My iPhone rings and it’s Ballmer. Somehow he got my private number and I guess he’s all proud of himself. He goes, “Hey, I know it’s only 9 a.m., am I waking you up?” Then he starts going on about how he just did this Yahoo deal, and how Windows 7 is awesome, and Bing is awesome, and the Xbox kicks ass, and the laptop hunter ads are working like crazy, and suddenly Microsoft is on a roll again. He’s all out of breath, like he’s stomping around in his office or something, and he asks me if I read the link he sent me where the Wall Street Journal was saying that maybe he isn’t such a complete butthead after all. I told him I had someone read it for me and tell me the gist of it. He goes, “Yeah? Is that what you did? You had someone read it to you? You guys down there in Silicon Valley have been having a good laugh at my expense, haven’t you? Well, who’s laughing now? Because the thing about Microsoft is, we keep coming after you. We’re like a bunch of pitbulls. And guys like you, with your sneakers and your jeans and your turtlenecks, and your groovy little glasses, acting all cool — you know what? I’ve been dealing with guys like you since high school. I may not be cool, but I always win. Because I will never give up. Never, never, never. Guys like you? You’re cool, but you’re weak. I find your weakness, and I go after it. I’ll chew you up and crap you out. I will eat your fucking balls.”

I was like, “Dude, hold on. Did you just say that you like to eat balls?” He goes, “What?” I said, “You just said you like to eat balls.” He goes, “I didn’t say I liked it.” I said, “So, you do it, but you don’t like it? Is that it? You don’t enjoy it?” He says I’m twisting his words around, and I tell him it’s fine, whatever, it slipped out, he doesn’t need to worry, because I won’t ever tell anyone about his secret hunger for big, hot, sweaty man balls, though I am curious about whether he wants to eat my balls before or after he chews me up and craps me out, because if it’s the latter case then it’s kind of doubly weird. Then I go, “Well, excuse me, but I have to go finish making the new tablet computer that’s going to destroy your precious little netbook market. But you can work on my meaty balls some other time. I promise. Because I know you want to. Okay? Namaste.”

Monkey Boy, honestly, you make it too easy.

Rest in peace, Yahoo.
O portal
O news feed
O provider of free email accounts
that everyone used
before Gmail existed–
you never quite figured out
what you were meant to be, did you?
Yet you truly put a dent in the universe.
With your cluttered home page,
crammed with buttons and tabs, you
introduced millions to the messy,
garish world of the Interwebs.
Indeed, you were the first great web site.
You even toyed with the idea
of becoming a giant media company
& you hired a bunch of Hollywood assholes to make it so.

Let me start on a side note: Dear netbook makers, whoever you are — I don’t know your names because we don’t pay any attention to you, but we know you’re out there, polluting the world with your cheap, ugly, underpowered machines — but here is my command: Surrender and prepare to be boarded. Yes, you’ve been pwned. We told you we didn’t care about the netbook market, so you went ahead with your plans, but now we’re about to put you out of business — iTablet is in the final stages, which means Apple will be taking over the market you created and then reinventing it in such a way that it immediately becomes 10 times bigger than it used to be, and all the money goes to Apple.

Honestly, Apple faithful, I feel like Jesus coming down from Mount Zion with those stone tablets. Except my tablet is electronic, which Katie says makes me Electronic Jesus. Of course she’s kidding. We really don’t go around comparing me to Jesus. Frankly, it’s apples and oranges, and it sort of diminishes both of us to put us in a framework like that. But I really view this product as the crowning achievement of my career. I’ve come to believe it is the reason I was put on earth. And yes, this is why I was, well, a bit of a dick to the people who were working on it. Because it had to be perfect. And you know what? It is. It’s actually better than perfect, which maybe you didn’t think was possible, but it is. In fat that is a phrase I first heard from my friend I.M. Pei (who by the way just loves his 30-inch Cinema Display) when he was telling me about that glass pyramid at the Louvre. “Steve,” he said to me, “it is better than perfect.” Ever since then, I’ve strived to reach that level of beyond perfection, or, as we say at Apple, “perfection plus.”

