynote, but the city still smelled of sulphur so I knew he'd been here. Word was he said nothing new, did a semi-funny bit about his last day at Microsoft and then talked about some pie-in-the-sky technologies that supposedly are right around the corner, like cameras in cell phones that will use image recognition so when you point the camera at a Wal-Mart it informs you that this is a Wal-Mart in case you're too frigtarded to figure that out just by looking at the building without a camera. Oh, and the good folks at Wal-Mart will beam you information about what kind of super deals they have running today on chicken-fried steak or whatever it is they sell at Wal-Mart; I have to confess I've never been inside one of them. Thank you, Microsoft, for the beautiful world you are helping to create for us.

Anyhoo I rolled in feeling like shit and with my body clock all fucked up after two weeks in Shenzhen (which, by the way, thanks a fucking lot for that assignment) but I got to the suite at the Signature and before I could even finish unpacking there was a knock on the door and it was Albert, my kind-faced Filipino driver, returning with an eight-ball of blow, an ounce of weed and a bottle of Cuervo Gold that I'd asked him to score for me. Within minutes I was back feeling normal again, or at least as normal as you can feel when you haven't slept for thirty six hours and your nose is bleeding from the coke and your ass is bleeding from something you ate in China which may or may not have given you a parasite. It's been my experience that Cuervo Gold will kill parasites; this anyway is the plan.

Fully refueled on the Bolivian marching powder I found Albert in the Range Rover outside and we made our way to the Pepcom press preview event at Caesars. I dressed like shit so I could pass as a member of the fourth estate and used my fake credentials from Macworld to get in, and spent a delightful two hours among all of the filthy hacks who are here covering the show and checking out the sad array of "breakthrough products" (ha) on display around the room. Basic impression is that the show is a total fucking bust. There's nothing, and I mean nothing, that anyone is excited about or talking about or caring about. Nothing. Every table is like the Hillary Clinton of electronics -- absolutely yesterday. Nokia, Motorola and Palm were like the Land that Time Forgot, displays frozen in time, showing phones so old that at each booth I approached the spokesflacks and handed them my iPhone and said, "Oh, hey, I've got the Year 2000 on the phone and he says you've got his products and he wants them back." Hearty laughs all around.

Then, um, there were some cool gaming PCs and Alienware had a curved monitor for gametards that won't be out until end of 2008 and some other company had some gamertard chairs and Whirlpool had some kind of refrigerator (I'm not making that up) and, oh yeah, there were a lot of GPS devices for your car. Whoopee.

Highlight of the evening was when Goatberg made his dramatic entrance -- he was carried in on a litter by four oiled-up muscleboys in togas, with Katie Boehret, his poor assistant, walking ahead of them and strewing flower petals in their path. The entire floor stopped and all heads turned and the vendors all chanted, Waaaalt! Waaaaalt! Waaaaalt! Meanwhile someone in the crowd (I think it was Brian Lam of Gizmodo) made goat noises -- "Baaa! Baaa!" Goatberg, ever haughty, occasionally held out his hand so that marketing dweebs could kiss his fingers, but otherwise he remained oblivious to them all. It was like seeing Jesus riding his donkey into Jerusalem.

Other highlight were the cheerleaders, who were everywhere, apparently to go with some theme about LSU versus Ohio State (these are football teams? I asked but couldn't get any straight information). The cheerleaders were the usual array of Vegas booth skanks, nothing too outstanding, and to make things worse they were all hitting the food displays trying to cadge a free meal instead of, I don't know, whatever it is they were supposed to be doing. Saddest moment for me was when I noticed, upon closer inspection, that one of the poor cheeleaders was old enough to be a grandmother and she was wearing support hose under her little cheerleader miniskirt. Sigh.

What else? Sony has a very very thin TV. Big fucking deal. Microsoft has a deal with NBC to do the Beijing Olympics on MSN and is already talking about what comes after Vista and they're also very proud of their new system that turns crappy vehicles made by Ford into crappy vehicles that talk. GM is showing off a robot car. My mission is to get a ride in it and smash it into a display. We'll see. Otherwise I'm going around to all the PC company booths and waiting until no one is looking and then using the keystroke combinations that Moshe taught me to make the Windows machines crash.

