Open Source wonks will tell you that this is the value of Open Source, that a project can live on beyond it’s original owner losing interest.² Guardians of Commercial software would gently point out that the whole point of paying for software is to ensure that you don’t have to wait for the developer to go on spring break to get new features. Maybe someday we’ll do a fireside chat ‘bout that, but for now, feel free to go get a new version of QS if you’re not already using LaunchBar and start doing really zippy things like pasting text into a file without opening it or whatever. 

1. We would like to point out that this would be an easy place to comment about the file the iPhone uses to follow you around all day, but we’ll refrain.
2. Which reminds us, we haven’t heard from ZRMS in a while

“I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem to be very useful,” said Pre Tend, who asked to remain nameless. “I tried it for a while, but none of my friends are on there, and everybody’s already on Facebook. So I just use that.”

“I go through the motions. I mean, I’ll review a song or two every so often,” said P. Schilller, who asked that we not identify him in this article. “Just to keep Steve and Tim happy, you know. I’ll review a song or something. But really, who wants everyone to know when they’re listening to Inna Gadda Da Vida for the fifth time that day? Er, not that I’ve done that. I think…I think Scott does that.”

There are others who say that the service provides a vibrant link between fans and artists, and that it’s just getting started. Unfortunately we were unable to reach any of them for comment. Officially, Apple remains confident that Ping will eventually be like Facebook without the freedom. When asked for a comment on the results of the study, an Apple spokesperson said “hey that’s 40% than the national average! So things are looking up!”

“It started out innocently enough,” said Sina Tamaddon, VP of Applications at Apple, Inc. “We had WriteRoom, which was a nice little app. I mean, get serious, it’s TextEdit stretched out and colored. But really, no harm done. Later some of the bigger writing apps, like Ulysses and Scrivener added full screen views. Heck, we added it to Pages. But now these little full-screen text editor programs are popping up like mice. OmmWriter Dana added some pretty music and background graphics, but this new Byword? It’s like Pages on the iPad for the Mac. We should have come up with that!

“The full-Screen Writing program epidemic is a small part of the larger threat,” said Dr. Weisman, a made-up pompous guy with leather patches on his elbows. No, no tweed jacket. “Like any ecosystem, the Mac app ecosystem needs to maintain a delicate balance. Too many graphics programs and the businessmen wander off. Too many spreadsheets, and there go all your artists,” at this point Weisman started to giggle. “I’m just kidding. Artists would be eaten alive on a PC. Two seconds after they brought it home it’d be so full of viruses and spyware they’d have to unplug it and take the battery out just to get it to stop shouting obscene phrases at them. But that’s beside the point. The point is, the number of writing programs currently in the mac ecosystem is threatening that delicate balance. Scrivener, we’ve got nothing against Scrivner. And Pagehand, we like Pagehand.¹ But these newcomers are starting to crowd out the long-standing, upstanding, outstanding old guys like NisusWriter or Mellel. Sure, the new ones are easy to use. But they don’t have history, or deep roots, and they don’t keep people from flowing downhill into PC territory.”

“Yes, exactly,” Tamaddon said, wresting control back from the somewhat creepy doctor. “so, starting in the summer of 2011, we will be selling tags for hunters to remove certain Full-Screen Writing programs from the ecosystem. We want to make sure it’s done humanely, no porting a program to Linux or anything like that. We’re thinking that tags will begin at $40, after you join the Apple Hunter Program, which is quite reasonable at $99/year, and includes a license for XCode 4.”

Tamaddon mentioned that Scott Forstall would be monitoring this program closely, and if it proved successful would be offering a similar system for “all those dang iOS ToDo list apps.”

1. Apparently Dr. Weisman also likes repeating himself.

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.

“There’s nothing better than false sincerity in a situation like this,” said Une Real, a made-up professor studying the effects of being terribly small-minded and vindictive on the average human psyche. “When a great person is having a less-than great time of things, it’s incredibly easy to sneak a few smug little digs at that person while  seemingly professing concern for their well-being. I believe the technical term for this is ‘being a total waste of flesh’.¹ Unable to compete fairly, they find a puerile joy in kicking someone while they’re down.”

We here at CANS may occasionally make fun of Steve Jobs, but we hope it’s still obvious that we have a lot of respect for the man and the company he’s created. We would like to again publicly thank Steve for all he’s done to make our world a better place and wish him a speedy recovery.

