Tag: Apple

Stewart calls Apple “Appholes” over lost iPhone response

An Apple employee lost a prototype for the new iPhone, which is kind of a big deal to them and soon after came the headline/news: Per Apple Request, Police Questioning Gizmodo’s iPhone Scoop. RespondingiIn a segment titled “Appholes”, John Stewart went off (though gently) on Apple for handling the Gizmodo iPhone leak poorly, most notably observing that Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one, but now Apple is busting down doors in Palo Alto while Bill Gates rids the world of mosquitoes. Everything is upside down!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Appholes
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Commenter Durox on the Daily Show website rebuts:

1. the guy has a case# from the Apple’s support team, he contacted them but they had no idea that a ‘secret iPhone’ was lost, so they decided it was a joke (Apple also said in the begining that it’s not a prototype …) 2. the blogger paid for an iPhone; he took a chance; it might have been a joke, a replica, etc, but he considered the risks and got it. when asked to return it, he sent it back to Apple. the whole thing took days to develop, and that seems to me like a publicity stunt… Jobs’ own secrecy regarding the product, turns out to be the cause why they didn’t get the iPhone back before it made it on the news. if the support team were updated, if Jobs would not have been so paranoid, the phone would have been returned to Apple. IMO it’s like this: you buy a used bike on a garage sale. the guy says he found it on the side of the road.. you give him the money, and take the bike to a ride. someone stops you and demands that he left the bike on the street, and he wants it back. you give it back.. now, what’s going on w/ your money, what’s going on when the police arrives? ;] ps Apple has the argument that the new iPhone is top secret and the competitors might steal its ‘secrets’! come on Jobs, we are in 2010 and the iPhone still doesn’t multitask. it took several upgrades to film, and other expensive jokes like these ;]. don’t give us this BS, with the secrect technology, iPhone’s only thing is its applications. w/o them it simply blows!

and commenter Go Zi An created some buzz on the videos comments with a few along these lines:

But John Gruber actually has a fair and balanced take on this issue, unlike Jon Stewart. Steward [sic] is misrepresenting facts, leaving out important details like the prototype was stolen, and whoever found it never informed anyone at all for 3 weeks, despite knowing the identity of the Apple engineer since he could access his Facebook app on the iPhone prototype. And Gizmodo paid for the prototype, is that even ethical journalism (something Stewart himself always raves about?) Jon Stewart it’s time you actually went to journalism school to learn the basics on reporting facts.

The iPad Approacheth

With availability of the iPad, just weeks away, millions of people like me CAN’T WAIT till it hits stores!…so we can go to our local Apple store to play with it for free and then go home without buying one…

Tens of thousands of others, however, are excited about actually OWNING one though. I would be too if it had half the features it should, and I each one of their absence (no multi-tasking, no camera and less functionality of a real computer at above-Netbook price) is a deal breaker for me, especially considering how easy their inclusion would be. The purposeful holding-back so the 2.0 and beyond versions have lots of room for improvement is obnoxious.

Almost as obnoxious as the device’s absence of Flash…

This official commercials from HP Computers Youtube account touts their new device’s superiority to the iPad (without mentioning the iPad by name of course) because it has Flash. The video is titled “NEW! Web, Flash & Air on Slate Device from HP” in a non-specific slam on the iPad’s frustrating lack of Flash, going on to say in the description “Access the full web and not just a part of it!“.

That’s the short version. The teaser with the one line touting. But HP went further with this 5 minute long demonstration of just how Flashy this Flash enabled Flash Player device is. What was subtle in the first video is pounded hard in the following video that translates to “Wanna watch MTV on your tablet device? stay away from the iPad. Apple loyalist? have fun playing your Spongebob maze games on it, SUCKER!”


Alan Tam from Adobe Flash Product Marketing walks us through Adobe Flash and Adobe Air functionalities on HP’s upcoming slate device. Learn how you can access the full web, and not just a part of it.

