Crazy Apple News Site

In the wake of yesterday’s Apple music event, tech critics are struggling to find bad things to say about Apple’s complete redesign of their media consumption devices.¹

“Man, the new iPod Touch? What’s that all about? It’s just an iPhone without the phone, man. Just a really fast gaming device. Just an awesome display for your emails, books, music, and video. Like I would want that! Whatever!” said Isaac N., noted Apple critic.

“Yeah, and that touch screen nano? How am I supposed to read a book on that screen? It’s way too small!” he continued. When informed that the new nano doesn’t display books, but just plays music, he had a hard time with that as well. “Oh great! So now I Can’t read books either! Useless, I tell you! Useless!”

Critics were equally hard pressed to find fault with the new Apple TV.

“Well, sure it’s only $99, and yeah, I guess streaming from any computer in your house, or the internet, or Netflix is kinda cool, but what about…erm…what about…penguins? Yeah! What about set top penguins?” Asked John Cleese, although we’re pretty sure he was joking.

Apple was unavailable to answer his penguin-related questions.

Meanwhile, actual human beings are reported as being interested in (if not excited by) the changes Apple made to the iPod lineup. The “excited” part will come when they get a new iPod during the winter gift-giving holidays.

1. We’ll talk about iTunes 10 tomorrow [↩]

Apple has sent out announcements for an event happening Wednesday, September 1st. It’s got a guitar with an Apple-logo hole in it, it’s happening at the right time to be a music based event. You know what that means, kids: It’s time to make some predictions of the sort that would make Nostradomus say, “whoa, dude, let’s bring it back to reality, there.”

Not for us the predictions of a new Apple TV, or the demise of the once-glorious iPod Classic. No, we seek wilder, weirder skies than these. This, then, is our ten least likely predictions.

1. Fat.
   Nano.
   Touch.
2. The whole event is actually being held because Steve Jobs is tired of the terrible music people are making in GarageBand, will be spent with him at an iMac, writing an elaborate ballad in his favorite loop based music creation program. It will instantly shoot to the top of the iTunes charts and stay there by force for two years.
3. The event will be a retrospective, looking back at all the special musical guests Apple has had grace the stage over the past few years of keynotes and “special events”. Randy Newman, Norah Jones, John Mayer and Bono will all be in attendance, and the highlight will be a four-way rap battle between them. Norah Jones will make John Mayer cry, and will receive a standing ovation. As well she should.
4. Apple will finally make the iGuitar. The picture on the invite is the real device. It will have no USB ports, no plugin, and will only work with Apple-branded Bluetooth amps.
5. The Apple TV and iPod Classic will join forces and merge into a super-device in an attempt to remain relevant in this world of multi-touch screens and flash memory. Unfortunately, the new device will be no more intelligible or user-friendly than the two old devices¹ . It will, however, make John Mayer cry, and receive a standing ovation.
6. Look forward to seeing Jony Ive covered in a new Liquidmetal skin, resplendent and transcendent, as he takes the stage to explain how he has finally found a way to make the human body entire into a perfect wi-fi and 3G antenna.
7. Sick and tired of all the controversy and hype, Apple, Inc. will announce that they just out and out purchased Apple Corps, and have fired Yoko Ono.Out of a cannon.All Beatles songs will be available on iTunes. For free. When asked about this bold new pricing plan, Jobs will reply “take that, Ringo!”
8. iPhone 5 will be announced, with an emphasis on music production. Garage Band for iPhone and iPad will be released by the end of the week.
9. This probably won’t happen, but it would rock: Apple puts someone with an attention span of more than 30 seconds in charge of MacHeist III, because the current people are “making the Apple community look bad.”
10. OSX 10.7 will be announced. Code name: Coltrane. When questioned about the shift, bad jokes will be made about ‘Trane being a “cool cat”.²

1. Can you believe we used to think that click wheels were a good way to browse huge libraries of music? Ugh. [↩]
2. Look, you try coming up with 10 jokes about a guitar with a  Apple-shaped hole. They’re not all going to be good. Or even any of them. [↩]

Following their announcement that they are poised to release a tablet that’s better than the iPad, LG further announced that they would be releasing some other world shattering devices:

• A new car that’s better than a BMW
• A house that’s more beautiful than Fallingwater
• A steak that tastes better than a perfectly-prepared fillet mignon
• A supercomputer that’s better than whatever it is Cray and IBM are releasing these days.

These products can be viewed as major departures from LG’s usual line of low end radios and lightbulbs, or Costco-special LCD televisions. We asked them about this.

“The problem with all these other things is that they don’t allow for content creation.¹

Well, supercomputers do, but nobody uses them for that. They just do protein simulations and play killer games of StarCraft II. But that’s not the point.

The point is that, in each of these fields, we will introduce devices that allow the user to be a creator as well as a consumer. I mean, sure, Fallingwater is a good house, but what if you need to, I don’t know, whomp up a 3D movie? The house is totally not designed to accommodate you. Sure you can try to make a movie in the house with, like, a Mac Pro or something, but the house doesn’t really lend itself to your endeavors. Our new house, car, steak, and computer will all specifically aid in content creation.”

