The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs

Mossberg's demented evil twin on Chrome OS, Arrington and more

2009-07-11T04:57:00.000-07:00

Words fail me.This Canadian puppet dude does some pretty amazing stuff. See his Web site here. Enjoy.

Hey, it's 4:20 on the East Coast

2009-07-10T13:20:00.000-07:00

I'm getting loads of mail this week about my deep friendship with Albert "Abbie" Hofmann, the inventor of LSD, which was reported in the Huffington Post a couple days ago. To be honest, I asked Arianna not to run this item. Not because I'm embarrassed. Just because I value my privacy. Anyway, she said she couldn't hold the story, and I told her I understand, but that she should be careful when she's out jogging because it's just so easy to get hit by a car or killed in a drive-by shooting. She understood.

Anyway, on the acid thing. Yes, I did LSD. A lot. And yes, I really benefited from LSD, and I highly recommend it to everyone. But did I give those freaks any money to do their wacky LSD psychology research? No fucking way. As is often the case, I don't have time or patience with academic approaches to solving problems. As the doctor guy (or whatever he is) says about his meeting with me: "He was still thinking, 'Let's put it in the water supply and turn everybody on.'" That is absolutely true. I've approached city officials in Palo Alto about doing this in a kind of limited beta program. So far no luck.

Anyway, as for the video above, I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you'll forgive me for starting my weekend a little bit early, but I just feel like celebrating. What's to celebrate? Well, I've made it through another week alive on the planet. Maybe you take that for granted, but take it from a dude who's got a black-market liver that's still trying to knit itself into his body -- you shouldn't. Life is precious. So go enjoy it. Hug your kids. Kiss someone you love. Put away your iPhone and your MacBook and go sit on a patch of grass and just stare up and marvel at the blueness. Like, just be there. Okay? Great. Now would someone please get me a mango smoothie and my fucking medical marijuana? Like, now? And where's the bong? Where the fuck is Ja'Red? Where's Katie? Hello? Has everyone gone to BJ's early again? Okay, fuck it. Fuck all of you guys. I'll get the bong myself, and when you get back, you're all fired. I hope you're reading this as you enjoy that pitcher of beer. Assholes.

Ballmer: In future, when you scream at your miserable frozen piece of shit Windows PC, it will be smart enough to understand why you're angry

2009-07-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

So Monkey Boy was giving a speech in Charlotte, N.C. (see the article about it here) and he says that in ten years we'll have computers that can understand our "intent." As in, "Dear PC, because you make my life a living hell, I intend to set you on fire now and then smash you with a fucking mallet." Ballmer also informed his audience that "Users will be able to speak to, touch and gesture at their computers even more." Uh-huh. And I can already imagine the kind of gestures those poor frigtards will be making, can't you? Finally, Fester says we'll also have computers that are as thin as a sheet of paper. Which will, of course, enable those computers to take up less room in a landfill after people get them home and realize that they don't actually work.

Man oh man. Can someone explain to me again how it is that we only have 4 percent market share against these buffoons?

(Much love to art director Jay for the improved photograph.)

We're cool, right? Steve? Are we cool?

2009-07-10T09:23:00.000-07:00

Sure we're cool, motherfucker. We're cool as a piece of key lime pie. You just keep telling yourself that, and you won't even feel it when the bullet hits the back of your ugly motherfucking head. Anyway, dear friends, here's one for a caption contest. It's Friday, after all. So fire up the Photoshop and send in your best efforts. We'll post them on Monday and send a free fake Apple tablet computer to whoever makes the one that Iulia and Natasha like best. Meanwhile, just FYI, we got this photo from the guys at 9to5Mac, who are re-reporting here a story from the Guardian here in which they claim Eric is going rogue at some conference and saying he's going to talk to us about his situation on our board. Money quote from Eric: "At this point there is no issue." Well, on that he is correct. There is no issue. None at all. As I explained yesterday, Eric is already off the board. Whether he knows that or not is pretty much irrelevant.

Sarah Palin, we are waiting for you to weigh in on this

2009-07-10T08:36:00.000-07:00

Something about crazy middle-aged communist-socialists raping teenage girls instead of progressing our nation and incentivizing our troops. First David Letterman, now Obama. What is it about these men and their need to diminimize underage girls? Please, Sarah. Go there. You know you want to. You've been out of the news for almost 24 hours. You need this, Sarah. Oh please oh please oh please.

Corrections

2009-07-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

First of all, much love to the many readers who tuned in to my long post about Chrome OS yesterday -- I appreciate all the comments, from both sides of the debate. Some commenters were generous enough to point out a few serious factual errors in that item. I had Iulia and Natasha, our interns, check these out on Wikipedia and it turns out the commenters were correct. In the spirit of transparency that embodies everything good about the Internet, I'd like to take the opportunity to set the record straight.

