Sunday, April 25, 2010

Dear Gizmodo guys: Start thinking about ways to keep your cellmate happy. And yeah, that is exactly what I’m talking about


Seriously, get your boss Nick Denton to start teaching you how to take it in the butt. Because the police are ready to pounce, and we are definitely going to do everything we can to make sure you clowns spend time behind bars. My guess is Jason Chen (above) is gonna be a very popular guy when he arrives in prison. He’ll look a lot like he does in the photo, except he’ll be wearing some lipstick, and that thing he’s holding next to his face won’t be an iPhone.


Thursday, April 22, 2010

Gruber wants to make a citizen’s arrest at Gawker and Gizmodo

Like a lot of his fellow Apple employees, John Gruber of Daring Fireball is incensed about Gizmodo taking possession of a stolen iPhone and turning it into a scoop. But Gruber is going a little bit around the bend. He’s been emailing me nonstop, telling me I should have everyone arrested. And here is his latest post, where he makes the case against Gizmodo and the guy who found the phone in the bar, claiming they have all broken the law, that under the California penal code (hoo boy) what they did constitutes theft, and then he loads up some innuendo about how the whole story of “finding” the phone doesn’t make any sense and what if these guys actually followed some Apple engineer and picked his pocket or something, and even if they didn’t do that, they should all be sent to the chair put in prison for life.

Gah. And now Daniel Eran Dilger is weighing in, with a finely crafted 16,000-word essay on the whole thing which basically concludes that, (a) yes, this all happened, and (b) Windows people are stupid assholes who are always conspiring against Apple because we are the one true holy church of technology, and it drives them crazy that we’re so good and they’re so evil. And Andy Ihnatko, another Friend of Apple, says Gizmodo are scum.

I can’t deal with Dilger and Ihnatko — even over email they give me hives. But Gruber I can handle. I keep telling him, John, dude, I love you like a son, but you’re letting this get to you, it’s getting under your skin, you need to let it go, and anyway it’s not up to us to file criminal charges. We can’t do that. So go bug the cops or something. He says he’s done that, but the cops in Redwood City won’t do anything, and now he’s thinking about just making the arrest himself, and if that doesn’t work then he’s going to go to law school and become a lawyer and bring a civil lawsuit against Gawker Media and the finder guy.

Good luck with that.

(Photo by Art Director Jason. Much love.)


Monday, April 19, 2010

A great new source for iPad news

Dear friend Brinke, from Rabid Fanboy, has launched the iPad Report on Blogger. I highly recommend it, despite the fact that he’s been writing about this thing where Gizmodo took possession of stolen property, even though we told him not to. Take note of which loyalists haven’t said a word about it and are pretending it just didn’t happen. Better still are the ones (eg Gruber and Ihnatko) who are condemning Gizmodo for their criminal behavior and suggesting that the bloggers might even have stolen the device themselves, or arranged for the theft. I mean does anyone really believe that some Apple engineer was stupid enough to leave a prototype iPhone in a bar? And that this kid’s name is Gray Powell? And that we’ve acknowledged that the prototype is real, and demanded that Gizmodo return it?

The whole thing is so cocked-up and obviously fake that it’s not even funny.

To all of you out there hammering away on Gizmodo for publishing this information: Blessed are you, for in the future you will inherit advance review units and perhaps even be allowed to speak to our executives. Namaste.


An open letter to John Battelle

Last week John Battelle wrote an open letter to Apple criticizing us for being so secretive. He was inviting us to participate in his Web 2.0 Summit, so that we could be more open and rejoin the nerd community and hold hands and sing Kumbaya. Apparently we would also have an opportunity to explain why we hate Adobe and Flash, and why we bully the press and tyrannize developers and end users. Then we could fall on our sword and apologize for being such total dicks to everyone around us.

My response follows.

Dear John,

No.

Sent from my iPad.


Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Michael Wolff has become obsessed with me, and it’s starting to get scary

Seriously, the guy writes about me every day now, plus he’s been calling my office over and over insisting on speaking to me, and then he’s sending email to my personal email account, and I’m thinking about getting a restraining order. See his latest hornball note here. Wolff says I’m suing HTC because I feel threatened. He says the lawsuit is a sign that the iPhone isn’t doing well enough, that “Apple’s margins are apparently not large enough to sustain a competitive onslaught.” Money quote:

It’s a Steve thing. Not just a temper tantrum. But an operatic one. It’s Steve Jobs’ signature: pride and paranoia. Behind it, too, is the motivation of all great competitors—they really don’t want to compete, they want the market for themselves.

Michael Wolff, you scare me more than Ray Kurzweil, and that’s saying something. Please, please, for the love of all things holy, go find yourself an intern to sexually harass, and leave me alone.


Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Michael Wolff is afraid of me — but not as afraid as interns are of him


World’s greatest journalist Michael Wolff (photo, right) says today that the world maybe should be afraid of Apple and especially of me. The whole thing seems to have been prompted by the fact that we’ve wiped out a bunch of smutty porno apps from the App Store. Frankly I’m baffled. Who, other than 15-year-old boys, gives a rat’s ass about porno on their iPhone? Has Michael Wolff run out of interns to bang, and now he’s reduced to beating off to porn on his iPhone? If so, I weep for you, Michael Wolff. And I will pray for your soul.

Of course this sad shiny-headed onanist can’t just admit that he’s pissed about the fact that we’ve ruined his beat-off hobby, so instead he launches into a screed about how Apple is so controlling. Because what? Because we run a store and decide what stuff we’re going to sell in our store? Well, guilty as charged, Sir Flogs-A-Lot.

(more…)


Wednesday, February 17, 2010

This is why I love doing business in China

Because when some reporter comes up and tries to snoop around our building, this happens:

As he stood on the public road taking photos of the front gate and security checkpoint, a guard shouted. The reporter continued snapping photos before jumping into a waiting taxi. The guard blocked the vehicle and ordered the driver to stop, threatening to strip him of his taxi license.

The correspondent got out and insisted he was within his rights as he was on the main road. The guard grabbed his arm. A second guard ran over, and with a crowd of Foxconn workers watching, they tried dragging him into the factory.

The reporter asked to be let go. When that didn’t happen, he jerked himself free and started walking off. The older guard kicked him in the leg, while the second threatened to hit him again if he moved. A few minutes later, a Foxconn security car came along but the reporter refused to board it. He called the police instead.

After the authorities arrived and mediated, the guards apologized and the matter was settled. The reporter left without filing a complaint, though the police gave him the option of doing so.

“You’re free to do what you want,” the policeman explained, “But this is Foxconn and they have a special status here. Please understand.”

This kind of stuff makes me so happy that I can’t even begin to describe it. If only we could do this kind of thing in Cupertino.


Tuesday, February 16, 2010

And the Pulitzer goes to …

The New York Times, or rather, the Times Digest, which arrived in my inbox today and, I must admit, kind of startled me.

Please note that the actual newspaper did not make the mistake. Just the Digest, which is something I get because I’m an online subscriber and which I guess is put together by the folks who create the online edition of the Times. You know, I can’t wait to see what these guys at the Times manage to do with the iPad.

The full page is here:


Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Mossberg down!

We’ve just received word that Walt Mossberg has collapsed on the sidewalk outside Yerba Buena. That’s all we have at the moment. One minute he was standing there doing a monologue about the tablet and raving about how amazing it is and not letting anyone else get a word in edgewise — and then bam. He went down. Katie B. (in photo with Walt) has called for an ambulance. Kara Swisher immediately posted the news and then began monitoring other blogs to make sure they credit her with the scoop.


Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Gizmodo explains why we are the greatest company of all time

Remember when Gizmodo used to be a site where you could find loads of small items about the latest crazy gadgets? Just like how MTV used to be a site where you could watch music videos. Alas, cable channels and blogs inevitably feel the need to evolve, which is why MTV runs whatever it is they now run, and Gizmodo now resorts to the dreaded A word — analysis. Egad. Like this piece, which runs 1,100 words and no doubt took a lot of time and effort to put together, but basically says, Most companies show off prototypes and then don’t build them; Apple only shows off stuff that they are really going to sell; therefore, Apple is better than everyone else.

On the bright side, they did create a really cool graphic (above) for the essay.