Posts with tag "Steve Jobs"

Who is Arrington trying to bullshit?

Category: Technology
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7 comments
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Posted 1604 days ago

For those of you who might be a little behind in the news it was mentioned earlier today that Steve Jobs checked into Stanford Hospital over the weekend and was going under the knife at some point today. Well it appears that TechCrunch due to their own more trusted sources close to the Big Guy of Apple has just posted a little ditty by Michael Arrington hisself refuting the story

Our own source, who is significantly more believable than some person at some party, says Jobs is in the office today in meetings and most definitely not undergoing surgery. Does that mean he might go under the knife tomorrow instead? Do we really need to know?

However that wasn’t the real kicker – no that was saved for the last line of the post

Let Steve Jobs do his job and live his life. Just because you can write a story doesn’t mean you have to.

Say what?

Are you fucking kidding me on this?

Talk about the kettle calling the pot black – Michael saying that just because you can write a story doesn’t mean you have to .. how frikken hilarious it that.

I only have one thing more to say before I book myself in to the hospital to get this split gut looked at

His Jobness to relinquish Apple for 6 months

Category: Technology
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Comments are off for this post
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Posted 1616 days ago

You can say what you want about Steve Jobs but the one thing you definitely can’t say is that he is stupid man. While he may have built a solid team around him in the latter years in the beginning after his return to Apple he helped bring the company from the precipice of failure and for that he will always be remembered.

Unfortunately in the last little while his health problems have been proving to be more of a distraction that both he and Apple thought it would and as such Silicon Valley Insider is reporting that Steve Jobs is stepping down from the day to day operations of Apple. While he will still be involved in any major strategic decisions Tim Cook will be taking over the day to day business. The following is the email that was sent out to all Apple employees

Team,
I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.
In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.
I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.
I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.
Steve

Even though I may be sarcastic sometimes about Apple and Jobs I truly wish him the best and that he recovers fully from whatever health problems he is having.

Satire is fine until it bites you on the ass

Category: Technology
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11 comments
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Posted 2005 days ago

You blogs are ours Our society has a long tradition of writing, reading and enjoying satire even to the point that in most countries those producing satirical pieces are protected under the law. Given that most satire is a method of poking fun; in varying degrees of nastiness, humor or light-heartedness depending on who is doing the poking and who is being poked, you can take much of what is being said by the writer with a grain of salt. Satire is more of a commentary on something or someone rather than actual news or editorial content.

On the Internet; especially since the explosion of blogs, satire has found a new outlet with some of the notables being The Onion and the many Fake [insert famous person's name] blogs of which The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs (FSJ) is probably the most famous. Up until recently the real author was unknown but then he was outed which is when we discovered that Fake Steve’s real identity was David Lyons from Forbes.com. Now I am not a regular reader of FSJ which is why I only came across the reason for this post in a round about way.

It appears from the last few posts on FSJ that David (aka Fake Steve) has received an email from lawyers purporting to be from Apple’s legal department with an offer of money payable to David if he would shutdown the FSJ blog. Apparently they don’t like the idea of of someone impersonating the illustrious leader and becoming famous in the process. According to Fake Steve their latest email to him also held an implied threat against his financial security along with an attached list of his assets and their worth.

Of course one’s immediate reaction is one of total outrage; which after all would be a normal reaction except for one thing. FSJ is a satire site where one has to always question the authenticity of what is written. It’s not like FSJ isn’t known for well stirring any pot of controversy he can. So once one steps back and gets the outrage under control one has to question the veracity of these posts. Is this a case of the boy calling wolf or is it in fact true events.

If in fact this is the truth and David Lyons (aka Fake Steve) is being threatened in this manner then my support for him is there and I truly hope that he doesn’t bow to the pressure. That said if this is true then we are seeing the first of what could be a concerted move after their success against ThinkSecret by Apple against any site or blog that talks smack against Apple. Regardless of how all those bloggers who said the whole ThinkSecret mess didn’t amount to a hill of beans the fact is that Apple now figures it has carte blanche to do as it wishes against anyone who posts about Apple.

So David if this in fact true then I am afraid you have just stepped into it and not only your future is at stake as a blogger but so is the future of any blogger. If you let Apple pressure you into closing without a fight it will open the doors to any company to do the same.

The ThinkSecret mess has changed the rules of the game and FSJ is the new line in the sand.

Is Apple a one trick company

Category: Technology
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8 comments
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Posted 2111 days ago

steve_jobs I was reading a few of the posts being written today as part of the fallout of the price cut for the iPhone and it was during reading Robert Cringely’s post The Puppet Master that I got to wondering about this whole Apple – Steve Jobs thing.

First it was Steve Jobs.

Then in 1983 it was John Sculley.

This was followed by a downward spiral that threatened the existence of the company known as Apple.

Then in 1997 under the guise of buying NeXT Steve Jobs returned to the company as its new CEO.

Bye Bye Sculley.

From that point on Apple has seen nothing but an upward climb in all areas that gets touched by the Jobs Midas touch. Even with the kick in the nether regions of those iPhone early adopters as Apple announced a $200.00 price cut of the jesus phone the Jobs mystic remains as untarnished as usual.

Sure the pissed of early adopters will take their $100.00 “oops - we’re sorry to have pissed you off” store credits clutched in their hands and spend double that while cursing the Apple name; but dollars to donuts they’ll still be first in line at the next super secret product release praising the power of Jobs.

This all begs the single simple question:

What happens when Jobs finally walks away from Apple for good?