First, as many pointed out, the line about "the Chicago way," was delivered by Sean Connery, not by Robert DeNiro. Second, the creator of Linux is Linus Torvalds, not Linus Tordalv, and he is from Finland, not Denmark. The Linux project originated not in 1991 but in 1977, with Richard Stallman, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who now runs the Ubuntu project from South Africa. FSJ regrets these errors. Mea maxima culpa, as Iulia and Natasha say in their Russian Orthodox church.

Also, much love and a sincere namaste to everyone who wrote in with corrections. After a long hiatus it's great to see this crappy old blog up and rolling again, with the whole gang back together (Putin, h_aiku, faddah, ashram man) and also so many new readers who are already generously helping out. Dear n00bs, please know that we welcome your corrections. In fact they make our day. If you spot any more mistakes, please bring them to our attention. Peace out.

Dear Eric: You're dead to me

2009-07-09T04:45:00.000-07:00

Tag him and bag him, boys, because Squirrel Boy is finished around here. I called him last night and told him, and he agreed. Katie says I should have talked to her first because we need to think about how this is going to look when the hacks start reacting to the announcement. I was like, Who says we have to announce it? She says we're a public company, he's a member of the board, so it's material. I'm like, I don't know about that, maybe we should talk to a bunch of lawyers and just keep getting more opinions until we find someone who says it's not material and we don't have to announce it. Or better yet, just get me Larry Sonsini. He'll do it.

She says even if we don't announce it, the hacks will notice that Eric is no longer listed on our board of directors page. I said that's the thing, we won't take him off the page. We won't do anything. We just leave everything the way it is. She says what if Squirrel Boy goes rogue and starts telling people that he's off the board? I said that's easy, we run him over with a car. She goes, what if for some reason people just start asking about Eric and whether he has left the board? What do we do then?

I looked at her and I was like, Who are you and what have you done with Katie Cotton? Honestly, Katie, did you have a stroke or something? Because this is like PR 101, okay? If anyone calls, you just say we don't comment on speculation, or we don't talk about rumors. Either that or you say we don't discuss personnel issues, because it's a privacy issue, and we think the hacks are being total scumbags for not respecting Eric's privacy. Then we get Jim Goldman to go on CNBC and say that his deep sources inside Apple have assured him that Eric Schmidt is indeed still on the board.

If the hacks still persist in asking, we make up some statement that doesn't mean anything, like, "Eric is a talented executive and an important contributor," and we tell Dowling to just keep repeating it, over and over again, until they give up.

Katie says, But Steve, wouldn't that be kind of like lying? I looked at her. Then she goes, Ha! Got you! And we both burst out laughing.

Anyway, you may or may not see anything on our Web site or in our filings to the SEC, but trust me -- Eric is gone.

Let's all take a deep breath and get some perspective

2009-07-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

So everyone is worked up about this new browser operating system from Google. Drudge apparently has gone off his meds again and calls it a "death blow" to the Borg. No spinning red light, but still, pretty over the top. I guess it's supposedly going to destroy us too -- like we're some kind of collateral damage. Man oh man. Where to begin?

First of all, nobody seems to appreciate how goddamn hard it is to make an operating system. You don't just wake up one day and fall out of bed and make one. Not even the smarty pants kiddies at Google can do that. These things take years. Decades, even. Ours started out 20 years ago, at NeXT. You could say it goes back to 1977, with the BSD guys. Heck, you could even say it goes back to 1969 with Dennis Thompson and Lionel Ritchie. Even Windows is -- what? Twenty years old? Something like that. For that matter, look at Linux. Correct me if I'm wrong -- and I'm sure you fucking freetards will find something to correct -- but I think Linus Tordalv started working on Linux back in 1991 when he was a high school student in his native Denmark. That's nearly twenty years ago, and the shit still doesn't run right. Point is, whatever Google might release in the second half of next year, it will just be a starting point. It won't come close to what we've got.

Point two: Who in their right mind thinks the world needs yet another desktop operating system? The hacks who are foaming at the mouth about this big threat to Microsoft are the very same halfwits who a couple years back were declaring that the desktop OS was dead, Windows Vista would be the last one ever made, Apple shouldn't bother making any more versions of OS X, blah blah. Now they're saying nope, the world does need more operating systems, especially ones like this that are designed to work extra super specially well on computers that are hooked up to the Internet. Whatever that means.

Point three: They're aiming this OS (or as we call it, "POS") at netbooks, at least at first, and in case you hadn't noticed, the netbook market is fucking tiny and will remain so forever. According to IDC, there were 11 million netbooks sold last year, and by 2013 that figure will hit 39 million. The market for PCs and laptops will be 10 times that size -- literally -- at 400 million units. Smartphones will be over 300 million units. So, um, you guys at Google want to have a dog fight with Microsoft to get a few points of that market? Go have fun. Seriously. Knock yourself out. Frankly, if the entire netbook market caught fire, I wouldn't piss on it to put it out. But that's just me.

