My personal favorites for "The Next Steve" are Ron Johnson (Senior VP, Retail) or Scott Forstall (Senior VP, iPhone Software, pictured at right). Why? Johnson is charismatic and has established Apple as a retail powerhouse. Forstall, because he is as anal as Jobs about interface design and kinda looks like "I'm a Mac" actor Justin Long.
After you take a look at the article, come back to TUAW and vote for your favorite candidate for the next Apple CEO.
What I admire most about Apple is the patience the company demonstrates. Nothing is rushed, either to the market or the press. Even when all parties are clamoring for what they want, the executives in Cupertino are patient enough to ignore the din and wait until the time is right to act.
There's a report on MacNN today about the increasing interest in the 3G iPhone in the UK. Part of the reason is that subsidies provided by O2 will make the new phone free for some shoppers on July 11th. "Free" is a powerful motivator, but interest would have been just as high without that four-letter word.
When the iPhone was first released with its now-infamously high price tag, It was purchased (in large part) by Apple's rabid fans, who evangelized the thing to everyone they met. Many of those people thought, "Nice, but the price is high."
Which leads to my second point. Namely, pricing sends a message. When you notice the discount bin at your favorite record store, you think, "lousy music in there." The $3.99 CDs can't possibly be good. Conversely, the $19.99 new releases must be awesome. I mean, they're twenty bucks!
Next month, all the people who were swooning over the iPhone but put off by the price tag will descend upon Apple Stores in droves. Expect quarterly sales figures to exceed expectations, as Apple is going to sell a boatload of iPhones.
Those are the words that make Mac nerds' hearts flutter. Afterall, the original iMac, Mac OS X and the switch to Intel have all followed that simple phrase.
The Cult of Mac has produced a cool time line graphic depicting a history of products that have been featured as Steve's "one more thing." From the iMac on May 6, 1998 to the MacBook Air this past January, the graph features a decade of announcements. For added fun, you can click any one to watch a video clip.
Well done, Cult of Mac! Here's to hoping for an addition in the very near future.
When Steve Jobs delivers a keynote or other high-profile presentation, Apple typically posts a video of the event on the web and in iTunes (who else remembers when you would stream these things live? Those were the days).
This week they've given these videos an official home in the iTunes Store. The Apple Keynotes Podcast [link] features three videos so far, the MWSF '07 and '08 keynotes plus the March 6th introduction of the iPhone software road map.
Check back on the evening of Monday, June 9th or Tuesday the 10 to see if the WWDC '08 keynote has been made available.
While there still hasn't been an official announcement from Apple (as of this writing), Fortune has reported that Steve Jobs will don the black shirt and blue jeans to deliver a keynote address on June 9, kicking off WWDC '08.
It's not a surprise, of course, as Steve typically talks during the show. Also expected is the announcement of a 3G iPhone, as well as plans for international distribution, as rumors have been at their usual pre-event levels for a couple of weeks.
There's no love lost between Steve Jobs and Dell founder Michael Dell. Back in 1997, when Michael was CEO of Dell, he famously told a group of IT big wigs, ""What would I do [if I were in charge of Apple]? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
Oh, Michael. That's the kind of statement that waits in a corner for years, thinking, "I'm going to bite him in the backside ... hard."
As we noted earlier this week Apple purchased of the chip design firm P. A. Semi and speculation has been rampant about what it all means. Well the Journal is reporting that Jobs spoke recently about Apple's relationship with Intel saying: "We have a great partnership with Intel. We expect that to continue forever." He further suggested that the acquisition was mainly to improve chips to go in portable devices and dismissed speculation about a return to the Power PC platform (the technology on which P. A. Semi's designs are based).
As part of their feature on Apple we noted earlier in the week, Fortune magazine also has an interview with Steve Jobs that's definitely worth a look. Though frankly a bit annoying to page through, it's chock full of Uncle Steve goodness. There's quite a bit of interesting background on some of Apple's biggest business decisions over the last few years. It's definitely worth a read if you're interested in how the CEO of the most-admired company in the country thinks.
In addition, there's also a story by Fortune editor Peter Elkind on The trouble with Steve Jobs. It comes off a bit like sour grapes in places, but nonetheless is also worth the time.
We've been sipping green tea in celebration here at TUAW HQ. Why? In honour of one Steven Paul Jobs, no less, for today just happens to be everyone's favourite CEO's 53rd birthday.
With 10 hugely successful years in the modern-era Apple saddle, let's hope there's many, many more of those to come. Happy Birthday Steve, from all of us at TUAW.
Let's face it. Macworld Expo 2008 didn't exactly blow people away with its product intros. There was the MacBook Air, Apple TV Take Two and...um...not much else. And there could have been. Think about it. The Mac Pro was quietly upgraded in the days that led up to the event (psst, hey you, interested in some raw computing power?), and now the iPhone and iPod touch have received some major memory upgrades in the February slump. Both upgrades, as we have now seen, were relegated to Tuesday-morning sticky notes.
