Is the #Apple goose cooked? #iPhone5s AND #iPhone5c? What?

To all the Apple folks: Is Steve Jobs turning over in his grave at the marketing idea of introducing a new iPhone and a cut-rate model of said phone at the same time?

I just don't get this idea, which seems totally true.

I'm not Jobs (or I'd be dead and unable to write this, even from my iCoffin) and I'm not current Apple CEO Tim Cook, Jobs' anointed heir. And, while I don't totally hate Apple smugness, or the smugness of at least some latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, iPhone-using, Meyer-lemon-squeezing neoliberals, I do dislike stereotyped versions of all that enough to bust Apple in the chops when the chance comes along.

And, I know Apple doesn't normally do something like this. Most tech companies don't. Imagine Jeff Bezos introducing a new version of the Kindle Fire, then at the same techie meeting, also saying, "Hey, we also have this cut-rate Kindle Smoulder." Nope, nope, nope.

I'm not a financial analyst, but, given that many have been bearish on Apple in general and Cook in particular recently,  I'd call this a black mark —bet-hedging worries usually don't play well with Wall Street, I think.

That said, given that Apple fanboys and fangirls easily can be punked, I suppose they'll find a way to spin this news. That includes even alleged skeptics who have done similarly before. Right, Chris Mooney?

Meanwhile, per blog posts I've written involving Apple's background in online infowars and the dark side of the Internet, things like a fingerprint log-in code? First, Apple's not read the science that fingerprints aren't quite so unique. Second, I wouldn't trust that Apple wouldn't save that biometric information elsewhere, no matter what it claims. Third, I wouldn't trust at all that the NSA wouldn't then try to get it.

Sadly, other "mobile device" companies will probably pick up on this horrible idea.

Some top #SteveJobs jokes

Update, Oct. 5, 2011: Steve Jobs is dead. Of course, this post, written on the day and day after he resigned as Apple CEO, is hashtagged and getting plenty of hits. Jobs was a marketing genius, if nothing else, even if his creativity level took a back seat during his second Apple stint. That said, is his death like that of John Lennon's? Well, maybe in that both were overmourned.

One obit, reaching for historic gravitas, compared Jobs to Thomas Edison. On the side of myth, I'd say that's about right. Edison's myth was different: Many of "his" inventions were created by assistants in Edison's labs.

Is it the degree of authoritarianism, even by modern CEO standards? Is it the personal marketing intermingled with the product marketing? I personally don't "get" what has driven the Steve Jobs hagiography. That said, going beyond Adbusters types, I can be non-commercial without trying to commercialize myself by the back door, including thinking that Apple is somehow anti-capitalist.

So, in doing an irreverent take on the cultic reverence for Jobs and his self-marketed image, I offer a mix of one-liners and zingers, at least some of them with serious thought behind the zing.

OH, and  do NOT forget your WWJobsD bracelets! Since we're already being told that Jobs would support "Occupy Wall Street" (I kind of doubt it), we will surely be bombarded with his alleged wisdom in the future.

The iCoffin! Stylish Apple coloring.

Speaking of marketing, branding and cultic angles, I have no doubt people are already Photoshopping the silver Apple logo onto the lids of black walnut Mac AirBook caskets, Photoshopping Apple aficionados crying silver Apple logo tears and more. And, to beat them to the punch ... on the left, I introduce the iCoffin! No word if you can jailbreak this baby, or if it's one size fits all. And, that's the Classic version. The iCoffin Touch? You touch the Apple logo to scroll through all the different iTunes-recorded eulogies. Press the center of the logo, and a holographic Jobs "shuffles"! The Nano iCoffin? It cryogenically preserves Steve Jobs for re-integration as an Apple iBorg!

And, speaking of iBorgs and hagiography, get a load of a worshiper's art, at left. That MacBook is probably worth more disassembled than it was put together.