Point four: You also may not have noticed, but nobody uses Chrome. I mean think about it. Do you know anyone who uses Chrome? Really? And you know why nobody uses Chrome? Because Chrome is shit. Just utter, utter shit. I mean they've got all these big brains at Google and you'd think they could make a decent fucking browser. Jesus, the freetards at Mozilla can do it. But not Google. Nope. They gave it their big best effort and what did they come up with? Chrome. It's a joke. I mean, literally, we laugh about it, except when Eric is around. But as soon as he leaves the room we all go "Chrome!" and just burst out laughing. Our guys on the Safari team even had special toilet paper made up with a Chrome logo on every sheet. That's how bad it is. Trying to make an OS out of Chrome is like saying you're going to turn a Pontiac Aztek into a stretch limousine. I suppose it could be done, but why?

Point five: What the fuck is going on inside Google? How much more out of control and undisciplined can this place get? How many new goddamn operating systems are they going to create? They've already got Android, and nobody wants it. Now they're going to make yet another operating system, this time out of a browser that nobody wants. What's next? A Gmail-based operating system? A YouTube-based operating system? Honestly, Google, is there anyone in charge over there? Is there anyone who knows how to criticize anything in that fucked up little Montessori preschool of yours? I mean I guess it's nice that you all get to spend 20 percent of your time dreaming up useless shit, and I guess you have to use the Montessori method and tell everyone that whatever little piece of shit they've created is just so wonderful and perfect and beautiful -- but really, as I've told Eric before, that doesn't mean you have to release everything these bozos dream up. There's a word for this. It's called "no." Have you heard of it? I mean, fine, let them fuck around with stuff. Engineers like to tinker. So let them tinker. Then when they bring you whatever it is they've made, first you say you're too busy to meet with them. Then you say you've changed your mind and you will meet with them after all. Then you wait until they're all in the conference room with everything set up, and you send Katie down to tell them that you're going to be a little bit late. You make them wait an hour. Then two hours. Then, at six in the afternoon, you send Katie down to tell them that you've changed your mind again and now you can't make it. Then, finally, you set up another appointment and this time you do meet with them -- but before they can even speak you just look at whatever it is they've made and you say, I'm sorry, that's a piece of shit, and you walk out. Trust me, engineers love this. They're all masochists. That's why they became engineers in the first place.

Point six: It's going to be free. So what's the point? I mean I understand the idea of a loss leader. We don't charge for iTunes. You'll notice, however, that we do charge money for music and hardware. But how does this concept apply to Chrome OS? Somehow if you put out a new operating system you'll get more people using the Internet and then you'll be able to sell more of those shitty little ads? Forgive me if I'm missing something here, but I don't see how a free OS or a free browser helps Google. To put it another way, have you ever met anyone who said they'd really like to try out that Interwebs thing, but they're just put off by the low-quality operating systems and browsers that are available at this time, so they're sitting it out for now? Or like maybe they're on the Internet now but they would just be soooo inclined to spend soooo much more time on the Web, and they'd be soooo much more likely to actually click on the ads, if the OS and browser made it somehow less onerous to, um, type in a URL and go to a page? Nah, the only point in Google giving away a free browser and OS is somehow to fuck up Microsoft. (And/or to do some sneaky shit that helps Google screw users a little bit more efficiently. See Point 8 below.) But on the anti-Microsoft angle, take it from someone who has spent the past 10 years selling a superior operating system and getting only 4 percent market share -- as obsessions go, battling the Borg is waaay overrated. If you ask me, Google is getting a little nutty about the Borg and it's starting to show. They're starting to look like the new Scott McNealy. Remember him? Ran a company called Sun, which had a great little business going until McNealy became obsessed with Gates and started doing things like paying millions of dollars to buy StarOffice so he could get into that booming free software business.