I left Caesars feeling depressed about the industry but excited about our Obama-like position in it. In need of fresh air, I walked back to the Signature and once there I received a visit from a young lady who promptly stole five hundred dollars from me. (Take note: do not call the escort services who advertise on the side of giant trucks driving up and down the strip; and if you do call them, do not let the girl tie you up, even if she says you're really really going to like it.) So it was back downstairs to the ATM in the lobby and then out to Albert in the Rover who hooked me up with a cousin of his, a highly reputable rub-and-tug practitioner who calls herself Luz Maria. Wonderful. Total GFE. Two pops and a bona fide massage to boot. Highly recommended. I was already asleep when she slipped out. Three hours later I was up doing lines on the glass coffee table and looking out the windows here on the twentieth floor and watching the sky turn the color of weak milky gray coffee over the mountains in the distance. You know how in Homer you got the rosy-fingered dawn, like each new day was some kind of sweet young nubile girl? Here dawn comes up with hands like an old hag, like some sixty-year-old woman in a cheerleader outfit, gray and wrinkly and already tired before the day has even begun.

Well, Luz-Maria promised to come back tonight and to bring a friend with her, so I can experience a four-handed massage. More as the day goes on.

John Edwards actually said this. Out loud. In front of other people.

Quote: "The status quo is yesterday. And change is tomorrow. And tomorrow begins today."

I am not making this up. See here.

The v2 iPhone poll results

Looks like 3G is the feature most in demand. Can't really say much about that. But I guess the dickhead from AT&T already did. Right? So, um, yeah. No problem. We're working on it.

"The demise of One Laptop Per Child"

That was the teaser headline on the front page of the Business section of today's New York Times. The headline appeared in the print edition only, so I can't provide a link to that headline. But the story itself is here. Grim stuff. Meanwhile check out the little Peruvian dudes in the photo from the Times. I'm not sure how you say "What the fuck" in Peruvian but at least two of them seem to be saying it. (Photo by Martin Mejia for AP.)

Caption contest

Much love to dear reader Brinke for this one. I know, I know -- fish in a barrel. What the hell have fun with it.

Meanwhile we're putting up a new poll about the New Hampshire Democratic primary. Much love.

We'll be covering CES

As you probably know, the Consumer Electronics Show begins tomorrow in Las Vegas, kicking off with a big keynote by the Beastmaster where I'm guessing he will talk about all the new ways in which Microsoft hopes to add extra layers of frustration to people's lives by turning ordinary everyday experiences like making phone calls and watching television into annoying, confusing processes that require you to integrate multiple unreliable and incompatible digital devices into a Frankenstein system that needs a dozen different remote conrols (each one bigger and uglier than the others, with a zillion tiny buttons) and which freezes, hangs and crashes without warning. Or something.

Anyway I wouldn't be caught dead at this clusterfuck, partly because of the crowds but mostly because exposure to all that inferior technology makes me physically ill. Even twice-a-day high colonics is not enough to flush the toxins from my system.

But we do need to keep an eye what's happening out there. So as usual we're sending a team of operatives. Moshe Hishkill, our director of intelligence and security, will be in Vegas with a team of his guys. We're also sending Johnny Poison, one of our veteran PR flacks, a guy who's been with us for more than a decade and who is so skilled at communications and public relations that no one in the Valley press corps has ever seen him, met him, spoken to him, or even heard of him. Inside the PR department at Apple there is no higher praise.

I've given them permission to post to the blog and share their reports to me with you, my readers. I'll also be posting, but perhaps only sporadically as I'm going into full-bore Jesus-in-the-desert mode in preparation for Macworld. The new guys are listed as contributors in the sidebar, and you should feel free to send them email. They probably won't respond or acknowledge you in any way because hey, we're Apple and you're not. But send it along anyway. Peace out.

How could this amazing device be improved?

Not that we really give a shit what you want -- you'll take what we give you, and you'll like it -- but I'm sitting here with Jony and we've had a few drinks and he's like, Dude, put out a poll about iPhone, just for giggles and to torment the poor idiots into thinking they might actually get some of this stuff.

