While Mark Papermaster may yet to be confirmed in his new role as senior vice president of devices hardware engineering, one thing is certain: former iPod hardware chief Tony Fadell is still gone, baby, gone. We imagine that he’s had to pack up his office, bid adieu to all his former teammates, and even give back his top-secret iPod prototypes (like the one that can broadcast songs directly into your head). Heck, we’d even imagine that Steve Jobs has swipe-deleted Tony from his iPhone Favorites list. I wonder what that would look like? (Fast-forward to 5:15).
Cold, Steve. Ice cold.
[via Daring Fireball]
Of the hundreds of Apple related publications out there, guess which one came out with the most comprehensive comparison between Snow Leopard and Windows 7, much before either one has even been released? Not one of them, sadly. That honor belongs to “America’s Finest News Source”, The Onion.
In a comparison chart detailing the differences between both forthcoming operating systems based on criteria such as the “ability to run Snood and porn at the same time” and “so aesthetically pleasing that it distracts users from countless technical gaffes”, The Onion offers an unbiased overview of where the two competitors stand.
I specially love the differences, or lack thereof, between the touchscreen capabilities of the two OSes. Go ahead, give it a look-see.
[Via Glenn Fleishman]
We brought you news yesterday on some of the risk factors Apple sees in the year going forward, gleaned from the densely informative 10-K form that they filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Of course, that’s hardly the only diamond in the 100-page rough, so here’s a round-up of other interesting details that have been extracted.
First up, Apple has apparently staffed up considerably in the last year, going from 21,600 full time employees to 32,000, an increase of 48%. Most of Apple’s employees work in retail and the company opened 50 new stores in 2008—between that and adding employees to existing store, it accounts for about 8,000 of those 10,800 new employees.
The second figure was a staggering increase in the number of Mac sales, which rose by 2.7 million units from 2007 to 2008, a rate of 38% in both units and net sales. Apple sold 9.715 million Macs in 2008 and, as TMO points out, the $14.2 billion in Mac sales trumped Apple’s total revenue of $13.93 billion in 2005. That’s quite a jump in just three short years.
As Infinite Loop reports, a special note was added towards the end of the 10-K spelling out Apple’s arrangement with outgoing senior VP Tony Fadell, whose title is now Special Advisor to the CEO. Fadell will continue to draw a $300,000/year salary and pull down benefits through March 24th, 2010 (Mac OS X’s 9th birthday, coincidentally?). While Fadell will lose 155,000 shares of unvested stocks, he’ll get 77,500 restricted shares that vest in full on March 24th, 2010—as long as he continues to work with the company. He also agrees not solicit Apple employees with employment offers for a year after he leaves the company, making me wonder if maybe Tony plans on striking out on his own.
Finally, a little game for you. The 10-K lists not only all the members of Apple’s executive team, but their ages as well. See if you can match the exec with the age (answers provided after the jump).
| 1. Steve Jobs | a) 48 |
| 2. Tim Cook | b) 53 |
| 3. Phil Schiller | c) 45 |
| 4. Scott Forstall | d) 50 |
| 5. Ron Johnson | e) 57 |
| 6. Peter Oppenheimer | f) 39 |
| 7. Daniel Cooperman | g) 47 |
Continue reading "10-K roundup: Employees and Mac sales get a boost and guess the executive's age!"
Did you know Steve Jobs can fly? Yeah, you know he has a private jet, but I meant Nathan Petrelli-style. Okay, I can’t prove it—the whole “having a jet” thing is pretty good cover for now. But consider these numbers crunched by Silicon Alley Insider in regards to Jobs’s recent travel on his Gulfstream.
Every quarter the company reimburses Steve for the amount he spends on jet fuel. Some believe there’s a connection that you can draw between said expense and the future of Apple, because Steve is so important to negotiations that he does more traveling when Apple is working on new products. Then again, Apple’s pretty much always working on new products, so that seems kind of silly. Anyway, the Insider points out that while the $189,000 reimbursement is lower than last year’s holiday quarter when Steve spent $550,000 on fuel, but more than the last couple quarters. Do you see the pattern? Because I sure as hell don’t.
We’re not going to take anything away from this until we get our hands of copies of Jobs’s latest tax returns to see how high his billable driving miles were. For all we know, he just likes to all of his shopping in London. I mean, can you blame him?
They're like collector actiom figures with defects, or like whem you get two McMuggets in your Happy Meal that are fused together to make ome giamt McMugget...like, like, a super McMugget.
Yum.
