Former CEO Jonathan Schwartz has started a blog detailing all the things he was too humble to tell us about himself when he was still captain of a sinking ship CEO of sun. His upcoming book WordPress hosted blog reveals some of the things you might not have known about the kinds of meetings that happen between CEO’s of major companies and third-string wannabes. But we weren’t content to wait for the next installment of “Jonathan Schwartz tells Apple to shut up”, so we called him directly and asked for the “The dirt”.

“So, this one time, Bill Gates came into my office, and was all, “Java is stupid!” and I was all “whatever Bill, .Net looks like crap and doesn’t run on Solaris!” Schwartz related over the phone. He continued, “So then I flexed all my pecs and abs and my shirt was like BOOM and Bill was all “Wow Jon you have awesome muscles and I just wet myself so I’m leaving now because you’re so scary and I was the strongest CEO in the world and I made Steve Jobs give me his lunch money and Steve Ballmer told me that he wants to be like me when he grows up.”

Unfortunately, at this point Mrs. Schwartz came in and told Johnny that it was nap time He had to attend a high-level meeting, so we were unable to continue with his story. But we’ll be sure to pick it up in his assuredly not soon to be a bestseller, as soon as it comes out on Apple’s iBooks service.

Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we answer the mysterious question: What the crap happened last week?

Q: So, what the crap did happen last week? You were all “I’m going to Cali, baby!” and nobody heard from you again.

A: Gaaah, I started that post like six times, but various computer glitches kept eating it, or scrambling the words, or some stupid thing. the most coherent thing to emerge from the wreckage was a comparison of my seat mate on the flight to a wildebeest.

Q: Weak. Sauce. Try. Harder.

A: Look, I’m not starting that post again, man. At one point the hard drive on my iMac self-destructed, and I had to take it into the shop for a new hard drive,¹ and when I rebuilt from my Time Machine backup my post was completely NOT on the backup.

Q: So those four of us who follow this blog are doomed to forever vaguely wonder if anything happened when you were in the home of the free Google Wi-fi?

A: Google Wi-fi rejected me. I wrote about that before the GREAT HARD DRIVE CRASH.

Q: So, you got anything for us?

A: Look, I feel bad, really I do, but writing about that trip is a curse. So instead I’ll just throw in something I wrote on that trip, that I was saving for your birthday.

Q: No, not gonna cut it.

Ngmoco Buys Freeverse

Q: And I get ignored again.

A: H2 tags can’t hear you. Now Shhhhh! the article’s starting.

We here at CANS HQ were distressed to learn that Freeverse, one of our favorite software vendors, from whom we have borrowed characters, is being purchased by Ngmoco, an iPhone game company. This news is odd, sad, and depressing, which is probably a good summation of the internet in general. But that’s beside the point.

Freeverse was our first introduction to mac games, with their Big Bang Board Games that shipped free on our iMac. The games were simple, but clean and Mac-like, with lots of polish and interaction. Over the years we found them to be equally excellent at other programs, from the actually useful Periscope² to the much needed port of Heroes of Might and Magic V to the Mac, we’ve relied on Freeverse to make easy-to-use, well designed software, and we’ve never been let down.

In recent years we’ve also done a very small amount of testing for Freeverse, and found their staff to be friendly, intelligent, and generous to a fault.

And now they’re being purchased by a company that formed, like, what? Three weeks ago? A company whose empire is based on Rolando: the story of a cartoon ball. This is kind of like some kid who just won a huge cash prize in a Risk tournament buying General Patton.

The question is: will they continue to make Mac games and programs? It seems unlikely. the iPhone/iPad platform is easier to write for, and has a huge base of people just waiting to devour your latest creation with minimal advertising. So desktop games and apps lose again on the mac and more people start to wonder if Windows is really all that bad.

Or maybe we’re blowing the whole thing out of proportion. (We are) so we’ll stop now. It’s not much, but we just wanted to thank Freeverse for the excellent games and wish them well in their new adventures. May the monkey ever be on your back.

---

A: See! See? How was that, eh? Pathos, humor, nostalgia, that post has it all!

Q: Did you want to borrow some black nail polish emo-boy? Whiny. that’s what it was. Whiny.