1. No, we’re not going to list real-life people we suspect would be in this camp. We’re above such things.

I mean, most weeks you can rely on Google to do something incendiary, or at least there’ll be some iPhone news, although calling anything short of new hardware “news” is kinda blowing things out of proportion. I mean, if the iPhone were to, say, get an all new antenna design so it could work with different carriers and solve the hideous “death grip” problem, that’d be something, but “oh look, there’s a new app!” just doesn’t cut it.

But here’s the thing that really gets our goat: If, say, Dave Barry were to write this article he would get thousands of letters explaining to him that there have been big Apple-centric news stories this week, and what was he thinking writing something like this. But my audience is all full of smart people who actually understand sarcasm and whatnot, so I don’t get the free follow-up article. I’ll tell you this, though: I’m not covering any more iPhone stories until they bring the blasted thing to T-Mobile. In the US, not in Germany, where T-Mobile’s had the iPhone forever. And even then, I’d probably still spend more time being annoyed by Google’s decision to contribute to browser fragmentation. Put all that to one side, and this article will be really unbalanced, because other than that, I’ve really got nothing this week.

Well, except for whatever tomorrow’s iFAQ will be about¹

Okay then. As you were. Carry on.

1. I know what it’s going to be about. It’s Just that you don’t. Well, you probably do, too. It’ll be about 800 words.

January

Most of January was spent rampantly speculating about what Apple would be announcing at their Big Reveal event on the 27th. As it became more and more certain that some sort of Tablet was in the works the Mythical Apple Tablet became the focus of everyone’s imagination. Feature lists sprang up like Peashooters in Plants vs. Zombies¹ and everyone was, well, kinda disappointed when the device that was actually revealed turned out to be a very intelligently designed, sensible device at a surprisingly low price. However, once the iPad was announced we of the Apple press were left facing the question of what we should write about in

February

With the iPad announced but not released, we had a lot of time to try and figure out what, if anything, was coming next. Apple itself seemed to be entirely focused on getting the iPad right, and we didn’t even get any good rumors during the shortest and bleakest month. Nate went to California, and subsequently failed to write anything interesting about the trip, as his computer committed suicide every time he tried to work up a post. I’ll say this: it was very warm. Which sounds nice right now. December in SLC is bitter, bitter. But things warmed up in

March

With the announcement that Steam would be coming to the Mac. People wondered why it was that Apple let Valve beat them to the online software distribution punch. In other Apple news, the iPad still wasn’t released, and people continued the “big iPod Touch” jokes, and the “pad sounds like a feminine hygiene product” jokes, neither of which were funny.

In CANS news, “Q” spent March standing in line to buy an iPad, which was finally released in

April

The month of the iPad! It was finally here! It was real! Everyone wanted one! Little kids hugged them! It was like Christmas! The dang things were actually really good! There’s really nothing bad to say about the iPad launch. It went off well and the iPad was and is an amazing device. And it’s good that iPad news was so positive, because April is also the month of the iPhone 4 fiasco.

It’s old news, but still irritating. Gizmodo bought a prototype iPhone 4 from a guy who picked it up in a bar when someone left it there…you know the song. Anyway, this happened in April, and like any terrible news story, was still making waves in

May

We decided to spend May entirely inwardly focused, as “Q” was still weak from his exposure to the elements and we really hated all the negativity about the iPhone 4. We had our own run-in with negativity on our other blog when we thoughtlessly said some rude things about Roger Ebert. But out in Apple-world the iPhone 4 storm swirled on into

June

When the iPhone 4 was actually really announced to a not-very-surprised world. The Retina display is and

Little. Aluminum. Different.

was an amazing idea, and this was before we knew the antennae on the device were flawed. The new Mac Mini was announced and Steve Jobs posted some thoughts about Flash. Adobe responded with typical aplomb, by which I mean various Adobe personnel told Apple where they could stick their magical devices. But, the Mac Mini, that was and is a thing of wonder. Or at least it’s really tiny and beautiful. But beauty isn’t everything, and in

July

We learned that form has to follow function as the iPhone 4 was officially launched and people discovered that wrapping their hands around the thing in certain ways reduced your signal strength. We here at CANS tried to ignore this whole mess then, and we continue to do so now. In July we heard from the future, the past, and an alternate reality, all to avoid “Antennagate” and it’s repercussions. Fortunately Apple announced a new battery charger at the end of July, so the month wasn’t a total loss. And speaking of loss, in

