At the D Conference today, Steve Jobs admitted he likes the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.
Walt Mossberg asked: Do you read the Fake Steve Jobs blog?
Jobs: I have read a few of the FSJ things recently, but I thought it was pretty funny!
Steve Jobs is a reverse switcher! He’s switched back to New Balance sneakers after a couple of token months wearing Nike. Could his Nike + iPod deal be in trouble?
Via Engadget.
Mr. Hopkinson’s Computer is, well, a computer that sings cover versions of The Stone Roses, Radiohead and Portishead. You’d think it would be dreadful, but the machine really knocks it out. The computer sounds like a falsetto Stephen Hawking, and it really works, especially singing The Stone Roses’ Fools Gold. Check out the MySpace page.
Via Cool Hunting.
The Chop Shop t-shirt website has a very unusual Apple II t-shirt design for sale. The front of the shirt looks like a template for a plastic toy — like a model airplane.
But turn the shirt around and the assembled model is on the back — an Apple II. The site says each tee comes with a limited edition temporary tattoo.
Apple: Get Your Defective Laptop Replaced By Sending Well-Written Emails To Steve Jobs – Consumerist
Steve Jobs on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
Weight Recycled as % of Past Sales. Credit: Apple
In a case of life imitating art, the Real Steve Jobs is following the Fake Steve Jobs’ green lead.
On Wed. April 11, Fake Steve wrote:
By the end of this year I want Apple to be known as the greenest company in the world — not just in tech but in everything. If we’ve got to make hydrogen-powered computers and iPods that run on solar energy, so be it. Let’s get this done.
On Tue. May 2, Real Steve wrote:
Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products. Upon investigating Apple’s current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas.
Great visual joke from TUAW. Link.
In the Times, reporters John Markoff and Matt Richtel cast about for the motives behind Fred Andeson’s statement on Tuesday that he warned Steve Jobs about the legal and accounting ramifications of the controversial 2001 “executive team” options grants.
Markoff and Richtel say the statement against Jobs was “an extraordinarily sharp elbow” and a “shot heard round Silicon Valley.” Speaking to various analysts and observers, they speculate that Anderson may be contributing to the “legal cloud remaining over Jobs.”
There’s a couple of interesting tidbits. It reveals that Anderson, when serving on Apple’s board, volunteered to conduct an internal investigation into how the company handled options when the SEC first started investigating widespread backdating practices. He “did so at the time not because Apple was suspected of having a problem but because many major companies were trying to understand their practices in case they did face scrutiny or accusations,” the Times says.
Irish rock star Bono, a co-founder with Anderson of Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm, said: “He is a man to whom you would give the keys to your life and know it would be calmer, tidier and better organized every day he was in it.”
Another Elevation colleague, said Anderson had been” deeply hurt by insinuations from Apple that he was responsible for the option accounting problems.”
He said the comments by Mr. Anderson’s lawyer were an attempt to clear Mr. Anderson’s name and “set the record straight in a way that has not been possible because of the pending legal action.”
The BBC is asking bloggers and website publishers to post a button in support of Alan Johnston, a BBC journalist missing in Gaza, presumed kidnapped. Johnston was the last international journalist reporting from Gaza, and was highly respected, even by many Palestinians. Remember Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor journalist kidnapped in Iraq who was released safely? International pressure does work.
Link:
BBC correspondent Alan Johnston disappeared on his way home from his Gaza City office on 12 March. He is feared kidnapped in the lawless territory, where he is thought to have been the only international correspondent still working. Intensive efforts have been made to secure his release.
From Jack000’s photostream: My submission to the 7th ipod give-away at mike inudstries: movie poster with Steve Jobs in it. More here.
Apple’s board issued a statement of total support of Steve Jobs this afternoon. It follows ex-CFO Fred Anderson’s ass-covering letter yesterday claiming he was a patsy in the options backdating scandal. Apple’s board said:
We are not going to enter into a public debate with Fred Anderson or his lawyer. Steve Jobs cooperated fully with Apple’s independent investigation and with the government’s investigation of stock option grants at Apple. The SEC investigated the matter thoroughly and its complaint speaks for itself, in terms of what it says, what it does not say, who it charges, and who it does not charge. We have complete confidence in the conclusions of Apple’s independent investigation, and in Steve’s integrity and his ability to lead Apple.
Lots of good news for Apple in its latest quarterly report. The company’s on a roll. Not only are iPod sales up (10.5 million sold), so are Macs, especially Mac Books. Apple sold 1.52 million Macintosh computers, up 24 percent from a year ago. Reuters reports:
The results blew away Apple’s own forecast, which tends to be cautious, of 54 cents to 56 cents. Analysts had expected Apple to earn 63 cents per share, on average, on revenue of $5.17 billion, according to Reuters Estimates… Shares of Apple have climbed about 12 percent this year, after advancing 18 percent in 2006 and more than doubling in 2005, fueled by robust sales of iPods and redesigned Macintosh computers.
