Mac OS X: 2.5 million users today. Most new Mac users don't know fuck-all about the difference between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS 10, nor do they understand the concept of "dual-booting" or the Startup Disk control panel. Apple has suckered many a Mac user into their "2.5 million" demographic tally.
3,500 apps for Mac OS X: Jobs fails to mention that most of them are supplied by Apple itself in one of the various "i" apps.
RealOne Player for OS X: Does anyone care? I don't. It should be called RealSpammer since it dumps so much shit all over your hard disk.
Mac OS X Jaguar: Announced today, available August 24. Phil Schiller takes the stage to demonstrate cycling desktop pictures. Hold the show, can I pre-order it now? Jesus. Oh, yeah, ugliest packaging ever for an OS.
QuickTime 6.0: Released Monday, more than 1 million users already exposed to the new and imporved QuickTime 6 nag-box before using the neat new MPEG4 features. Congrats, Apple.
Sherlock 3: Even uglier interface than Sherlock 2, "totally rewritten" (i.e. bought from another company and rebranded). I never use Sherlock, don't care about a this new "revision." *snore*
Rendezvous: "No one owns it." Great. Apple implements a new technology first again. Let's walk around and see who we can connect to. Watch for Apple iDate, a blind dating package, based on this technology. I called it here first.
Mail.app: New version demonstrated, included in Mac OS X Jaguar. Uh, no shit. Not only have we known about this for months, but is it all that prophetic to think the mail client would be updated in the nex major OS revision?
Address Book: Same as above. Filler at best. Jobs likes to hear himself talk.
iChat: The newsest (un)productivity app from Apple. Now Mac users can chat with their friends all day at work from an OS-integrated app. IT departments and managers beware. Apple is trying to destroy your profits!
.Mac: Bait and switch! Goodbye iTools, our free friend, and say hello to the much more expensive .Mac. "These are trying economic times." No wonder Apple is excited about the evolution of the PC. They get to charge for shit formerly supplied for free. Damn the economy, eh, Steve?
iCal: Calendars for .Mac, iPod, and Palm users. Hmm. Good idea. Available for the new .mac in September (re: fork over the dollars for it).
iTunes 3: Hey hey hey! Awright! Finally some good shit from Apple. New features like consistent volume playback (so I won't be jolted awake when it finishes playing piano sonatas and goes into Nine Inch Nails), playlist sharing support (via Rendezvous and Audible.com), and new iPod support. New icon too! Can't wait til the servers aren't chundering forbidden messages at me so I can download it.
iPod news: New iPod revision 2 announced today with a tweaked form factor in 10 and 20 gigabyte sizes; new menus; iTunes 3 integration. Prices are $500/$400/$300 for the 20/10/5 gig sizes, respectively. Oh yeah, support for Windows sometime. I don't remember when, nor do I care. How long before the iPod outdoes the iBook in terms of storage? At this rate, about a year.
iSync: Uses XML to back up your Mac, iPod, iCal date, or Palm via the .mac service. Sounds neat, wonder where the DTD for this SyncML markup is, costs lots of dough. Yet another piece due at MacWorld NY 2002 II (September).
iMac: 17" screens, baby. Everyone scooped this one, even MOSR (thanks to pilfering from SpyMac and ThinkSecret). The first 17" iMac ever, unless you count that abberational eMac thing.
Jul 17, 2002
MacWorld New York '02
Jul 10, 2002
Phil Schiller: Under Review
This was it. The last straw. The boiling point. Critical mass. Terminal velocity. Heart palpitation city. For the last time, Phil Schiller had embarrassed Steve and his pantheon of ex-NeXT, Inc. executives at a board meeting in a series of "rotten Apple" (Steve's phrase for Apple's 1985-1996 era) antics that had caused stock to drop more than three dollars at the close of that day. Steve was doing Phil a favor by letting him stay on as president of worldwide marketing, as all other executive roles had been filled by Steve's NeXT cronies. But no more!