So fine. It's up there in the right hand column. I realize there are probably other things you'd like iPhone to do, and feel free to use the comments here to propose those and discuss. We really do value your feedback. Honestly. We do. Well, not really. But tell us anyway. It's Friday, and we just had a beer blast, and now we're bored. But please no more suggestions like, "Gives me blowjob then turns into pizza and six-pack of beer," okay? Seriously. Somebody put that one up on the multi-touch wall in our lobby the other day and then the HR department got called in because it was a violation of the Apple sexual harassment policy and we ended up firing the guy.

Well, I'm off to another Macworld rehearsal, and then back to my float tank for eight hours of non-thinking.

So maybe there is a God

So maybe it's not yet time to join hands and sing "Ding dong, the witch is dead," but man oh man you can kind of feel that day coming, can't you? As many of you know, I've had some nasty run-ins with the Clintstones and I don't exactly hold them in high regard. Frankly, I can't stand them. And I can't tell you how glad I was to see this mean old grimbo get her big garbage-bag-full-of-oatmeal ass spanked in Iowa last night. Unless or until Al Gore enters the race, I'm supporting Obama. The guy was amazing last night. That speech! Yes, I did recently say that Obama was "a nice guy, but a lightweight." You know what? I was wrong. Because no lightweight could have beaten the shit out of the Clintstone political machine the way he did. Clearly Obama is not just extremely smart and a great speaker, but he knows how to run a campaign, and he knows how to stay cool, and he knows how to fight. My sense is he's tougher than he looks, but that he downplays his toughness.

As Peggy Noonan put it in this smart essay, "He took mama to school."

Or as readers of this blog might say, Hillary got pwned by a n00b. Amazing. And such great news for all of us. I just hope Obama can stay tough because the Clintstones are now going to unleash every low blow and dirty trick in their arsenal. Nothing, and I mean nothing, fights like a cornered Clintstone.

Meanwhile, what's to say about Huckabee, with his corn-pone aw-shucks Gomer Pyle act and his bass playing and his self-deprecating humor? All I need to know about him is that he says he wants to take this nation back for Christ. In my book that's it. Sorry. You're done. Out. Gone. Bye. I mean stuff like that scares the living shit out of me. Funny thing is I'm pretty sure Jesus would hate this asshole just as much as I do.

Economist bashes XO laptop

See their incredibly brutal review here. Headline is "One Clunky Laptop Per Child" and goes downhill from there. Keys are too small. Processor is too slow. Trackpad is "screwy." Moving files from word processor to web mail is "prohibitively difficult." Worse yet are the "bugs ... crashes ... errors ... hiccups." And check this: "The implementation of the technologies is terrible. In their zeal to rewrite the rules of computing for first-time users ... OLPC tried to reinvent the wheel and came up with an oval."

Ouch. Meanwhile Negroponte, keen PR man that he is, today lashed out at Intel and blamed them for his woes. Plus ca change, as the Portuguese say.

Freetard football: Intel bails from OLPC

Much love to the many readers who sent in links about Intel bailing from the OLPC effort. If you've not seen this yet, check out this quickie from Reuters. The Journal also has a piece this morning. Gist of the divorce seems to be that Saint Nicholas demanded that Intel drop its Classmate PC, a rival to the OLPC XO machine, and Intel wasn't willing to do that. Also worth noting in the Journal story, if you can find it online, is the paragraph toward the end which says OLPC claims its "Give 1 Get 1" program has been successful, but declines to provide numbers.

You know the whole OLPC thing started out as this big freetard experiment with loads of rhetoric about peace and love and sharing and openness. Now suddenly they won't operate out in the open. They won't share sales figures. Their CTO just quit to start a company and sell OLPC technology at a profit, with no details disclosed on who owns what and who'll be keeping whatever money gets made. Now we find out that behind the scenes Negroponte has been bullying Intel over the Classmate and trying to eliminate competition. He's like one of these petty dictators who talks a lot of shit about democracy but only holds elections if he's certain he'll get 99.9% of the vote. This is coming from the guy who was raving about the wonderful free market goodness of competition back when he was telling the world how he was going to make a PC for a hundred bucks and totally fuck up all the big players in the market. Oh yeah. In those days competition was a good thing.

