Crazy Apple News Site

10:00- Steve is on stage! But not made of metal, which is disappointing.

10:05- iPads are selling like really expensive hotcakes. Everyone loves them.

10:15- Doctors can show you your x-rays without you getting out of bed with their iPad. “This is where we think I left my watch,” says Dr. Johnson.

10:16- Kids love iPads too! Who knew?

10:17- The iPad…loves you. It loves children. It’s basically an angel of love and light and love.

10:18- iPad 2 gets announced today. Say goodbye to the copycats.

10:19- New Processor! Faster! Dual core! Did we mention faster? It’s faster. That’s why it’s called “A5”.

10:20- Cameras! Gyroscopes! Miracles!

10:21- It’s thinner too. Faster! Thinner! Cameras!

10:22- White iPad. ugly.

10:23- Verision and AT&T. I have nothing to say about that.

10:24- The white one is still really ugly.

10:25- The prices, they no move. No come down, but no go up. So there you go.

10:25- They ship on March 11th. Take that, all you other tablets that haven’t shipped yet.

10:27- For $40 you can have a weird port splitter thing. Charge and use all at once! You know you want it.

10:30- Weird new magno-roll-up cover thingy. Looks…cool? if you like the color light blue.

10:31- A RAINBOW of colors! A rainbow that includes three shades of what amounts to “black or gray” And executive leather covers. For the discerning user.

10:32- Scott Forestall is out, and is feeling intense about iOS 4.3

10:35- iPad switch does what YOU want, baby. It’s your switch. As long as you want it to mute or lock rotation.

10:36- iPhone 4 is now a hotspot.

10:37- Photobooth demos. I’m still not over the original OSX photobooth demos. Please stop.

10:39- FaceTime. Yep. Yep.

10:41- Big stuff coming out on March 11th.

10:42- iMovie for iPad. All the Pixar engineers who have been working with iMovie for iPhone breathe a sigh of relief. Finally! a slightly larger screen!

10:44- iMovie for iPad is…a lot like the OSX version. But it’s got a cool marquee thing on the home screen, so that’s cool, right?

10:48- My limited patience for iMovie demos is coming to an end. Seriously, guys. Move on.

10:49- Steve just revealed how old he is “It blows my mind, this stuff.” He may have well added “What with the tapping and the rotating and the looking and the making movies? I don’t know.”

10:50- GarageBand for iPad. This one make sense. But still, the demo better be short.

10:52- Moving on. Okay, thanks for the GarageBand demo. Moving on now. Please?

10:53- “This is a window into a much larger piano”. I’m pretty sure that’s not how that works.

10:55- Apparently the rest of the demo is all GarageBand, all the time.

10:56- Drums. DO NOT USE DRUMSTICKS! Use your fingers. Or our new iSticks.

10:57- Smart guitar: the guitar is smart, so you don’t have to be.

11:00- Okay, I’m going to just be over there somewhere until they’re done talking about GarageBand. Talk amongst yourselves.

11:03- Garage band is finally done. That was painful.

11:05- “Now we made a video that I’d love to show you.” Did they make it in iMovie on an iPad 2?

11:06- Jony Ive likes the iPad 2 A. LOT.

11:09- Kinda bummed they didn’t make iWeb for the iPad.

11:11- Steve is on stage, wrapping things up…hopefully. Unless he’s got some cool news about something else.

11:12- Steve is giving a speech about DNA and technology and stuff. It sounds kinda mystical.

11:13- And that’s all folks! Thanks for joining us in joining others…or something. And remember, if you enjoyed this post, why not buy your editor an iPad 2? It’s the classy thing to do.

MechaSteve.

Jony Ive has spent the past few months perfecting an entirely Liquidmetal body for our beloved CEO and visionary. From his new skin he can rule benevolently over all for many years to come.

 

Oh and new iPads.

