Palm teams up with the Amazon MP3 store. Aw, that’s sweet. I’m sure that, together, they’ll be a powerhouse.

So I’ve been getting all sorts of email today from people saying they’ve seen stories about some new iPhone app called “Fap Mapper” that lets guys document places where they’ve had sex. I have one word on this: No way.

So people are sending me stories like this, which I guess was based on this press release (caution: NSFW) from a porno studio called Pink Visual which claims, “At the moment, the only mobile device supported by the FapMapper is the iPhone, but Kysar said that support for additional devices is coming soon.”

Um, yeah. I mean, no. At first I thought the whole thing was maybe an elaborate prank cooked up by Woz. I still think it might be. But just for the record, let me be clear about this: We’re not going to be doing business with a company that makes films with titles like, “Memoirs of a Gusher,” “Teens for Cash,” and “Brazen and Unshaven.” We’re just not.

UPDATE: Larry just called and begged me to reconsider. He’s like, “Dude, these are the guys who made Asian Parade and the Asian Slut Invasion series. They’re awesome!” Well, I’m sorry, Larry. But no.

Brian Lam of Gizmodo reported we’re talking to publishing companies about the God Tablet. Josh Quittner of Time magazine says no way. Obviously I know who’s right, but will I tell?

Of course I won’t tell, and fuck you for asking. Fuck you, in fact, for wanting to know. When I’m ready to tell you, I’ll tell you. I will say that Quittner, who is someone I respect and admire, maybe isn’t seeing the entire picture here. Quittner says that his sources are telling him something different than what Brian’s sources are telling Brian. Guess what? I bet if you asked our old pal Gruber, he’d tell you his sources are telling him something else altogether. And the nice folks at iLounge are hearing yet another version of the story, in which we’ve designed three prototypes and one has a 7-inch screen and another has a 10.7-inch screen and we’re planning to announce it in January but it still hasn’t had final approval from Dear Leader.

Little info here, guys: We’re fucking with you. Okay? None of you has it right. I’m sorry. But you make it so goddamn easy, and we just can’t resist.

Just a heads up, people. We’re launching a new look for Fake Steve today, and also introducing a new sponsor for the blog. It’s Mozy, the online backupcompany, and we’re very, very excited to have them on board. Please click on their ads and check them out. They’re nice people, and they’re our friends. The Mozy deal also means we now have our dear friend iJustine gracing our pages, and this makes everyone very happy. Iulia and Natasha are huge fans!

Much love to Dante Araujo, our coder, and to Tina Chen from Google, who did the design. (You can also contact Dante via Twitter: @dantearaujo.)

We might have some rocky stuff in the near future, but we’ll iron it out. I hope. Peace.

The folks who made this video maybe didn’t realize that it shows us just how totally screwed we are. Or maybe they did. Warning: if you only come to this blog to read about Apple, you can skip this item.

Listen, energy isn’t my field of expertise. And it’s not what this blog is about. On the other hand, I am a citizen, and I’m #2 on this year’s Vanity Fair New Establishment list, and I also happen to be very close friends with Al Gore. But if you only come here to read about Apple, just move on.

So here’s the thing. The Council on Competitiveness, this group in Washington, D.C., had a conference last week called the National Energy Summit, and it was full of lots of brave talk about how innovative and courageous we are, and how we’re at the tipping point on energy and now it’s time for America to embrace change and unleash our big brainy scientists and our bold, risk-taking entrepreneurs in the quest to tackle the next great challenge of our lifetimes, blah blah blah.

So they put out this video (embedded below), which shows every president since Gerald Ford saying the exact same goddamn thing that we’re saying today. Jesus! If we were as bad at IT as we are at energy (or as full of shit), the whole world would still be using computers that look like this.

I watched this video and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. We’re fucked, people. Do you realize this? Forget about global warming. Pretend it doesn’t exist. Forget too about the geopolitical lunacy of continuing to depend on foreign oil. Let’s just talk about money, which is something we can all understand and worship.

Alternative energy is the next big tech market, the one that will spawn the next Google, or Apple, or Microsoft. But guess what? Those companies probably won’t be based here. As Thomas Friedman pointed out in his column a few days ago, the Chinese are racing past us. They’re investing billions — in physics, in nanotech, in material science, in fuel cells, in solar. They’re going to own this market.

Meanwhile we sit here with our heads up our butts, debating things like a gas tax or whether power plants should have to cut back on CO2 emissions and whether we can make this leap to a new paradigm without hurting our economy (read: without hurting the companies that sell oil and run coal-powered generators and which contribute loads of money to politicians in Congress.)

You know what? Like it or not, the whole goddamn world is going to shift away from fossil fuels. It’s going to happen. And we’re going to miss it. We’ve spent decades underfunding our scientists, treating them like shit, starving them of resources. Now, Obama has promised to boost spending, but guess what? Even if our scientists come up with great new technologies, our idiot politicians will do their best to keep anyone from being able to use them.