UPDATE: NYT:
In an interview, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, called the quarter a “blowout,” and noted that the strong sales and market share gains came even though the company had not made any major upgrades to its lines of portable and desktop computers.
“The Mac is clearly gaining market share, with sales growing 36 percent more than three times the industry growth rate,” Mr. Jobs said. Overall personal computer sales increased only about 11 percent during the quarter, according to the market researcher IDC.
Apple’s strength was particularly notable in that it came during the quarter in which Microsoft finally released the long-awaited Vista version of its Windows operating system, an event that the PC industry was counting on to spur a wave of computer upgrades.
Mr. Jobs noted that Dell had recently returned an earlier version of Windows to its product line, which he said was an indication that demand for Vista had not been overwhelming.
No Charges for Apple Over Options – New York Times
Federal securities regulators said yesterday that they would bring no civil charges against Apple over the backdating of executive stock options. But they stopped short of removing the cloud that for nearly a year has hung over the company’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs.
… “Steve Jobs dodged a bullet,” said Mark C. Zauderer, a trial lawyer in New York specializing in white-collar cases. “This is another circumstance where the government is going after an easier target. It will generally shy away from situations where the evidence is ambiguous or subject to different interpretations.”
The new Coda website development app from the well-regarded software publisher Panic gets a rave review from John Gruber at Daring Fireball. Coda is an all-in-one site creation tool, combining a text editor, CSS editor, FTP, terminal and live preview in one app.
Gruber writes:
It’s about reducing clutter and emphasizing the relationships between the different aspects of web development, making it easier to switch from source code to preview to files. Coda’s advantages are most obvious when you consider working with two or three projects at once. In Coda, each site gets its own window, grouping source code, browser previews, terminals, and file listings together.6 The idea is that all your stuff –œ file listing, source code, browser previews, terminals –œ for site A is here, all your stuff for site B is there. Coda groups and visually organizes these disparate elements by project, rather than by app.
There’s another thorough review here at MacApper.
What do you get if you cross an iPod, a boombox and a Mac Pro?
A: the iPod PowerBox G7
Unfortunately, this is just a mockup by someone called “Greg” but I like its styling. It’s got one too many handles though.
Link.
Time is allowing readers to vote on the year’s list of the top 100 most influential people — and Steve Jobs is rising fast. I confidently predict that Jobs will shortly be #1. (At 6.54am pacific time, Jobs is #5 and comedian Stephen Colbert is #1).
Apple’s ex-CFO has cut a deal with the SEC in Apple’s backdated options scandal, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing anonymous sources. Anderson will pay a fine of $150,000 and repay about $3.5 million worth of options. The deal does not include an admission of wrongdoing, the WSJ says.
The SEC reportedly intends to pursue civil charges against Nancy Heinen, Apple’s ex-general counsel, who will contest the case, according to the WSJ.
The AP reports:
Cris Arguedas, a lawyer for former Apple counsel Nancy Heinen, said Monday that the Securities and Exchange Commission has informed attorneys in the case that it plans to file a lawsuit against Heinen alleging fraud in connection with two options grants. One involved a grant to Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs on Oct. 19, 2001, for 7.5 million shares and another involved a grant made to top executives, including Heinen herself, on Jan. 17, 2001.
“We do expect them to file against our client and we will be defending those charges because they are a misunderstanding of the activities of Apple,” Arguedas said.
More from our Greek friend Anthony (see below). Not only is Anthony’s house in Athens filled with Macs, his wife Christine made him some Mac knitwear to wow Athens with.
Above is his handmade waistcoat featuring the famous Apple logo. Below is Anthony’s Mac sweater with the Happy Mac on the front and Sad Mac at back.
Link to Anthony’s cult of mac Flickr set documenting more of his Apple obsession.
Anthony Sigalas, a Mac nut par excellence from Athens, Greece, has filled his home with Macs. The pictures below, lifted from his Flickr set “My Mac Home,” shows that every corner of every room has a Mac.
Here’s the workspace with His and Hers MacBooks, plus a Mac Mini under the telly.
Here’s the view from the bed: a 20” iMac. Anthony writes: “It’s the mac that wakes us (via Aurora and iTunes) and put us to sleep (via Sofa Control, VLC and our favorite TV Shows and old Greek Movies). Furthermore its huge internal hard drive houses our music library (iTunes), our photo library (iPhoto) and a large collection of movie files. All in all a worthy media extender for the bedroom.”
Check out the cool Greek interface:
And then there’s a 12” iBook G4 in the “office room” that acts as a backup server, a wireless print server and a fax.
Alexander Amosu, a London entrepreneur known as “King of the Ring” for making a bundle on urban ringtones, has introduced a line of gold-plated iPods. The 24 carat iPods cost $600 for a 30-Gbyte version and $800 for the 80-Gbyte model.
According to Amosu’s site, the ringtone millionaire is branching into gold- and diamond-encrusted phones and iPods for “the rich, famous and sophisticated.”
He wanted to be the first person to have a dedicated website for high end customised mobiles phones with gold, white gold and various colours of diamonds.
