Steve Jobs = Complete Jerk!

So I'm reading this book now, the one EVERYONE is saying I have to read.

I'm about halfway through (it's 700 pages!) and I must say that while I never thought too highly of Steve Jobs before (I had no knowledge of him, and held no opinion on him whatsoever), Walter Isaacson's book paints him as nothing short of the DEVIL himself.

I mean even if 1/50th of what he wrote is true, Steve Job's was one of the biggest a$$holes I've ever seen.

Unless something dramatic happens after he is 30 years old (that I haven't read about yet)...

He was one nasty, self-centered monster.

Furthermore, it's not even like he was a savvy businessman or creative genius (as alleged). He was just single-minded and hellbent on doing his thing no matter what. Anyone can become a titan of industry if they toss marriage, children, MORALITY, etc. out the window.

There's nothing nice at all to say about this jerk.

And it wasn't like I needed yet another reason to hate iMorons...

The only thing I find interesting, and hence the only reason I'm still reading the tome, is the historical aspect of his life. For example, right now the book is covering the NeXT comptuter (epic fail!). I remember vividly how I used one at the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology (Terre Haute, Indiana) back in the summer of 1991.

And then there was this famous commercial which first aired during the *Marcus Allen* SuperBowl:

iDiversity?

Cool logo....except iMorons DON'T *think different* (or differently).

I've been bashing them for quite some time as pathetic subscribers to groupthink.

Read this Wall Street Journal article for corroboration.

The gist of it is that people who buy iPhones....predominantly talk to other iPhone owners!

Google - Setting Its Sights On iTunes

I'm always rooting against Apple - much like I'm always rooting against the Red Sox.

While neutral on the products, I just don't care for the rabid fans!

And this reminds me...

One of these days I'm going to have to figure out a way to listen to music and whatnot in my car in a more modern way, i.e. NOT through the AM/FM car stereo.

I just can't bring myself to BUY an iPod and then BUY a thousand dollars worth of music.

Then I have to *manage* it: physically bring it with me, hide it in the car, sync devices, etc. Heck I'd probably get another $180 ticket from a cop for a *hands free violation* messing around with it.

I need a computer embedded in my car, with access to my stuff. Google obviously is positioning itself for such a future world.

For more info Google's latest salient - click here.

Silicon Valley - Eventually Will Fall Into Its Own Pit

You have to love this story - Apple Store Employee Seeks To Plant Union Seed:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Apple Inc store employee has started a union in a rare move at a company known for its near-fanatical following and cutting-edge mystique.


Cory Moll, a part-time employee at an Apple store in San Francisco, is working to form a union to fight for better wages and benefits and to address what he says are unfair practices in the company's glass-and-steel retail showrooms.


While unions are strong in industries like trucking and autos, they are largely unheard of in Silicon Valley companies, which pride themselves on being quick-footed and having the flexibility to hire and fire.


The would-be Apple union's website is sparse, but states: "At Apple, our most important resource, our soul, is our people. Our Time Has Come."

Hah! Take that Steve Jobs!

The *most important resource* at Apple IS NOT those amazing products that sell themselves....it's the $14 per hour multi-pierced geeks that work in Apple Stores!

I would love nothing more than to see a successful unionization effort at Apple - and at Microsoft, Google, among Warren Buffett's staff, etc.

There's no legitimate reason all those *entrepreneurs* enthusiastically vote with the socialist faction...

Except of course for their overriding hatred of Christianity.

It certainly doesn't help that Republicans are only half-hearted free marketeers but still...

All these Morons are mentally trapped in *binary* - just the way the organized political parties want it.

Broke Down, And Crossed Over To The Dark Side

I just broke down and bought my first wife the iPad 2 (16GB, WiFi + 3G) for $683.25 including tax. Of course we're going to have shell out another $30 a month to Verizon.

The problem is, while my wife has a Blackberry through her job, her firm's network blocks a ton of websites including many quality ones like Marginalizing Morons. The Mrs. has two 40 minute or so train rides each day (Mon-Thu) and she's been pining for an iPad that she can use for a couple months now.

I kept kiboshing it but could do so no longer. The money is irrelevant - since we are so cheap otherwise. But I do hate to think of myself as an iMoron!

I was planning on getting my 4.98 year old daughter her own PC and strongly considered buying her a Mac - if for no reasons other than the that I've never heard anyone complain about Apple products and because I realized I was displaying *extreme closed-mindedness* on this front. But the $1200 price has been giving me pause.

As a compromise, I decided to buy the iPad for $600 and then just get her what I bought her brother - a totally sufficient $600 Dell.

Another reason I did get this iPad is because I, as someone endeavoring to create and sell some content,....I should probably familiarize myself with the technology platforms it'd be delivered on. A Kindle might be next...

iSluts?

More than once on this blog I've generalized about that fanatical sect - iMorons.

I don't care what anyone else or any study says, in my world they are a pure *chick thing*. (I guess because most of the Dads slave away for corporate America and hence have those BlueBerries?)

