Chelsea Kate Isaacs is conflicted. “I hate Apple, but I don’t hate Apple,” so told a reporter during Microsoft’s recent Windows Phone 7 launch in New York City. Where, precisely, does the whole hating Apple part come from? Well, if Isaacs’s name doesn’t ring any bells, her recent run in with Apple CEO Steve Jobs just might.
Last month the journalism student made news after a testy e-mail dialog with the exec hit the blogs. Isaacs sent an e-mail Jobs an e-mail asking why his company’s PR team wasn’t more responsive to student queries,
Mr. Jobs, I humbly ask why Apple is so wonderfully attentive to the needs of students, whether it be with the latest, greatest invention or the company’s helpful customer service line, and yet, ironically, the Media Relations Department fails to answer any of my questions which are, as I have repeatedly told them, essential to my academic performance.
Jobs responded to the question in typically curt fashion,
Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade. Sorry.
The conversation just kind of devolved from there, with the turtlenecked executive finally responding, “Please leave us alone.”
Isaacs, meanwhile, won a Microsoft-sponsored contest. The company sent her to the aforementioned New York event, where she told press, “I wouldn’t be comfortable giving [Apple] a dime. If that’s the way you treat consumers, that’s not right.”
She did promise to cover both Apple and Microsoft objectively, however, but we know which OS she’ll be using to file her stories in the future.
Remember Apple’s Power Mac G4 Cube (2000-2001)? Apple sold the Cube as a stylish compact desktop, but instead it would go on to become a squat plastic symbol of Steve Jobs’ fallibility.
I used a Cube at my very first job after graduation. The thing lacked a conventional fan, so it overheated and crashed a lot. Constantly, in fact. Lots of Cubes did. The workaround discussed on the message boards of the time was to stick some cardboard in its vent to cool the little sucker down. It kinda worked.
My boss justified shelling out $1,500 because “it just looked so cool.” Keep in mind, this was following the go-go 1990s, it was a different era–the cold war had ended, reality TV was just beginning to weave its way into the cultural fabric, and the economy wasn’t teetering on the edge of a gold-and-barter based abyss. Back then, you could realistically justify purchasing a computer simply because it kinda sorta looked like a prop from Sleepers.
We were all so naive and adorable.
However, despite its technical shortcomings, lackluster sales record, and untimely demise, the Cube did, in fact, look really cool. The New York branch of the MOMA still has one in their permanent design collection.
Were you one of the unfortunate suckers who was swayed by Slick Steve’s little future box of mystery? If so, now you can take some solace in the fact that your purchase didn’t go to complete waste. In a few easy steps, you can re-purpose your Cube as a tabletop accessory that not only hearkens back to a gadgetry of yore, but will help stop fluids from leaking out your nasal passages. Just in time for cold and flu season.
So, congratulations to you, Cube. For today, you have discovered your true calling in life.
Well, this isn’t going to be surprising to many, but certain executives of certain big studios and networks aren’t wasting anytime letting everybody know what they think of Apple’s new 99-cent rental model for the Apple TV. If you’ve read our review of the tiny new iOS device, you’re already aware that one of Apple’s biggest challenges with the product is getting the content providers on board for such a reduced price — so far, the company’s managed to pull in ABC, Disney, Fox, and the BBC — but Jobs has said that studios will quickly “see the light” and join up. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes seems to disagree, however. “How can you justify renting your first-run TV shows individually for 99 cents an episode and thereby jeopardize the sale of the same shows as a series to branded networks that pay hundreds of millions of dollars and make those shows available to loyal viewers for free?” Bewkes recently asked, joining the now growing chorus of executives to decry the new scheme. Jeff Zucker recently said he thought Apple’s 99-cent rentals “devalue” the content, while Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said the rental model was “not good.”
The new Apple TV could be Steve Jobs’ best sleight-of-hand trick yet.
During his modest introduction of the device, Jobs called the Apple TV “one more hobby.” But a closer look at the code and the hardware powering the Apple TV reveals that there’s a lot more going on under the hood than the CEO shared.
Interestingly, Jobs didn’t mention that Apple TV runs iOS, the same operating system running on its flagship product, the iPhone, and some other big hits — the iPod Touch and iPad. And there’s more, too: The Apple TV’s software may already be jailbroken, and some hidden software should eventually allow you to share the Apple TV’s media with other iOS devices.