Point seven: The only people who are pushing for this are the hardware OEMs and ODMs and they're only doing it so they can get a bargaining chip on the Borg. They don't want to use Chrome, or Android, or Linux. They want Windows. They just don't want to pay for it. Whatever Microsoft wants to charge for Windows 7, the hardware guys want to pay less. Hang the threat of yet another OS over Ballmer's shiny head and maybe he'll bring down his prices. That, anyway, is the thinking. Happened already in netbooks when they first came out with Linux on the Anus EEEEEPC -- that rang some bells up in Redmond, believe me. So maybe there is some benefit to Google in forcing Microsoft to lower its prices. Maybe by doing that they choke off a little bit of Redmond's oxygen supply, and that makes it a little harder for Microsoft to encroach on Google's search advertising business. Google is pissed about Bing, and the Yahoo stuff. So they splatter back some machine-gun fire at Microsoft's cash cow, the OS business. Fair enough. As DeNiro said, They send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue. That's the Chicago way. But if that's your big goal in life, the chance to maybe put a stick in Microsoft's spokes -- well, we've come a long way from the days of Sergey and Larry with stars in their eyes, wanting to make the world a better place. If that's really what gets these guys up in the morning, well, friends, I will pray for your soul. Here at Apple we have better things to do. Like creating new devices that nobody else has ever created before, and restoring a sense of childlike wonder to people's lives. Or inventing whole new multi-billion-dollar markets that didn't exist before. You'd rather just ape the Borg. Well, whatever. Godspeed to you, Google.

Point eight: People are starting to realize that Google is not their friend, and that all this "free stuff" from Google is not about a) philanthropy, or b) keeping Microsoft honest, but really about c) helping Google gain even more control over what you do on the Internet. See a nice piece by John Paczkowski here for an example. You know how we call IBM the Original Borg, or OB? Google is the NB. Really, Google, in case you hadn't noticed, a lot of people are kind of not really liking you guys right now. Even the freetards are starting to turn on you.

So, to reiterate, everything's fine, and there's nothing to worry about. It's nice that Google wants to make more operating systems, and we at Apple don't feel threatened by this, or betrayed by our own board member Eric Schmidt, just as we didn't feel betrayed or threatened by the Android smartphone platform. We welcome competition and think it's just great that Google wants to contribute to advancing the state of the art of personal computing. As Sarah Palin would say, the engineers at Google are ambitionistic about wanting to progress the world, and gosh, ya know what? That's darn good for everyone.

Or, as I just told Eric on the phone a few moments ago: Dear friend, I realize you think I'm weak right now, and maybe a little bit vulnerable, and you may also still be a little bit peeved because even though you're on the board at Apple I didn't tell you about the surgery I was having and instead led you to believe that I had moved to Tennessee because I needed to negotiate some country-western deals for iTunes. Okay. Fair enough. And I know you think you got a lifetime free pass on fucking me over after you and Al Gore bailed me out of that jam with the SEC investigation of the options backdating a couple years back. But, dear friend, enough is enough. You really need to think about what you're doing and who it hurts. Seriously. I mean it. Do some thinking. Meanwhile, for the time being, I've instructed Apple security to revoke your pass at Infinite Loop, and I would really, really, really appreciate it if you would just not call me or come around here anymore. Because if you do, well, I'm just so upset about all this that I might just -- well, honestly, Eric, I'm afraid I couldn't be responsible for what I might do. I will hurt you, Eric. I'm sorry, but I will. Are you feeling me? Because that's how it is. Seriously, bitch. It's over between us. Namaste.

Asshole Forbes reporter stalking our employees

2009-07-02T08:21:00.001-07:00

This just in. Last Friday a reporter from Forbes was hanging around outside the Outback Steakhouse on De Anza Boulevard in Cupertino trying to talk to Apple employees who were going out for beers after work. Guess he wanted to know whether anyone had seen Dear Leader, and if so, what did he look like, blah blah. Word spread quickly through the engineers hanging out at BJ's, who immediately started taking turns walking down the street and pretending to be drunk and then throwing disinformation at this dickwad. One thing you hacks need to realize is that yes, our marketing and PR people receive training in how to spread fake stories, but guess what? Engineers don't even need that training. That kind of shit comes naturally to them. So here are some of the stories we're hoping to see on Forbes.com over the next few days:

1. Steve working out with Jon Ive at Apple gym and is seriously bulked up. Claims it's just protein shakes, but some of the guys suspect steroids.

2. Steve, while hospitalized in Tennessee, fired several hospital employees who could not satisfactorily answer the question, "What do you do here?"

3. Steve had two livers installed, one as fail-over. Calls it "RAID-1" configuration.

3a. No, Steve only got one liver, but the donor was Mexican and when Steve woke up he could speak fluent Spanish. Weird.

4. Steve made up "medical leave" story, was actually in Argentina visiting his mistress. Will confess at weepy press conference next week.

5. Apple tablet PC will be announced in July. Intel quad-core processor, tiny fan on back.

6. Steve seen eating cheeseburger in Caffe Macs, has apparently dropped the vegan thing.

By the way, Forbes reporter -- we know your name. We know your home address. We're working on getting your medical records. Keep this up and I swear to friggin God we will go nuclear on your ass and publish all of it. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm weak, I'm vulnerable, I'm having someone drive me to work and I need people to open doors for me. And so you think maybe you can push El Jobso around a little bit. Well, go ahead. Try it. Seriously. I dare you. I double-dare you. Fuckwit. I will crush you like the bug you are.