The oil companies will unleash Glenn Beck and his army of frigtards to attack the proponents of change, just like the health insurance companies have done on health care reform. Solar energy? It sounds so … socialist. Carbon sequestration? Isn’t that some kind of secret plan to take away our freedom? Glenn Beck gets his ratings boost, and who cares if the country gets fucked? Better yet, it’s all done in the name of being patriotic. It would all be hilarious if it weren’t so insanely tragic.

So here’s what happens to us. We’ll shift to new energy, because we’ll have no choice. But we won’t buy our fuel cells and solar panels and other power-generation technology from American companies. We’ll buy it from the Chinese. Better yet, we’ll buy it with money we’ve borrowed … from the Chinese. Does nobody see this? We’re living on heroin here, drugged out and happy. Our drug dealer is happy to keep the China White flowing, at incredibly reasonable prices. Why not? How better to compete with an enemy than to drug everyone in his camp?

And all this talk in Washington about bold action, and what a great and powerful nation we are, how brilliant and innovative? All this stirring music with trumpets blaring and soaring strings? Bullshit. This is all just a lullaby we’re singing to keep ourselves asleep, as our empire slides away.

Brian Lam hints at it on Gizmodo this morning, but it’s worth a deeper explanation. Little hint: It ain’t about technology.

Here’s the money quote from Brian Lam’s Gizmodo article about how we’re trying to redefine newspapers, textbooks and magazines:

The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridized content that draws from audio, video, interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static. And with release dates for Microsoft’s Courier set to be quite far away and Kindle stuck with relatively static e-ink, it appears that Apple is moving towards a pole position in distribution of this next-generation print content. First, it’ll get its feet wet with more basic repurposing of the stuff found on dead trees today.

Italics mine on the “hybridized content.” Because that’s the key thing here. And that’s what Brian is getting at when he talks about “redefining” newspapers and other dead-tree products.

New technology spawns new ways to tell stories. That’s the really exciting thing here. Not the tablet itself, but what it means for news, for entertainment, for literature. Gasp. Geddit? Is the fucking light going off yet? This is what Anton Chekhov meant when he said that the medium is the message. This is why the Tablet is so profound.

There is no point in moving to digital readers if we’re just going to do what we did on paper. That’s why Kindle is such a piece of shit. All they did was pave the cowpath. And that’s why we’ve held back on our Tablet — not because the technology wasn’t ready, but because the content guys are such fucktards that they still can’t create anything that makes it worth putting the Tablet into the world.

It’s stunning how few of the big guys in publishing actually understand this. We’ve invited them in for meetings, and while we’re talking we sort of give them a little quiz, in the form of a very simple question: Where do you think publishing is going? Most of them can’t see anything other than what they’ve done in the past. To them this is all just another blip, a little shift in their business, like going from black-and-white newspapers to color, or going from broadsheet to tabloid.

But that’s not it at all. We’re talking about an entirely new way to convey information, one that incorporates dynamic elements (audio, video) with static elements (text, photos) plus the ability for the “audience” to become content creators, not just content consumers.

The funny thing is that the publishing guys still consider themselves the “creative” side of the business, even though they’re the ones with no vision. In their minds, we techies are just a pack of drones. And they wonder why, in this new digital age, we’re reaping most of the financial rewards.

My guess is that the truly revolutionary content is not going to come from the old-guard publishers. It’s going to come from new guys, kids who have grown up digital. This notion of mashing together elements comes naturally to them. And somewhere out there, a genius is waiting to be discovered — the Orson Welles of digital media, someone who will create an entirely new language for storytelling. If you’re reading this, Orson Jr., please get in touch. I’ve got something I want to show you. Okay? Peace.

Thing is, we need to talk to publishing companies and line up content deals. But unlike the music companies, the a-holes in publishing can’t keep their mouths shut.

Which is how Brian Lam of Gizmodo manages to land this scarily in-depth scoop about what’s going on with the Tablet. Fair enough, Brian is a pretty amazing reporter, probably the best on the gadget-gizmo beat these days. He’s light years ahead of Goatberg and Smurfy, and what’s more, they know it, and it drives them nuts. But the real problem with the Tablet is that everyone we talk to rushes right out and tells the whole fucking world what we’re doing. Sure, they’ve all signed NDAs, with terms that allow us to sell their kids into slavery if they talk. But these aren’t human beings we’re dealing with. They’re hacks. These people have no sense of honor. Note the following quotes from Gizmodo:

Two people related to the NYTimes have separately told me that in June, paper was approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a “new device.”

Moshe is on it, but my guess is it’s Pogue and Damon Darlin, the tech editor.

Then this:

A person close to a VP in textbook publishing mentioned to me in July that McGraw Hill and Oberlin Press are working with Apple to move textbooks to iTunes.

Oy. Book publishers. They’re worse than the news guys. But “a person close to a VP in textbook publishing”? My bet is it’s a barista.

And this:

Apple also recently had several executives from one of the largest magazine groups at their Cupertino’s campus, where they were asked to present their ideas on the future of publishing.

That’s either Time Warner or Conde Nast. We’ve met with both, but we’re not sure who leaked. Probably Conde, via Wired, where Brian Lam used to work. Again, Moshe is on it.