A: Whatever man. That’s David Pogue level Pulitzer material.³

Q: So, what we get from your trip to California is NOT EVEN a stupid T-Shirt, but a stupid article.

A: Okay, well, maybe you’ll like this post:

MacHeist Mails it In

Three months after the expected beginning of MacHeist, we get, not a new heist full of interest and prizes, but a cheap bundle of good but ininspiring software. Well, we here at CANS arent’ going to stand for it. I mean, yes we’ll buy the bundle, heck, we already have. But we’re not going to like it–

Q: Nope! Not interested.

A: Hey! Stop that!

Q: Alright look, you had a hard week, got it. I’m gonna go hang out with the Macalope for a while. Come back when you got something interesting to say.

1. this actually happened. On the plus side my iMac now has a 1.5 TB hard drive [↩]
2. which I used as a security camera in my room in California [↩]
3. I put that in just so David Pogue would read this and get mad at me again. Hey, negative attention is still attention! Ask any three-year-old! [↩]

Every Friday week so often we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we cover Pandora|One, the music service that

This Just In!

Q: Wait, so I get preempted before I get so much as one line? What gives?

Breaking News!

Q: I guess so.

The Crazy Apple News Site’s top News Analyst & Team Enthusiast (“NATE”) is being sent by their top secret employer to some top-secret training (the training is so secret that it requires a hyphen!)

In Mountain. View. California.

Q: So? What’s so special about Mountain View?

Home of Google, only seven minutes from 1 Infinite Loop, it’s like finally going to MacWorld or WWDC, only without all the other people there or anything remotely Apple-related going on. Stay tuned for some Crazy On The Road posts soon!

Q: And it’s not even a long post, either. Really? Really? That’s all we get?

We would normally return you to our iFAQ already in progress at this point, but we’re too excited. Also this week’s “Q” is kind of a jerk.

Q: Oh, now that’s just cold.

Every Friday week so often we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we celebrate true love, enduring love, the love that is felt between a man and his Extended keyboard.

It seemed appropriate.

Q: My keyboard is soft and mushy.

A: Too long in the microwave?

Q: No, I mean, the keys, they don’t do it for me any more. No strength. No resistance.

A: A fine romance, my friend, this is…

Q: I want to type like I did when I was young. I want a keyboard that lets me know when I’ve typed a letter. I want to know where not only how to type the @ symbol, but also the ¥, the£, and even the §. So I guess that’s my question, doc. Where can I find such a keyboard?

A: Ah, to be young again. To return to a time when men were men and keyboards were really really noisy. To recapture that feeling of youth that comes from the feel of springy metal switches under your fingertips.

Q: Yeah, yeah doc. That’s what I want. Tell it to me straight, will I ever feel that way again?

A: There is hope for you, but it comes at a price.

Q: Awww, man, for a keyboard like that, I’d pay hundreds, just to feel like I’m actually doing something again.

A: That’s good. Listen, there’s a company out there that thinks the way you do. They think we’ve gone soft in our modern age with our terrible and quiet keyboards, with no number pads and all that. So they’re bringing the magic back.

Q: Sounds like some great guys! What do I gotta do do get me some of that fully mechanical action?

A: Shell out and be patient at this point. Because you see, the new Tactile Pro 3 won’t is out of stock, but it’s on the way. At $150, Matias is making sure you really want the joy of the late 80’s in your office before they send you one of their wunderkind.

Q: $150? Is that all? Man just bail was more than that from the last time I broke into the Old Computer Museum to play with the–

A: Yes, yes, quite right. So, enjoy your new-old keyboard. Clicky.

Every Friday week we publish a list of inFrequently Answered Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week, we scrape the bottom of the barrel and dredge up disk utility, the app that 90% of the time only gets used when you think your system is fried.

Q: I have secrets I need to keep.

A: I hear the secrets that you keep–

Q: I don’t talk in my sleep.

A: … Spoilsport.

Q: Aaaaanyway, I have things that need to be kept on the DL. The QT. Under the radar. Under the bridge. Under the boardwalk. Out in the Boondocks ¹. Leaving New York. I forgot what I was talking about.