These secret ingredients could be the recipe Apple needs to shake up the television industry. For years, Apple executives have labeled the set-top box a “hobby” product because of its mild success compared to blockbuster sellers like the iPhone and iPod. Now that Apple TV has been revamped into a streaming rental service with an arsenal of stealth features, maybe Apple has a chance to change the TV business — if not today, perhaps later.
“The most important hint of Apple’s real ambitions in the living room come from AirPlay, which puts iPhones and iPads in the driver’s seat and makes the TV just an output device for the Apple ecosystem,” said James McQuivey, a Forrester analyst, in a recent e-mail statement. “Expect Apple to gradually push more and more in that direction, but as of this moment in 2010, Apple has not yet made a significant play for control of the TV.”
Here, we round up the juicy tidbits we’ve heard about Apple’s mysterious new set-top box.
iOS and third-party app support
There’s more than enough evidence proving that the Apple TV runs iOS. Dispelling any doubts, Apple recently posted a build of iOS 4.1 specifically for the Apple TV.
This piece of information about iOS is important because of a new feature called AirPlay, which streams media from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch to the Apple TV. When Jobs demonstrated AirPlay, he only showed the feature working with an iPad’s built-in video player, photo app and music library. Now that we know Apple TV runs iOS, it’s likely that third-party apps such as MLB at Bat or ABC Player will be able stream media to the set-top box, too.
DaringFireball blogger John Gruber confirmed that an AirPlay button is showing up in the MLB at Bat app, and he adds that apps using the built-in media controller will be able to integrate AirPlay.
Long story short, you’ll be able to wirelessly stream media from some third-party apps straight to your Apple TV with an AirPlay button. AirPlay is shaping up to be Apple’s secret weapon to reshape home entertainment.
In addition to AirPlay, the fact that Apple TV is running iOS means that — in principle, at least — it may someday be able to run applications from the iTunes App Store. For now, that capability is not included in Apple TV, but the underlying operating system certainly supports it, so Apple might open a TV App Store in a future software update.
Jailbreaking hacks
Third-party app support will probably be limited for the Apple TV, but that’s where the jailbreakers come in. In the same way that we’re able to override restrictions on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch with a jailbreak, we should be able to run unauthorized apps on the Apple TV — something Jobs would never advertise, of course.
In fact, hackers already have a head start, because a tool called Shatter, which was used to jailbreak the newest iPod Touch, already works with the Apple TV, according to the iPhone Dev Team. That means we should be expecting hackers to code some unauthorized apps soon to unlock additional capabilities such as video conferencing via your Apple TV.
On top of that, existing hacks for the old Apple TV should work, too. Dev Team member Will Strafach explained that “the new AppleTV OS seems to be a mashup of the old AppleTV OS and iOS,” meaning “frappliances,” plug-ins that add functionality to the old Apple TV, should work as well.
‘Lowtide’ app
The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Erica Sadun, a popular iOS programmer, took a close look at the Apple TV’s software and discovered that it runs an application called Lowtide — the software containing the set-top box’s media interface.
Sadun dug deeper and found lines of code that suggest that Lowtide might eventually be extended to other iOS devices. In other words, you should be able to share media from the Apple TV to your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, whereas originally we thought we’d only be able to do the converse with AirPlay. This functionality would be comparable to a Slingbox or an EyeTV.
Lowtide isn’t readily available for Apple’s iOS mobile devices yet, but iOS developer Dustin Howett has already managed to load Lowtide on an iPod touch running iOS 4.1, demonstrated in the video above. He recommended against doing it yourself, though, unless you’re ready to reformat your iPhone on a regular basis just to turn it back into a phone.
Mark Zuckerberg may be worth more than Steve Jobs according to Forbes’s most recent list, but the Apple CEO is doing just fine, thank you very much. Jobs is number 43 on the list, valued at $6.1 billion–that’s a $1 billion increase over his value on last year’s list.
So, what to get for the technology CEO who has a few billion of everything? How about a snazzy new home? That’s the gift the executive is giving himself. Jobs is going to erect an $8.45 million home in Woodside, CA, a small, ultra-wealth community in San Mateo County in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Jobs bought the site back in 1984 (a big year for the executive for a number of reasons, of course). He actually purchased a 17,000 square foot historic mansion located on the site. The executive has been battling preservationists, attempting to tear down the home Daniel Jackling, a copper baron, in order to erect a fancy new mansion.
The preservationists threw in the towel last month, leaving Jobs to go forward with his plans.
