Fake Steve creator Dan Lyons just signed a deal to bring Steve Jobs to another small screen near you.
The half-hour series called “iCon” is billed by the presser as “a savage satire centering on a fictional Silicon Valley CEO whose ego is a study in power and greed.”
Making sure the barbs prick will be the job of Larry Charles, director of “Borat” and “Religulous.” The single-camera show to be aired on cable channel Epix may borrow something in style from his work as writer and producer of “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
Charles said, “We are attempting to do nothing less than a modern ‘Citizen Kane.’ A scabrous satire of Silicon Valley and its most famous citizen.”
Inside Steve Jobs’ abandoned mansion. @Photo Jonathan Haeber, Bearings.
A judge upheld a ruling to let Steve Jobs raze a crumbling mansion in Woodside, California, though a preservation group may appeal the decision, again.
The saga of the sagging 30-room Jackling mansion is a long one. Jobs bought it in 1984 and lived there for about a decade, then rented it until 2000. Built in 1925 for copper magnate Daniel C. Jackling, it sat empty, overgrown until Jobs was granted a demolition request in 2004. (For a good look on just how run down, check out Jonathan Haeber’s amazing photos).
A local preservation group called Friends of the Jackling House went to court and kept the bulldozers at bay. In May 2009, Jobs submitted more documentation to bolster his argument that razing the house was more feasible than restoring it.
This week a supreme court judge upheld the council’s decision, so Jobs can apply for another demolition permit.
Steve Jobs may be one of the most admired CEOs in the tech industry even if he’s not the richest.
Jobs ranked 136 — down from up 43 spots since last year — in the annual Forbes list of billionaires, far behind Bill Gates (no. 2), Larry Ellison (6), Google founder Sergey Brin (24), Steve Ballmer (33) and Michael Dell who came in at no. 37.
Here’s how they explained his ranking:
“Following months of rumor and speculation, cultish king of the iGeeks presented the highly anticipated iPad in January; ten-inch, multi-touch computer intended to fill gap between smartphone and laptop. Delighted: nerds everywhere. Scared to death: newspaper and magazine publishers. Also unveiled new iBookstore and iBooks application in direct challenge to Amazon’s Kindle; several book publishers have committed to content agreements. Apple shares up 100% in past 12 months. Reed College dropout founded Apple in 1976. Revolutionized music industry with iTunes, iPod. Best investment: bought Pixar from George Lucas in 1986 for $10 million. Created string of hits (Finding Nemo, Toy Story); sold to Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion in stock. Today is Disney’s largest shareholder; stake worth $4.2 billion.”
We all love Steve, but it’s still common knowledge that our beloved Apple leader can be a bit ornery, especially when he feels like his intellectual property is being threatened. Of course, he doesn’t always get it right, as evidenced by a great little blog post made today by former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, who explains how Jobs threatened to sue Sun over Project Looking Glass and its graphical effects.
In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass*, Steve called my office to let me know the graphical effects were “stepping all over Apple’s IP.” (IP = Intellectual Property = patents, trademarks and copyrights.) If we moved forward to commercialize it, “I’ll just sue you.”
To Be Or Not To Be… Steve Jobs. That is the question.
Well, actually, that’s not the question at all: the real question is whether you will pay good money to see “one of the elite performers in American theater,” Mike Daisey, be or not be the reclusive Apple CEO in a one-man show titled The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
Don’t expect a flattering portrayal of Jobs. The official description of the monologue declares that Daisey will follow the “epic story of a real-life Willy Wonka” along his “trail to China where millions toil in factories to create iPhones and iPods.” Did you get that? Forget Oompah-Loompahs, Jobs apparently has millions of his own diminutive ethnic slaves to work at his Wonka factories.
We’re guessing that Dickey isn’t going to be afraid to play fast and loose with the facts in order to embellish the internal struggle of a charismatic tech leader and grand poombah of the Cult of Mac… but it’s not like he doesn’t have the credentials. Daisey’s first big theater break came from a show focusing on his employment at Amazon.com, and he’s also done a one-man show in which he portrayed another enigmatic cult leader: the one great nemesis of Lord Xenu himself, “Commodore” L. Ron Hubbard.
If a questionably sourced monologue about Jobs piques your interest, you’ve got plenty of time to pick up tickets: The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs won’t hit the stage until January 14, 2011.
Saturday Night Live spoofed cubicle-based reality show Undercover Boss — where the corner office guy or gal climbs back down the career ladder to go incognito as a menial employee — with Undercover Celebrity Boss.
Steve Jobs sticks a “mainentance” badge on his signature black turtleneck and tries to sell an unimpressed secretary on the iTrash and the iTrash Shuffle.