A: You said you needed to keep secrets before you started quoting song titles.

Q: Riight right. Anyway, I need a way to keep some…things…secure.

A: On your mac.

Q: Yes.

A: You do know that you can encrypt your entire user directory, right?

Q: Yeah, but I don’t want to go that far. I only need some things secured. And they need to be secured even if someone gets into my account. ‘Cause this one time, when I was on rocket-powered skis in the Improbable Mountains outside of Marrakesh…

A: I don’t think I have proper clearance to hear the rest of that. Anyway, Believe it or not, Apple has provided a tool custom-made for people like you.

Q: An incredibly stylish cyanide capsule that fits nicely into a false molar ² ? Retrofitted iSight cameras that also shoot laser beams at unauthorized users? an iPhone app that allows me to not only play my music via bluetooth in my Aston-Martin, but also calls said Aston-Martin to me if I can’t get to it?

A: Umm, kinda like that yeah. Only instead of an improbable and deadly device it’s a way to create an encrypted disk image where you can store your confidential files.

Q: You intrest me strangely, old friend.  How does such a thing work?

A: Well, you know that Macs make great use of disk image files, or “.dmg” files, for things like installers and whatnot? And that a .dmg file is a much easier thing to send over the internet than, say, a CD-ROM?

Q: Yes, I follow you.

A: Well, there’s also an option to encrypt your new .dmg file, so it’s only accessible with a password that you set. You can use 128-bit or 256-bit AES encryption, the same encryption the Americans use for Top-secret documents.

Q: But will  a super-spy be able to crack my password by sitting in  a dark room in front of a screen with green letters scrolling upwards across their face?

A: Only if you’re dumb enough to choose something stylish like “martini” as your password, and only if the hacker is using a Mac.

Q: I like what you say old friend! I shall transfer all those top-secret Soviet plans into an encrypted disk image, set the password to something unguessable like “nomoresecrets”, and finally get the drop on the Reds once and for all!

A: But the USSR… the Soviets… The Berlin Wall… Yeah, alright. Have fun.

Q: So I shall. I’m off!

1. Did you know “boondocks” comes from the Tagalog (Filipino) word “bundok” which means “mountain”? And that it’s the only known Tagalog word to be adopted into English? Well now you do! [↩]
2. Proposed name: the iDie [↩]

• March 15, 2010: People finally get tired of calling the iPad “basically a big iPod Touch”
• March 16, 2010: The wave of iPad-sounds-like-maxi-pad jokes fails to slow down at all, sadly.
• April 7, 2010: iPad app sales outpace the sales of all apps on the Android Marketplace ever.
• April 8, 2010: The ill-conceived ZunePad is announced
• April 9, 2010: In a move that earns the respect of Mafiosos everywhere, Microsoft attempts to whack every journalist who covered the ZunePad launch event, hoping to be able to deny they ever dreamed of such a thing.
• May 21, 2010: Apple announces the code name for OSX 10.7; not in a conference, nor in a webcast, but via email to John Gruber and David Pogue. Industry pundits suspect the new name heralds an overall shift to the new iPad when the name is revealed to be “Some kind of cat or something”
• May 4, 2010: Lazarus Long buys an iPad.
• July 24, 2010: Pro-Windows bloggers are forced to admit that, despite its shortcomings, the iPad “seems to be doing okay” as Apple celebrates the sale of the 10 Millionth unit.
• July 25, 2010: Apple announces the iPad 2nd Gen, with all the features everyone wanted in the 1st Gen for $100 less.
• July 26, 2010: 10 million 1st Gen iPads are available on eBay.
• July 27, 2010: iPad OS 4.0 is released to developers so they can write apps for the new 2nd Gen iPad. 4 million copies of the SDK are downloaded, resulting in 10000 new apps released to the iPad App Store, 5000 rejections, and an estimated 6 Million “Hello World” apps worldwide.
• September 21, 2010: The 2nd Gen iPad is released. People who have been standing in line since July find that they no longer have the ability to walk.
• November 3, 2010: Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Paul Therrott , all dressed in black trench coats with the collars turned up and sporting dark glasses and fedoras, each buy an iPad from the Apple store in cash. A suspicious mall employee presses the silent alarm and the three are apprehended and taken in for questioning. They  found to be perfectly innocent, albeit perfectly innocent owners of iPads. Apple bloggers are unable to breathe for a good twenty minutes after seeing this story on Twitter.
• December 25th, 2010: Millions receive iPads for Christmas. Dozens receive whatever terrible tablet thing HP is pushing, and immediately list them on eBay.
• January 10, 2011: Apple announces a user base of 20 million iPads, and the new iPad 3rd Gen with all the features everybody wanted in the second gen. 20 million iPads are listed on eBay.