BTW, we highly encourage Apple fans to go lurk outside the Forbes Silicon Valley bureau and ask people if they've seen Brian Caulfield lately. The address is 555 Airport Boulevard, in Burlingame, and they're on the fifth floor. Here is a photo of the place. Go right on up. There's no guard in the lobby. There might be a guard on the fifth floor but he's usually asleep and even if he's awake he's not armed and he's easily overwhelmed. Great collection of Malcolm's old motorcycles and some astronaut spacesuits. Totally worth checking out.

Well played, Microsoft. No, seriously.

2009-07-01T06:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a great idea. Create an ad in which the name of your product (in this case, your new browser) is placed next to an image of a woman vomiting. Brilliant! B.F. Skinner (who was totally a Mac user) is applauding you from the afterlife.

FWIW, here at Apple someone stripped the audio out of this clip and replaced it with a script in which a guy shows his wife Windows 7 for the first time. Then she pukes, and we toss in our cutesy Apple music and a voice-over that says "Seriously. Buy a Mac." Go ahead and try it at home. It's loads of fun. Send in your best efforts and we'll share them with the world.

And another thing about Palm running ads about us

2009-06-28T11:27:00.000-07:00

Listen up, Palm marketing people. If you've just launched your big breakthrough product, and the only way you can explain that product to people is to run ads comparing it to another product -- well, you've pretty much already lost, haven't you?

I mean it's marketing 101. Do you remember what the ads for the original iPhone looked like? You remember seeing anything in those ads about the BlackBerry or the Treo? No. It was a whole new thing -- sui generis, as the French say. It had to be. If all we could do was to make a slightly less shitty BlackBerry, and offer it for a few bucks less than what RIM was charging, we would not have bothered to make the product. Honest.

I'll let you in on a little secret about Palm's real weakness. Palm got a lot of credit for hiring Ruby and other Apple people, like it was some big coup to steal them away. But the truth is this was the worst thing they could do. You know why? Because they're Apple people. They can only think like Apple people. Which means they're going to make Apple products -- or actually Apple clones. And yeah, maybe in some small ways their products will have an edge. Maybe for some brief period of time they'll have some feature that we don't have. But they're clones. The proof of that is right there in their own ads -- the ads that are all about us, and which only help boost our business.

Because the fact is, nobody wants a wannabe Apple. Or a clone Apple. They want a real Apple. Duh, Palm. Duh. But thanks for the free advertising.

There will be blood

2009-06-28T06:14:00.000-07:00

Well the good folks at Palm have decided it wasn't enough to steal our ideas -- now they want to steal our customers too. Which is funny, because for the past two years they've been going around saying that they weren't trying to compete with Apple. Nope, not all. Nothing to do with Apple. Why, their target audience was completely different. Palm wasn't going after iPhone users, they were going after all those people who are using feature phones and haven't yet migrated to the broad, sunlit uplands of the smartphone. Hacks would try to cast this as a "Palm v. Apple" showdown, and the Palm folks would chide them and say they really didn't want to talk about Apple, and they really wished people would stop viewing it that way. Remember all that happy horseshit from Ruby and McNamee? And now, gosh and golly, they're running ads telling early iPhone adopters that they should switch when their two-year contracts run out. Well at least they're now telling the truth.

A few thoughts on this.

1. If this really is your business plan -- if you figure you can build a company by winning over some tiny percentage of iPhone users who are unhappy enough to switch -- well, I pray for your souls.

2. Your big point of differentiation is price. You're claiming to be $50 per month cheaper. That's an exaggeration, but let's assume for the sake of argument it's true. Let's think about this. You're trying to lure away Apple users by offering them lower prices. But as you must know, since so many of you used to work at Apple, our users aren't attracted by low prices. In fact, they're put off by them. They don't want cheap. They want premium. They want to pay more than everyone else. It makes them feel special. To put this another way: They don't care if the 2010 Camaro SS can outrun a Mercedes SL550 and costs $30,000 instead of $100,000. They want the Merc. Did you frigtards not learn anything during your time working for me?

3. You're running ads about feeds and speeds (better browser, true multitasking) but the market has moved past that, and the key thing now comes down to "developers, developers, developers," as my good friend Steve Ballmer once said. The iPhone is our castle, but the App Store is our moat. You've got -- what? Thirty apps? Fifty? We add more than that every hour.

But hey. Maybe you'll lure away some of our developers. Maybe you'll lure away some customers too. So this is your business plan: You're going to set up a Camaro car lot across the street from the Mercedes dealer, and put up some bright balloons and streamers and maybe some huge signs about how your cuh-raaaazy prices can't be beat! Oh, and maybe some kind of big inflatable dog or something. And a bouncy castle for the kids! Free hot dogs! Girls with big hair, wearing shiny shorts and tiny T-shirts! A year's worth of free gas!