Jobs, likable if clueless in a Michael Scott sorta way, gets a much kinder send up — some say too kind — than the other celebs, most of whom (Sir Richard Branson, the Olsen twins) are barely undercover before they say stuff like: “Because I’m Martha f*ing Stewart. ”
(It’s a Hulu video, which means if you’re outside the U.S. to you’ll need to install something like Hotspot shield to view it. It’s a drag. We know.)
The kind of minimalist Apple-logo cake Steve Jobs might like
Tomorrow is Steve Jobs’ 55th birthday. Many happy returns Steve.
Steve Jobs was born February 24, 1955.
To celebrate his birthday, we’re replaying Jobs’ great 2005 commencement speech to Stanford University’s graduating class.
Delivered just a year after being treated for cancer, Jobs is uncharacteristically open about life and death.
Jobs tells three simple stories from his life, and they all include some some great advice. He advises to trust your gut, follow your heart and do what you love.
It’s a great speech. The video is 15 minutes long. If you haven’t seen it, you should.
The video and full transcript of the speech after the jump.
This might be the first couple to get hitched at an Apple retail without permission, flash-mob style, by a celebrant dressed like Steve Jobs who pronounced the solemn vows from an iPhone. The news was first tweeted by an Apple employee of New York’s Fifth Avenue store.
CC-licensed photo by richdrogpa - http://flic.kr/p/7D9ziS
Steve Jobs unloaded on Flash during a meeting with Wall Street Journal executives last week, according to Gawker.
Jobs met with editors of the Journal to show them the new iPad. The Journal make widespread use of Flash on its website for video, infographics, etc., and editors raised concerns about the absence of Adobe’s plug-in.
According to Gawker: “Jobs was brazen in his dismissal of Flash, people familiar with the meeting tell us. He repeated what he said at an Apple Town Hall recently, that Flash crashes Macs and is buggy.”
The book, which is in the early planning stages, would cover the entire life of Mr. Jobs, from his youth in the area now known as Silicon Valley through his years at Apple, these people said.
Mr. Jobs, who will turn 55 on Feb. 24, has invited Mr. Isaacson to tour his childhood home, one person with knowledge of the discussion said.
… Cooperation with Mr. Isaacson could be a sign that Mr. Jobs has emerged from his recent health battles with more of an interest in shaping his legacy.
Modern day hippies and endless jamming may not be among the first images that spring to mind when you think about Apple’s products and customer base, but check this promotional video for the premier Jam Band confab in the United States, the High Sierra Music Festival, and see how well the two play together.
High Sierra impressario David Margulies does a quite credible job of mimicking the classic Steve Jobs Keynote presentation method introducing the 2010 festival, to be held 4th of July weekend in Quincy, CA — he even incorporates images of the highly anticipated iPad to excellent effect and coins a new catch-phrase especially suited to his product: there’s an act for that!
The High Sierra clip is obviously a spoof, but it actually works to engage the viewer in the content, suggesting the elements of Job’s presentation style — if not, perhaps, the mock turtleneck and jeans — lie at the root of any successful product pitch.
Someone is looking for a Steve Jobs look-alike, like this guy, who was snapped at the San Francisco Dyke March in 2008 by photographer/comic Heather Gold.
Someone is looking for a Steve Jobs look-alike for an “impersonator event” on Friday and Saturday in San Francisco’s SOMA — the area around Macworld.
The actual job isn’t specified, but looking like Steve is important, of course, but so is “punctuality.”
“If necessary, we can provide a black turtleneck and glasses,” the Craigslist ad says.
Pay is $100 a day. Wanna bet it’s handing out Gold Club flyers?
Steve Jobs doesn’t follow a presentation template but as outlined in my new book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, he does consistently follow the same principles that have turned Apple product launches into an art form. The iPad announcement on Wednesday, January 27th was no exception: classic Steve Jobs.
The formidable Economist magazine has blessed Steve Jobs with a rare cover story examining the potential impact of the Jesus tablet.
Even rarer, the iPad story is mostly positive, even if the religious imagery is over the top.
The Economist fancies Jobs’ chances of shaking up not just one industry, but three — especially media:
Jobs’s record suggests that when he blesses a market, it takes off. And tablet computing promises to transform not just one industry, but three—computing, telecoms and media.
Companies in the first two businesses view the iPad’s arrival with trepidation, for Apple’s history makes it a fearsome competitor. The media industry, by contrast, welcomes it wholeheartedly. Piracy, free content and the dispersal of advertising around the web have made the internet a difficult environment for media companies. They are not much keener on the Kindle, an e-reader made by Amazon, which has driven down book prices and cannot carry advertising. They hope this new device will give them a new lease of life, by encouraging people to read digital versions of books, newspapers and magazines while on the move. True, there are worries that Apple could end up wielding a lot of power in these new markets, as it already does in digital music. But a new market opened up and dominated by Apple is better than a shrinking market, or no market at all.
