The Lint Screen

Tag: iPod

  • He Was “For The Rest of Us”

    Steve Jobs has left the building. He is no longer Mr. Apple. While this day had to eventually come, it doesn’t make it any easier to take.

    No other business leader has been such a visionary, and no other company is such a reflection of its inspirational leader. Jobs is Apple, Apple is Jobs, and we will see if the great company can continue going forward without him at the helm.

    I suspect it will. After all, Jobs stocked the pond.

    In its early days, back when IBM ruled the PC world, Apple was positioned as “the computer for the rest of us.” Us were those who could care less how the damn thing worked. Us were the technophobic crowd who merely wanted the magic without knowing how the trick was done. Us were the ones who wanted to do a task with one keystroke instead of three, and wanted to make it possible for typography to be beautiful.

    That’s what Jobs and Apple gave us: easy to use computers and devices that did what needed to be done, while doing some other cool things, all while looking pretty cool.

    I spend most days hunched over an Apple laptop. I listen to an iPod on foot, in the car and on the plane. I talk on an iPhone and surf the web with it, too. I rarely resist the siren call of an Apple store and lust for all the goodies within (MacBook Air, I’m stalking you). And, of course, I’ve been a fan of Apple’s advertising from the start.

    Aside from those couple years when Jobs got das boot from Apple and created NeXT and turbo-boosted Pixar, the company was a reflection of the man in jeans and a black turtleneck. A man who is sick, but still generously shared his wisdom a few years back with this inspiring commencement address.

    A man who was our modern day Edison with his name listed on 313 Apple patents. A man who thought differently, and asked us to think different. A true American legend, this Steve Jobs. He will be missed. Enjoy.

  • Inaccuracy Found On Internet!

    The internet was created over 20 years ago, providing a canvas for millions of websites and billions of pages. In its history, there was one thing you could always count on with 100% certainty– absolute truth and accuracy.

    That may no longer be the case!

    Sir Reginald Highphatt, a British scientist, recently made a startling discovery: a fact that was in fact not a fact. “I was chagrined,” said the esteemed learned man, “I was simply astounded and, dare I say, flabbergasted to discover an inaccuracy.”

    What was the falsehood? An alleged playlist from Sir Winston Churchill’s iPod.

    Was he really into Wham, Steppenwolf and Jay-Z?
    Was he really into Wham, Steppenwolf and Jay-Z?
    “When I first encountered this, I thought it seemed rather suspect, after all, Churchill was hardly a music lover. He once attended an orchestra performance and had all its members slaughtered to, I quote, ‘stop the infernal caterwonking!’ But what really titillated my investigatory senses was the first three choices on the Prime Minister’s alleged playlist: ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ by Wham, ‘The Pusher’ by Steppenwolf and ‘Run This Town’ by Jay-Z. I had a hard time believing Churchill could be into Steppenwolf, and especially not ‘The Pusher’— ‘Magic Carpet Ride’, maybe, but the extended play of ‘The Pusher’ is for the most ardent of fans only.”

    And so, Sir Highphatt began some extensive research and discovered a few startling things:
    1. Churchill died before the invention of the iPod
    2. See above
    3. Ditto

    “As much as it pains me to say,” the downcast scientist said, “I’m afraid we will no longer have 100% assurance that everything you read on the internet is the God’s honest truth and beyond reproach. Pity, that. I use it as research tool for all my papers and books.”

    Be aware: some things on the internet may not be true!
    Yipes!