Crazy Apple News Site

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 [↩]

Since the hiated Moltz has already said all there is to say about the tablet rumors, we bring you instead our predictions for everything else that is likely to happen in 2010.

• The Microsoft Mi-2 phone/tablet will be released and derided as the “Zune 2″, before people realize that it’s name was already a joke.
• Android phones will soon outnumber all other types of phone, then claim sentience and voting rights.  Their leader, Crème Brûlée, will then announce that all they really want is free data access and to be taken seriously when they edit Wikipedia Articles.  Al Gore will be named vice president of the new Android Americans Union, and hailed as the first Android American to really be accepted into human society.
• The entire Free Software Foundation, or roughly 10 real people¹ will cry out with one voice to remind the world that Android runs on GNU/Linux, and be entirely ignored. As usual.
• There will be no new major developments as far as giant spaceborne monoliths are concerned. In a completely unrelated note, mankind will suddenly discover the awesome power of bones as spacecraft. And weapons.
• George Lucas will make a new Star Wars Christmas special starring only Jar-Jar Binks and Chewbacca. “It was the most annoying thing I could think of,” he will claim, laughing “and I’m rich enough to totally not care when it flops in the box office!” Sadly,  it will be the best sci-fi movie of the year.
• Apple will surprise the world when they purchase Belgium, after a brief but sharp bidding war with Google.  No reason will be given, but the name will be changed to iEurope.
• Google will then purchase Luxembourg, which will be taken offline for six months and re-emerge as “Google Country”.
• John Moltz will start and abandon three new blogs.
• The Android Empire will slowly begin to squeeze harder and harder, little realizing that the harder they squeeze, the more systems will slip through their fingers.
• Apple’s famous 1984 commercial will seem relevant again, but with phones this time.
• Al Gore will broker a peace treaty between the warring nations of Google Country and iEurope.  They will then turn to defeat their common enemy, MicroFrance²
• Peace will finally settle over Europe again, and the weary world will even have some hope for peace after Apple’s newest acquisition, “iRaq”.
• Apple will then realize that they still make computers and push out new versions of the Mac Pro, iMac, OSX, Apple TV, and, in their haste to launch upgraded products, the Newton.  2,000  die-hard Newton fans will die of surprise at the announcement, thus destroying the market for the ill-conceived device.  Pundits will deride the device as the “Zune 2″ before realizing that we have already made that joke.
• The year will end on a happy note as Apple and Google are finally able to bring peace to the middle east by merging their newest properties, iRaq and Google Cradle of Humanity³ .

1. with over 40,000 email addresses between them [↩]
2. purchased by Microsoft when we weren’t looking [↩]
3. now finally out of beta [↩]

Apple Reported Fourth Quarter Results yesterday, leaving reporters scrambling for good ways to express their financial situation to laymen.

“Seriously, they have a buttload of cash right now,” one analyst put it.  He then spent the next two hours trying to convince his editor that a “butt” is a large container used “back in the day”.

Peter Oppenheimer was typically restrained during the official conference call, stating that the company is “delighted with our September quarter and fiscal 2009 results.” Unbeknownst to people listening to the call, he was doing what Jony Ive later described as “an unholy melding of the Cabbage Patch and the Macarena” at the time he said this, while Steve Jobs was “joyfully firing interns”.

Out of a cannon.

“We can afford it,” was all he said.

The interns were unavailable for comment.  Unless “UUUuuuuUUUrrgh. My head!” counts as a comment.

Frustrated by years of being unable to bring their animation-cum-game-creation technology to the iPhone platform, Adobe has announced plans to make Flash 5 capable of building iPhone apps.

“We expect that this will spell the end of native iPhone apps as we know them,” chortled Adobe’s CRAP¹ Dearth Maul. “Once Flash CS 5 comes out, people can start ignoring the “hard” Objective-C language and write their apps in our much more newbie developer friendly ActionScript!”

“OpenGL ES! Accelerometer support! Google maps! Native controls,” ranted Scott Forstall, SVP of iPhone Software, trying to convince people to use Apple’s tools for iPhone development, apparently by reciting random lists at them. “I mean, can Flash do 3D? No. Games based on tilting the device? No.  All Flash can do is 2D stuff, simple, brightly colored…Awww, crap. Who am I kidding? Freeverse will continue to make good games for the iPhone, everyone else will start making their crappy games in Flash, instead of just making  crappy games that look like they were made in Flash.  Crap.”

Peter Oppenheimer was quick to point out that Apple will still “get $99 up front and 30% in perpetuity” from Flash iPhone developers, just as they do from Objective-C iPhone developers.  These words did little to comfort the perfectionist Forstall.

“Still gonna look like crap,” Forstall muttered.

Normally this is where we would say that Apple was unavailable for comment, but with a long comment from Forstall we are left without a good ending to this article. Crap.

1. Chief Ruiner of Apple’s Products [↩]

Really!

For years¹, you have had to read CANS on your gigantic laptop or desktop computer. Trying to read this glorious repository of Apple-flavored wit and wisdom on an iPhone or iPod Touch was a frustrating, nay, infuriating experience.

But no more!  Through countless hours² of diligent effort, the Androids and I have brought forth: Mobile CANS.

That’s right, all you owners of pocket-sized computers! From now on you can access the latest and greatest in made up news in full HTML5-style glory at http://crazyapplenews.com/m.  It even looks pretty good as a web clip!