This just in:

Expect people all over the world to start ditching their iPads in preparation for new iPads, and expect Android tablets to start wondering why they’re not competitive anymore¹ .
Expect Tim Cook to try to be somewhere near as cool as The Steve. Expect a large number of superlatives from Jony Ive about the new device. Expect me to start subtly begging for money so I can buy one of the blasted things.
And, as always, expect a not-exactly-live post from me covering the event in hard-to-follow detail.

We’ll be interviewing a current Gen iPad as soon as we find someone who is willing to let us talk to their iPad and not think it’s weird.

1. not that they have ever really been competitive… [↩]

We’re not really ready to post a full on iFAQ about the Mac App Store, because we haven’t upgraded to 10.6.6 yet. So we’re going to ask pointed questions in an effort to stir up pointless controversy. Mostly because it sounds like fun.

• Is it true that the App Store will be giving a percentage of every purchase to the DEVIL?
• What if I want to offer a free trial version of my app?
  • What do you mean that iOS developers already do that just fine?
• Does the app store represent the end of the free market?
• Will all my base belong to Apple?
  • Is it too early to hop on the retro “All your base” wagon?
• What happens if Apple discovers they secretly hate an App after they said they liked it? Will it disappear off my mac?
• Is there anything in the app store, either by intent or by accident, that will make it easier for John Mayer to invade my computer?
  • Norah Jones is fine.
• Fun bonus question: Come up with the best name for Microsoft’s copycat App store that will probably be announced either at CES or later this year!
  • Our guess: Windows Live Program Marketplace 8.

That’s all we have for today. Expect a really nice iFAQ tomorrow after we’ve had some time to play with the dang thing. Well, actually don’t. Whenever we promise a post bad things happen to it before we actually get it posted. So seek to manage your expectations accordingly. We’ll keep you posted.

So, Apple has spammed the iTunes store with “We’re about to do something amazing” type banners, and nobody knows what’s actually coming. Not John Gruber, not Andy Ihnatko, not even me. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. In these days when all corporate secrets are leaked/rumored/left in bars it’s nice to have something come up that actually catches people flatfooted. All the respected technology pundits are stumped, and it’s refreshing and kinda fun.¹

However, unlike the aforementioned respected technology pundits, I have no reputation for veracity and can therefore speculate like crazy. And since I’m slightly ahead of the curve on my NaNoWriMo story, I figured I can spend some time making things up in this world instead of my novel world. These, then, are my terrible guesses about tomorrow’s announcement.

• Angry Birds for Mac. People will be quick to point out that the Mac is already capable of playing Angry Birds and listening to Pandora at the same time, which gives it a significant advantage over the iPad. Right-minded people will continue to wonder why these two apps continue to be the yardstick against which all new OS/hardware combos are measured.
• iOS 5.0 “We’re just gonna launch it, and the developers can catch up when they do.” An insanely-pleased-with-himself Steve Jobs will announce.
• Apple buys Oracle. “THIS is why we’re not making our own Java any more. We just BOUGHT Java! And Solaris. And MySQL. Oh yeah, and that Oracle and PeopleSoft garbage. We’ll EOL those shortly. But hey, what do you all think about ‘iDatabase’ as the new name for MySQL?”²
• New iPod Nanos that are actually good again. “We’re renaming the old ones “ShuffleTouches”, which sounds kinda racy but actually isn’t,” Phil Schiller will explain.
• Free Upgrade to Lion for everyone!³ . Apple will get people warmed up for the Mac App Store by making Lion a free upgrade in the current iTunes store. Critics will have a hard time deciding if this is an example of incredible generosity or a cynical way to line up all Apple users like sheep for the shearing as they start to buy all their software via Apple.
• Peter Oppenheimer Will Finally Finish Portal: Apple’s CFO will finish the iconic first-person-puzzle-shooter on stage and broadcast live via iTunes. “This is a triumph!” Steve Jobs will say. Jonathan Coulton and Natalie Imbruglia⁴ will then come out on stage and sing an acoustic version of the closing credits song. Everyone who watches the broadcast will have “Still Alive” stuck in their heads for weeks. Again.
• Apple buys Oracle and Sweden. These two acquisitions will be mentioned in passing. The rest of the announcement will be 45 minutes of Steve Jobs and Jony Ive showing off their cool houses they made in Minecraft. Notch⁵ will be named “A National Treasure” and will eventually have to get a restraining order against Jerry Bruckheimer and Nicholas Cage so they will stop trying to steal him from his office.