Steve buzzed his secretary, the fat blonde woman from Apple's current hip, trendy Switch campaign, and told her to show in Phil. Moments later, Phil entered Steve's office, wearing his typical Nike sneakers, blue jeans, and denim shirt. Steve was staring hard at his desk as he blindly motioned for Phil to take a seat. Grabbing his bottle of water laced with LSD, Steve took a sip, cleared his throat, and began one of his notorious scoldings.
Prancing across the room, Steve attached his clip-on mic and stood in the center of the huge office, looking directly at Phil. Phil was sweating, nervously, but also rolled his eyes and sighed. Were there any limits to Steve's megalomania?
"Folks, today, we have a bad situation. Phil Schiller, our president of worldwide marketing here at Apple, seems to want us to let him go. Fire him. And we– we at Apple don't like to do that. We think he have a pretty good thing going here at Apple and we don't want to-- don't want to dis-balance that. Our users wouldn't benefit. But Phil's actions have been pretty strong, pretty vivid as of late, so we're stuck between a rock and a hard place."
Phil clawed at his knees, unable to believe the mass of unchecked ego in front of him. He wished he was clawing his eyes out.
Steve continued on, occasionally taking sips from his water bottle and clearing his throat. He now had a small device in his hand, and he pressed the end of it with his thumb. The screen behind him was lit with a boring purple pattern, obviously out of PowerPoint, and he began parading numbers, charts, graphs, and third-party testimony across the screen, all regarding Phil Schiller, Apple's hardware, and the weight of scatological pranks at a public board meeting.
"It's clear that we have someone with the ability-- the talent-- to lead Apple's hardware on in successful directions. In the past we've even seen the huge transition from Motorola's 68k series to IBM's PowerPC, and that's something not many people could have pulled off, let alone without a hitch."
From somewhere unseen to both Phil and Steve, a far-off voice shouted "Yeah right, seven years of an emulated OS is not 'without a hitch!'"
Phil whipped his head around looking for the heckler, shouting back. "I'm the marketing guy, don't bitch to me about how long the software division took to get their collective ass in gear!"
Drinking the rest of his "magical" bottled water and tossing the empty container off to the side, Steve shut the PowerPoint presentation off and placed a podium in front of him. He rested his elbows on it and adjusted the mic.
"So, getting back to this conundrum, we have Phil, a talented guy-- great stuff with the direction we've taken in every one of our lines-- the Xserve is a success, the eMac is a success, as well as our older stuff-- the iBook, iMac, Power Mac, and PoweBook." Here Steve looked down again for a second, pushed his glasses closer to his face, and snapped his head back up again.
"But the catch– the catch with Phil is, he doesn't realize that turkey-mooning the board in a public conference regarding our quarterly earnings isn't the right thing to do."
Phil bit his upper lip with his lower teeth and looked at the ground, tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair. Steve was right, he had turkey-mooned the board, having jumped on the giant conference table and wheeling around 360 degrees to make sure everyone got a glimpse of his spread ass-cheeks, anus, and testicles, but it had been Steve himself who had goaded him into doing it, in the name of "the old spirit of Apple" or some such malarkey. And now Phil was sitting here at his own private Stevenote, taking the blame for the stock drop that happened a few short minutes later, Steve's scapegoat once again.
Steve slammed his hands down on the podium and looked Phil directly in the eye.
"So what are we gonna do with you, Phil? You tied my hands at that meeting, Phil. You signed your own death warrant. What do you have to say for yourself, Phil?"
Steve was asking him, subliminally giving him a chance to redeem himself. Phil was at once elated but newly nervous again. What he said in the next few seconds would either save or snuff his career at Apple. He looked worriedly around, reviewing his years at Apple, the hard work, extra hours, the keynotes, the success, the failures, the recoveries. There was more of his blood in the Macintosh than almost anyone else's at the company. And Apple, in turn, was in his blood. Like an addiction.
Wiping some sweat off of his upper lip, Phil met Steve's gaze and swallowed once.
"Would you like to smoke some marijauna?"
Moments later Steve's secretary could hear the uproarious laughter from inside Steve's office. With a secretive smile, she knew that she'd not seen the last of Phil Schiller after all. Peace once again reigned at Apple Computer, Inc.