August

Apple lost their most interestingly named executive, Mr. Papermaster. We here at CANS felt the loss keenly, as we hadn’t made nearly enough jokes based on that name. I mean, look at it. Papermaster. Papermaster. It’s just too good. But he’s gone and there’s nothing we can do about it. So we’re back to jokes about Phil Schiller. Ah well. Anyway, August segued right into

September

with the announcement of a big music event at which Apple announced all kinds of new iPods. the new iPod Touch should really be called the iPad Mini, and the new Nano should be called the iPod Shuffle Touch. An updated Apple TV was announced, and people still seem to feel that it’s got a long way to go before it reaches its full potential. And in

October

We were told that the potential for a new version of OSX was about to become a reality. Well, actually, Lion isn’t due to ship until “Summer 2011″, but we got a sneak peek at what Apple’s working on. The “Back to the Mac” theme that they chose for the announcement event was, it turned out, more meaningful than we expected, as many UI decisions and idioms from the iPad are being brought back to the Mac, from which, Apple was quick to remind us, iOS originally came. Chief amongst these is a Mac App Store, which will let you buy your Mac Apps without going to real stores or the actual internet or anything. the App Store is set to launch in just a few days, well ahead of the rest of the Lion package. Seemingly designed specifically for Lion, Apple also released the new MacBook Air, which is so small it’s practically an iPad itself. Whether people will buy into it or not is anyone’s guess. Then it was

November ²

The month were I wrote a book, as I am wont to do. But even so, Apple wasn’t content to rest on their laurels. No, they finally put the axe to the XServe and buried the hatchet with Apple Corps. For the first time ever, it became possible to buy Beatles music on iTunes. Someday I might actually do so. But don’t hold your breath. And indeed, we were all breathing fairly easily heading into

December

Where Apple announced the early launch of the App Store, which won’t happen until next month. Many, many people got iPads as holiday presents, which of course means that it’s time to start speculating about the iPad 2′s specs and pricing.

And that’s 2010 in a nutshell. What will 2011 hold? Will the App Store for Mac take off like a rocket to the moon or fizzle out like that Ping thing that’s built into iTunes 10? Will Lion be everything we were hoping for and more? Will Penny and Leonard get back together, or are they going to pull a Ross and Rachael right up until the final episode of The Big Bang Theory?³ We can but wait and see. And speculate wildly, of course. But that’s the subject for another post. Here’s to the year that was.

1. which was also quite popular at the time
2. Look, you try coming up with 12 really good segues
3. The parallels between Friends and TBBT are striking. It’s almost as if the producers of TBBT realized that they had a good ensemble sitcom on their hands and decided to do some research into how those work out…

Once upon a midnight dreary,
As I pondered weak and weary
Over many quaint and curious iPhone
Bought in days of yore

and then before I get to the part where they’ll get upgraded “nevermore” I realize that I’m supposed to be trying to do a Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/New Years/Saturnalia type poem, not a Halloween one. So then I try again with something like this:

The moon on the crest of the new-fallen snow
Glared like an iPad in in full sunlight below.
And Jobs in his kerchief, and Ive in his cap,
had just counted their money and an intern did slap¹

Which invariably gets pretty terrible.

I had good luck with the letters to Santa Jobs one year, which were fun to write and gave me a lot of latitude to make fun of all manner of people in concise and amusing ways. But doing that again would be basically admitting that I’m completely out of ideas.

So then I’ll try for the sentimental angle, thanking people for all their support over the past year, which really has been pretty great. Or I’ll drop hints about my upcoming “predictions for next year” post, which guarantees that said post will never get written. But I’ve decided I’m not going to do any of that this year.

Well, except for the “thank you” part. Seriously, thank you all for reading. You make this worth doing.

But other than that, I’m not doing any of the stuff I usually do. Instead, I’m trying something new this year. This year I’m going to write a short story. Like, just abandon the journalistic overtones and do some full-on fiction. It’ll be fun! And it doesn’t have to rhyme, which makes it better than poetry.

