Lkahney - page 3

Image by Alan Rhodes via Mike Davidson’s Design a Steve Jobs Movie Poster

I’ve started writing a biweekly column for Wired News and calculatingly chose a controversial subject that’s been on my mind for a while: whether Steve Jobs is worthy of our slavish devotion?

The column was tricky to write and looking at it now, I don’t think I quite pulled it off. Based on the feedback, there seems to be some confusion about what I was trying to say.

The column was not a critique of Jobs’ achievements, which are monumental and undeniable — he’s been a driving force of the PC industry for 30 years — but with the way the press and public project a progressive image onto him, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary.

I was also questioning my own reverence for the man. He’s quite magnetic, but should I really admire him that much? My heroes — most of them British punk singers from the seventies — hated capitalists like Jobs. And in public at least, there’s no sign he’s anything but a captain of industry.

The same could be said for Bill Gates, of course. I used to revile Gates, but his philanthropy, which seems earnest, is beginning to redeem him. Even though he earned his fortune in reprehensible ways, there’s salvation in the ambition to give it all away before he dies.

What do you think? Wired News’ comment system is temporarily down, so please contribute your thoughts here.

Several people sent me email that made good points I’d like to share. Here’s a couple:

Andrew Mayne said:

“You also make the classic mistake of equating net worth with liquidity. The vast majority of Jobs wealth is in stock. His salary from Pixar is $52 a year and $1 from Apple. His billions are in Pixar stock and options in Apple (to a much lesser degree). So far he has liquidated very little of his stock from either. He lives far from an ostentatious lifestyle compared to others of his own net worth.”

And John Kwo wrote:

“… while I certainly agree that Elvis Presley was never the outspoken activist that John Lennon was, Presley was incredibly generous in private. The following is from the official Elvis Presley website: … ‘Most of Elvis’ philanthropic endeavors received no publicity at all. Throughout his adult life, for friends, for family, and for total strangers, he quietly paid hospital bills, bought homes, supported families, paid off debts, and much more.’

Uh oh. Looks like there may be trouble brewing in the spat between Apple and The Postal Service.

In “a note from Ben” on the The Postal Service’s website, singer Ben Gibbard chastises Apple for the shot-for shot remake of the band’s cleanroom music video.

It has recently come to our attention that Apple Computers’ new television commercial for the Intel chip features a shot-for-shot recreation of our video for ‘Such Great Heights’ made by the same filmmakers responsible for the original. We did not approve this commercialization and are extremely disappointed with both parties that this was executed without our consultation or consent.

– Ben Gibbard, The Postal Service

John Venzon, the former-curator of Newton Museum who recently sold his collection of every Newton made on eBay, writes:

“I can now let you know that the winner of the Newton Museum was none other than Walter Smith, one of the creators of the Newton. He was responsible for, among other things, the unified data model which ties the Newton software together, the compiler, interpreter, and runtime library for NewtonScript, the language used to write Newton applications and the Newton object store, where all the persistent data in a Newton resides.

I have transfered the www.newtonmuseum.com domain to him as well, so the Newton Museum lives on, and in GREAT hands.”

Wow. What a knockout quarter Apple had — posting income of $5.75 billion, it’s best ever. Most of the cash came from 14 million iPod sales — three times what it sold this time last year. But the company also saw 20 percent growth in Mac sales, shifting 1.25 million Macs. What surprises me is these were lame duck machines — soon to be made obsolete by new Intel boxes.

Wall Street’s a little bit worried though about the current quarter, which Apple said will be lower than projections due to “a pause” in Mac sales as the product lineup switches to Intel, according to the Wall Street Journal.

There was also “a pause” in sales the previous quarter, Reuters reports. If that’s true, what will sales of Intel Macs be like when the lineup is filled out this year? A quick skim of the earnings call reports doesn’t mention any guidance about supplies — but my gut is it’ll go gangbusters, but supplies will be constrained and Apple won’t be able to keep up. I think Apple’s going to have an unbelievable year, and this is just the beginning.

I must admit, I’ve got the hots for first lady Laura Bush. And now I find she uses an iPod, just like her evil nincompoop husband. She’s got abysmal taste in music though.

Reports the Washington Times:

Mrs. Bush also revealed that her IPod listening includes songs by Tina Turner and Dolly Parton. She said her musical tastes are somewhat different from those of her husband.
“He likes country music a little bit more than I do, although I actually really am very fond of country music, as well,” she said. “One of the songs on my IPod that I love is Dolly Parton singing ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ So that’s sort of a combination, country and pop.”

Image by Ben McLeod on Flickr.

(Via iLounge)

“Being a guy and having a wedding is easy,” Internet radio host Shawn King told AppleXnet after his wedding here at Macworld. “I just have to show up wearing pants and say, ‘I do.'”

Shawn and Lesa Snider tied the knot on Thursday night in a wedding planned around Macworld (see below).