See, that's how it goes with freetards. They're like a bunch of guys with a weekend touch football team who go around talking smack about how they could totally beat the New England Patriots -- and they could, as long as the Patriots would agree to the freetard rules, which is that when the freetards take the field the Patriots must stay on the sidelines, watching, and let the spastic freetards run the down field over and over, clumsily scoring points. Touchdown! Another touchdown! Field goal! My goodness these freetards are amazing! They're beating the New England Patriots, the greatest football team in NFL history! God forbid the Patriots might finally get fed up and decide to take the field and beat the snot out of these guys. God forbid the Pats should simply do what they do, which is run, hit, tackle, block and pass. That, my friend, would constitute cheating. And the freetards would start leaping up and down demanding a penalty call.

Freetard football is what we call it. The best part is watching when they're playing against an open field and still can't get a first down. Negroponte takes the snap, he fades back, he's looking, he's scrambling, he's under pressure from the non-existent pass rush, he's searching, but he can't find an open receiver ... oh! He trips over his own feet and sacks himself! Ouch! That one's gonna hurt ... but wait, he's back up now and he's looking around for someone to blame! He's pointing at the Patriots on the sidelines and yelling at the referee, demanding an instant replay and a penalty call ...

Scoble Facebook shutdown was a hoax

So much for the big drama of Scoble being tossed off Facebook. By end of day yesterday he'd had his privileges restored. But only after causing a big fuss and calling all sorts of attention to himself and boosting his traffic numbers. Seriously, what kind of shameless attention whore would do something like that? Scoble, if you're going to pull stunts, at least try to be original. Much love, big fella. Sorry I'm just reporting this now but I was in rehearsals until late last night then went directly to my float tank.

Join the "Ban Scoble from Facebook" group on Facebook

Well it's happened. The "ban Robert Scoble from Facebook" group has been created. Apple faithful, let your voices be heard. Go here and vote to keep Robert Scoble banned from Facebook. Much love to dear reader Ted for doing what needed to be done. All I did was ask, and boom! Like that, it happened.

Incredible jackass jumps into subway tracks to retrieve iPhone; thinks he's all cool and badass.

See this story about some lunatic who dropped his iPhone into the subway tracks in New York and went down after it. He could have been killed by a train or by the third rail. What's more, someone had taken a dump in this subway tunnel. Folks, please listen to me. If you drop your phone into a crap-filled subway tunnel, do not go down after it. Write to me and tell me what happened and I'll see what we can do for you. Oh, and one more thing: This kid admits in the story that he's unlocked his iPhone and hacked it with all sorts of craplications. We're bricking him pronto.

Poll results

Well it looks like this Blogger poll feature is a good one -- we've had more than 2,000 responses in just a day. At least I think it's been only a day. Anyway, at last count it looks like "Flash notebook" is the clear winner, with a ball gag for Dave Winer coming in second. We'll get to work on both right away.

Full results:

Flashbook: 911
Winer ball gag: 615
3G iPhone: 588
Tablet: 540

Much love to all who participated. New poll about Robert Scoble is up now.

Caption contest

Hey look kids! It's Robert Scoble and Dave Winer, the two most annoying blowhards on the Internet, and they're talking to one another! What on earth could they be saying?

Scoble banished from Facebook. We're trying to see if we can banish him from Apple too.

If you haven't heard already, Robert "King of All Bloggers" Scoble has been tossed out of Facebook because he violated their terms of use. Scoobie used a script to try to pull his friends list off Facebook, which is something they don't allow, because they're, um, all about transparency and openness and freedom, dude. Or something. Anyhoo, Scoobie knew the rules but he broke them anyway. Now he's begging Facebook to let him back in. According to Valleywag (see here) a bunch of people have joined a Facebook group calling for Scoble to be reinstated. (To see this group -- or God forbid, join it -- go here.) Problem for Robert as I see it is that Microsoft is now partnered with Zuckerborg, and those dudes in Redmond friggin hate Scoble. I'm not kidding.

What I'm wondering is whether anyone will counter the pro-Scoble group by starting a "Keep Robert Scoble off Facebook" group. And if not, why not? Someone create this thing and we'll drive as many people as possible to it.