Speaking of the funeral, will we have a funeral as hagiographic as that of Ayatollah Khomenei? It wouldn't surprise me, the way I see people talking in semi-salvific terms about Jobs. Speaking of that, will we have Sevener and Twelver Appleholics battling over the location of The Hidden Imam Jobs? People fighting to touch the casket? The hem of Jobs' black burial turtleneck? Hoping for magical healing powers?

I guess we won't,  if it's going to be private .. but ... I bet somebody arranges at least one "surrogate funeral," or wake, or something.

Will we get a Steve Jobs funeral iPhone/iPad app? Maybe there's one called iMourn. When you launch the app, a Chinese worker at Foxconn gets Tasered into crying. That would be followed by iMourn2, where Chinese workers at fake Apple stores go into fake mourning, which may be happening. Or worse, they actually are mourning as much as Appleholics here in America.

And, it's nice to see the cultists doing most my Photoshopping work for me. I still haven't gotten around to Photoshopping Apples being crapped in the punchbowl.

Anyway, if not the iMourn, we could have the iDie, an app that connects you to the Hemlock Society.

And, will Apple release a "Steve Jobs' favorites" music list available for iTunes download? Will we get his Illinois commencement speech and other words of Jobs' wisdom also available for download? Since others compare him to John Lennon, that music list would include "While My iPod Gently Weeps," right? Snark aside, ti would not surprise me one whit if they actually happened.

Will Jobs dial all Apple product users with a final message, "Sent from my iCoffin - Steve Jobs"?

Was the iPhone 4S ... 4 Steve? (More serious "hagiography" - was it rushed out because his demise was known to be imminent, even though it wasn't an iPhone 5? So ... how do you kill the iPhone 5? You kill Steve Jobs!)

Will we see the lakes turn Apple rainbow colors? The skies rain silver Apples? Is the iApocalypse here?

No, but "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" is! Seriously, I've put this unauthorized bio in my Amazon cart. Deutschman accurately compares Jobs, one reviewer says, to a televangelist.

If he's not a televangelist, did you know Jobs is an iCon? Well, he's an icon to worshipers, but an iCon, pun obviously intended, to an even harder hitting biographer. (That said, this book sounds a bit more iffy.)

Did you know Jobs had no big brother? That's because he WAS Big Brother!

Meanwhile, on with the jokes!

What the iGenius who has everything, including monetarily, should get his iDaughter? Nothing! You deny paternity instead!

What do you call Jobs' business model for Apple? It's iProfit!

Or, there’s the iFlop app. When you launch this, you immediately get a list of the:

1. Apple III (unreliable)

2. Lisa (underpriced by the Mac)

3. NeXT Computer (overpriced)

4. Puck Mouse (stupid, and showing Jobs’ design instinct wasn’t unerring)

5. The Cube (overpriced based only on design)

6. iTunes phone (don’t want to forget this)

7. Apple TV (Jobs would like to forget this)

8. Add to this AP list the decision to kill the Mac clones market.

That said ... continue on to additional jokes below the fold, written on the day Jobs announced his resignation as Apple CEO. (The one about rising three days later might be apropos.) There's also more seriousness about Foxconn and other Apple reality behind the Apple myth. (And welcome, whoever was visitor 10,000  at about 2 a.m. Eastern time Oct. 7.)

More on the Apple iPhone spying

First, Apple has already spoken, indirectly, about this issue in the past, but it's still not talking now.

Among its claims is that it "decouples" the GPS tracking data it gets from individual phones. Well, if that's the case, then why can't it also create a way for that data to be erased from the original phone after 12 hours, if a jailbreak app can do that and more.

Then, there's Steve Jobs' hypocrisy about how it's OK for Apple to spy on its users but NOT for third-party app makers to do this:

"Before any app can get location data, they can't just put up a panel asking if it can use location, they call our panel and it asks you if it's OK," Jobs said.

"That's one of the reasons we have the curated App Store. A lot of the people in the Valley think we're old-fashioned about this. But we take it seriously."

Some of us think it's not "old-fashioned," but Orwellian.

Second, not so smug from Jobs haters. Some Android phones do the same thing.

Apple spy probs heat up - devices used for govt spying!