Well, we could go on, but we’re mild and modest⁶ and don’t want to look too prescient in public. Feel free to put on your tinfoil hat and guess what Apple is up to in the comments.

1. Also kinda fun: WordPress informs me that this is officially the 1000^th post on this site. Happy 1K Day, everyone! [↩]
2. What boundless hatred for Oracle? I don’t have a boundless hatred for Oracle! I keep my hatred for Oracle down to three hours a week max. [↩]
3. Only in the iTunes Store [↩]
4. I know she had nothing to do with Portal, but she’s got a nice voice and doesn’t get nearly enough air time these days. [↩]
5. The developer of Minecraft [↩]
6. This is a lie. All bloggers have huge egos. [↩]

As usual, I’ll be posting snarky comments about other people’s serious comments here¹

11:01 am: Here’s my hoped for breakdown of the keynote:

• Steve Jobs announcing new products: 30 minutes
• Phil Schiller doing a speed run of Portal on an iMac and being blown away by it: 15 minutes
• Jony Ive talking about how his new industrial designs are better than the Mona Lisa: 5 minutes
• Full on flash bashing: 10 minutes

11:08: iPad (have you heard of it?) is apparently a “thing” that some people have “bought”

11:09: I have the Elements App. It was interesting for five minutes. I bought some iBooks. I have read them. I have far more than 2.5 per iPad.

11:10: iBooks will now be as cool as the Kindle reader on the iPad. (bookmarks, notes)

11:11: Ooooh, PDF in iBooks. Sorry, GoodReader!

11:13: “We are totally into Open, uncontrolled HTML5. As long as you do it our way. HTML5 isn’t standardized yet, you guys!”"

11:14: Apple rejects apps that crash. Kinda like my MS professors. Curse them.

11:16: Netflix really is pretty good on the iPad. And will probably be pretty good (if small) on the iPhone.

11:20: Oh crap. Not farmville for the iPad. Please no. Please please please no.

11:21 Not push notifications from your farmville farm. Please, please no.

11:23 Farmville Demo is over. Finally. I feel dirty now. Somehow.

11:25: Guitar Hero. I couldn’t really care less.

11:27: Let’s please get to something that isn’t a game, nkay?

11:29: If Steve starts marching around, sweating, clapping, and chanting ”Developers” I’m gonna cry.

11:31: Wait, there’s going to be a new iPhone? Who knew?

11:32: That new phone looks…familiar, somehow.

11:34: I’d really like an iPhone, but I really don’t want any AT&T stuff.

11:36: Wow, the new iPhone has ANTENNAE!

11:39: And PIXELS!

11:40: More about pixels. The new iPhone has better ones.

11:44: Network problems. Someone at Moscone West will be fired. Out of a cannon.

11:49: The new iPhone is full of not-very-interesting surprises.

11:51: It has a Gyroscope. I don’t know why.

11:53: Steve will now spend the rest of the keynote playing Jenga

11:54: the new iPhone has CAMERAS!

11:56: This pixel math sounds eerily like “Reganomics”. Video is useful.

11:57: iMovie for iPhone. Oh Man. Take that George Lucas!

11:59: As of next week, Pixar will make all their movies in iMovie for iPhone.

12:07: iOS 4. New features! Stuff! Less awkwardly-out-date name!

12:10: Things we already knew. But now we know them AGAIN!

12:13: Pandora: The only way to know that a mobile OS is worth anything.

12:17: iBooks on iPhone. It’s like Kindle, but better. Steve says so.