Yeah. Good luck with that. Really.

(Much love to Kevin for the tip.)

RIP, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson

2009-06-25T17:42:00.000-07:00

Rest in peace, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett & Michael Jackson,
O sidekick
O angel
O scary freak from hell--
You know how they say that bad news comes in threes?
Well I have to admit
I was kind of crapping my pants
when Ed passed, & then Farrah,
& then for a while the number three slot
was just hanging out there, unoccupied,
& I'm like, Dear sweet baby Jesus,
I don't care which celebrity buys it next,
just as long as it's not me.
Then came the news about Michael,
& all I could say was,
Whew.
Okay.
I would have bet on Swayze, but still.
We'll take it.
Phil Schiller sent around an email saying
that in memory of Michael,
Wal-Mart would be running a special offer:
boy's underpants, half off.
A bit unkind of him, I think.
Not very original, either.
Now he's in trouble with HR.
Honestly, Phil. You should know better.

Jon Rubinstein now says he'll get a new liver, too

2009-06-25T08:30:00.001-07:00

Just heard this from Katie. Palm, which has reinvented itself with a business model that basically involves doing whatever Apple does, only two years later, announced today that its CEO, Jon Rubinstein, is planning to receive a liver transplant. No official date -- they just say it will happen sometime in the next 12 to 18 months. Palm says Rubinstein's liver will have features that my liver lacks, though they won't say what those features are. Meanwhile Roger McNamee has been posting Facebook updates saying he has seen a working prototype of Ruby's liver and it totally blows my liver away. Just like the Pre blows away the iPhone, right?

Which reminds me. I've been meaning to call Ruby and his team of ex-Apple traitors and congratulate them on that device. Really, guys, it's a terrific piece of work. Especially that keyboard with the teeny-tiny keys. I was thinking of an accessory you could sell in the Sprint stores: a little knife that Pre users can use to whittle down their fingertips. Oh, and some Band-Aids to patch up cuts from that razor-sharp edge that Gizmodo used as a Ginsu knife. Okay, forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm just kidding. I wish you guys all the best. I really do. I hope you sell loads and loads of those crappy Pre phones. And good luck with the liver, Ruby.

{Much love to Jay for the photo.)

Asked and answered, NY Times. Happy now?

2009-06-24T08:43:00.000-07:00

So a hospital takes the extremely unusual step of publicly announcing that a certain patient got a transplant, and that this patient got the transplant because he had the highest MELD score on their list, which means that everything was legit and above-board and totally fair. Now this kind of statement is something that hospitals hardly ever do, and never should have to do, but when a national newspaper starts questioning your ethics and suggesting maybe you're not a bunch of well-trained medical experts with a huge amount of integrity, but instead maybe are a bunch of sleazy hillbilly organ schleppers who'll violate every oath you've ever taken and even break the law in order to sell a liver to some rich guy, even though it means that some poor broke bastard is going to die -- well, when that happens, you put out the statement. Katie swears this will satisfy the inquisitive minds at the New York Times, and basically get them to stop slandering me based on unfounded rumor and speculation. I wish it were so, but my bet is it won't work at all, and now the hacks will just move on to the next complaint, which goes like this: If Jobso had such a high MELD score, well then he must have been a lot sicker than Apple let on, which means Apple was misleading investors, which means all of Apple's board members should be fired and sent to prison and/or have their eyes held open and be forced to watch Al Gore's global warming movie over and over again for the rest of their lives. I'm sure that's where this is going. I just know it. The vultures will never leave me alone.

Meanwhile we're still trying to figure out which member of the board leaked the story to the Journal, and then got payback yesterday with the story about Tim Cook being the smartest guy in the world. Maybe you didn't notice, but both articles were written by the same two people at the Journal. They also co-bylined this article from June 5 which cited someone "familiar with the matter" of what we tell our board members (translation: one of our board members) saying the return of Jobso was imminent. Now here's the thing. One of these reporters is a regular tech beat reporter, but the other, Joann Lublin, has never covered us. So who is this Joann Lublin, and why does she suddenly show up covering Apple? What does she bring to the party? Turns out she's kind of a heavy hitter. She's an editor, and she's been at the Journal since 1971, which makes her, I don't know, about 60 years old? According to her bio, her area of expertise is management and business ethics, and she "frequently appears at conferences about corporate governance." If you're guessing that at these conferences she probably rubs elbows with lots of corporate directors, and that maybe in the course of her travels she connected with someone on our board, and that the reason she gets a byline is that she's the person to whom our rogue board member is leaking, well, we're on the same track here.

