Steve Jobs Briefly Speaks Out

Oh, Steve Jobs. I never know whether I should love you or loathe you. It's usually a little bit of both. And it doesn't really sway much in one direction or the other. There are equal amounts in each part of both love and hate that I feel for you. The email exchange that you had with a senior at Long Island University exemplifies these feelings, though I think I end up a little more on the love side this time.

According to the gawking folks over there at Gawker, a Long Island University senior, a one 22-year old Chelsea Kate Isaacs, had been given an assignment by her journalism professor to cover the university's plan to give all incoming students an iPad. She "...wanted to get a quote from Apple about the use of iPads in academic settings". That seems fairly reasonable. So she called Apple's PR department six times and left six messages and got zero responses. For some reason, that seems to have surprised her.

I don't know what Apple's reason for not returning her calls was, but I'm guessing it has something to do with them being fairly busy. Aside from that, I'm sure that she could scour the Innerwebs and find a quote from Apple about how wonderful they think their iPads are and how they will be immensely valuable in a scholastic setting. In fact, I'm positive she could find their take on it somewhere out there. If there's one thing that Apple can do well, it's speak highly of themselves.

Ms. Isaacs then decided that she would just email the man himself, so she sent an email off to Steve Jobs. Part of the email that she sent included the following sentence: "Mr. Jobs, I humbly ask why Apple is so wonderfully attentive to the needs of students, whether it be with the latest, greatest invention or the company's helpful customer service line, and yet, ironically, the Media Relations Department fails to answer any of my questions which are, as I have repeatedly told them, essential to my academic performance." Good God. And I thought that I was wordy.

That was one sentence. And really? She repeatedly told them that answering her question was "essential" to her academic performance? Not good. She's going to need to learn a little bit about how to phrase things when she's annoyed. What do they care if she gets a good grade or not? Does she have an iPod? That's good enough for them.

And it turns out, Steve Jobs didn't give a fat rat's ass about her grade. And he let her know it. In his reply, which was about one-tenth the length of the sentence above, he wrote, "Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade. Sorry". Guess what? She didn't like that very much. I, on the other hand, liked it very much.

So, having not learned anything about brevity, she responded to Steve Jobs with: "I never said that your goal should be to "help me get a good grade." Rather, I politely asked why your media relations team does not respond to emails, which consequently, decreases my chances of getting a good grade. But, forget about my individual situation; what about common courtesy, in general —- if you get a message from a client or customer, as an employee, isn't it your job to return the call? That's what I always thought. But I guess that's not one of your goals." Wow. She's a talker, that one. Gotta mouth like a motorboat. But which one is it, cupcake? Emails or phone calls? Clearly, your emails are being responded to, by Steve Jobs no less!

And he continued to respond by explaining the realistic nature of the situation over there at Apple when he told her, "Nope. We have over 300 million users and we can't respond to their requests unless they involve a problem of some kind. Sorry." It's just not possible. The mathematics are not such that they can tend to every individual who wants a quote that they can find on the Internet. But do you think that was good enough for her? Hardly. So what do you think that she did? She wrote him another lengthy response, that is correct. She told him, "You're absolutely right, and I do meet your criteria for being a customer who deserves a response: 1. I AM one of your 300 million users. 2. I DO have a problem; I need answers that only Apple Media Relations can answer. Now, can they kindly respond to my request (my polite and friendly voice can be heard in the first 5 or 10 messages in their inbox). Please, I am on deadline." For cryin' out loud.

Perhaps he should have told this simpleton that when he says "a problem of some kind", he means a problem with a freaking Apple product. Not a problem in general. It's not a suicide hotline or anything like that. But she might want to find one after his final response to her. It was short. It was direct. It was kind of all sorts of awesome. It read: "Please leave us alone."

I don't think that this has anything to do with him being Steve Jobs and thinking that he's better than everyone else (regardless as to whether or not he really does think that, which I'm guessing that he does on occasion). I think it has to do with her not understanding how the real world works and how it's not something that a company with 300 million users can be bothered with. I can only imagine how self-important her voicemail messages that she left were. No wonder he asked her to leave them alone. Besides, what's she going to do? Buy a Zune?

If you'd like to read the initial email that Ms. Isaacs sent to Mr. Jobs, you can do so at the link that I provided to Gawker above. It's lengthy. It's self-important. It makes it clear that she has a deadline. And from how it reads, it seems to indicate she might want to spend just a little more time in those journalism classes. She gets a little muddled toward the end. Hey, I'm just saying! Look, I'm far from a professional journalist, but at least I don't expect the world to bow down to me because I possess fairly adept typing skills and an Internet connection.