And now we’ve hit it. Because iTablet truly is the most amazing product I’ve ever created, more amazing even than iPhone, and I was pretty sure iPhone would never be topped. Fast network? Check. Gorgeous interface? Check. Light weight? Sleek design? Great (unremovable) battery life? Check, check, check. Childlike wonder? Almost too much of it. In fact, the first time Phil Schiller held iTablet in his hands, he began to shake and had to sit down. It’s that overwhelming.

As usual, we began with an ad campaign. Then we went through excruciating rounds of prototyping and non-thinking and dozens of emergent designs. Then came months of trying to decide whether the tablet should be white or black, and looking at plastics, and getting the exact right gloss. Then came the packaging, and finally, last March, we began the lock-down period where the two dozen engineers who are most crucial to the project are kept on campus 24×7 so that they can’t talk to their families or friends about what they’re doing. For 18 of those hours every day they work in solitary confinement, communicating with each other only through email and instant messages, and receiving delicious, freshly cooked ethnic meals through a slot in their door. For six hours they are put into “sleep mode,” meaning they are hooked to an IV and put into an intensely restful chemically induced coma in solitary sleep pods (shiny white, natch) during which time their dreams are monitored and scrubbed of any information that we deem proprietary.

Now we’re in the final stage — leak mode. No doubt you’ve seen the articles, like this one in Apple Insider or the one in the Financial Times where they said we’re doing some “Cocktail” thing with music companies so we can force people to go back to those wonderful days when you had to buy a whole album of shit songs just to get the one song you liked. That part about the music companies and the cocktail was what we call a “barium enema,” meaning it’s fake info that we attach to the real info so that we can trace who leaked it and then have that person shot.

Meanwhile, we’re also well into rehearsals for the iTablet keynote. And, as always, it’s making me nuts. We spend eight to ten hours a day on stage in the recreation of the Moscone Center here on campus. And it’s just grueling. Every few seconds I have to stop because some tiny thing is not quite … perfection plus. I realize I’m being overly obsessive, but I can’t help myself. This is a super important event. Not only because we’re introducing the most amazing product the world has ever seen, but because this marks my return from the underworld.

We’re using the code name “Project Orpheus,” and in order to create the right vibe for the event everyone on the events team was required to read Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” Because think about it. A hero goes off on a journey or adventure; experiences tremendous challenges that threaten his life; he possibly even dies, and journeys into the underworld; but then he returns to the ordinary world with a great gift, or “boon,” to share with the world. (Yeah, I know — “boon” sounds like “boom.” Happy accident. We’re working with it.)

Anyway, just like Orpheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to the world, my gift to the world is iTablet — a device that incorporates not just chips and software, but magic. Special secret powers from Mount Olympus, stuff that turns you into a kind of man-god, a semi-divine being with a magic tablet so light that you can’t even feel it in your backpack or briefcase but with the ability to connect you to the Internet and enable you to buy anything you want as long as it comes from Apple. In other words, you’re a superhero. With super powers. All this for only $899!

If you doubt the power of this hero’s journey myth to sell products, well, I urge you to check out some of the organizations that have used it in the past. Like there’s this product called Christianity. Have you heard of it? Pretty big deal. I mean they’ve been selling that stuff for two thousand years — to be sure, with updates and upgrades, and a lot of forking of the code — but it’s still throwing off huge amounts of positive cash flow. All based on this amazing marketing narrative about a dude who dies, goes down into Hades, and comes back to the ordinary world with something to tell. You spiff that story up a bit and tell it just right, and people send you their money. Not just once, but over and over and over again, throughout their entire lives. Brilliant! It’s the greatest marketing campaign ever invented.