12:19: Winnie the Pooh on a very small screen, folks.

12:20: The notes you take will follow you. No matter where you go, no matter how you hide.

12:22: iAds. Connect emotionally to your customers’ wallets.

12:25: Target and citi want to have an emotional conversation with you in your iPhone apps.

12:26: What exactly is AT&T advertising on iPhones?

12:30: Ads are finally done.

12:33: “One more thing” is video chatting.

12:35: STEVE HATES YOUR WIFI

12:36: voice chat only works with Jonathan Ive, unfortunately.

12:38: Apparently it works with Babies too.

12:40: This will be some kinda industry standard or something.

12:41: AT&T will be semi-nice to you if you upgrade NOW

12:45: And that’s really about it.

12:49: Scott Forestall likes being excited about things.

12:54: Steve feels that a marriage of tech and liberal arts would work out well. Better than a marriage between techno music and folk songs.

12:55: And that’s all! It certainly is a new phone.

1. I’ll answer questions about where we’ve been for the past month later [↩]

Last week’s Friday iFAQ was cancelled, indeed a number of iFAQ’s have been severely compromised recently, due to Q’s decision to go stand in line for an iPad. We worried that he didn’t come back right away, but figured he was just playing with his iPad a lot. To be fair, that’s what we were doing, so we didn’t think much more about it. But when he still wasn’t around last Friday we started to worry. So we went out to find him. This is what we found.

Friday evening, we are waiting for Q to show up and record the iFAQ with us. When our usual 7pm appointment came and went we decided something was up. A called his cell phone, but Q wasn’t answering. We decided to go out and look for him at first light Saturday morning.

A quick note about appearances: You may think that the real Q looks like the Q you see on the webpage as you read each week’s iFAQ. But that’s just a cue, to let you know who’s speaking. There aren’t giant queues of A’s and Q’s standing around on each web page, although that would be cute.

No, the real Q, the actual, living glyph, has a house in the upscale Avenues district of Salt Lake City¹ and is a hearty 48-point Copperplate Gothic Bold upper case individual. At least, he used to be.

On Saturday morning we went down to the Apple store, looking high and low for Q, shouting “Q! Q! Where are you?” At one point John de Lancie showed up, and it wasn’t until he had called us fascinating mortals and wondered at our determination at continuing our menial existence that he got bored and pointed us to our fallen comrade.

Q was in a bad way. He hadn’t had any electrons or even pigments in days, and had passed out.  He had lost way too much weight, indeed his serifs were almost completely gone. His color had de-saturated to the point that he nearly blended in with the concrete, and his alpha channel was so weak that you could swear you could see your hand right through him. He looked more like a 5-point Helvetica Neue lowercase than his normal robust self. We immediately gave him a thin broth of weak ARGB values and started trying to figure out how to get him to a good foundry.

Ideally, of course, we would have taken him to Hermann Zapf himself, but weren’t sure he would survive the trip to Germany. Adobe is much closer, but current tensions between them and Apple left us unsure of the help we would receive at their hands. Finally we contacted Ross Carter (creator of the amazing PageHand) for help, knowing him to be a lover of fine typography, and not one to stand by idle while a poor glyph suffers.

“Q was in a bad way,” Ross told us later. “The CANS guys had made a good start, and his saturation was up to more stable #C0C0C0, but he was still fluctuating wildly. I transferred him into a PDF to keep him from getting any worse and started him on an Alpha drip.”

Q started to recover, growing more opaque and finally getting past the iffy 8-pt mark, but he’s still weak. We predict that he won’t be able to leave PageHand’s support structure for at least another week, which means we’ll have another substitute Q this Friday. But he’s already making jokes and is optimistic for a full recovery.

“I’ve got some good questions in mind, real zingers,” he told us, smiling a little. “I just hope A can keep up.”