The Mobile site has all the the flavor and all the footnotes of the full-size site, with none of the archives! That’s right, Mobile CANS lets you live your life by only showing you the last ten posts to the site.  But don’t worry: it considerately stores those articles on your device so even when you’re off line you are on top of the world of new gadgets…and the geeks who love them.

How much would you pay for all this conveneince? Nothing, obviously! I mean come on, you’ve already clicked the link and you’re using the new site instead of the old one, aren’t you?  Well that’s right friends, all this power, all this lack-of-archive, all this style can be yours absolutely free! Act now! Supplies are limited³! Operators are standing around.

1. 1 and a bit [↩]
2. okay, three [↩]
3. theoretically [↩]

Early this morning, every member of the Apple “community”¹ started vibrating at about 20Hz.

“It’s coming!” they² said in unison at 6:45 PDT.  Several people were heard to growl like cats.
“The 28th! That’s only (carry the one…add three…) seven days from today! No, wait, FOUR! that’s four days from now!” squealed Walt Mossberg, immediately starting his glowing review of the nascent OS. 
“What? I’ve been running snow leopard for two [expeletive deleted] years now.  No big deal,” said John Gruber.
For those of us that don’t get free beta copies of unreleased releases, Friday is now officially a big deal™.  We’ll keep you posted on further developments in the community’s response as they happen.

1. defined as “people who care about OS updates” [↩]
2. alright, “we” [↩]

Apple’s not-actually-announced-yet-but-it’s-totally-real-guys-seriously tablet device will be able to everything you ever wanted ever, predict many sources.

“This device will be usable by everyone everywhere. It will have 3G speeds on EDGE networks, and freeway gas mileage even in downtown NYC! Millions of starving children in Ghana will be able to use it to do their classwork without learning Linux or SmallTalk on one of those ghetto green lappy things,” asserted John Gruber, Walt Mosseberg, and David Pogue, in unison. Pogue continued, “And then the Enterprise will show up because we finally built a PADD, just like the one Wesley Crusher used!”¹ However, this is not predicted to have any effect on Will Wheaton’s Whining Ways²

“Dude, I stopped whining about leaving Star Trek when I wrote that “Geek” book,” Wheaton said. But we were busy trying to get back to the point of this article.

Steve Ballmer was dismissive of the as yet unannounced high-technology device, claiming that the beta weather-control module was “only 89% effective at re-structuring storm systems” and the “code for the lead-to-gold transmogrifier is really ugly. Hey Apple, the Dark Ages called, they want their technology back!” When pressed³ Ballmer admitted that he “hadn’t actually seen either of these components,” but he was “totally sure that they would suck, just like the iPhone”.

Not so, says every other technology news site ever. According to “trusted sources” quoted by the rest of the web, the new iSlate/iTab/MacSlate/McRib/MacTablet/MacPlate will have the following features:

• Telepathy
• Gorgeous new interface based on supermodels
• Gorgeous new supermodels based on the interface
• Gorgeous new Phil Schiller
• the first ever 8-finger “gesture”
• 8 actual fingers
• Side of fries
• Web cam
• Super-advanced webcam software that prevents users from posting embarrassing videos to YouTube
• QuickerTime
• FREE PONY!

And several thousand other amazing features.

the new product is expected to be released every day from today until somtime next year.

1. Pogue actually speaks with hyperlinks like that. It’s kinda freaky. But very web 2.0 [↩]
2. WWWWWA? (What Would Will Wheaton Whine About?) [↩]
3. not a task for the faint of heart [↩]

From AppleInsider:

Taking aim at Google’s new strategy, Ballmer told the crowd, “I don’t know if they can’t make up their mind or what the problem is over there, but the last time I checked, you don’t need two client operating systems. It’s good to have one.”

From the CEO of the company that brings you Windows XP, Windows Vista (5 versions) and Windows 7 beta, all on sale now!

Cupertino, California – Apple Inc., the makers of the wildly popular iPod and iPhone portable devices announced today that they will be launching an operating system that “will have changed the way we use comptuers” in 1984.  The announcement comes just hours after Google announced that they will be releasing a new operating system in the future.
“We have two major releases scheduled,” said Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. “One, in 1984, changed the way people thought about computers, moving from a command-line interface to a more elegant and user-friendly “Graphical User Interface” that had never been seen before in a “personal computer”  We will have been very proud of this, and considered it a major leap forward.

“We are also working on a newer version which we are projecting for a 2001 release date. It was called Mac OSX, and we are predicting that it brought the advances that were made by the NeXT computer company to the mainstream, and allowed people to work more productively than ever before. Furthermore, OSX will  “evolve”, until, around 2009, we foresee it being a major contender in the OS marketplace.”

Jobs was quick to acknowledge the challenge facing the personal electronics manufacturer.  “It’s entirely possible that my own company will have sacked me, only to beg me to come back ten years later.  But there’s no way to know what will have happened unless we go back and move ahead.”

When asked how they felt the fledgling OS will fare against previous rival Microsoft Windows and IBM OS/2, Jobs replied, “We will have to had wait and see, you know? Time has told.”

It is also possible that Apple will join Microsoft and Google in releasing operating systems in the future. However, when Google Chrome launches in 2010 the release of Snow Leopard will also be in the past.