But the killer comment, and the one that explains why Brian Lam is now the best tech journalist in the business, comes at the end:

The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridized content that draws from audio, video, interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static. And with release dates for Microsoft’s Courier set to be quite far away and Kindle stuck with relatively static e-ink, it appears that Apple is moving towards a pole position in distribution of this next-generation print content. First, it’ll get its feet wet with more basic repurposing of the stuff found on dead trees today.

More on this in my next post.

The Norwegian code monkey has created a remake of our famous 1984 advertisement, with a guy who looks like me in the role of Big Brother. And he’s got some new iTunes hack. We’re all trembling with fear.

Seriously, DVD Jon, listen up. Apparently you’re a pretty smart guy. You’re entirely self-taught, and you seem to be able to crack just about any kind of encryption. But is this really the best use of your time and talent? All this playing of lame jokes and publicity stunts, like placing a huge anti-Apple ad right next to our store? Hacking our software? Making knock-offs of our videos? Really? Is this what you want to do with your life? You just want to copy work that other people do? You’re just going to be a cloner? A prankster? A painter who makes copies of Rembrandts, and tries to pass them off as originals? The kid who goes around letting the air out of everyone’s bike tires? Why not try your hand at actually making something original? You know?

Well, whatever. You want to spend your life playing cat-and-mouse games with me. That’s fine. It’s a distraction for me, and yet another slight pain in my ass, which I don’t need, but somehow I will push on and keep bringing wonder to the world. Somehow I will make peace with the understanding that all of your incredible, superhuman efforts — all those sleepless nights, the endless hours spent hacking away, drinking Red Bull and cackling like a maniac — may, in the end, maybe cause us to make .00001% fewer dollars than we would have otherwise. Fine. I will find a way to live with this. I will deal with the notion that you have attached yourself to me, like a remora to a shark. (Though for what it’s worth, I would refer you to the Wikipedia entry for remora, specifically the following discussion of that animal’s diet: “There is controversy whether a remora’s diet is primarily leftover fragments, or the feces of the host. In some species … consumption of host feces is strongly indicated in gut dissections.” Yeah. Enjoy that image. I know I will.)

For the record, we did not “pull strings” or “pressure the advertising company” to take down your ad from the side of our store, as you apparently told TechCrunch. At least, there is no evidence that we did those things. Nor, for that matter, is there any evidence to support your claim that we’ve become Big Brother. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must call Eric Schmidt and have your video taken down from YouTube. Peace.

Students and faculty at Princeton find the Kindle “disappointing and difficult to use.” My God we are so going to destroy that poor ugly piece of plastic crap.

The really astounding thing is that Princeton gave the Kindles out free — and the kids still friggin hate them. Money quote:

“I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool,” said Aaron Horvath ’10, a student in Civil Society and Public Policy. “It’s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.”

Once again, it’s all about design — and not in the sense of making a pretty object (though let’s face it, on that front, Kindle fails big time) but in the sense of creating technology that vanishes, so that the user doesn’t have any sense of encountering technology at all and instead just experiences the magic and wonder of being able to do something effortlessly, intuitively.

Remember that old line from Alan Turing about how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic? Kindle never came close to that. My prediction: If you own a Kindle, get ready to put it down in that shelf in the basement that you jokingly refer to as “the museum,” where you keep your old Kaypro computer and your TRS-80. Tell yourself that maybe that Kindle will be worth money someday. Or at least it will be a great conversation piece with your grandkids — the device that came along first but got wiped out by Apple.

By the way, this guy says we’re not going to name our device an iTablet. He’s betting on iPad or iTab.

The good news is that Palm’s App Store is a mess, and it’s run by idiots, and the third-party freaks are giving Palm just as much grief as they’re giving us. Yay.

I have to tell you, as much as I love having billions of app downloads on our App Store and tens of thousands of apps available, dealing with these little dickwads is a huge headache and the 30% of revenues that we skim from them doesn’t begin to make up for the hassles they deliver. Luckily we’re big enough and nasty enough to handle these buffoons. That’s not the case for Palm, however. They need to be nice to these douchebags. Sadly, nobody has told them that — they think they’re a miniature version of Apple. So naturally they are running roughshod over their developers. Check out the “Kafka-esque nightmare” that this guy has endured in trying to get his free application distributed via Palm’s store. But see also if you don’t agree with me that after you read this guy’s complaint, he’s the one who comes out looking like the idiot. Frankly, we wouldn’t waste five minutes on him. But Palm has been going around and around with him for weeks.

Basically the guy’s got sand up in his pussy because the old PalmOS environment used to be a total free-for-all, but now Ruby (aka Mini Steve) is imposing some Apple-style command-and-control top-down discipline on these buffoons and amateurs. Oh, and they required him to have a PayPal account, and that’s a deal breaker for him because he’s afraid that if PayPal has his credit card number on file the government will be able to find him on the grid and they’ll start beaming messages into his house again and controlling his thoughts and he’ll have to move back down into the basement and line the walls with tinfoil again and never go outside. Or something.

Anyway, Ruby, congratulations. I’m really happy for you. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.