His words are “to have an exclusive phone that cost more than anyone else is like having a Bentley rather than Ford, the type of phone you have speaks allot (sic) about your lifestyle and ambition. That’s why celebrities, footballers, actors and millionaires get their phone from me”
A giant, five-story Apple retailer just opened opposite the biggest, swankiest plaza in Milan and look what they have displayed in the window — my crummy books!
The Apple stores here in the states won’t carry the books because they only sell “how-to” titles. We were told the decision went “right to the top.” We suspect you-know-who doesn’t like the jokey “Cult of…” titles. Clearly not a problem across the pond.
Gary Allen at IFOAppleStore reports:
The grand opening of the five-story Mondadori Multicenter in central Milan (Italy) was important enough for Apple’s CEO of Italy operations to attend, perhaps because the store includes a large Apple sales area. Enzo Biagini viewed the 1,200 square-foot space on the second level that includes displays of laptops, iMacs, MacPros and Cinema displays, as detailed in a story and photos on the setteB.IT Web site. The interior design includes white-painted walls and wood display furniture similar to U.S. Apple stores.
Check out the Genius Bar — now serving coffee and fine food!
(Ignore the HP kit in the pic below. Apparently the store sells all kinds of junk.)
Pictures by SetteB.it.
Sometimes, users of high-end, professional software despair when Apple buys the company that makes it. Stu Maschwitz, one of the founders of <a href=”https://www.theorphanage.com/”>The Orphanage</a>, a San Francisco FX studio responsible for Sin City, The Host, and a bunch of others, explains:
When you buy expensive software from small companies, you effectively become best friends with the development team. You know them by first names and you send them holiday cards. You have a folder full of emails from and to them. Apple, however, mistakenly applies the same strategy of black-box secrecy that works so well for iPods and iPhones to its Pro Apps division as well, cutting off developers from users and vise versa. I have struggled with this enough that my company, The Orphanage, no longer has any special relationship with Apple. It’s just too much of a one-way street. I can’t buy my bread-and-butter tools from someone who can’t conduct an open conversation with me (under NDA of course) about the future of the product.
Maschwitz’s post is about the new Color tool in Final Cut Pro, and though he has misgivings about what used to be a separate app from a small, friendly company going behind the Apple firewall, all in all he’s delighted with the outcome.
I hate to admit this, but my kids hate Macs.
Despite forcing them to dress as iPods at Macworld* the little chickens aren’t in love with beautiful Apple hardware.
Even though the house is filled with wonderful Macs, the kids prefer an old ThinkPad we have kicking around for playing Club Penguin and other online games .
Why, I hear you ask?
“It is much faster,” says son number one, Milo, seen here giving his Mac user salute.
They couldn’t give a hoot about the elegant interface or the better quality of QuickTime video. All they care about is the responsiveness of the Flash games they’re addicted to.
Worse thing is they have a point. As my esteemed colleague Paul Boutin pointed out many years ago, Windows machines are much faster on the Web than Macs.
*Actually my wife’s idea. I was mortified.
I found this striking picture of a Mursi tribeswoman at iLounge’s “iPods Around the World” gallery, but there’s very little information about it.
The caption simply says: Female member of Mursi tribe in Southern Ethiopia. Unfortunately, there’s no other information, but a quick Google search reveals:
We’d been hearing for days about the Mursi tribe–the one where women split their lower lip and insert a round metal plate. As we were repeatedly told, the Mursi are neither fun nor friendly. And while they’ve kept their distance from the outside world–largely in part because their territory is a vast expanse of remote national park–they nevertheless have turned their small contact with foreigners into an art form of extortion. Pictures equal money. No exceptions. (from Gabriel Openshaw).
Hacking stories bore me to tears, but the cleverly named “pwn-2-own” hacking competition (Hack a honeypot MacBook, get it as the prize) is getting such attention, it’s worth pointing to some of the better reporting on the subject:
Dan Goodin at The Register:
A New York-based security researcher spent less than 12 hours to identify and exploit a zero-day vulnerability in Apple’s Safari browser that allowed him to remotely gain full user rights to the hacked machine. The feat came during the second and final day of the CanSecWest “pwn-2-own” contest in which participants are able to walk away with a fully-patched MacBook Pro if they are first able to hack it.
…Dai Zovi, who is not attending the conference, was recruited on Thursday night by Shane Macaulay, a friend and conference attendee. The ease Dai Zovi found in pwning the machine was all the more remarkable, given an update Apple pushed out yesterday patching 25 Mac security holes. Macaulay described Dai Zovi’s vulnerability as a client-side javascript error that executed arbitrary code when Safari visited a booby-trapped website.
Turn off Java; to be safe, until Dino lets us say more, turn off everything else too. Or live dangerously like me.
… huge numbers of pundits and anonymous nerds on the Internet will decry Apple’s lack of security and how unfair it is that Microsoft, which expands so much effort on security, is perceived as having a less secure OS. Meanwhile, Mac users will rationalize the situation, including me.