No iFAQ this week, sorry. Monday is exactly one year since my sister-in-law died and I can’t think funny right now. Go drop by her site for a moment, if you like.

http://laurasteelmusic.com/

Much has been made of Apple’s new tablet released this morning [Note to self: put name of tablet here after tablet is released, unless you forget], but only a select few reporters were invited back for Apple’s other product unveiling later in the day.  Announcements simply read “Meet us at the Palace Hotel at 5:00″ with the Apple logo underneath.

Members of the press were ushered in to a large ballroom near the bar area. There were chairs, a microphone and a table on one of those portable stage thingies, and that was it. Nervous looks were exchanged. iPhones were consulted, and people re-read the invite, just to be sure.

At 5:15 the lights went down and a guy in ripped jeans and a “Journey” T-shirt came into the room and turned a spot light on the stage, then left. Nothing more happened for five minutes.

At 5:20 Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller , arm in arm, came up onto the stage. Each was holding an aluminum bottle in one hand, and they were swaying slightly. Jony Ive walked in behind them, towing a cart full of crates. As Jobs and Schiller stepped into the spotlight the audience could see a distinctive Apple logo on the bottles.

“Ladish and gentlemenssss… hey, wha happend to all the ladish? Shteve, whurrrr, whurrr the ladies? Coul’ve at least invited Trapani. What’s with all the….awwww, fuggedabodit.” Shiller began, then turned back to his bottle and sat down heavily on a chair on the stage, mumbling to himself. Steve Jobs looked up and took over.

“Gennelmen… I would like to introush you to Applesh newesht product. This is shomething that Phil an’ I have been workin’ on for… for…. foralonglongtime.  Thish!” he said, holding up the bottle to the light, “Thish is… APPLE BEER!”

Only he was able to pronounce the Apple symbol. Very strange.

“Now don’t get ush wrong!” Phil said from his chair, standing up again. “Thish isn’t just som’, som’ beer made from applesh. This ish a completeere….completlish, thish is a whole new thing!” He took a long pull on his bottle again.

“It’sh true! Apple Beer is non-alcoholic! Sho you don’ hafta worry ’bout your liver. Inshtead, it’sh got a shpechisal blend of aneshthetisksks… anishtehetis…. of thngsh that make yer lips numb… AND other thingsh that make your BRAIIIIN numb!” Shteve…sorry, Steve said. He continued, “It’sh made to our most demanding speshifications!  Jony here, he made the bottlesh outta OLD CANS.  They’re recycled! Sho Greenpeashe can jus’ shuddap abouddit already. And the ingrediensh! We got shome of the besht ingreditensh your money will be able to buy! But Jony’sh gunna havta tell ya ’bout ‘em, ‘caush I godda sit down.”

Ive then stepped up to the microphone. “We crafted Apple Beer from the finest Jonagold and Fuji apples to give it it’s unique flavor, and added a carefully selected mix of natural and synthetic ingredients to provide you with all the “good” aspects of normal beer, but without all the downsides… the vomiting, the headaches, and the addiction.  Apple Beer is completely non-addicting, non-alcoholic, and won’t leave you feeling like a cat went to the loo in your head the next morning,” Jony said, holding up a bottle. “Oi! Too right! Ya barmy blokes!”

Actually that last part was Phil Schiller.

“As you can see, however,” Ive continued, “Apple Beer does still lower your inhibitions and allow you a certain degree of freedom of expression that you might otherwise deny yourself.”