As I blogged yesterday, if you have an iPhone or iPad, Apple is potentially spying on you. Ditto if you save iPhone or iPad info to a Mac computer.

I saw this and said, "just wow." In the consumer part of the tech world, Apple, even more than Google, has a reputation (though not totally deserved even before this) of being "good guys."

No longer, eh?

Not only is Apple sniffing out and tracking your location, the data it gets from that is unencrypted.

I said yesterday that people are surely waiting on Steve Jobs to explain this.

So far, crickets.

But, another information security analyst makes three interesting claims, the last the worst.

1. This isn't new or secret. Supposedly, according to Alex Levinson, it's been on older versions of Apple devices and so reported.

2. Apple isn't keeping this data. That's even asother researchers claim the tracking is likely a mistake, which gives us two other issues.
A. If it's a mistake, then why's it been on Apple devices in previous generations?
B. If it's NOT a mistake, why should we believe Apple isn't collecting this data? Remember, it's competing more and more, if indirectly, with Google for online advertising.

3. This isn't listed as a separate point; Levinson's actual point 3 recapitulates Point 1. But, here's Levinson giving us the Orwellian secret, per Financial Times:

Through my work with various law enforcement agencies, we’ve used h-cells.plist on devices older than iOS 4 to harvest geolocational evidence from iOS devices.

WTF??

An information security analyst has been helping police departments spy on people's locations!

Levinson adds:
When the iPhone 4 came out, I was one of the first people in San Francisco to grab one.
Well, of course. You needed the latest generation of your spy tool.

Per his bio, Levinson advises both governments and private businesses.

Another blogger has already followed up on these ideas in an interview with Levinson.

Levinson declined to divulge the names of those agencies (whom he had advised), but told me that he had worked with “multiple state and federal agencies both in the U.S. and internationally.”

So, what other governments are snooping on iPhone users? In response to my initial blog post, a friend in Japan said she'd be far from labeling Apple as "evil." Want to at least partially rethink?

And, speaking of corporations ...

Let's see, a corporation could give all its employees iPads or iPhones as a perk, or a work tool, then spy on them. How much more Orwellian can this get? (Wait, I'm not sure I want to know.)

Given all this, and assuming this isn't a "mistake," it's no wonder we hear just crickets, not Steve Jobs, at Cupertino, Calif.

That all said, there is an app to stop this. You have to jailbreak your iPhone first. (I assume this all applies to iPads, too.)

More here on what may also be a Fourth Amendment violation against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Update, April 23: First, Apple has already spoken, indirectly, about this issue in the past, but it's still not talking now.

Among its claims is that it "decouples" the GPS tracking data it gets from individual phones. Well, if that's the case, then why can't it also create a way for that data to be erased from the original phone after 12 hours, if a jailbreak app can do that and more.

Second, not so smug from Jobs haters. Some Android phones do the same thing.

Steve Jobs and Apple are spying on you

Well, if you have an iPhone or iPad, they are. Ditto if you save iPhone or iPad info to a Mac computer.

I saw this and said, "just wow." In the consumer part of the tech world, Apple, even more than Google, has a reputation (though not totally deserved even before this) of being "good guys."

No longer, eh?

Not only is Apple sniffing out and tracking your location, the data it gets from that is unencrypted.

Here's the final insult to injury:

It turns out that there is no way to remove the data from your iPhone or 3G-enabled iPad — and there is no way to stop the devices from recording anything further. All you can do is secure the information that is on your computer — you can do so by selecting the "encrypted backups" options in the syncing settings — and be aware that all this data exists.

Waiting for Steve Jobs to explain, or try to explain away, this one.

Apple rushed iPhone 4 to market, Jobs lied

It appears Steve Jobs and Apple knew about the iPhone 4 antenna problems all along, and rushed it through in-house testing.

Why does Steve Jobs hate gays?

Beyond the ludicrous nature of some iPhone/iPad censorship, due to the biased nature of some of the censorship, it's a serious question.