But you know what? This whole “I’m off to get a liver and might even die but oh wait, I’m back now and guess what, I saw God and here’s the tablet computer that he wants you to use” thing is right up there. People are gonna be so excited to see me on stage that they’ll do anything I tell them. P.T. Barnum? David Blaine? The big J.C. himself? I have pieces of guys like that in my stool. So, my advice? Keep your Tuesdays in September free. Get the lawn chairs and blankets ready, and start staking out a space in front of your local Apple store, and get those credit cards ready. Nerdvana is just around the corner. Seriously. It’s closer than you think.

Much love to K-Squared for this link. I must say, I hate rap music, but I really like this video. Partly because the coder girl is using a Mac. And mostly, I think, because it depicts two demographics that don’t actually exist at Apple.

Another inspired moment from our good friends at Hoggworks Studios. Happy Monday.

This just in from a reliable source in Germany:

Now look. I have no idea if this is true. But based on everything I’ve ever heard about Bono, or experienced first-hand myself, it sure has the ring of truth, doesn’t it? Remember, it’s U2′s management who were going around complaining about digital music sales and how Apple was getting rich and the artists were getting shafted. Our response, which I think was extremely fair, was that artists should not expect to make any money from their recorded music — that money should go to us, since we’re the ones doing all the heavy lifting, running the store, buying the servers, paying for the bandwidth. Especially in the case of “legacy” acts where they’ve already made money on the vinyl and tape and CD versions of their albums. When I meet with those guys I have a hard time not going totally ballistic. Because, like, what the hell is wrong with you people? You’ve already been paid three times. And now you want more? You musicians have spent decades exploiting distributors and taking advantage of record companies and treating everyone around you like shit. Well, those days are over. This time around the businesspeople aren’t going to sit here and be star-fucked by your rockstar aura. No. This time time we’re going to get paid our fair share, which is 30 percent of everything we sell. Plus allowances for returns and breakage. You want to make money, get out on the road and play some concerts and sell some T-shirts. Yeah. That’s right. Work for a fucking living.

But anyway it doesn’t take much imagination to picture Bono and his manager going to these venues and saying, Well, Apple is taking all our money from music sales, so we need to squeeze every last penny out of these concerts, and we do mean every last penny. Food and drink sales? We get half. Toilet cups? Check.

One thing to know about the U2 boys in particular. They’re Northsiders. If you know anything about Ireland, or Dublin, you’ll understand. But it’s like this. Sure, they’ve made millions. Sure, they have houses in the south of France and fly around in private jets. Sure, they talk about helping those poor starving babies. But the truth is, down deep, they’ll always be Northsiders. Which means they’re the kind of guys who send their girlfriends to England for abortions with instructions not to forget about the duty free on the way back. The kind of guys who propose marriage by saying, “You’re fookin wha?” The kind of guys who who sit down at a Denny’s and pocket the tip that the last patron left on the table, and steal the sugar packets at the end of the meal. It means that the only “cause” they really care about is this: “Cause I grew up in fookin Ballymun, mate, and if you don’t fookin like it I can fix yer face for ya.”

Not sure if this is real, but who cares? Much love to Fernando for sending this in.

Much love to K-Squared in Dallas for this thought-provoking link that poses the notion that Huxley, not Orwell, might have been correct about the future — ie that we’ll be controlled not by forces that inflict pain but by forces that inflict pleasure; that the truth won’t be kept from us, but rather will be drowned out by oceans of information; and that we will become a passive, trivial, self-centered culture obsessed with useless activities and meaningless “news.”

So they hacked into iTunes. We broke their hack. Now they’ve hacked us again.

Translation: It’s war.

This just in from our friends at Hoggworks Studios, the creators of Mosspuppet. Apparently they’ve just received this horrendous Kermit goatse photo with a threatening note telling them to “shut it down or get shut down.” Meanwhile, Brian Hogg, the puppetmaster, tells Iulia and Natasha that he’s been approached by a major media company, asking him for “More puppets! Puppets 24-7!” Namaste, Brian Hogg. I honor your deviant soul.