Maybe Microsoft should take a page from Apple’s playbook

Category: Technology
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Comments are off for this post
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Posted 2154 days ago

Secrets aren't such a bad thing sometimes Vista has probably been one of Microsoft’s most problematic OS releases it has ever experienced. With high hopes from day one and an openness that was heralded by the like of Robert Scoble when he was their main blogging front man Microsoft laid bare the roadmap to Vista.

Such was the openness that the Wow campaign; which was meant to send us all running to the nearest Best Buy to get our copies, pretty well fell flat on its marketing face. There was no coolness, no Rolling Stones theme song, no revelations found through individual playing with the new OS.

Some said this was the new Microsoft – a Microsoft open to its consumers. At the same time this also set up Microsoft for that inevitable fall when reality didn’t meet the heralded projections of wishful mockups.

On the other side of the fence we have Apple who is well known for its lawyer enforced secrecy where nobody knows anything and gawd help you if you leak anything. Almost sounds like pre-blogging Microsoft doesn’t it; but where people condemned Microsoft for this practice people in turn think it cool when Apple does it.

It has been the constant rant against Microsoft that it is a monolithic corporation who would step on anyone to get ahead; but when Apple does the same thing it’s cool. Microsoft gets dollar signs in it’s name so the l337 can feel they are cool in their against the man puffery but Apple gets drooled over because it’s cool as it slams take down notices down website owners throats.

As Matt Freestone at Windows Connected points out:

First, does Apple pre-release information about upcoming products or OS releases/features? Absolutely not. In fact, Apple is notorious for being highly secretive, to the point of leaking false information (even internally) firing people for even breathing a product name, suing blogger’s who dare mention something they’ve heard, etc. (The iPhone is a perfect example.) And yet, with Apple, and the iPhone specifically, did you hear outrage at Apple’s secrecy? No, everyone thought it to be ‘cool’, and it helped hype the product beyond appropriate levels.

In his post he comes to the defense of Microsoft over it’s air of secrecy for Vista SP1 and the upcoming Windows 7 which is an attitude I am coming to agree with him on.

Openness has its place but both from a development and marketing point of view I am beginning to question the whole idea. Not to mention that it bothers me that while it is cool for Apple to live behind a wall of lawyers, proprietary software and hardware exclusivity the case is the exact opposite with Microsoft as it is proclaimed as the big evil beast.

Do you think Steve Jobs and Apple would not do anything that Bill Gates and Microsoft has done if the tables where turned – not a chance. So you can all get on your high horses about the need for openness but the fact is that the only thing this openness is doing is puffing up a bunch of bloggers ego’s. For the rest of us who like to be surprised; like to not always know what is in the box, it’s like being told Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

So if Microsoft wants to return to keeping its operating system development under wraps, to keep the service pack details in a lead lined box I don’t have a problem with it.

Steve Jobs would make P.T. Barnum proud

Category: Odds & Ends
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4 comments
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Posted 2177 days ago

For years and years people have moaned and bitched about the prices Microsoft charges for its products and yet here comes His Job’ness walking across the water like the second coming of Moses with an iPod and iPhone as the stone tablets of the 21st Century; and a smirk from knowing the old adage by P.T. Barnum is still true today.

I’m not saying that the iPhone won’t force a much needed change upon the mobile market; much as the iPod did for music, but the fact that people are willing to pay such an inflated price for the privilege to salivate over the newest Apple coolness only goes to show that Jobs knows how to play the hype like a master violinist.

After all what else would cause people to stand in line for hours upon hours; in some cases days, for the privilege of forking over what for some people is a month’s rent just to hold a chunk of electronics in their hand. Then there is the pleasure of using it on an outdated network once you have locked your soul into a 2 year contract with AT&T.

Sure I realize that in the orgasmic heat of the moment no-one really cares about the profit margin Apple would make from this rush to the alter of coolness but folks that iPhone you are cradling like it was a gift bestowed upon you by above only cost from $200.00 to $268.00. This is according to reports in both posts by TechCrunch and CrunchGear as they quote different sources for the information.

So even using a rough average of $300.00 profit per phone; depending on the number of gig, and a projected sale of 4.5 million iPhones in the next year it would appear that Jobs and Co. will enjoy about $1,350,000,000.00 of coolness.

Hang on I think I hear P.T. laughing his ass off.

It doesn’t matter if the iPhone sucks

Category: Technology
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4 comments
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Posted 2182 days ago

The iPhone frenzy continues unabated with all its associated silliness peaking constantly as Friday approaches – even Scoble has gotten in on the kool-aid drinking extravaganza. Just about everywhere you turn something is being written about it in the tech b’sphere to the point that some folks are crying uncle. Debates are going on about how the iPhone will forever change the mobile space and whether or not it will live up to all the hype.

It doesn’t matter that it runs on a slow as molasses network, it doesn’t matter that you can’t get it without signing a two year locked down contract with AT&T, it doesn’t matter that the iPhone could cost you close to $6,000.00 over that two years. What does matter is that it is an Apple product that has the whole iPod culture behind it. A culture of “only Apple knows how to bring cool designs to market“, a culture of Mac coolness and then on top of that it has His Job’ness.

The iPhone will be a financial success even if in the days following the release of the product the natives get restless. The road of success forward has already been paved and nothing will derail this gravy train for Apple. Sure the hype leading up to Friday is getting nauseating and folks might be wishing that Friday will come and go so we can get this abject drooling under control.

Well I hate to tell you folks this is only the beginning of the iPhone’ing of the tech world. Come Monday; or even late Friday, the real iPhone hype will start rolling across the b’sphere like an unstoppable train. It won’t matter if some of it is negative or some is positive. As of Friday the iPhone will change the b’sphere for good and it won’t matter if it sucks – the Master of Hype will have succeeded in making Apple the one to beat. Not to mention making him just a little richer in the process.