Indeed, if the device is price-compatible or even competitive with the iPad, has all the same features and has the added advantage of not banning the thing that makes watching videos on sites like Hulu possible, its hard to see why anyone would view the Apple product as superior – EXCEPT for the inevitable situation an HP Tablet user will find themselves in where someone see’s them holding the interactive tablet device and says “oh cool, is that the iPad?” and when the awkward reply of “no.. its an HP Slate Device…” comes, the significantly less impressed “…oh…cool..[i guess]”. The deep burn of that negative wow-factor may just be the thing that keeps Apple on top of this market. After all, isn’t that the business model of the iPod and the iPhone?…

Apple deserves credit for pushing this market forward though. While these things should be commonplace by now, it was Apples announcement that has brought the others to the surface. Being first deserves kudos, but it comes with ridicule as we saw with the endless “iPad sounds like a feminine hygiene product” cracks. As that meme grows stale, new ones like the following arise.
This is a submission for a Doritos viral marketing campaign contest:

iPad is finally here to change the world. or something

Would have been more impressive a year ago. i would have bet everything i owned that there was no way in hell the Apple Tablet device would be called a freaking iPad. good thing i didnt. ifail. Being one vowel off from the company’s flagship product is an equally wtf-ish move.

The price is the the big news. Macworld:

$499 for 16GB is the base model.
For 32GB it’s $100 more, for another $100 you get 64GB of storage.
The 3G models cost an extra $130 to build in radios. $629, $729, $829.
These are the six models.
The most expensive model is just $829. Unbelievable price.

So what can you do with this giant iPod? everything the iPhone does (including all the apps) except make calls – BUT – since the screen is bigger, you can burn out your eyes by reading books on the large backlit screen… yeay…

i want one just cuz it’d be easier to surf web stuffs on a smaller hand held thing than my 17inch Macbook but bigger than the iphone. i, along with the human race, have no real use or need for one.

What’s missing? NY Times Blog:

* No ability to play Adobe Flash animations, widely used on the Web.
* No camera, still or video
* No non-Internet phone function
* Unclear whether you can bundle your AT&T iPhone plan with an iPad data plan
* No removable battery for a device that can suck a lot of power
* No removable storage

Some of these are obvious, like the battery and storage being locked in – duh – Apple is even starting to do that with it’s laptops, so of course this thing wouldn’t have those. I don’t know why either is so great anyway. Removable storage would be nice, but not necessary.

No flash however is just frigging unacceptable. wtf is that shit about? no flash? I can’t watch Hulu videos on this thing? uhm… ya. now I’m not buying one. thanks for that necessary deal breaker. No camera? at all? not even a forward facing one like on the iphone? Why are you downgrading, Apple? your previous smaller device has a forward facing camera that takes pictures and video. You just put HD video capturing and editing on the otherwise useless ipod NANO for Christ sake and you cut it out of the iPad? what the hell? the iPad should have 2 cameras facing front and forward (or a single one on a hinge that you can flip to the opposite direction, though that would interrupt Apples one-piece sleekness it goes for in everything). Not having even one camera is a major fail.

Still can’t get over the name… It’s another “why are you making this harder than it needs to be?” moment. why IPad instead of the hundreds of better choices?

If you think the stupid name iPad sounds like a product for a bloody vagina, so did MadTV 5 years ago:

President Obama is set to give a rebuttal speech to Steve Job’s event later tonight.

UPDATE: the actress and writer of the sketch talk to CNN via…webcam for some reason…

Steve Jobs is not dead

Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs has been on extended sick leave and had to skip the last stage presentation or two because of it. His lack of visibility lead many to believe he was terminally ill or maybe even had already died and was being kept as a Weekend At Bernies type secret for as long as possible. But today – tadaa! – Jobs is back on the job..z, and conducted the expo thingwhatever today revealing new ipod nano’s with cameras and a software upgrade to the iPhone full of features no one will ever notice. yeay! but his entrance… so blah… dude just walked out on the friggin stage with no announcement.

The video below is the whole thing if you’re interested, but for purposes of this blog, only the first 60 seconds is important.

Jobs squandered a huge opportunity here. No one had any idea he was going to appear on stage and he just strolls out and starts talking?? wtf Steven? He could have tripled the publicity for this event if he had taken the Willy Wanka route:

See Mr Jobs? thats how its done… Maybe a full floor tumble was out of the question, but a fakeout still could have been pulled off subtlety and been just as awesome. Imagine him limping out with a cane and beginning to tell that story about his recovery only to drop it and erect himself to announce how great he feels. Apple stock would have risen an extra 4 points, I guarantee.