LG’s spokesperson declined to elucidate, which is probably for the best. Especially in the whole “steak” arena.

“Look forward to car like devices that will not only get you where you’re going, but allow you to write a novel while you’re doing it. Or maybe a spreadsheet, if you’re a business type. I don’t care. Right now it’s a Dodge Neon with an iPad glued to the dashboard, but that’s just the prototype.” The spokesperson said, followed by “oh, don’t put that in.”

We put it in.

1. Apparently they completely ignored our qustion. [↩]

Apple now has the exclusive right to use the new Liquidmetal alloy-thing for electronical type communication devices and whatnot. Everyone make the Terminator jokes now. I’ll wait here.

Thank you.

Now, that done, here are some things we hope John Ive does with this new, insanely useful metal:

• Actually Build EVE from Wall*E
• Actually build Wall*E from Wall*E
• Mac Wars Episode VI: RETURN OF THE CUBE
• Shiny-backed iPhones That don’t pick up millions of fingerprints (because it’s magic!)
• Newer, more powerful Phil Schiller
  • For that matter, it’s about time to redo The Woz. The current model is getting kinda ragged.
• bullet-proof mock turtlenecks
• Liquid. Metal. Ponies.
• Summer Glau 2.0: Don’t call her “Autumn”

Well, we’ve wandered a bit from our main point. Here’s to Jony Ive and his shiny new toy. We look forward to the next coolest thing in industrial design.

We here at CANS are saddened at the loss of Mark Papermaster, recently axed VP of device hardware engineering. Instead of pointing at all the “i-word” possible reasons for him being axed, we thought we would instead take a look back at all the highlights of his time at Apple. Mark, this is for you.

Mark Papermaster Joins Apple

Apple® today announced that Mark Papermaster is joining the Company as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Mark Papermaster Leaves Apple

According to sources who spoke with The Wall Street Journal, Papermaster’s departure came as a result of a “falling out” with Jobs. How much the iPhone 4 antenna controversy played a part in his exit was said to be “unclear,” as those anonymous sources said the departure was chiefly a result of “cultural incompatibility.”

Ummm…yeah. that’s pretty much all we knew about Mr. Papermaster, except for the fact that he had an awesome name. Well, anyway, he’s gone. And so it goes.

Here’s why.

This is probably the best excuse I’ll ever have.

This is just to let you know that we are officially taking a break until this whole iPhone 4 thing blows over.¹
Because frankly, we’re tired of it. The only Apple news on the block is the iPhone 4. No new macs, no new iPods/iPads, or updates to OSX or any of the other stuff that is actually interesting or any fun. It’s all antennae and their problems, as far as the eye can see. It makes it hard to scrounge up material, especially if you’re as lazy as we are. It kinda goes like this:

8:02: “Well, I’ll see what’s out there about Apple. Something funny must be happening”

8:03: “Hmmm, Pogue thinks the iPhone is good. No surprise. Gruber thinks people who don’t think the iPhone is good are bad. Yep. Yep.”

8:04 “Would ‘the iPhone: Will it kill your entire family?’ be a good article? Bleh, no! C|Net already did that one. Well, probably. It sounds like something they would do.”

8:06 “Maybe I could start a ‘Crazy Windows News Site…wait, that’s Paul Therrot’s site. Too bad.”

8:07 “Maybe I should go into something less crazy.”

And that’s no way to run a humor site. So I will start writing funny things about things when something funny starts happening. Thank you very much.

1. the past few weeks have been an unofficial break [↩]

The FCC, CIA, and FDA have started a joint investigation into the design of Apple’s latest update to the Mac Mini.
“We are concerned that the elegance and beauty of the new Mac Mini will influence the way people watch TV, as it will almost invariably be added to entertainment centers around the world.” said an FCC representative. “I mean, that thing can store every episode of LOST in HD, which is bad for reruns.”

“We are worried that the new unibody enclosure of the Mac Mini will affect people much like a drug, forcing people to buy more and more Minis until they can buy nothing else,” wrote the FDA. “We haven’t stopped thinking about it since it was announced.”

“We jumped in because there’s not a whole lot to do these days, what with the FBI taking over pretty much all of our work,” Said the CIA¹ .

Here at CANS we are trying to save up enough pennies to conduct our own research into the effects of the new Mac Mini’s HDMI port on our 23″ monitor that is currently connected to a loathsome Dell laptop. We estimate we will have the required number of pennies (70,000) by the middle of 2014.

1. At least, that’s what they want you to think… [↩]

Look, when humor sites do April Fool’s Day things it’s just stupid, right? I mean, parodying your parody site puts you dangerously close to the Alfred Newman/Dr. Demento/Gallagher level of humor, where you start relying on wolf whistles and watermelons and opaque catchphrases.¹

So instead of doing any of that we’re presenting a post that was scheduled to auto-appear on April 3rd at 7:00 am. It’s all about me not going to stand in line because my iPad was going to be delivered, and was written before I decided I’d rather go stand in line. So without further ado, we present: Saturday Morning.