It's not as if Apple couldn't have announced this morning's memory upgrades in January. I'm pretty sure these new iPods and iPhones didn't just magically spring into existence within the last 3 weeks. The product that was announced, the (*yawn*) major AppleTV upgrade with movie rentals. is already delayed, and no sign yet of the "late February" iPhone SDK.
So what's going on with Apple? Is there some sort of mojo shortage? Or maybe Steve just wanted some of us to do badly in our keynote predictions[1]. You tell us in the comments.
TUAW reader Ian Donaldson discovered that the SBEnableAppReveal preference allowed you to double-tap hidden applications to reveal them--and double-tap them again to re-hide them. I decided to see if I could extend this behavior to other applications. After a bit of testing, I discovered the SBIsRevealable preference in the three keynote applications: YouTube, Safari and iTunes. So after modifying plutil to allow it to set Boolean values as well as strings, I went ahead and issued the following command:
After restarting, I was pleased to find that pretty much all my applications were hidden and could now use the double-tap-to-reveal trick. The three holdouts? Photos, Camera, and iPod, all three of which use special "roles" in their Info.plist files. These roles let the Slideshow app appear as both "Photos" and "Cameras" on the iPhone, and MobileMusicPlayer as "Music" and "Video" on the iPod touch and "iPod" on the iPhone.
Those stock obsessed folks at Wallstrip, the daily video blog about all things Wall Street, have posted a short interview with the man behind Fake Steve Jobs. If you don't want the illusion of FSJ to be shattered you shouldn't watch this video, but it is very entertaining.
You'll find out why FSJ started blogging, what he thinks of the real Steve Jobs, and his thoughts on the Big Dig.
Remember that whole stock backdating scandal that was threatening to throw a wrench into the unstoppable train that is Apple? Yeah, Apple would prefer you forget about it too, but the SEC (that's the Securities and Exchange Commission) hasn't. They have subpoenaed Steve Jobs to testify in relation to a trail involving Nancy Heinan, Apple's former General Counsel (we covered her involvement here).
Keep in mind that no charges are being brought up against Steve, but whenever the CEO of a publicly traded company is brought in front of the SEC it is big news.
I think there's no question by now what the biggest announcement yesterday was. The iPod Touch is cool, and the new CoverFlow interface will definitely make some music listeners happy this holiday, but since the end of the announcement, the biggest splash has come from the iPhone's price drop.
Why would Apple drop the price of something that was already hitting all the marks they expected to hit? The analysts have already started their breakdown, and if stock prices are any indication, it seems investors are sure Apple is worried (not about competitors obviously, but about expectations), and wants an extra boost. Of course, us Apple fans will disagree-- Apple really does want the iPhone to be "more affordable," and a lower price is icing on an already sweet cake. A lower price doesn't mean desperation-- it's Apple doing what Apple does: breaking the mold and making things better for consumers.
Except that if any other company dropped the price of a product after only a few months (ahem, Microsoft-- one of my Twitter buddies noted that no one raised hackles about the Zune's price drop), it'd be seen as a sign of big trouble. What's going on here? Is Apple just aiming to put more iPhones in consumers' hands? Are they worried about the iPhone's sales numbers? Or did they bring down the price just to make sure the iPhone was still competitive against the iPod Touch?
You were not happy, and Steve Jobs listened. Apple has posted an Open Letter from Steve (yet another blog post, Steve? When are you going to make it official? You know, we are looking for bloggers... I'm just saying) in which Steve acknowledges that the iPhone price reduction was the right thing to do, but that Apple needs to think about those who bought an iPhone early on and not just those who will buy one during the holiday season.
Apple will be offering a $100 credit to the Apple Store (both online and physical stores) for anyone who purchased an iPhone before the break reduction and who hasn't received any other kinds of credit (i.e. if you get a refund from Apple or AT&T already you won't get another sawbuck). While I still think the reaction to the price reduction was way overblown, this is a great example of Apple listening to their customers and trying to make the situation right.
Details are still being worked out, but look for them to be posted on Apple.com next week.
Fortune on CNN/Money.com has a rogue's gallery of photos online today. The gallery features 11 executives at Apple, each of whom is considered in one way or another to be a possible candidate to replace Steve Jobs if he steps down. If you want to skip the gallery, the full story is on one page at Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog.
What I admire most about Apple is the patience the company demonstrates. Nothing is rushed, either to the market or the press. Even when all parties are clamoring for what they want, the executives in Cupertino are patient enough to ignore the din and wait until the time is right to act.
"But there is ... one more thing."
When Steve Jobs delivers a keynote or other high-profile presentation, Apple typically posts a video of the event on the web and in iTunes (who else remembers when you would stream these things live? Those were the days). 
While there still hasn't been an official announcement from Apple (as of this writing), 
There's no love lost between Steve Jobs and Dell founder Michael Dell. Back in 1997, when Michael was CEO of Dell, he famously told a group of IT big wigs, ""What would I do [if I were in charge of Apple]? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
As we 
As part of their 
Let's face it. Macworld Expo 2008 didn't exactly blow people away with its product intros. There was the 
Remember that whole stock 
I think there's no question by now what the biggest announcement yesterday was. 
