Apple

Terrible news. The word on the e-street is that Apple’s super-secretive tech-heads aren’t just slaving away on a new flat screen iDiotBox. They’re also attempting to kill off a wonderfully slapstick glitch in the company’s existing devices.

‘Autocorrect’ is an iPhone function designed to correct spelling mistakes and complete par-finished words. Often, however, it demonstrates a delightfully human tendency to stuff up.

Over the past year, it has become infamous for transforming innocuous missives about holiday plans and office schedules into surreal ejaculations about Pussy Hats (instead of Pizza Huts), stroking offs (instead of stroganoffs), backyard transsexuals (instead of trampolines) and earthquake titty scales (instead of the usual Richter models).

Continue reading "The joy of autosex, I mean autolicks, I mean autocorrect" »

When it comes to being cool, Apple have had their highs and their lows. Highs: their “Big Brother” ad in 1984 and their funky early-to-mid 2000s iPod campaign. Lows: Well, look at the photo below.

A US fashion blogger has unearthed an Apple attempt at a fashion line circa 1986. It’s not pretty, and you can see more of those photos here. But whaddya reckon Punchers? Is it Apple’s fault their models look so ridiculous? Or is it just the ‘80s?

It’s Wednesday. What’s on your mind, folks?

Your workplace, circa 2000. Employee: “I’ve got an idea for an entertainment device that can hold an entire music collection. It is beautifully designed, fits in your shirt pocket and can retail for under $500. What do you think?”

Chief: “We appreciate your input Steve, but it doesn’t quite synergise with our six-month strategic outcomes moving forward”. What would have happened if, ten years ago, someone came up with the idea for the iPod in your workplace?

Would it have got up? Would it even have got past the initial pitch? And if it did get considered for development, would the original, brilliantly simple concept have ended up as the final product, or would something like this have happened …

Continue reading "There’s a fine line between genius and prickdom" »

This should be quite successful.

Take a look at this line of Steve Jobs action figures by WHOA TOYS. They’ve been pinging around the interwebs. Before you say “too soon”, the line came out just after The Man resigned.

We often hear people ask why we don’t idolise scientists and inventors over sportsmen. But I think it’s nice Jobs has received so much acclaim for his accomplishments. What do you think? And it’s Tuesday. What’s on your mind, folks?

After 30 years of making the world a happier place, Apple co-founder and chairman Steve Jobs died yesterday, age 56. The world mourns the man some have called the Edison of our time.

People around the world took to social networks yesterday to express their condolences. Bill Gates tweeted: “I will miss Steve immensely”. Tony Hawk said: “Steve Jobs was the man”. Barack Obama’s statement, “There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented,” got retweet after retweet. 

While this was happening, Wikileaks was also tweeting about Steve Jobs. Except in doing so, the organisation was committing a journalistic crime taken straight from the playbook of the News of the World. You wouldn’t even read what they published on TMZ.

Continue reading "Wikileaks does a News of the World job on Steve Jobs" »

Steve Jobs has died at the age 56. The technology mogul who founded the Apple Company with childhood friend Steve Wozniak in 1976 has faced considerable health problems over the past few years, including a battle with pancreatic cancer in 2004 and a liver transplant in 2009.

His colleagues at Apple have posted a warm message of farewell to their founder, paying tribute to his creative genius: “The world has lost an amazing human being,” they said.

Jobs has been a hot topic here at The Punch in recent weeks. Simon Sharwood claimed he made the world a happier place. Yesterday Dan argued against the seemingly addictive Jobs business model.

Continue reading "A heartfelt goodbye to the Apple of our eye" »

In just a few short days, four giant demons astride winged, skeletal steeds are expected to swoop from the sky and hurl every man, woman and child into the dark chasm of the infinite.

“Curse you, Apple!” the terrified masses will scream as CEO Tim Cook desperately points out the improved 8-megapixel camera and upgraded dual-core processor.

But they won’t have it, those Apple customers. They wanted an iPhone 5. Instead, they got an iPhone 4S and now everybody has to watch as palm trees and baby lambs are cast into fiery oblivion.

Continue reading "We’re all suckers for a good marketing ploy" »

Another week, another Apple product feted as the Second Coming in gadget form. Wait, hang on a minute. . .

Apple are pretty good at hype, but it seems like they’ve been a little too good at it this week. Apple fan-boys and -girls (and shareholders) were roundly disappointed this morning with the launch of a slightly improved iPhone 4, the 4S. They were let down after whipping themselves up into a frenzy of iPhone 5 speculation over the past week.

But give it 9 days, when the smartphone is set to be released here, and you’re sure to see Apple-maniacs queueing from one end of your nearest capital city to the other to get their hands on the new smartphone. Their existing year-old iPhones will just get tossed. That’s a feature of Apple products. Your latest whizz-bang gizmo is always just a few short months away from being made obsolete by a product with only slightly more whizz and a pinch more bang.

Continue reading "An Apple a day, then Jobs wants you to chuck it away" »

Steve Jobs has quit as Apple CEO. This is sad news for everybody who fell in love with gadgets that were simple to use, and enormously fun to play with.

The secret of Steve Jobs’ success is making customers deeply happy. Steve Jobs changed the world with a manic insistence that his customers must be so happy with his products that they want to buy them again and again.

You’d think every entrepreneur on the globe would do likewise, but no-one cares about customers like Jobs. And that’s why he has changed the world.