The Macwood Caper

Dirk Drake snubbed out his cigarette on the rain-slick bricks next to him and turned out of the alley, easing himself into the general flow of pedestrians practiced ease. There would be no way those goons could follow him now. He walked two blocks, then turned into a smoky, cheap bar on the corner. The other pedestrians were a little surprised, sure, but they lived in a detective-noir world. People spontaneously transformed into bars all the time here. Getting excited about something like that was a mug’s game. They kept walking, heads down in the rain.

Inside, Drake leaned on the bar and ignored the fact that if there was any continuity in this story from one paragraph to the next he’d be standing inside himself. He had some inner demons, sure, but he knew how to handle them.
“Next round’s on me, boys.” he said loudly, and everyone cheered, then came to the bar to place orders. In the din he was able to talk to the barkeeper quietly.
“Word on the street is, Mr. J ain’t to happy with you, Drake,” Pat the Barkeeper said. He really wished people would stop taking his name literally. His life was like an endless TSA screening process.

“I’m not here to make Mr. J happy. I got a job to do and I aim to do it.”

“What’d they offer you, that could make you switch sides like that?” Pat said.

“None of your business. Let’s just say they can make things easier on me. They got protection.”

“Come back, Dirk, and you won’t need protection. You know Mr. J can take care of you.”

Dirk didn’t say anything. He’d been offered quite a bit. Speed, Power, flexibility, and, of course, protection. He still wasn’t sure what he’d given up was worth it, though. He swallowed his drink in one gulp, made a face, then slapped a large wad of bills down on the counter.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Pat. Take care.”

Pat watched Dirk walk out of the bar, completely unconcerned that both the bar and everyone in it would cease to exist at the end of this paragraph. “If he hates the taste of Ginger Ale so much, why does he always order it?” Pat wondered aloud. But nobody answered. They all just stopped existing.

Dirk knew the way in. He slid silently down shadowed halls, drifted like a ghost through doors that should have set off more alarms than the announcement of an impending John Meyer concert–well, ghosts that weighed about 210 pounds and had a deep working knowledge of the type of security system used in this place– and at last was exactly where he wanted to be. Slowly he approached the dias in the middle of the room. Like most of the room itself, the dias was made of a single block of aluminum, elegantly carved and beautifully minimalist. And there, resting on a stand, which was resting on the dias, you see, I mean, not to detract from the action, but this should be made clear; on a stand on the dias was the object of his quest.

The Second Generation iPad Prototype.²

Dirk knew this was the most dangerous part of the mission. He knew this because he’s not stupid. The most dangerous part is always the part where you’re in the middle of the building of the company you’re trying to rob. Knowing this, he spent fully two minutes straining his senses to catch every sound, every flicker of light, every possible indication of a trap. But he’d made it. The alarms were turned off, completely unaware that he was there, and he was free. He reached out, and just as his hand was closing around the edge of the iPad a great, tolling startup chime rolled through the room. One seemingly solid aluminum wall lit up, bathing the room in light, and in the wall next to it a face appeared on a screen that Dirk knew wasn’t there a moment ago.

“Well well, Mr. Drake. I wish I could say I was surprised. We always knew you would return. What a pity that it has to be in such…confrontational circumstances.”

“I didn’t choose to leave, and I’m not too thrilled about being back.”

“But the money was too good, huh?”

“Let’s just say that I could win those seven flaming dares and still make less than they offered me to pull this heist.”

The man in the screen laughed. “Very clever. And now I’m to guess who is paying you, is that right? ‘Win those seven’ you said, which sounds suspiciously like “Windows 7″, so perhaps it’s Mr. B himself. “Flaming dares” or Daring Fireballs? and the heist? Well, we both know that was just a red herring. a John “Red” Herring. Well, I don’t think I’ll play, Mr. Drake.”

Dirk looked at the screen, hope and fear fighting in his heart.

“So what now? You got me. What’s your move?”

“My move, Mr. Drake? Just this. You’ve seen it. You know what we’re planning, at least on the surface. Unfortunately, that’s all you’re going to get. You’re free to get what you can for that information on the outside. Nothing you say is going to hurt us, indeed, any publicity is good publicity. You didn’t get what you were sent for, but you may be able to get something out of this after all. Merry Christmas, Mr. Drake.” ³

Two large, well-muscled and inexplicably aluminum-colored men walked to the center of the room and guided Dirk out of the building. Once they were off the property they turned around and left him, having never spoken a word. Drake walked off into the night. He wished it was more like Chicago, but this was suddenly Cupertino. It was fairly warm, even with the rain. He turned up his collar anyway, just for the look of the thing.