I'd also like to mention how incredibly happy it made me to be able to write a post where I could use several "vintage" pictures of Mr. Jobs and of Apple products. It's awesome. It's really hard to squeeze things like that into posts about moronic politicians and stories about things going awry when they involve a penis.

Apple Varieties

Braeburn: Fruit is medium to large, red striped with an orange red blush on a yellow background. The flesh is pale, cream colored, crisp and juicy with a pleasant subacid tart flavor. The overall flavour is sharp and refreshing but with a good balance of sweetness - and never sugary. There is occasionally a hint of pear-drops to the flavour of a new-season Braeburn. Fruits store for four months. An ideal dessert apple fresh or baked, add Braeburn's spicy-sweet flavor to cobblers, tarts, cakes & pies.






Granny Smith: It originated in Australia in 1868 from a chance seedling propagated by Maria Smith, where the name "Granny Smith" comes from. Granny Smith apples are a light speckled green in color, though some may have a pink blush. They are crisp, juicy, tart apples which are excellent for both cooking and eating out of the hand. They also are favored for salads because the slices do not brown as quickly as other varieties. A Granny Smith Apple usually has a slightly more sour, sharp flavor than other apples.





Jonagold: An apple that is both tart and sweet. It’s firm texture makes it one of the world’s most preferred eating apples. It's a cultivar apple that is a cross between a Golden Delicious and a Jonathon.
















Golden Delicious: A cultivar apple that is NOT related to the Red Delicious. Very sweet flavor - eating, salads and apple sauce. Tends toward bruising and shriveling.















Cortland: A cultivar apple that came from the McIntosh and the Ben Davis (a Southern apple). It has a very white flesh and is a good dessert apple. Tangy Taste - snacking, salads, and baking.












Empire: Firm, juicy, crunchy, sweet. They come in September through October and will keep until January. They were developed in 1945 from Red Delicious and McIntosh. Eating and salads








Ginger Gold: Starts out a very pale green, though, if left on the tree, will ripen to a soft yellow with a slightly waxy appearance. The first yellow apple to ripen in the Fall. Doesn't discolor when sliced. Sweet but mildly tart - eating, baking and salads.










Honey Crisp: Tremendously crispy with a real snap. Big, juicy and sweet/tart - great eating apple. But good in the kitchen too.















Ida Red: A cross between an Wagnerapfel and the Jonathan. The idared has a white flesh with a firm body, and generally considered to be tart and juicy, highly flavored-eating and baking for cakes, sauces and pies. Harvested from Sept to mid-October and can be kept til the end of January.







Jonamac: The Jonamac apple is a cross between a Jonathan and McIntosh. The eating quality combines the rich flavor of McIntosh with some of the spiciness of Jonathan. Excellent for cooking, sauce or eating out of hand. When baking, the slices tend to be melting and juicy.








McIntosh: Firm and crisp, distinct aroma, red/green skin. Cooks soft and smooth, also a popular eating apple and great for cider. Every McIntosh apple has a direct lineage to a single tree discovered in 1811 by John McIntosh on his farm in Dundela, a hamlet located in Dundas County in the Canadian province of Ontario, near Morrisburg.











Macoun: A cross between the MacIntosh and the Arkansas black varieties. The skin is a dark red with a purplish flush. Its very firm flesh is juicy and snow white, tasting sweet with a hint of berry. A superior eating apple.
Northern Spy: Its skin has green and red stripes when ripe and produces fairly late in the season (mid to late October). The white flesh is juicy, crisp and mildly sweet with a rich, aromatic subacid flavor. Its characteristic flavor is more tart than most popular varieties, and its flesh is harder/crunchier than most. It is a good dessert apple and pie apple, that is also used for cider. Further, the Northern Spy is also an excellent apple for storage, as it tends to last longer due to late maturation and lower sugar content.
Red Delicious: The most widely grown apple in the world. It was overgrown in the 1990's and became degraded. Due to the better storage and transportation techniques we have now, other varieties are more available and the Red Delicious has lost it's popularity. Sweet, simple flavor. Juicy and sweet taste - eating and salads















Rome: Firm mildly tart flavor - Good-quality Rome apples will be firm with smooth and clean skin. The coloring is a brilliant and almost solid shade of red with white lenticels - natural tiny white dots that allow the apple to "breathe". The best apple for baking, but also good eaten fresh & in salads.














Fuji - A Japanese cultivar that was developed in 1932 and brought to the market in 1969 and came to the US in the 1980's. It has a dense flesh that is sweeter and crispier than many other apple varieties. Although Fujis perform well when baked or frozen, they are perhaps best suited for eating fresh or in salads. These apples are extremely flavorful and super sweet. Fujis are very juicy and crisp and are not in the least bit mealy.






