The question then becomes, who is Joann Lublin's source? Who on our board knows Joann Lublin? Who would leak my transplant and then, as payback, get a story placed about how great Tim Cook is and how he's probably going to get a seat on our board soon? Who on the board is in Tim's corner? Who wants to make Tim Cook our new CEO? Who would be so pissed off about having to cover up for me and keep quiet about my illness, and so worried about their own personal liability, that they would go to the Journal and trust Joann Lublin with a leaked story? Because you'd have to really, really, really trust someone to take this kind of risk.

Thing is, we keep looking at our list of directors, and we can't figure out who it could be. Then again, it may be that we set this all up ourselves, because we wanted to let the world know about my transplant, but I didn't want to just announce it myself because, I don't know, that would make too much sense or something. I don't know. I don't remember ever meeting Joann Lublin. Katie says she's never met her, either. So who knows? Anyway, Moshe is on the case, and he's got his dental tools. We'll figure it out.

Gawker, I need your help

2009-06-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

Those are words I never thought I'd write. But here's the deal. The idiots at Reuters have sent a secretary to stake out my house. It's sick. I'm calling on Gawker (or anyone else with some spare cycles) to go confront this birdbrain, take pictures, or take video (like with your super tasty new iPhone 3GS) and humiliate Reuters for being such assholes. Seriously, my fellow citizen journalists -- it's time to fight back! And would someone get Jim Goldman and his crew on this pronto? And bring me a chai latte at exactly 165 degrees? Jesus. Thank you.

The New York Times is friggin pathetic

2009-06-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

Seriously, this is just so lame. They got beat on the liver story by the Journal, and now they're desperately trying to put some spin of their own on the story to sort of redeem themselves. So they run this incredibly stupid piece suggesting that maybe I jumped the organ donor line. "Whenever someone rich and famous receives a transplant, suspicions inevitably arise about whether that person managed to jump to the head of the waiting list and take an organ that might have saved the life of somebody just as desperate but less glamorous," they say -- only to assert, a paragraph later, that every doctor they talked to says there is no reason to cheat because these days anyone can pretty much sign up for a liver and get one.

There's no evidence suggesting I cheated. Nobody is quoted in the story saying I cheated. There's not a shred of anything in the actual story about that. I mean, yeah, as they point out, if you're rich and you own a jet you can sign up at different places and zoom in on short notice. And you can buy a big friggin mansion and just camp out waiting for some motorcyclist to go splat and leave a nice juicy set of fresh organs behind. So what? This is news? As I've said before, what is the friggin point of being obscenely rich if it doesn't gain you some advantages in life? Why would anyone want to be rich if you didn't get anything out of it? Duh, New York Times. Think about it. Anyway, they've got no proof that I did anything wrong -- in fact they've got no actual information about me at all, but nevertheless they can run a photo of me and a headline that says, "A Transplant That Is Raising Many Questions." Oh really? It's raising many questions? Where? From whom? I haven't heard any, except from the newsroom of the lame ass New York Times.

Then, as if that's not bad enough, they pack right next to it an incredibly boring piece by our hero Brad Stone and his ladyboy sidekick Ashlee Vance about how Apple is so secretive, even though some pinhead academic guy says everybody else is trying to be more transparent. You can read it here if you want a good laugh. Thing is, these secrecy complaints have been around forever. It's not news. But let me offer a quick response on this: a) Yes, everybody else is talking about being more transparent, but mostly they're full of shit, and oh, by the way, Apple isn't everybody else; and b) last time I looked, we're kicking everyone's ass. So hey, Brad Stone and Ashlee Vance, did it not occur to you that maybe we know what we're doing? You know, there's this little thing called an "income statement." And something else called a "balance sheet." Have you heard of them? Worth taking a look sometimes. Ours is pretty impressive.

Fact is, what's really going on is the Times is pissed that they got scooped on LiverGate by their big rivals at the Wall Street Journal. According to the person we've got embedded at their Silicon Valley bureau, their boss Damon Darlin has been going apeshit ever since the Journal liver story broke on Friday at midnight. Now they're desperate to break some kind of second-day news on this.

For what it's worth, you want to know what Brad Stone was doing last week when the Journal was busy digging up the liver story? He was calling around to fellow hacks asking if they had galleys to some forthcoming Ben Mezrich novel about Facebook. According to Brad, Fortune had locked up some exclusive deal to run an excerpt of the novel -- and Brad wanted to pee on their shoes and ruin their exclusive by obtaining the galleys and running excerpts first. In other words: Classy. Now he's bothered by the fact that I don't want to tell the whole world every little detail about my liver. Seriously, what would you like to know, Brad? You want video of the operation?