I'm referrimg, of course, to MacNooks with flawed keynoards. Like this ome from Emgadget, with two "M" keys...amd mo "n"!
There was also this ome, which is apparemtly my meighnor's computer-his music is always either off, or, more oftem, REALLY, REALLY LOUD.
How lomg nefore these start showimg up om enay for imsame collector's prices? Nooths will ne set up at Macworld showcasimg famnoys' "rare" collectioms of "ome of a kimd" Mac keynoards. Amd it wom't ne lomg nefore people start switchimg out their keys with other MacNooks' keynoards im am attempt to deceive others imto thimkimg theirs are flawed, too. Nastards.
Amyome out there im Reader Lamd get amy of these flawed keynoards? Let us kmow!
You may not realize it, but you are traveling through another dimension right now. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Next stop…the Apple Screen Sharing Zone.
If you’re the curious sort—and I know I am—perhaps you’ve wondered what happens when you turn on screen sharing on two of your Macs, connect to the remote machine, and then use the remote machine to connect back to your local machine. Perhaps you have also wondered about the sound of one-hand clapping. But I digress.
Reader William was kind enough to send us the answer to the former question—click the picture above for an immersive view. Ah, it takes me back to the days of my high school freshman video class, where I would play around by pointing the video camera at the monitor that it was hooked up to. From there, you could almost see infinity—the joys of being easily amused.
Oh, and if you were wondering: the sound of one-hand clapping is “cl.” The other hand makes the “ap.”
If you’ve always wondered what the inimitable duo of Justin Long and John Hodgman reminds you of, Charles Miller has one suggestion over at his blog, The Fishbowl. As abstract as it may sound, Charles reckons that the ‘Get a Mac’ ad format has a certain likeness to classic Warner Bros. Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote cartoons.
You’ll need to check out his article to really understand the point he’s trying to make but the gist of it is that if we were to compare the unstated rules of the Apple ad campaign to director Chuck Jones’s rules for Road Runner cartoons, listed on this Wikipedia article, we’d spot an unmistakable similarity.
And I have to say, I agree. I didn’t quite come to the same conclusion but I remember being on that very Wikipedia page a couple of weeks ago and getting a distinct feeling that I knew that formula from somewhere else. This might also explain why everyone finds Justin Long so annoying—would you want to go on a dinner date with someone who reminds you of the Road Runner?
[via Daring Fireball]
They just keep on comin’, don’t they? In another ‘Get a Mac’ multi-banner web advertisement spotted on TIME (hurry, it might still be there), PC gives us the first glimpse into his fine writing skills. He’s authored an op-ed requesting, nay pleading, users to stop switching to Macs and assuring them that suffering with a PC is the ethically right thing to do. Check out the YouTube video below and the entire column PC wrote after the jump.
Continue reading "PC begs you to "Stop Switching To Mac!" in another web ad"
Well, well, how’s this for a surprise? The official website of Photosynth, an admittedly fine new technology by Microsoft, expressly declares on their Install page that “we’re not cool enough to run on your OS yet”. And it isn’t a generic message either, because on the very same page they promise to have a Mac version ready soon.
Either someone at Microsoft was in a really sarcastic mood when they wrote this or they’ve finally come to terms with the fact that Apple is cool and they’re not. Either way, it’s an amusing little tidbit.
That said, I’d like to throw in a good word for Photosynth here. You can take several overlapping pictures of every nook and cranny of an area and, using the Photosynth application, convert it into a virtual 3D representation that you can then walk around in and explore. I recently watched David Pogue’s video review of the service (iTunes link) and, as long as it works as advertised, it sounds like a brilliant technology to me.
As Pogue notes, QuickTime VRs have enabled us to do something very similar to this for a few years now but you need a tripod to make those swanky videos and it only allows you to swivel around and zoom from a fixed point. Photosynth has the potential to bring this technology to the masses.
So, if you have Windows installed somewhere, you should go check it out—it’s the best way to view the Taj Mahal without actually visiting it. Meanwhile, we Mac users will have to wait while they work on getting the coolness factor right.
[Via TUAW]
Lest you think we here at MacUser only focus on Windows errors displayed in public spaces, I give you this OS X error spotted by Rob Sandie in Philadelphia's airport--which just so happens to be my hometown airport. That's just a coincidence though--or is it?
That's right, Philly uses Macs to power all the flight information displays, but it looks like someone forgot to set a time server on one of those Macs. As you can see the Mac's time was set to something before March 24th, 2001--that's pre-Mac OS X's release. Talk about delays (zing!).
You can read all about the Philadelphia Airport's use of Macs by check out this PDF from Apple.
