Technology
Mac news site Appleinsider.com posted images today of banners being put up around San Francisco ahead of MacWorld next Tuesday, with the slogan “There’s something in the air”, which insiders say connects to long-circulating rumours about the Cupertino-based company’s plans to turn the majority of the world’s population into brushed aluminum-loving zombies.
“This is clearly a sign the iBomb is ready,” said tech analyst Mykos Jones. “I have to say it’s a surprise Jobs would put advertisements up about this kind of weapon before it’s deployed, but then again he did invent that damned puck mouse.”
Sources inside Apple tell PTTBT the iBomb is a “wide-range RDF impregnator”, which uses a photonic burst pattern to distribute a synthetic version of Steve Jobs’ infamous Reality Distortion Field across several city blocks from single source. RDF is largely credited with helping Jobs create “Mac Zealots”, who often argue the merits of Apple hardware that does not yet exist.
Sources say once fully installed, a network of iBombs would create a “mesh network” which could “rid the world of Windows once and for all”, as well as convince Sony and Universal to put their movies on iTunes.
Although the precise delivery vector of the iBomb is uncertain, some suspect the actual hardware was deployed in the form of iPhones last summer. The reputable Taiwanese trade magazine DigiTimes reported last month that a major chip vendor outside Taipei recently “landed a contract to manufacture Apple’s next-generation of mind-control devices, which feature a shiny 27″ touchscreen and 16GB of solid-state memory”.
An Apple spokesman declined comment on this story, saying the company “does not comment on unreleased psychokinetic weapons” with an odd, vacant smile on his face.
Shares of Apple fell in mid-morning trading after a computer glitch caused the apple.com website to release the specs of Apple’s next-generation hardware ahead of the MacWorld Expo keynote by CEO Steve Jobs on January 15.
“Obviously, we’re very upset about the mistake and are working hard ensure it never happens again,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior VP of worldwide product marketing and political assassinations. “It’s really embarrassing for me, personally, because I usually take this last week to think of some genius marketing-speak to put in the press release, but on such short notice all I can think of is: ‘The new Mac Pro is the fastest Mac we’ve ever made’, which is utter crap since we obviously wouldn’t release something slower than the previous rev, would we? I need a scotch. Who’s up for some breakfast drinks while I try and think of something better?”
Sources inside Apple tell PTTBT that the announcements for the new Mac Pro and Xserve computers were supposed to be wrapped in Steve Jobs’ powerful Reality Distortion Field to make them more palatable to the masses, but the early announcement has left them exposed for scrutiny and ridicule. Apple engineers have been flooding message boards all morning trying to play up the new machines’ capabilities, but face an uphill battle promoting things like 4TB of internal storage and 32GB of RAM amid a torrent of jeers about single-button mice.
“Someone really dropped the ball on this one,” said tech analyst Germaine Lowenstein, “I expect they’ll be trying to polish off some half-baked products in the next six days so they have something to show at MacWorld, like they did with the Apple TV. I would hate to be in the Apple web department today, when Steve hears about this. Ballmer throws chairs, but Steve throws people. With his mind.”
Indeed, eyewitnesses report seeing four ambulances leaving Apple headquarters Tuesday, though it was not clear if the incident was related to the information leak or simply another culling of employees found to be reading Dan Lyons’ book Option$ at work.
An Apple spokesman said Jobs was unavailable for comment, as he was busy personally re-tiling the walls in the Moscone Center for “maximum karmic energy transference” ahead of “the ritual”.
Consumer electronics giant Toshiba used the CES tradeshow to unveil a new version of its HD-DVD standard on Monday, leapfrogging the competing Blu-Ray format’s capabilities, in a move sure to send shockwaves through the industry.
“Today we are pleased to present HD-DVD-CX+,” said Toshiba America CEO Grant Morginson to a packed crowd of onlookers hoping to see a grown man cry. “Our engineers have managed to cram over two hundred times the capacity into a tiny plastic cube, and still make it backwards-compatible with the dozens of players we’ve already sold. I think it’s pretty clear who’s won the format war. And it don’t rhyme with ‘pony’.”
The HD-DVD-CX+ “discs”, which are small black cubes approximately 1.6cm x 1.6cm x 1.6cm in size, reportedly have such a high capacity that they are able to hold all 25 versions of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece Blade Runner at a resolution beyond human comprehension. Also, due to a breakthrough in the wireless HDMI standard, the cubes don’t even need to be placed into the player to be viewed.