Yesterday I accidentally learned that the young female iMorons apparently can't keep their legs together. It was a widely broadcast *study* that I'm sure was carefully noted by the young men who oft troll the late-night singles bar scene, looking for openings.

What exactly is the DOUBLES bar scene anyway?

Cheap Music?

Do any of y'all buy MP3s online?

If so, could someone tell me how much they cost and where the best place to buy them is?

Don't laugh, but I have no clue. A Google took me to iomoio.com which says they sell songs for 16 cents apiece. That sounds pretty good to me and would impel me to actually buy an MP3 player, docking station, and start amassing some music.

And it leaves me wondering why anyone would spent 99 cents a song on iTunes - if that's what it costs.

Marginalizing The iPad

Not me, as I only have a few hunches what it's all about.

I'm outsourcing this Marginalization.

A guy on a popular blog titles his post:

Why I Won't Buy An iPad (and think you shouldn't, either)

The gist is that the device is for Morons - for people who passively consume information. *Ease of use* isn't a breakthrough but rather a tactic to hook or *re-capture* those who can't think for themselves.

Just like the gadget press is full of devices that gadget bloggers need (and that no one else cares about), the mainstream press is full of stories that affirm the internal media consensus. Yesterday's empires do something sacred and vital and most of all grown up, and that other adults will eventually come along to move us all away from the kids' playground that is the wild web, with its amateur content and lack of proprietary channels where exclusive deals can be made. We'll move back into the walled gardens that best return shareholder value to the investors who haven't updated their portfolios since before eTrade came online.

The blog post was provocative enough to generate, as of now, 895 comments....so it might be worth a read.

The Big Apple Circus

This talented young lady uses *3 iPhones* to make some decent music:





Obviously, with all that expensive technology (and nice leather furniture)....obviously her mom is one successful masseuse!

Have any of y'all been to the Big Apple Circus? I thought it was terrific - when I was 10. In fact, it was also the implied backdrop for Seinfeld's The Gymnast.

Pointless Contrived Hindsight

Some guy has a post up that compares investments in Apple products - e.g. iPhone, iPod, Powerbooks,...- with what similarly timed investments in shares of Apple stock would have returned.

Obviously, it's a highly selective trough-to-peak comparison at the moment.

The only nice part about it, is that it essentially mocks those Apple-worshipping geeks who ran out and bought every new and slightly-tweaked product.

Of course, without that irrational consumerism....the stock wouldn't have risen 40-fold over the past seven years.

(Note the stock was dead money, flat, for the 16-year period 1988-2004. Don't be surprised if that trajectory re-emerges.)

BTW, contrived comparisons like this are nothing new. I remember reading somewhere, perhaps in The Millionaire Next Door, that if a married couple who had been smoking a combined 3 packs of cigarettes a day, for 50 years, had instead invested that money in Philip Morris....that they'd be retired happy and healthy, with a $2 million equity position.

The Ego Cycle

From Wired:

Jobs, characteristically, did not mince words as he spoke to the assembled, according to a person who was there who could not be named because this person is not authorized by Apple to speak with the press.

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: "It’s bull$hit." Audience roars.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

Apple certainly is *on top of the world* at the moment; and it's oozing the arrogance usually accorded that station.

But these things are fluid. Some 12-13 years ago I saw Michael Dell speak to a standing-room-only hall at the University of Pennsylvania. At that time, Dell Computer was *on-top-of-the-world*, posting the best stock returns over the entire decade of the 90s.

Most of the audience was wide-eye Wharton MBA students. They were positively drooling over the success of Michael Dell, a man only a couple years older, if that, than most of them.

The speech was awesome and at the end the discussion was opened up to the audience. I'll never forget Michael Dell mocking the viability of Apple Computer and then Sun Microsystems who he said was going "...to go the way of our fruity little friend."

He sounded as arrogant as, well, Steve Jobs today!

Check out the longer term charts and recall that I heard Dell speak in either 1997 or 1998:







Sun Microsystems did in fact just about go to zero. AND, Apple, in the early part of this decade traded for *cash on its books*. For example, if the company had $1 billion in cash, then it's market value was also $1 billion. In other words, Wall Street valued Apple's computer making business at ZERO less than 10 years ago.

Obviously, since then Apple has risen 20-fold, while Dell stock has gone nowhere.

And today, there's supposedly only one guy out there saying to short Apple!

Me? I believe I've made a little bit of money over the last few years shorting AND buying this stock. But I have no opinion on it at the moment. But you just watch, if the overall market tanks soon as I expect it to, this stock will trade back down below 100 towards its high from four years ago. Then say, for example, the iPad thingy flops, competition erodes the margins of the iPhone, etc. This is how it begins; this is how high flyers morph into decade-long flatliners like Dell Computer - and how a fall cometh after pride (See Proverbs 16:18) for egomaniacs like Steve Jobs.

Michael Dell is kind of quiet these days, at least relative to the others, isn't he?