“Yesh yesh, thanksh, Jony,” Steve Jobs said, standing back up. “We’re done with you. Go pash out the free shamples. Apple Beer will be available as shoon as we can get groshery stores to shell it. An’ now, Phil an’ I are gonna go get pished.”

Jony then told the crowd that Apple Beer would be priced at $11 for a six-pack, thus putting it just out of John Moltz’s reach.

Moments after Steve Jobs left the stage; iPad launch presentation completed, the Apple Pundit community began pining for the “Mythical” Apple Tablet.

“Yeah, the iPad is nice,” admitted David Pogue, “But before, when we were all waiting for the ‘Apple Tablet’ it had way more features, and they were cooler, too. Now we have a real thing, and we can’t make up new features all willy-nilly. Screen that makes little bumps where the keys on the keyboard are? Gone! Face recognition so your whole family can use it? Gone! It’s just a big ol’ iPod touch.

“I mean, yes, of course I’m going to buy one and write a missing manual for it, but I’m not gonna be happy about it.”

“I could afford the mythical apple tablet,” John Gruber said, holding his torn cardboard sign reading “will be grumpy for food” with one hand so that he could gesture wildly with the other. “It was going to be free, or at least really really cheap. But the iPad, well, it’s all ’sensibly priced’ and stuff. I can’t afford real cash monies! Who am I, that Nate guy who writes CANS? I heard he’s rolling in the dough.”

Not everyone was despondent, however. Walt Mossberg calls the iPad “The best thing ever ever ever,” stating that he “loves it more than my own left ear! It’s perfect and beautiful and everything that was ever good is in that iPad!!!1!!!!”

Slightly more rational correspondents are waiting to “see one in real life” and are withholding judgement until they experience… who am I kidding? There are no rational correspondents in the world of Apple punditry.

And now we’ll leave you with the Steve Jobs Summation: “our most advanced technology in a magical & revolutionary device at an unbelievable price.”

12:34: I just like posting at 12:34.

12:33: Steve Jobs “got the goods” to create a new market out of thin air.

12:31: OSX lovers brace to get ignored for another year while Apple plays with the new OS for this thing

12:28: It’s a whole new gold rush!

12:27: The iPad will change the way we do the things we do be do be do

12:24: Everything is better when Jon Ive says it.

12:23: Keyboard dock turns your tablet back into a laptop.

12:20: Okay the prices are actually reasonable.

12:18: “pundits” said it would be under $1000, which is $999. They’re wrong! It’s $2999!

12:17: Unlocked out of the door? You can use any SIM? Wow, take that, AT&T!

12:15: 3G via AT&T is $30/month for the “Unlimited” (read: limited, but we don’t tell you what the limit is) plan.

12:13: Steve Job’s new catch phrase: “Isn’t it great?”

12:12: Giraffe Graph.

12:11: Numbers moves this into the realm of justifiable business expense.

12:10: Soccer teams are always looking for a way to make attactive graphs of their players’ performance.

12:08: The Numbers presentation slides into a discussion of the American vs. Canadian tax systems.

12:06: All Keynote presentations must be about the great wall of China. Other topics will be allowed in later versions.

12:02: Keynote looks a lot like keynote, only you touch things now. How you connect it to a projector so other people can see your slides is anyone’s guess.

12:01: Phil Just took over Steve’s Chair.

12:00: Phil Schiller comes to tell us about iWork. Good ol’ Phil! Whadda guy!

11:59: Apple’s using an open format for their books? My mind, she is blown. In a good way. That is some happy news.

11:57: BOOKS! BOOKS! BOOKS! thank you.

11:54: Steve graciously nods to Amazon’s Kindle before completely dethroning it.

11:53: Did you hear that? That was the sound of every chess club in america writing an iPad app to track their games.

11:51 MLB.com will give you nerdy stats about baseball games. Trig fans rejoice! All six of you!

11:49: This just in! Car games! Whoda thunk it?

11:47: a quick glance at a painting program and off we go to more game demos from EA games. Order is restored.

11:44: The New York Times is hoping the iPad will save them from the inevitable death of old media. They could be right. Of all the newspapers, they have done the best job of using new technology.

11:42: Wait, only one game demo? What happened Apple?

11:40: Wake me when the game demos are over. Zzzzzzzz….