Continue reading "How Steve Jobs made the world a happier place" »

Happy birthday to Apple co-founder, CEO and all-round mega-rich guy, Steve Jobs. He was born on this day in 1955.

And it’s Thursday at The Punch. What’s on your mind? Share it here.

As entertaining as the game was, the best action in yesterday’s Super Bowl was off the field.

In the second quarter, Motorola ran a one minute ad which parodied Ridley Scott’s bold, apocalyptic 1984 Apple ad.

In Scott’s ad, Apple seemed to be implying that the world of personal computing, circa the actual year 1984, was dominated by a Big Brother-like power (IBM, anyone?) more reminiscent of Orwell’s fictional 1984.

Continue reading "Motorola taunts Apple: “Who’s Big Brother now?”" »

Sometimes it’s tough being a celebrity journalist. Not only do you have to constantly travel to Prague and party with Ben Affleck but you also have to do radio interviews.

Earlier this week I was chatting to a Queensland radio station at about 7.30am when all of a sudden my mobile phone just cut out. Just immediately ceased to function, as if Philip Nitschke had caught it in a bad mood.

I must admit I found this lack of reception strange, given that I was standing in a street in the middle of Sydney—as opposed to, say, Hitler’s bunker.

Continue reading "My iPhone is great - except at making calls" »

Remember all the things you learned at school: the periodic table and calculus and Egyptian pharaohs and dangling participles and the causes of the First World War.

Now think about what you learned at school that is actually useful in your everyday life today.  Excluding obvious basics such as reading, writing and arithmetic, I’d nominate two things, neither of which I imagined would turn out to be so handy.  The first is touch typing.  The second is what the teacher announced in the opening class of Grade 11 economics: wants are unlimited but resources are limited.

It’s something I think about all the time.  For example, I like to imagine that if I had an iPad with The New Yorker application on it, I’d be Perfectly Happy for the Rest of My Life.  Sadly though, I predict that soon after, there’d be a strong hankering for a stylish red leather pouch for said iPad. 

Continue reading "iWant therefore iAm" »

In an old episode of MASH, the doctors are talking about missing television, in particular missing watching Milton Berle at night with their wives. Charles, arch conservative who likes old wine and even older music, says television is a passing phase.

Winchester wasn’t the only one who poo-poohed the arrival of a new medium of entertainment, nor was he the last.

Well, its de ja vu all over again. There’s a new gadget on the market, the doubters and sceptics are doing their thing and technological evangelists are doing theirs.

Continue reading "I hope I didn’t buy a $1000 calculator with WiFi" »

Call me a miserable old piece of shit but I reckon it’s pretty weird that on the same day that some of Australia’s most committed virgins are queuing up in the cold outside the Apple Store for the launch of the iPad, in China, they’re queuing up on the roof to kill themselves at the factory that manufactures them.

If you want to know the story of globalisation, this one surely will do. On George St, Sydney, extra staff have been called in at the Apple Store to cope with the demand as hundreds of cashed-up geeks gather in a display of commodity fetishism which will hopefully be the subject of formal study by some sardonic anthropologist from the developing world.

Meanwhile, not that far north at the Foxconn factory in China’s Hunan province, nets have been installed on the roof after an 11th employee hurled himself to his death as the workers struggle to meet a deadline which has been created by our demand.

Continue reading "I’m dying to get one of those iPads they’re dying to make" »

A new messiah arrived in the US over the Easter weekend, ready to save the world’s flailing print media industry.

Sandal-less and sleek, it was, of course, Steve Jobs’ new fantasy tablet, the wildly anticipated, possibly revolutionary, definitely state of the art, iPad thingymajiggy. And America threw a bonza welcome party for its latest chosen one. Australia will have to wait a month to throw theirs.

Apple sold 700,000 iPads in two days, with 300,000 plucked from shelves and UPS men on Saturday, the first day of sales. By any standard that’s a massive take-off; even by Apple standards. The now ubiquitous iPhone sold 200,000 on its first day in stores in 2007, a third less than its plus-sized cousin.

But it was the media laying the palms for the iPad’s arrival more than the shoppers.

Continue reading "Will the iPad save the news?" »

The one advantage that paper-based magazines have had on their electronic counterparts is usability and look. The ability to turn the page and take in the beauty of a well-designed magazine is something that most web sites can’t match.

Portability is the other area where magazines have had the edge. Carrying them around is lot easier than a standard computer.

As such, many have scoffed at Rupert Murdoch’s aim to get people to pay for digital content. After all, lots of online content is currently free and there’s been nowhere near enough ‘value-add’ to warrant people paying for content. However, the launch of Apple’s iPad tablet could well be the game changer that proves Murdoch right. With their new ultra-portable tablet, Apple can change the publishing industry to the same degree that they’ve changed the music sector.

Continue reading "Why the iPad could be the saviour of paid content" »

The first thing that came to mind on seeing pictures of Apple boss Steve Jobs with his new iPad device this morning was Trigger Happy TV, the British skit show whose signature sketch involved the star taking hysterically loud phone calls at inappropriate times on a three-foot telephone.

“Hello?” he’d suddenly shout in a full cinema, brandishing the prop. “No, I’m at a movie. It’s rubbish.”

Let’s not kid ourselves. The iPad is a laptop computer that doesn’t fold. But its appeal – or potential – lies in the content you’ll be able to access from it at a touch, once you hand over your $560 for the basic model when it ships worldwide two months from now.

Continue reading "The future of media is a comically oversized iPhone?" »