Meanwhile we're trying to figure out if we can banish Scoble from using Apple products or visiting Apple retail stores. From what I'm told others have picked up on the same idea. Google wants him off their apps. Twitter says he's eating up too much bandwidth. Here's a thought. Why not banish Robert Scoble from the Internet altogether? Is that even possible? Moshe says he's looking into it.

Watch out, baby. We're gaining share.

Check out this report. Based on this trend data we are going to hit 10% by 2009. Watch out, Microtards. We are on your ass! BTW, for all the noise about Linux, why does it only register at .63% of Web browsers when it has 27% of column inches in trade rags?

Meet the guy who's in for the biggest disappointment of 2008

His name is Dennis O'Reilly and he says here on CNET that he's had it with Windows and this year he's going to dump Microsoft and switch to Ubuntu Linux because it "has a reputation for being complete, well supported, and easy to use." But then he admits that he's made this momentous decision purely based on articles he's read and some stuff on Wikipedia. Money quote: "I know the OS only by reputation, however."

Um, yeah. Well I'm sure Linux will be just as easy to use as all those articles say. What could possibly go wrong?

Question: Have you ever used one of those online dating services, like Match.com, where you meet people based on that one really good-looking photo? Do they ever actually look like that photo? Right. Well good luck with your desktop migration, Dennis O'Reilly. Let us know how that works out, you friggin n00b. My guess is the freetardation will wear off and we'll be seeing you at an Apple store shopping for an iMac by about, oh, I don't know. March? We'll be waiting for you.

Jaron Lanier takes on the freetards

Virtual reality dude Jaron Lanier doesn't believe in the nirvana of open-source development. He got attacked for this position at a conference. See his argument here in a Discover magazine headlined, "Long Live Closed-Source Software! There's a reason the iPhone doesn't come with Linux." Jaron cites the iPhone as an example of the beauty and perfection that can only be created in a closed-source environment, and suggests that while open-source is fine for making knock-offs, it's not so good at fostering creativity and innovation.

Money quote: "Open wisdom-of-crowds software movements have become influential, but they haven’t promoted the kind of radical creativity I love most in computer science. If anything, they’ve been hindrances. Some of the youngest, brightest minds have been trapped in a 1970s intellectual framework because they are hypnotized into accepting old software designs as if they were facts of nature. Linux is a superbly polished copy of an antique, shinier than the original, perhaps, but still defined by it."

Amen and much love, Jaron Lanier. You big fat Whoopie Goldberg looking freak.

Wired's "Sexiest Geeks" competition is an outrage

Just look at this photograph of Olivia Munn from "Attack of the Show." She's in her underwear! My goodness. Apple faithful, this must be stopped. Go here to see the rest of this filthy smut and to voice your outrage! Yes, they want you to vote for the sexiest woman. But I say forget voting and protest instead! It's sickening enough that Wired.com is exploiting these poor creatures, but now they also want you to objectify and rank them, like so many, I don't know, rankable objects.

Also, why does this list not contain photographs of top geeks like Dave Winer and his friend Naked Jen? Because the editors at Wired.com are sexist and lookist and have a narrow, stereotyped view of what's beautiful, that's why. I mean just look at that photo of Olivia Munn. Look at it! Now look again. Well I guess that's what passes for "beauty" in this twisted age. That's the image that the sicko media force-feeds us, and we all buy into it.

Shame on you, Wired.com. Shame! Running photographs of barely clad women in a transparent ploy to goose your page view stats. Ugly stuff.

Windows User of the Week award

Because come on. You just know that this guy runs a Windows PC, right?

Macworld Advent calendar

Once again from our dear friend Marco. I've never seen one of these before and don't really know what they mean but I'm told they are used by the peoples of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. If anyone has more information please send it along. Thanks and much love again to dear reader Marco.

Spielberg pimps his iPhone

See the little video clip on the Vanity Fair page here. Check's in the mail, Spielberg.

We're trying out the new Blogger poll feature

Check it out at the top of the right side. First poll: Which product would you most like to see us announce at Macworld?

Help me decide something

So as you know Apple's campus is generally a peaceable kingdom where all subjects live in harmony with one another and respect each other's differences and nobody makes fun of the dude in engineering who dresses like a man from the waist up and a woman from the waist down -- skirts, nylons, pumps. I'm not kidding.