Sharp-eyed observers have noticed what looks to be an iSight camera in the iPad Steve Jobs used in last week’s keynote.
Even though Jobs didn’t talk about a camera, and it’s not mentioned in Apple’s official tech specs, something that looks like an iSight camera can be seen when Jobs first holds the iPad up for everyone to see.
As he holds it up, the light catches the iPad’s surface, illuminating something underneath. That something looks like an iSight camera, similar to the ones built into MacBooks, under the screens.
It’s not conclusive, of course, but corroborates the prototype images published by Engadget in the run up to the event, which clearly show an iSight camera in the same position. And references to a camera have been found in both the iPad’s Address Book software and the iPad firmware.
The absence of a camera on the iPad has been one of the device’s most puzzling omissions. Although, as our own John Brownlee first noted, a camera in a tablet that’s sitting in your lap, staring up at you, doesn’t produce the most flattering camera angles.
UPDATE: A repair company called Mission Repair says the iPad’s frame clearly shows an empty spot for an iSight camera, and it is exactly the same size and shape as the iSight slot in a MacBook’s screen frame. (Mission Repair received a shipment of iPad parts on Monday, the company blog says).
This is my last chance to say something before the great and terrible Steve holds his tablet aloft (and even then, rumormongers might have beaten him to the punch), so let me give you a bit of a long view perspective, something usually left out when we’re discussing whether we’ll see a 10 or 11″ LCD panel on the device.
You see, I’ve been thinking a lot about Apple and its insane run of success over the last nine years. Consider this: in 2001, Apple’s revenue was about $6.5 billion. In 2009, that revenue was $42.3 billion. Essentially, the company grew by more than 550 percent in eight years. How exactly is that possible? Was it the great products? Partly. Great leadership? Sure. Killer marketing? No question. But more than all of those combined, the secret to Apple’s success was that it defined and followed the right strategy and the right era. Steve Jobs is king of the world right now because he hit on the idea for the Digital Hub.
Farhad hopes the tablet will have an iPhone-like operating system (as we’ve mentioned here before) that offers a somewhat restricted, locked down computing experience like the iPhone. That is, he hopes Apple has removed all the complexity of using and maintaining a traditional personal computer.
“The most revolutionary thing about Apple’s phone wasn’t its sleek case or the multitouch gestures, but the artful way in which it hid nearly every bit of complexity behind a display of easy-to-understand icons. The iPhone contains no visible “directory structure.” Your music is not in a particular place on your phone; it’s just on your phone, and you get to it by launching the music player. Other than charging it, the iPhone requires no maintenance. Backups and OS upgrades occur automatically, and because all programs are approved by Apple (and because even third-party programmers aren’t given deep access to the phone), you never have to worry about malware. And look how easy it is to install a program: Choose one from the store, press “Install,” and type in your password to authorize the purchase—and that’s it. The iPhone doesn’t ask you where you want to put the new program, or how you’d like to launch it, and whether you’d like it to be the default program for doing a particular kind of task. It just puts up a little icon on the screen. To run the program, click the icon. To do something else, hit the home button.”
I think Farhad has put his finger on the most important feature of the tablet. It’s not designed for nerds, like traditional PCs (even the Mac) but for ordinary consumers who have no interest whatsoever in learning how to use a computer.
If you can get your noodle around it, it’s an astonishing thought. Steve Jobs is attempting to reinvent computing again, but to do it right this time.
The tablet will usher in a new era of consumer-level computing that will be utterly different to computing in the past. Instead of mice and keyboards, there’ll be a new generation of software designed for fingers and voice. It’ll be a lot easier to use (see all those videos of toddlers using iPhones), and a lot easier to maintain. Thanks to Apple’s controls over app installation, it’ll be largely free of the viruses, driver issues and tech-support headaches of traditional PCs. Of course, we’ll sacrifice some freedom to tinker for all this — but who cares? (Our own Leigh McMullen for one. See his “My Tablet Won’t be Running any Silly Phone OS.”)
No wonder Steve Jobs is so excited about the tablet. All the way back to the Apple II in the late 1970s, his earliest ambition was always to make computers accessible to mere mortals — to make the computers “for the rest of us.” It’s the realization of his earliest dreams.
Unable to contain his excitement about the upcoming tablet, German blogger Richard Gutjahr has created 10 mock movie posters featuring the tablet, Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer and other Silicon Valley stars.