He had more information than a lot of people, and he might be able to get something out of it. But who to sell to? Giz? DF? Pogue? Mentally he checked down the list. Finally he decided on a buyer. He knew someone who would want the information, and was in a position to pay for it.

Far away, a phone rang.

“Dickson residence. Who’s calling?”

“Listen, Dickson. I’ve got a scoop. What’s it worth to ya?”

1. Being me I would try to work a “fired. Out of a cannon” joke in here, but it really doesn’t scan at all.
2. and you thought we’d never get around to the Apple-related stuff! Just wait until we work the holidays into this!
3. Turns out that’s all the holiday cheer this story’s getting. Also, yes, we are well aware that Mr. J is Buddhist. But he’s also a retailer in America, and Christmas means something to anyone who sells things around here.

Cooks Source Steals Content: We’re not sure why this story got such heavy coverage, but it surely did–for about five minutes. Expect this story to die down quickly and nobody on the entire internet to remember anything about Illadore or Cooks Source magazine by the end of next week. This story isn’t really Apple related, but it is apple related, as the recipe in question was for apple pie.

Apple Hates Flash Round II: Apple pundits are jumping on the Flash-hating bandwagon, and discovering that the Flash plugin kills laptop batteries faster than something that kills something else in around four hours. So discount spider spray and big hairy spiders maybe. Or hand sanitizer and cold germs. I don’t know. I don’t keep a handy list of things that kill other things in around four hours on my person at all times. That seems kinda morbid. Oh, wait, I got one: “…the Flash Plugin kills laptop batteries faster than The BBC’s eight-hour-long Pride and Prejudice miniseries kills any modern male’s will to live.” Yeah, that’ll work.

Apple Hates the XServe: Sad but true. Apple will stop making XServes in 2011. We don’t know why. The Mac mini Server is a fearsome piece of technology, but not that fearsome, for Pete’s sake. Maybe Apple was looking at the new data centers they’re building and realizing that even they don’t have enough money to fill them with XServes. Maybe they’ve decided that anything even remotely businesslike is outside of their sphere of concern, and in coming months we’ll see an End-of-life announcement for the PowerMac Mac Pro as well. Maybe the future of Apple is wall-to-wall iPads as far as the eye can see, with an occasional MacBook Air thrown in here and there. We’re not sure. All we know is that the one time we were tasked with keeping an XServe up and running it was a finicky, picky diva of a server and made our lives miserable, unlike the Windows and Linux servers we were running alongside it. On the other hand it had the prettiest User Interface, so that has to count for something.

The Big Bang Theory Don’t Know Macs: In a recent¹ episode of The Big Bang Theory one of the characters dressed up like an Apple Store “Genius” in order to pick up women. The plausibility of this scenario to one side² , The character says that he was “showing this hot girl how to boot into safe mode…” and that’s what nearly caused me to spew apple cider all over my Apple computer. “Macs don’t have a ‘Safe Mode’!!!” I thought with multiple exclamation points. “Windows has a ‘Safe Mode! There’s no way he could be ‘booting into safe mode’ on a Mac!”

“Unless the hot girl had Boot Camp set up on her machine.” A part of my brain that likes to argue with me suggested.

“Well, yeah, but still, he should be helping her with Apple problems if he’s pretending to be working at the Genius Bar.”

“Maybe the real Geniuses don’t handle Windows problem, and that was his edge.”

“Look, shaddup. You’re ruining my perfectly good sense of outrage here. I get so very few of them.”

“Sorry about that. Okay. As you were.”

But it was no good. The moment was lost. So you can be outraged or not as you choose about this glaring mistake in an otherwise pretty good show.

Well, that’s all we have for today. Feel free to drop any other Appley newsy things you may find relevant in the comments. We’ll be watching the comments with one eye while simultaneously trying to figure out why one of our protagonists is trying to turn into an antagonist and ALSO trying to write at least 1667 words a day.³

1. less than a year old is recent to me
2. I spent years working a job that had a minor tech-support component to it. While it’s true that I often assisted a certain six-foot-tall blonde ballerina with her Mac problems there was never any spark of growing romance, nascent ardor, or increasing passion involved with the job. If history has taught us anything, it’s taught us that tech support is not the basis for budding romance.
3. We’ve been told that trying to focus on two different texts will make us blind and insane. But we are not worried. We are a chameleon! We can focus our eyes independent of each other! We may perhaps need to get more sleep so we don’t say stupid things like that.