Sony reps were predictably angry about the news.
“It’s a load of crap is what it is,” said Peter Moon, Sony VP of Blu-Ray Propaganda at CES, “Did you see what he had in his hand? It was a pair of dice coloured over with permanent marker. He just made it up over the weekend after we snagged Warner Bros from his rag-tag band of loser studios.”
Toshiba reps were confident that creative talent would flock to the HD-DVD-CX+ standard once its capabilities were demonstrated, including “5400p resolution” and “Dolby 99.5 3D++ Surround Sound”.
“Consumers are going to be blown away by the revolution we’re introducing here today,” pleaded Morginson to a group of skeptical reporters, “Or at least they will be, once we start shipping TVs that can handle all the quality we’ve… uh… packed in these cubes. It should only take about ten years. And a miracle. Please buy our players! Please!”
Tech giant Microsoft admitted Friday that they had “dropped the ball” by forgetting to assign a team of developers to work on their upcoming Internet Explorer 8 web browser, blaming the oversight on mid-level management.
“I know it sounds far-fetched, but please try and remember we also made up Windows Genuine Advantage,” said company spokesman Jen Parbly, “We didn’t realize those three floors were unoccupied until Bill [Gates] asked what the hell was going on with the IE team. For a few days, we were convinced we just kept checking in when they were at lunch.”
According to sources inside the company, after the release of Internet Explorer 7, a decision was made at an executive level to “start from scratch” to come up with a brand new approach to web browsing, including “taking a long, hard look at these things they call ’standards’.” Unfortunately, the task of assigning developers to begin brainstorming was lost in the shuffle when it was discovered customers had realized Vista was really Windows 3.1 with added transparency.
To make matters worse, sources indicate IE Project Manager Marcel Duplessis had unknowingly switched to Firefox several months before, and believed “perfection had been achieved, so they might as well take a break”. It was at his recommendation that the web browser team was assigned to other projects like the Zune, which analysts say “explains everything”.
At a press conference in Redmond Friday, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates pledged more transparency on the IE project in the future.
“We’re working hard to make it easier for you to see what we’re doing inside the company,” he said to a room full of tech reporters and programmers. “We realize we can’t force thousands of companies around the world to update their entire websites to meet our crazy new code quirks if we don’t have half-competent monkeys learning what kinds of things you really can’t afford to have broken. We haven’t done a great job recently, but we really do want to embrace you all. Embrace and extend. And then smother.”
Consumer rights activists praised Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday for his stance on space-shifting – the ability to transfer a movie from a DVD to a computer or iPod – calling it “a heroic idea sure to benefit consumers worldwide”.
“Against all odds, Apple has done something great,” said Martin Hyslop of the American Freedoms Association, “Rather than forcing consumers to download freeware to access their legally-acquired films on whatever device they choose, this new initiative will provide a new, copy-protected version for Apple products, for a nominal fee. Nominal compared to the cost of the computer. Or at least Macs.”
The Apple plan, which would see a new class of DVD discs sold in stores across the country, would include a second copy of the movie specifically designed to be copied to the hard drive of any iTunes-enabled device. The new “enhanced” discs would be sold for an extra $4, and would eventually become the “standard” delivery method for Hollywood movies, not counting BitTorrent sites.
“It’s a big savings for the consumer,” said Hodgwin Pile of analyst firm Holt and McGregor, “It would seem like ripping a movie yourself for free would be cheaper, but if you consider that it takes at least 90 minutes to convert a DVD… I don’t know about you, but my time is worth $250/hour, so that’s a $371 savings doing it Apple’s way. Even more if you factor in the legal fees of fighting a DMCA case for bypassing the copy protection. Apple’s finally given us a legal alternative to enjoy our fundamental rights as consumers.”
Still, not everyone is happy about the new approach. Sources inside at least two major studios tell PTTBT they will fight Steve Jobs’ proposal to the end, decrying what they see as “corporate piracy of the worst kind”.
“So what, we jack up the price of the discs by $4, and Apple gets $2 of that?” said Universal Pictures executive Jim Rubenstein, “We’re not going down the same road as those music dopes. You want to do this, it’s $15 extra, and you get the same $2, and no more propping up your little iPod scam. We’re not getting screwed, left begging for more. That’s what writers are for.”