I will tell you this about iLiver 2.0: It's nanoengineered, and it kicks ass. I wake up every morning feeling like Shaft, Superfly, James Bond and Kung Fu all put together. I'm bench-pressing twice my body weight, and I am so friggin ready to kick some low-rent tabloid hack wannabe ass that's it not even funny. So bring it, Brad Stone and you other jealous, sanctimonious gits at the New York Times. Seriously. Bring your A game, you clueless, classless motherfriggers. I will be alive long after every one of you is dead. I know this makes you crazy, but it's the truth. I'm back, bitches. Deal with it.

Clarification: I only have half of Pogue's liver

2009-06-21T07:52:00.000-07:00

He wanted me to have the whole thing. But I was like, David, seriously, I only need half of it, and he was like, "Seriously, man, after all you've done for me -- I mean have you seen my house? Have you seen where I live? Really, Steve, take the whole liver, I mean it." I insisted I only needed half, and he was like, "So as long as they've got me opened up, why don't you take a kidney while you're in there?" I told him I don't need a kidney, and he was like, "Just keep it as a backup. Have it frozen or something. Or how about a lobe from one of my lungs? Or a section of my large intestine. Just name it, you got it." In the end I only took the liver section. The photo shows him arriving at my house to thank me for letting him be my organ donor. Frankly, I understand where he's coming from. I'm not happy about needing a new liver, but I do feel great that I could let David even out his karma a little bit. Truth is, Pogue wasn't kidding when he said he owes me. Hell, even we're not even close to calling it even. Also, I have to tell you, the guy's liver is friggig primo. Very, very low mileage. Much better than the stuff you get waiting on some list. Much love, David Pogue.

Pogue's liver kicks ass

2009-06-20T09:34:00.000-07:00

Namaste, David. I owe you one.

Seriously ... where the hell am I?

2009-06-19T13:03:00.001-07:00

Feeling ... strange. Am I ... in heaven?

2009-06-18T06:58:00.000-07:00

Attention: Fake Steve is now Real Dan

2008-07-22T10:57:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,

Please check out my new blog, which I'm calling "Real Dan." (URL is realdanlyons.com/blog.) I really was hoping to just take the summer off and relax, but stuff keeps happening and I can't resist blogging about it.

I hope you'll bookmark the site and/or add Real Dan to your feed readers. Most of all I hope you'll start sending in your sicko ideas and strange photographs. The email for the new blog is simple to remember: realdanlyons@gmail.com. With luck we can all pick up where we left off, before Fake Steve decided to head for parts unknown. As my dear friend Bike Helmet Girl likes to say: Peace.

I'm sailing away

2008-07-09T10:51:00.001-07:00

My goodness I am so high it's not funny. Apologies for all the confusion lately and much love to the many folks who have written in asking, Dude, what the hell is going on with the blog? There's no big scandal or anything. It's just I tried to add a new permission for "Real Dan" to post some items on the Fake Steve blog and somehow "Real Dan" gained admin privileges and Fake Steve appears to have been wiped out and is unable to log back in. Not sure if this is Google screwing with me or if it's just the meds -- I'm thinking it's the latter. I'm so pumped full of chemicals right now that most of the time I can't remember my own name. Iulia and Natasha are looking into the Blogger situation but at this point it probably doesn't matter.

Just FYI, I'll be launching a new site under my own name in the near future. Should be next week. I'll announce it here as soon as it's ready and provide a link. I hope you'll come check it out.

Meanwhile I've compiled a "Greatest Hits" book for anyone who'd like a small keepsake of the FSJ blog. I did it using some Web site called Blurb. I made a huge version of this book for myself but it was way too expensive for regular civilians. So this morning I created a short version. It's 120 pages long and costs $25. You can get more info by clicking on the box in the right sidebar.

UPDATE: I've had a few requests for the bigger book that I created for my own personal use. So I've included a button for that too. Unfortunately, the two buttons look exactly the same. Just FYI -- the top button takes you to the shorter, less expensive version. The bottom button takes you to the longer, more expensive edition.

I'm sorry that the blog is fizzling out with yet more screwups and confusion. But I suppose it's somehow appropriate, too.

I know you'll miss FSJ. So will I. But rest assured, Fake Steve is not really going away. He's just taking on a new form. As Jimi Hendrix once said, If I don't see you no more in this world, I'll meet you on the next one, but don't be late.

Namaste to all. Much love. Peace out.

This site inspired me

2008-07-07T10:15:00.000-07:00

Fair enough, I'm having a bit of a rough day. But then I saw this page and I really cheered up. So much so that I went and looked at the rest of the Web site. It's truly moving, and I'm sharing it with you in the spirit of love.

If you have any favorite inspirational sites, please send them along. Much love.

Proof that God exists and has a sense of humor

2008-07-04T19:27:00.000-07:00

Jesse Helms and Bozo the Clown, dead on the same day. Nice work, O Great One. I honor the place where your sick sense of humor and my own become one.