Saturday Morning

UnAssociated Press–SALT LAKE CITY Something big is happening today. Crowds are gathered downtown, lining up, hours early, waiting. Many of these people have travelled from neighboring states to be here. Most, if not all, have dressed up for the event, even. Laughing, talking, happy. Sure, here and there is someone who doesn’t seem to be part of the scene, perhaps a bit annoyed by having to get past all these other people, but for the most part everyone here seems to be looking forward to one thing.
I’m referring, of course, to the 180th Annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and event that has been tying up SLC traffic for well over 160 years now.

But just under one mile away, almost due east, there’s another crowd. Not as large as the first, perhaps, but they too are lining up for something big. Something new is coming, and they are here to be among the first to see it. A few of them are in suits and ties or dresses, suggesting that they’re ready to move from one crowd to the other as soon as they’re done here. Here, too, there is an air of excitement, here, too, are a few people annoyed at the crowd, but overall a feeling of expectation.
I’m referring, of course, to the official launch of the iPad.

A few miles south and west, there’s a house. That’s where I am. Since it’s only about 7am on a Saturday, I’m still asleep, mumbling something about video drivers into my pillow.² I’ll be taking part of both activities today, but from the comfort of my own house. My iPad will be here soon, so says UPS’s tracking website. I can watch conference on the internet, as I’ve done for a few years running now. Unfortunately, I have a duty to perform: I must make up stories about the people who wait in line for a new Apple product. Blearily I stumble out of bed and start pretending to be somewhere I’m not³ Here, then, is the official live coverage of the iPad launch event.

The mood is festive here at the Apple Store, with people lining up, sitting down and waiting for the launch of the decade⁴ I approached with caution, my experiences with the MobileMe and iPhone OS 3.0 launches having left me wary and skittish, like a cat that’s been around two too many two-year-olds.

Still, the crowd here seemed, well, normal. People were wearing real pants and shirts, and there wasn’t a single tatoo’ed Apple product on display anywhere. Some people were on their phones, some were watching movies on their iPods, some were just…having conversations. In person. It was kind of like opening the door into the sub-basement after coming down a flight of damp and creaky stairs and finding a well-lit, clean and aired out sitting room with comfy chairs. One couldn’t shake the feeling that it wouldn’t be long before the other shoe was dropped and a huge monster with big slimy claws slithered out from behind a dust ruffle and ate a minor character. Still, such is the life of a pretend journalist, so I waded in and actually spoke with some people.

“I want an iPad so I can watch movies on the train,” said the first man I approached. Before I’d even asked him, as a matter of fact. “Because I like watching movies, and I hate sitting on the train for 45 minutes a day, looking at the wall. I mean, who wants to do that? Not me. Not Marvin Q. Peacock.” He looked at me expectantly, but what exactly it was he was expecting was opaque to me. Then he started offering to sell me low-cost vacations and generic medicines. That’s when I remembered where I’d heard his name before. He was a spammer.

“I think the iPad will be a great help to me in my work,” said a young lady who apparently decided I was a real journalist. “It’s got all the features I’m always looking for in a communication device. It’s portable, instant-on and instant-off, with a good battery life and rock-solid connectivity. Furthermore, the built-in screen and speakers make it a perfect addition to my one-woman shows against apartheid. I can use it as a prop or as a music player. that way I’ll really be able to get people to pay attention to the rights of downtrodden, masses of ants. Would you like to see a scene? It’s called ‘The Shoe That Stomped Me’.”

She then launched into a three-minute diatribe against what she referred to as “that infernal Nike”.

The next person I saw was Chandler Bing, from the TV show Friends. Not Matthew Perry, the actor who portrayed him, but the acutal fictional character Chandler Bing. “Could I be any less real?” he asked. “And hey, why am I in line to buy an iPad? They didn’t exist when I was on the air! I have no way of knowing about them! I gotta go find Joey.”

Past him were three men in dark coats, collars turned up, hats down low on their heads. I informed them that they were several months ahead of schedule and in the wrong state to boot. They left hurredly and without comment.

At length the doors opened and everyone flooded into the Apple store to buy their iPads. As I headed home to await the arrival of mine, I couldn’t help but feel just a little let down. Sure, people being weird at launches is kinda scary, but it’s also a lot of fun. everyone at this launch was so,so…well, normal. Oh well. Next maybe next time.

1. Fun game! Try to think up a catch phrase more banal than “What, me worry?” ! (Hint: this isn’t possible.) [↩]
2. That’s the benefit of writing your articles two weeks early. I should remember that. [↩]
3. well, not really. See, this is still all written two weeks before the actual fact. But let’s pretend. Which would be easier if I stopped knocking holes in this here fourth wall. [↩]
4. a decade which is only four months old, I’ll grant you. [↩]

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.