But lately our happy campus has been riven over a very huge issue. Should we or should we not release our tablet computer and our flash-based laptop at Macworld? Both of these babies are ready to go. But now some people at Apple feel we should hold them back. The reason is they don't believe these products will be huge best-sellers and we already have Apple TV which is non-selling like hotcakes and how many "hobbies" can one company have before they start to seem, well, a little flakey?

We've had terrible arguments about this right here in King Steven's court. Phil and Jonny almost came to blows again. Bertrand says one thing, Ron Johnson says another.

I happened to run into My Little Pony this morning -- he's here begging us to buy Sun -- and I mentioned this dilemma and he says, "You've got a blog right? So why don't you take a survey on your blog? That's how we make all our big decisions at Sun."

So I'm throwing it out there. Should we do the flash-based laptop? What about the tablet? Please let's not just have yes or no answers. We'd like to really hear your thoughts on this.

Now I have to get back to rehearsals. We're doing three a day from now till the show starts and honestly we're so far behind I don't know how we're going to pull everything together.

Christmas card from Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

This just arrived in the mail -- a Christmas card from Steven J. Vaughan-Cut-and-Paste of eWeek. Message on back:

Dear Fake Steve:

Season's greetings from North Carolina! Look what I got for Christmas. Can you say "distributed denial of service"? Ha! Watch your back, jackass. I'm free as in freedom, and you're a dead man walking.

Luv,

SJVN

I forgot to mention Ron Paul

Just realized I forgot to mention Ron Paul in my previous item. I find him intriguing. Mostly because he was the only one who didn't come knocking on my door hoping to meet me. In fact we had to reach out to him. Even then he said he didn't really know who I was and he was kind of busy and he didn't think he could fit me in and what would be the point of this visit?

So in the end I had to go to him. He was down in Los Angeles for part of a day so I flew there and had breakfast with him. He's pro-drugs. Great. Wants us out of Iraq. Great. Wants to reduce the size of government and wipe out taxes. Fantastic.

Only sticking points for me are the fact that he's a Republican and the fact that he's got this pro-life stance. I'm like Dude, is there any chance you could switch over and be a third-party candidate because I can't vote for a Republican. And dude, on this pro-life thing, you gotta lets the ladies control their lady parts, ya know what I'm saying? But he says it's a matter of principle.

So that's it. I'm stumped. There's nobody I can vote for. But I must say, I really liked Ron Paul. Maybe it's just because I know he can't win. I always go for the ones like that -- Nader, Jerry Brown. Oh well. I've heard there's lots of grassroots support for Ron Paul, so maybe he does have a chance. Anyone heard anything? And if so, could we somehow get him to drop this crazy pro-life position?

I'm up in the air on this election

So one good thing about being the most powerful person in the universe is that I can pretty much get access to anyone I want. In the case of politicians, most of them are begging to see me. And yes, I've met with a bunch of them, even some of the Repubes, just to hear them out. They all pretend like they just want to get my input on policy and sound me out for possible cabinet positions (right; as if) but I know what they're really after is my money and that's fine too. Because what is the point of having loads of money if you can't use it to make other powerful people grovel and dance like puppets on strings?

So here's the rundown. Obama is a nice guy, but a lightweight. Hillary scares the shit out of me and makes me glad once again that our management team and board of directors are entirely male. Edwards? Two words: The hair. Kucinich I like, the way you like some sweet fruitcake uncle who shows up every year at Thanksgiving and talks about UFOs; but I'm not letting him get his hand on the big red button. Biden? He's a vacuum cleaner salesman. Dodd? I fell asleep. Richardson brought a box of donuts and ate them while we talked.

Honestly, the Dems are so bad that even that fat blowhard moron Michael Moore says he's bummed out and can't bring himself to vote for one.

So on to the Repubes. Huckabee doesn't believe in evolution, and thinks the story of Adam and Eve is literally true. I'm sorry but anyone who is capable of believing that is certifiably insane and shouldn't be allowed to vote, let alone run for office. Rudy Giuliani picked his nose when he thought I wasn't looking. Gross. Romney appears to be a cyborg. McCain? Great sense of humor, but, um, yeah. He freaks me out.