The ceremony was perfomed onstage at the Great American Music Hall. Mac author Andy Ihnatko officiated, and New York Times columnist David Pogue gave away the bride. Here’s Pogue toasting the happy couple.

Combining matrimony with marketing, the ceremony was followed by a party to promote Shawn’s Your Mac Life Internet radio show, paid for by long-time sponsor Griffin Technology and others.

The Music Hall — a grand Victorian pile — was really filling up as we left at about 10PM. As we departed, we were given a party favor — a plastic travel mug festooned with the sponsors’ logos.

Photo courtesy of Trent Lapinski at AppleXNet, who has more.

Update. YML cohost Jay Curtis has more pix and a video of the ceremony, which Curtis says includes “the uber-techie closing speech by Andy Inhatko.”

UK blogs Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny have named the iPod Shuffle as this year’s “Must Chav Gadget.”

A chav is slang for a member of Britain’s “peasant underclass” — a lowlife, in other words.

Says Tech digest:

The shuffle is perfect for chavs. It’s cheap. It’s by a cool brand, and you can let others know you have one as it is designed to be worn round your neck. As it is white it also accessorises well with those classy gold chains Chavs wear. The sad part is that the shuffle is the worst player in the Apple range — more like some dodgy back street knock-off than the excellent other iPods. The fact it has no screen so you can’t program it or choose a track — it chooses the music for you — also saves Chav brain cells for the much more important business of, ahem, pimping their rides.

Second prize went to the Motorla Razr — “standard fixture for every Tom Dick and Chav.”

LaCie’s newest hard drive is a 500GB brick — literally.

The $400 hard drive is shaped like a Lego brick, and is stackable to boot.

Available in late December, the USB 2.0 drive will be available in a range of capacities, starting at 160GB for $120.

Crafted by the world-famous designer Ora-Ito, the new Brick expresses a ludic playfulness in a user-friendly high-performance hard drive. Stack & Play multiple LaCie Bricks together to brighten your desktop and your mood.

There’s a lot of criticism of Apple’s copy-protection scheme, Fairplay, in the news today.

Tidbits Adam Engst describes the headaches he encountered trying to make an audio book, which had been split into four chunks, into one easy-to-use file — a perfectly legal and reasonable thing to do.

Newsweek columnist Steven Levy chastises Apple for refusing to license Fairplay and allow consumers to play iTunes songs on other devices.

Ex-Wired News columnist Adam Penenberg, now writing for Slate, wraps it up with a cogent explanantion of why we, the consumers, have to put up with limiting copy-protection schemes. It has little to do with protecting content, and everything to do with protecting business models:

While Apple stands alone and Sony self-destructs, Microsoft is practically giving away its digital-rights-management tool in an effort to pick up market share against Apple (so far with little success). We may even see a replay of the Apple-Microsoft battle over the desktop, which ended with Apple holding on to a tiny sliver of the computer market. There is, however, a big difference between then and now. Steve Jobs has a hefty market share and a massive content library made up of millions of songs at a price that people like. As long as the record companies license their content to Apple and consumers flock to the iPod, Apple is in a powerful — some might say Gatesian — position.

What’s hardest for the consumer to swallow, then, is that anti-piracy schemes like DRM look like the subtle tactic of the monopolist. Neither Apple nor Microsoft is hurt by music piracy. Instead, they use it as a marketing ploy to force people to use their products. It doesn’t have to be this way. The companies could agree on one standard that allows people to play the music they lawfully purchase on whichever player they choose. The music industry is supposed to sell music, not the medium it comes in, right?

The developer of the the iLoad CD-to-iPod loader is hoping it will be a hit so he can pay off his court-ordered restitution.

Reports the Colorado Springs Gazette:

A Monument businessman convicted of theft and securities fraud won’t be allowed to travel to China to market a product he invented, a judge ruled Friday.

Sanford Schupper, 56, has been convicted of defrauding Citibank Visa of as much as $200,000 and sentenced to six years in prison. In another case, Schupper was convicted of swindling a family out of $872,000 and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Friday, Schupper’s lawyer asked senior state District Court Judge Donald Campbell to grant Schupper permission to go to China to market his latest invention, an accessory for Apple iPods.

Schupper says the product could make him millions and allow him to pay court-ordered restitution to victims of his crimes. He hasn’t revealed specifics about the product because of fears someone might steal the idea.

Meanwhile, Schupper is sparring with Gizmodo.

Although it’s verboten, ZDNet UK installed the x86 version of OS X on a Toshiba Portégé M300 notebook.

It’s the first test by a respected testing lab I’m aware of. All went smoothly and ZDNet was impressed.

Mac OS X looks in amazingly good early form on the x86 platform. As far as power consumption and OS performance are concerned, it can already keep up with Windows XP. Application performance clearly lags behind, though, and still needs to improve.

…

So far, mainly because of performance and price issues, the Apple platform has failed to tempt many Windows users. This could change soon: from the middle of next year, a Mac OS X x86 platform will be available, which will offer more performance to the Windows world.