Please stop predicting a new MacBook Air.

Depending on where you stand on the issue, the MacBook Air is either the best thing Apple’s ever done or is completely obviated by the iPad. Apple either agrees with you or they don’t. Either way, We’re tired of you all talking about it. It’s just not interesting is all. At the end of the day, the Air is just a lil’ ol’ laptop, only it’s not all that much smaller than a MacBook, so it’s just a laptop.

Since you all seem to be having a hard time thinking up better rumors, we’ve decided to break with our long-standing tradition of only writing about made up factual news to give you a few made up rumors upon which to speculate.

1. The new OS will be the horrible, Lovecraftian hybrid of OSX and iOS, similar in scope of failure to Windows ME, and its release will be a moment of utter rejoicing for Windows fans.
2. The new OS will be a blend of OSX, Windows, Linux, and iOS that is so amazing that Linus Torvalds starts using it instead of whatever version of Linux he’s using these days. Steve Ballmer is put out to pasture, which will be a moment of utter rejoicing for all people on earth.
3. Apple will finally release a mid-tower form Mac that has user-upgradeable components other than just the RAM. (I know this one’s so old it’s got whiskers, but we can hope.) Mac users finally start doing well at online games as their graphics capabilities catch up to Windows users.
4. Apple will announce that they have purchased Adobe, and are turning Flash into an HTML5 framework instead of a plugin-based framework. When asked why, Steve Jobs says that the purchase was made “Mostly just to annoy Android developers. All that work making a flash plugin for their phones and BOOM! We make it completely unnecessary.”
5. Apple will announce that they have purchased John Gruber and are turning him into a well-rounded tech commentator instead of a rabid tech commentator. When asked why, Steve Jobs says that the purchase was made “Mostly just to annoy David Pogue. All that work put into becoming a really well-rounded tech columnist with an Apple bias and BOOM! We give the nod to someone else.”
6. In a move that suggests he may have lost his laser-like focus on designing new small electronic devices, Jonathan Ive will spend 20 minutes explaining how he designed the doorknobs for Steve Jobs’ new house.
7. Home Depot and Lowe’s will be sold out of iKnobs for the next six months solid.

So, there you have it, tech press! Seven jucy, implausible rumors upon which to speculate instead of hoping that the MacBook Air will get thinner by an eighth of an inch.

• Apple finally breaks down and puts Blu-Ray into the Mac. Yeah, that’s too crazy even for us.
• Five, count ‘em five new wallpapers!
• Building on the success of the iOS ecosystem, Apple will limit you to seven screens’ worth of apps on your Mac. “How many word processors do you actually need? Steve Jobs will explain.²
• Apple will announce a new MacBook Air. It will have a touch screen and a detachable keyboard. Critics who point out that it looks a lot like an iPad and keyboard set bundled into one box will never be heard from again.
• Lion will have a new 3D interface that utilizes a living room motif. The Sign-in screen will be the front door, your office apps would be on a desk, your games on a shelf, your movies in an entertainment center, etc. It’ll be high-tech and awesome and everyone will love it. Critics who point out that it’s just an updated version of Microsoft Bob will never be heard from again.
• Apple will stop supporting Adobe Flash on the desktop. “Oh, we have the technology,” Jony Ive will say. “We just like to tweak Adobe every now and again. Besides, who even needs Flash, now that Homestar Runner isn’t updating any more?”

The possibilities are endless³ ! Have a guess? Shout it out loud and proud in the comments.

1. Might not actually be called “Lion”, but come on. Look at the freakin’ picture. What else are they gonna call it?
2. Steve Jobs is perfectly capable of explaining in the form of a question.
3. I’m guessing; I could apparently only think of six.

Wanted: Philandering Executive

Candidate must be good at self-promotion and scandal management. Must be able to attract media attention without attaching shame to Apple. Good people skills a must. Please include a mug shot (yours) and a head shot (scandalous partner).

Neither Apple nor Bill Clinton were available for comment.

“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

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.

• 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.

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.

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.

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

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

“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…