So here's the thing. I'd love your input on this. Is there anyone in this crappy election year that's worth supporting? Or should we just ride the whole thing out in protest?

And yeah, I've already called Al Gore and begged him. Over and over again. Latest take from Al is he says he's thinking about it. He'll let the other idiots beat the shit out of each other and then he'll leap in later and ride off with the nomination. If that happens, my problems are solved.

More raves for Vista

This time from Cracked magazine, which includes Vista in its list called "2007: Seven Things We Should Pretend Never Happened." Money quote: "Nearly everyone hated Vista, in the way that nearly everyone hates being stabbed. It didn't matter. About 100 million copies of Windows Vista were sold in 2007, because 90 percent of the PCs for sale were already infected with it. Want a new computer? Want to be able to buy software for it? Well, then you don't have a choice. Vista is one of those things the future will laugh at us for, in the same way we laugh about old hospitals using leeches."

Testing

We're testing out a new comment system called Disqus. Let us know what you think. Peace.

Windows fucks up New Year's Eve fireworks. In Seattle. Perfect.

See here. The dudes running the big fireworks show in Seattle had set up a computer to run the display and keep it timed with the music. But somehow the poor dumb piece of shit PC got messed up or crashed or needed to be rebooted or something and the whole show got ruined. Yup. In Seattle. Our spies say Ballmer was at the show and people around him started laughing and pointing at him and doing the monkey dance and chanting, "Vista sucks! Vista sucks!" Afterward Ballmer went back to the Borg campus and trashed an entire set of office furniture, although Frank Shaw of Waggener Edstrom says that this absolutely did not happen. Go Steve!

Much love again, Joy of Tech

Check out their New Year's resolutions by Web luminaries like RSJ, Kevin Rose, Larry and Sergey, Zuckerborg, Jeff Bezos, Al Gore -- and oh yeah, me.

Report: iPhone soon will surpass Linux as Web browser platform

Dear reader Walt sends along his latest blog post in which he references this article from Ars Technica by my main man Charles Jade. Money quote from Charles: "Finally, the iPhone has tripled its admittedly meager market share, going from .04 percent in July to .12 percent six months later. What's interesting here is not the uptake so much as how the iPhone is categorized—as an OS. It's quite possible that by the end of 2008, the iPhone will surpass Linux, which isn't too hard since it rates only .63 percent. Still, it's something of an accomplishment, considering that the iPhone will have been out only 18 months."

Bigger than Linux. Who would have ever imagined? I'm getting all misty. Peace out.

More great news for OLPC team -- their CTO just quit

Mary Lou Jepsen, designer of the XO machine, is history. See a story from IT World here. Her reason for leaving? She wants to make money selling stuff she developed for OLPC, presumably the screen technology. As IT World puts it, "Jepsen noted in an e-mail that she was starting a for-profit company to commercialize some of the technologies she invented at OLPC." Money quote from Jepsen: "I will continue to give OLPC product at cost, while providing commercial entities products they would like at a profit."

Frankly, I'm shocked -- shocked! -- at the idea of someone making money this way. I mean shouldn't all ideas be free to everyone? Why not just share the design with the world? Isn't that what OLPC was all about? Has anyone told Richard Stallman about this? Ahem.

At the very least shouldn't OLPC be the one making money on this stuff? They could license this super valuable technology to commercial companies and use the money to buy laptops for poor kiddies in the developing world.

Another question worth asking is whether Mary Lou Jepsen actually managed to retain ownership of her designs while working for OLPC, a 501(c)(3) organization. If so, doesn't this mean that in effect taxpayers subsidized the R&D for whatever "for-profit company" Mary Lou Jepsen is now about to launch? Well, much love, taxpayers -- and a big namaste to all the corporate sponsors and the good folks who paid $400 for the Give 1 Get 1 program. Not to mention those poverty-stricken nations who've placed orders. Thanks for the seed money, kids! How's it feel to be venture capitalists?

Hoo boy. Freetards.

Caption contest

It's our favorite grumpy bastard, Dave Winer, in a sauna with some other dudes. This photo first appeared on Valleywag. (See here.) Any idea what these guys are thinking? Crank away.