Gala - Excellent for fresh eating. Has a mild, sweet flavor. A very pretty, medium size, conical to round fruit with yellow skin patterned with bright orange-red. Firm, juicy, fine textured, yellow white flesh. are fairly resistant to bruising and are sweet, grainy, with a mild flavour and a thinner skin than most apples. They are also considered to be a very soft eating apple due to their lack of crispiness, well-suited for denture wearers.



All about apple varieties:

http://www.allaboutapples.com/varieties/index.htm

Apple Tips:

• Rub cut apples with lemon juice to keep slices and wedges creamy white for hours.
  Store apples in a plastic bag in the refrigerator away from strong-odored foods such as cabbage or onions to prevent flavor transfer.



• Apples are the second most important of all fruits sold in the supermarket, ranking next to bananas.



• Tens of thousands of varieties of apples are grown worldwide.



• The history of apple consumption dates from Stone Age cultivation in areas we now know as Austria and Switzerland.



• In ancient Greece, tossing an apple to a girl was a traditional proposal of marriage; catching it was acceptance.



• Folk hero Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman) did indeed spread the cultivation of apples in the United States. He knew enough about apples, however, so that he did not distribute seeds, because apples do not grow true from seeds. Instead, he established nurseries in Pennsylvania and Ohio.



• Three medium-sized apples weigh approximately one pound.



• One pound of apples, cored and sliced, measures about 4 1/2 cups.



• Purchase about 2 pounds of whole apples for a 9-inch pie.



• One large apple, cored and processed through a food grinder or processor, makes about 1 cup of ground apple.

Animations

Slowly but surely I'm learning new tricks with the iPad I inherited. In addition to drawings, I've now figured out how to create little animations, something I used to do years ago with a Gif builder program, though those ran on a continuous loop and were really images, whereas these are mini-movies, something I've wanted to create since I was small. They're crude, but I'm just learning how to use the software. Here are four: "Paul's World Cup"; "Music"; "Catness"; "Butterfly" (the very first one I did). Enjoy!

Paul's World Cup

Music

Catness

Butterfly

Congrats to C: First App, TrendTalk, at iTunes Store!

I finally can announce it: Congratulations to my partner C (CAC-IT!), whose first official iPhone/iPad/iPadTouch app, for MBF TrendTalk, is now available for free download at Apple's iTunes store!

This customized project required a tremendous amount of work, but C accomplished it, and now everyone with access to iTunes and three of Apple's best-selling products will be able to stay on top of the worlds of green fashion and design, by following one of the world's leaders in this area, MBF Trend Consulting!

Here's what the TrendTalk app looks like on the iTunes store:

And here's the link for you to download the app for free:



Click on the link to download and urge everyone you know to download it as well!

Then Don't Do That

One of my favorite jokes has always been the one where the guy goes to the doctor and tells him that it hurts when he does this. Naturally, the doctor tells him, "Then don't do that." It's a classic. A timeless classic. Granted, it's hard to say why it's funny, but it just is. And whatever the reason, it doesn't seem to have stopped Apple from using a variation of that theme as a remedy for poor iPhone 4 reception.

Here's the deal: The new iPhone 4 came out the other day. And by all reports, the thing is pretty darned cool. But of course, there are always going to be some glitches or some things that don't work just quite the way that you'd expect them (or like them) to work. And according to the astonishingly still in business CNN, one of those things is "...that holding the phone by its metal edge causes mobile reception to suffer." See, because Apple gets all wacky cool with their technology, they've wrapped the antenna on the iPhone 4 all the way around the edge of the phone. Thus, if you hold the phone the way a normal person holds a phone, you're going to see your reception go all to hell because the antenna is being blocked by your big ol' mitt there.

One guy decided to ask Apple's Grand Poobah about this problem. A chap named Amar wrote the following email to Steve Jobs: "Hi, Mr. Jobs. I love my new iPhone4 (nice work) but when I put my hand on the steel bands I lose all reception. It appears to be a common issue. Any plans to fix this? Thanks, Aram." Nice inquiry. Short. To the point. Complimentary. All of the things that you're going to want to have in an email in order to better your chances of a response. What's that? His response? "Just avoid holding it in that way." Wait. That's it? What now?

That's the response. The modern adaptation of "then don't do that". What exactly does he mean by that? The metal bands go all the way around the phone. How are you supposed to avoid touching them? I'm unclear as to how you're supposed to hold the thing if you're not touching the sides. How would you hold any phone without touching the sides? I'm not so sure that a great piece of technology is something that is only great when it's being held in a certain manner. Steve Jobs tends to pride himself on making the perfect piece of technology, so what is the deal with this?