11:37: Nothing’s as exciting as new SDK’s! I mean, new features? Bah!

11:34: You can run iPhone apps in the middle of the screen and imagine that you have an entire foot of bezel around your iPhone.

11:31: It’s powered by AL GORE’S HAIR! I mean, an “Apple A4″ chip. Don’t know what that’s all about.

11:27: That surfing dog is getting a lot of facetime. He must be a personal friend.

11:23: Dangit, John Mayer got his lizard-like visage into this presentation. Why won’t you leave us alone, you substandard guitarist-slash-crooner?

11:21: Yep, look straight down and type. Your Chiropractor recommends you get an iPad immediately.

11:18: Why do I think all the trekkies are going to call this thing the iPADD?¹

11:16: Steve is sitting comfortably, so the Moody Blues can stop asking, thank you.

11:14: The iPad looks like a giant iPhone. But I’m sure Steve’ll tell us why it’s not any second now. Any second. Any time now.

11:10: “Netbooks have no reason for existing” Take that, ASUS!

11:09: Last post from MacWorld says “Steve Jobs is on the stage” SO ten minutes ago.

11:08: Apple now owns all mobile stuff. They have their hotels on boardwalk and broadway. They rule the world.

11:06: Amazing picture of Woz.

11:02: Big Steve has taken the stage. Many people have taken pictures. 2/3 of the traffic on the internet right now is…well, probably unmentionable, but a LOT of traffic is Steve Jobs pictures going back and forth.

11:01: The time has come, no posts! WHAT IS GOING ON? Oh, wait, new post now.

10:55: Even from a few thousand miles away, I’m excited. Not about Jason Chen’s nose, you understand. About the tablet thingy.

10:54: Jason Chen is picking his nose.

10:53: I will never understand why people have “spoiler-free” versions  of their liveblogs.  What would you say? “Steve Jobs is talking about…a thing. It’s really amazing! It has… some features…wow, you’ll really want to see this, later, when you watch the “official” version”

10:44: Dan Moren should be told that the spawning possibilities at this event are decidedly low. His salmon metaphor is  a bit creepy.

10:43: MacWorld’s Jason Snell begins his coverage of the event. He just told us where they are, a vital piece of information that Gizmodo somehow forgot.

10:39: We are trying to keep ourselves wanting an Apple tablet, and ignoring the small voice in our head that says it’s just a big iPod. Come on, Steve! Distort our reality!

10:02: Some guy at giz reveals that he’s not actually at the event. See, I told you I wasn’t at the event right off the bat. Which is why all my times are in MST instead of PST. CANS: the most honest of the rumors liars.

9:34: In a shocking last minute revelation, supposed leaked photos of the enclosure of the new device reveal that it looks a lot like an Apple product.

9:04: Nothing interesting is happening now. As you were.

8:43: Jason Chen from Gizmodo is already in line and already updating Giz’s live blog. So I’m going to steal his funniest comment yet:

I wonder what celebrities will be attending today. John Mayer² ? Ralph Macchio? Yoko Ono?

Or Kanye West, as he runs up on stage, slapping the tablet out of Steve Jobs’ hands, exclaiming that the Handspring Visor was the best tablet of all time.

Live Coverage begins now! Like all the other sites, we’ll be top-posting, so updates are easy to read while the event is going on, and really annoying in the future. Because you can’t break with tradition.

That’s right! We’ll be offering live coverage of the coverage of today’s announcement later this morning! Think of us as Rifftrax ³ for the super-serious regular coverage of Apple’s latest products.

Also, unlike those other sites, we won’t bog your browser down with some javascript or flash monstrosity to auto update our blog! No! We put the power back into your hands with the re-introduction of the “refresh” button!

For those of you who like birds, you can also follow our coverage on twitter! simply follow @crazyapplenews or go to http://twitter.com/crazyapplenews.

So hold on to your seats and prepare to be amazed at the things we say about the things other people say about the stuff Steve Jobs talks about! It’ll be triple fantastic!

1. Why do I even know what a PADD is? [↩]
2. Oh please no [↩]
3. We are, unfortunately, completely unrelated and unaffiliated with rifftrax [↩]