Now back to our regularly scheduled viciousness

Well good old Dave Winer is whining again, this time because he brought in a broken MacBook and we fixed it but we kept his fucked up hard drive and won't give it back to him and he thinks there's some big security issue because surely the whole fucking world gives a shit what's on Dave Winer's hard disk. See this flickr page where he posts a copy of the email he sent to me hoping I'll do something about it. Well since Dave has chosen to air this issue in a public forum rather than letting it remain private let me share with you the email I'm sending back to him.

Dear Dave:

What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you always such a huge fucking pain in the ass to everyone around you? You broke your laptop. We fixed it. As for all this bullshit about how you've lost control of your passwords and brokerage account logins -- come on Dave. That's not what you're worried about. It's the porn. That's right, freak. We've combed every nanometer of that hard drive and pulled everything off it and you know what? I'm halfway inclined to call the fucking cops. You know we're legally obliged to do that when we find stuff like what you've got on there, right? Like the outtakes from this photo shoot of your friend Naked Jen. Dude I'm sorry but that is some truly scary shit. The ones of you prancing around made me throw up in my mouth. Worse yet was this sickening bear-on-twink sauna movie. You look like slightly less attractive version of Ron Jeremy.

By the way, you big dumb fuck, did it not occur to you to take the drive out yourself before you brought it to the store? Surely a big computer scientist such as yourself knows how to remove a hard disk from a laptop and put in a new one? But no. You waltzed into the store and stood in line for customer service just like any other total fuckwit. Now you have the balls to post an open letter about it? I'm sure it's just your way of setting up a legal defense -- your attorneys will be able to argue that the drive was out of your control for some period of time, and who knows what some other person might have put on there, blah blah. Dave, you make me sick. Oh, and by the way, that line about the "source code" on your drive? Right. Source code. Like you're out there writing big important programs and you need your precious source code back. According to our forensics team the only source code they found was some stolen graphics drivers you'd put in a folder and sent to Andrew Tridgell, along with an invoice.

Finally, please know that whenever people expect me to personally attend to their petty complaints about an Apple retail store experience, and when they tell me how they've spent a whopping $3,800 on Apple products in the past two years and make some big threat about how they'll never buy another Apple product, as if I give a shit about losing some asshole pain-in-the-ass customer, well, we automatically put those notes in a special bin. It's called the loony bin. Everyone in that bin automatically gets the same response: Siooma, frigtard. You are hereby forbidden from buying Apple products. Do not ever write to me ever again. Now get down on your knees and bite me right on the ass. Hard.

PS, cheers and best wishes in the new year.

Sincerely,

Steve.

Re: the Ron Burkle takedown drama

Some people have written in wondering what happened to the post about Ron Burkle non-dating Miley Cyrus aka Hannah Montana. So here's what happened. I thought it was funny, fair enough, as a joke about Ron Burkle, who, as you may know, has been the subject of some ribbing on this blog in the past and will probably continue to be a target as one of Larry's rich playboy pals. And the idea of him non-dating Miley Cyrus seemed funny to me. And we didn't get any serious complaints or anything. In fact most people seemed to get the joke.

However, after I put up the item I saw what a few people were doing to the photo of Miley with the PhotoCrank application (imagine something really sick and inappropriate, then double it) and I saw what people were saying about Miley in the comment strings and I realized that in my attempt to make a joke about rich playboy billionaires with back fat I'd also created an opportunity for people to say some nasty things about a perfectly nice young woman -- and the things they were doing, um, frankly made me kind of sick. Yes, Virginia, even FSJ has a conscience sometimes. One policy of the blog is we don't shoot civilians.

There was no way to stop the stuff without shutting off PhotoCrank and shutting of comments and I'd rather leave things running free. So I took down the item. It's just not worth it.

Apologies to anyone who saw the gross photos before they came down; and apologies to those who want the item to be put back up, because it ain't coming back. I should have anticipated this kind of thing and avoided it from the start. But I didn't. I'm an asshole. I made a mistake. I'm sorry. Peace out. Happy New Year. Don't be hatin. Stop the war.

(This explanation originally appeared as a comment in the comment string on the "Bill Gates as pope" item but I'm afraid people won't see it there so I've put it here as a full-fledged item.)