Did the Apple folks really think that people wouldn't notice or complain? It's a worthy complaint. It's a less than worthy answer of "then don't do that". That's pretty weak. When you have a phone like the iPhone 4, you're going to be concerned with your data speeds and your reception ability. To have to hold your phone a certain way seems vaguely reminiscent of putting tin foil on an aerial TV antenna and then having to hold it with one hand as you stand on one foot. Don't get me wrong. I realize that there wasn't enough room in that teeny-tiny little phone to shove in an antenna as well and so they had to wrap it around the edges so that it would fit in there. I get that. But when it's a matter of getting reception or not getting reception, what say you sacrifice a millimeter of thickness and cram that thing in there, OK? I'm not real thrilled about paying a couple of hundred dollars for something that I have to hold a certain way in order for it to work at an optimal level of performance.

Bloomsday + Congrats to the Grads + Buffett's Giveaway + Krugman/Cassandra

It's Bloomsday! "STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air..." and you know, or know of, the rest. (If not, you can find the entire, remarkable novel, Ulysses, one of the greatest ever written in the English or any other language, here.) You can hear Joyce himself reading from it here, at Bedeutung Blog.

To commemorate today there's the annual Lilac Bloomsday Run, as well as the Bloomsday Festival in Dublin and elsewhere. Apple, steadily gaining a reputation for prudery regarding its iPhone and iPad applications (and the anti-porn comments of its founder-guru), has decided to reinstate Throwaway House's Ulysses Seen app, created by which it had previously censored because of its depiction of partial nudity (an imagined goddess's breasts, Buck Mulligan's penis, egads!)

I haven't seen this app, but given how the entire novel ends, I wonder if that was bowdlerized too. To Apple's credit, they also reinstated a graphic novel version of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which features a strip of a male couple kissing, after having heavily censored it.  Something tells me neither Joyce nor Wilde would have been surprised.

^^^

The university's graduation doesn't officially occur until this weekend, but final grades are posted, so I think I can post without caution:

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THIS YEAR'S GRADUATES IN THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE CLASSES OF 2010!

Some of the seniors (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and lit scholars writers all) at the annual Bowling challenge (fiction won, creative nonfiction finished second, and I bowled with poetry this year). Congratulations to all the graduating senior major and minors, and to the other undergraduate students finishing up this week that I taught (including those in the Conceptual Art/Writing class--you were great!), advised or worked with over the last few years!

Congratulations also to one of my graduate fiction thesis advisees, Roya Khatiblou, whose magnificent manuscript received a 2009-10 Distinguished Thesis Award! It was exciting to work with Roya, and with the other graduating fiction students I advised this year, whom I'd also taught in the past, Jennifer Companik and Wendy Schoua Musto.

Lastly, to all the students in the novella class (The Theory and Practice of Fiction, Winter-Spring), congratulations on finishing your novellas! It was a huge, speeded up, often stressful undertaking, and you accomplished in 4 1/2 months what it takes many writers a year or more do but you've all completed your little books, and deserve praise for having done so!



^^^


Warren Buffett is giving away 99% of his wealth. That's right--nearly all of it, to charity. And none is going towards endowments, but towards organizations with current pressing needs. He says that he can do this and still maintain his current lifestyle, as can his very wealthy children. This giveaway is part a push that he and Bill and Melinda Gates are making for hundreds of superrich Americans to pledge at least 50% of their wealth to charity. Their target is for their fellow billionaires to give away about $600 billion, thus changing the landscape of charity in this country.

Of course the government could solve countless problems simply by reinstating the estate tax, closing all current tax loopholes and strengthening penalties for tax avoidance, and levying another hefty tax on these folks, putting the money, which would far exceed Buffett's and the Gates' target, towards pressing national needs, of which there are many, as opposed to the idiosyncratic focuses of the superrich, but the larger idea, of giving away this almost unimaginable wealth for the benefit of others, especially at a time of several national economic crisis and of a massive gulf between the rich and the rest of the country, is admirable. Let's see how many take Buffett and the Gateses up on their challenge.

Speaking of unemployment and the struggles people are facing, some of those in power, with great wealth (c. $75 million) at their disposal, still think that people on unemployment don't want to work. It's beyond crazy, really. I doubt even Warren Buffett could get through to these people. But he or someone like him should try, since they only listen to their own.

^^^

Ironically, as Buffett is calling for this extraordinary personal charity, there's Paul Krugman (Princeton Professor, New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate), a/k/a Cassandra, continually trying to address the terrible economic policies now sweeping the US and its major international peers, which have been gripped by deficit frenzy; against the current, he keeps sounding the anti-austerity alarm. Between the Group of 20 and the US Administration and Congress, the mania for cutting deficits through fiscal austerity and tight monetary policies has now become an article of faith.  But Krugman and a few others keep warning against this neo-Hooverism and the dangers it's already sparking. Is anyone (but his loyal readers), especially those controlling the national and global checkbook, listening?  Do they care? Is there any way to make them care?