It’s safe to assume, I think, that Steve Jobs has a pretty nice little nest egg set up for himself. And it’s not just because of all of that sweet Apple and Pixar money. I’m guessing that the Apple CEO doesn’t have all that many expenses for a rich guy.
I mean, for one thing, he’s got access to all of the computers, music players, and phones a guy could want (he probably gets a pretty good discount from AT&T, as well). Also, his wardrobe expenses are no doubt fairly low. What’s he got to buy, like 10, 15 black turtlenecks a year?
Still, even with all of these factors in place, Jobs has been passed up by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg on Forbes’s annual rich people list, the Forbes 400. Zuckerberg and Jobs now rank numbers 35 and 43, with estimated values of $6.9 and $6.1 billion, respectively.
Not that it was a bad year for Apple’s head, by any stretched–his net worth actually jumped $1 billion since last year.
Zuckerberg, for his part, recently announced that he will be donating $100 million to schools in Newark, NJ. All in all, thinks seem to be looking up for Facebook’s 26-year-old CEO. Not like they-decided-to-cancel-that-movie-about-me good. But still, pretty good.
In a purported e-mail exchange published by a gossip blog, famously mercurial CEO Steve Jobs told an innocent journalism student to buzz off.
That’s the story featured in today’s Tweet of the Day, which comes from our friends at Valleywag (Gawker Media): “Steve Jobs In Email Pissing Match with College Journalism Student http://gawker.com/5641211/.”
According to the author of the post, Adrian Chen, Long Island University senior Chelsea Kate Isaacs emailed Jobs on Thursday complaining that Apple’s PR department wasn’t replying to any of her e-mails asking about the use of iPads in academic settings:
Mr. Jobs, I humbly ask why Apple is so wonderfully attentive to the needs of students, whether it be with the latest, greatest invention or the company’s helpful customer service line, and yet, ironically, the Media Relations Department fails to answer any of my questions which are, as I have repeatedly told them, essential to my academic performance.”
Jobs allegedly shot back a terse reply:
Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade. Sorry
Incensed, Isaacs shot off another e-mail to the CEO, saying it was a common courtesy to respond to people’s questions. After a few more back-and-forths, Jobs attempted to wrap up the conversation with a deathblow:
Apple did not immediately respond to my e-mail requesting comment on the e-mail exchange. Maybe I’ll send a note to Jobs myself whining about the potential impact on my salary. I have cats to feed and a gym membership to pay, you know.
Joking aside, this is especially hilarious for anyone who covers tech, because we all know that Apple’s PR team usually doesn’t respond to professional media outlets — so the thought of them responding to a student puts a toothy grin on my face. But congrats, Isaacs: If your story is real, you got a response from the legend himself, which is more than most of us tech journalists can say.
In this week’s Gadget Lab podcast, Dylan Tweney and yours truly geek out about the potential for Steve Jobs to be a ninja, in reference to a bogus news report published by Bloomberg about the CEO attempting to smuggle ninja stars from Japan.
Apple said it never happened, but who knows — maybe Steve’s just really good at hiding shuriken, like a real ninja would be?
In more serious news, we’ve had some hands-on time with the new iPod Nano, a touchscreen media player that might even make a decent wristwatch. (Dylan’s full review on the Nano will be published soon.)
Speaking of publishing, we’re currently holding an “iPhoneography” contest, asking readers to submit their most impressive smartphone photos. There have already been a bunch of great submissions. Keep them coming! We’ll feature the best art here on Wired so you can show off to your friends.
Still images are cool, but the world of video is getting plenty interesting with gadgets like the Veebeam, a streaming media player that wirelessly hooks up your computer to a TV. Sounds like an intriguing solution for fans of online video services like Hulu or Netflix.
Whoosh. As fast as a ninja can swoop in for a kill, Taiwanese animators have already parodied Tuesday’s bogus news report about Steve Jobs attempting to smuggle ninja stars from Japan.
Bloomberg on Tuesday published a rumor pulled from a Japanese tabloid claiming that Jobs had vowed never to visit Japan again after airport security guards refused to let him bring ninja throwing stars onto his private jet. Apple later said the story was “pure fiction.”
Way to spoil the fun, Apple. Anyway, here’s how it might have looked if the incident had really happened:
Famous for its CG reenactments of news stories about Steve Jobs, Tiger Woods and other celebrities, Next Media Animation is a small animation outfit located in Taiwan. Wired magazine published a feature story on Next Media Animation in this month’s print edition.
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