1. He lives on the corner of 14th and Q [↩]

You may have been wondering what happened to me over the past two weeks that nothing has been posted. Yes, an occasional twitter update, but not much beyond that. And it would be totally in keeping with this site’s mandate to assert that I had been left in a bar by an Apple engineer who’d had one too many German beers. Or I could say I was too German for Apple, and thus left in an iPhone by a Barrister. It would not be stretching my credibility too far to even suggest that I was barred from Germans by two left Apple beers.

I could also go on a long rant about Gizmodo being a bunch of money-grubbing lowlifes, and strongly avow a desire to see them get hung out to dry in court. But I’m not going to do that either. Truth is, I think Gizmodo is a great site and sincerely hope that they continue to make millions of dollars, and then use those millions to get absurdly low prices on ill-gotten hardware prototypes. Also, good luck to Brian Lam and Jason Chen when they try to get into the next event at Moscone West!¹

Or I could wax lyrical about my iPad and the way it has filled a niche in my life, changed how I work and play, and made me a better and more well rounded person. I could discuss the amazing touch screen, the simple beauty of the Numbers app, which I have been using the heck out of; or fondly discuss the time I’ve spent reading in iBooks and the awesomeness of being able to touch a word and instantly access it’s definition in a dictionary, or look it up in the book and on Wikipedia. I could get misty-eyed relating the joy of streaming MST3K via Netflix to my couch in the middle of the night.

But I’m not going to do that. The reality is that I have been involved in Very Serious Things of a Positive Nature that have taken Considerable Time². As you can tell, I’ve also been putting in some time with Winnie-the -Pooh on the iPad with my kids.

But that sort of thing does not good blogging make. So instead I’ll offer to make it up to you with not one but two iFAQ’s this week, as well as an investigative report the likes of which we haven’t featured since the early days of CANS. Stay tuned to this channel!

1. But I’m sure they can buy passes from someone who “found them in a bar” [↩]
2. Real estate, ya’ll [↩]

Apple again made news today as they responded to many jibes over calling the iPad a “magical” device.

“The iPad has been described as magical, and we have taken a lot of heat over that,” said Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone Software. “Especially from the State of Oregon. We’re here to defend that claim.

“But first, what is the deal with Oregon? I mean, really.

“Anyway, returning to my point, the iPad does contain actual magic. You see, each Apple A4 chip contains not only next generation processing power, but also a very tiny piece of an actual palantír.”

Forstall waited for people to either be awed or sneak out their iPhones to look the word up in Wikipedia, then be awed. He then continued, “Steve and Oppenheimer found three palantíri after correctly identifying the locations of the Shire, Gondor, and Minas Ithil, then triangulating the location of the burial mound of Aragorn son of Arathorn. However, it wasn’t until we had a true Son of Westernesse on the staff that we were able to tackle the task of wresting the stones to our will.

“It’s Jony Ive, by the way. I guess the Men of the West got a bit shorter over the years.”

The palantíri have long been regarded as the ultimate communication devices, able to communicate instantly across great distances without electricity or any other known human technology. Apple’s inclusion of the Noldor artifacts represents the first successful blend of ancient and modern philosophies, and even crosses the line between reality and fantasy. Also, how else were they going to get a 10-hour battery life out of a battery that’s a little thicker than three pieces of paper?

But this amazing blend does still have a few glitches. “Some of the iPads have had a tendency to show an image of two hands withering in flame, or a fire-rimmed Eye still searching across the fathoms of time,” Forestall admitted. “But we have found that a simple ‘hard-reset’, performed by holding the home button and the power button simultaneously for five seconds will clear that up.”

Forstall then turned to the large screen behind him, where a video detailing the process of turning the Seer-stones of Gondor into 802.11x wireless devices was played.

“The palantíri represent the pinnacle of communication magic from the days when the Elves still lived in the Ultimate West,” said Jony Ive in the video. “But you will create the real magic as you use the iPad to touch the lives of those you care about…from anywhere.”

Rumors that the “S” in “iPhone 3GS” actually stands for “silmaril” are as yet unconfirmed.

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.