Dear Gizmodo: Don't return the Apple iPhone

Make Steve Jobs sweat for a while before you give this baby back.

Ask how much he'll pay.

Threaten to mail it to either Google or Microsoft.

Post it for auction on eBay or sale on Craigslist.

Sell it to Verizon or some other non-AT&T phone company.

Or, rather than money, put on the engineering thinking cap.

Reverse-engineer it so that every icon is either Google or Microsoft. Or put a bug in it to snoop on advance details of future top-secret tech news in advance of Apple rollouts.

In short, do what you can to make Steve Jobs crap his pants.

Scat with Apple?

Apple has iPhone scat identification apps? Really? Part of me is amazed to know what different developers will create. Part of me wonders if that increases, or lessens, a wilderness experience while out hiking. Another part of me can think of numerous angles on "bear shitting in the woods" jokes.

Hey Mac lovers, wipe that smirk off & hang up your hackable iPhone

Yes, all you worshipers of Steve Jobs, your iPhone can be hacked. Maybe, given it’s history, AT&T can wiretap you through it, too.

And, here’s the real biggie. Apple was warned about this two weeks ago, but has yet to do anything.

Google iPhone knockoff just around the corner — a skeptical look

The gPhone, powered by T-Mobile, is just around the corner, priced to move, and slap Apple in the face, at $199. The phone is platformed on Google’s open-code Android software.

The one critique so far is that it lacks the iPhone’s attractiveness quotient.

And, as far as slaps in the face, Research in Motion and the Blackberry may be in Google’s sights more than Apple.

Flip side of skepticism on gPhone?

Will the Android program, like Chrome, turn out to be another version of Google as Big Brother?

Let me put it this way — I wouldn’t bet against that.

Flip side of skepticism No. 2?

Google doesn’t always get things right. And doesn’t always do a good job of fixing what it didn’t get right in the first place.

Steve Jobs, cyberstalker?

Well, it’s possible at least, since he’s admitted all iPhones are equipped with an Apple-controlled kill switch to shut down “malicious applications.”

First, per the Wired blog, what is a malicious app?

Second, beyond the blog, what’s on the iPhone that Jobs isn’t disclosing?

iPhone 3G sux — hah!

Once again, all you “Apple can do no wrong” types get punked. Not that even that deterred some:

Edward Watkins, a 34-year-old engineer and avowed “techno nut,” said he didn’t mind paying an extra $10 a month to the carrier to upgrade his phone.

“I’d pay an extra $30 or $40 a month for that. It’s a smoother running phone. It’s driving a Beamer as opposed to a Chevy Metro.”

Hey, Ed?

If the Beamer won’t start when you’re in the dealership, it doesn’t look so good, does it?

iPhones suck…

Or how aggressive public relations and customer service can hide a bad project

Scroll down to the MY FOURTH iPHONE to read the details of how and why: Suffice it to say that, as long as customers like Andrew Tobias exist:

I remain a basically very happy customer, even if it’s been a bit of an adventure. And they have provided me with four phones in seven months.

Corporate bullshitting CEOs like Steve Jobs will be showing just how right P.T. Barnum was.

Of course, Barnum didn’t add the first corollary to his “a sucker is born every minute” bit of genius. And, that is… “suckers often become that way because of their own ego.”

This SocraticGadfly genius corollary explains just how Jobs milks people’s egos, speaking of genius:

But two nights ago, shortly after midnight, I went on-line to make an appointment at the Genius Bar … Within 10 minutes, my Genius determined I needed a new phone.

What non-reflective, at least mildly egotistical or even pompous golden years yuppie wouldn’t have his ego stroked to the point of psychological orgasm by having a “genius” wait on him?

When will Steve Jobs and Apple learn you can’t beat hackers?

Apple said that upgrades to the iPhone would shut down phones previously hacked to use cell providers besides Apple partner AT&T.

That may not last too long.

Steve, Steve, Steve. Don’t even try to up the ante in this war. You lost, you blew it, and all because you stupidly challenged hackers, and pissed off some potential. Although hackers haven’t yet restored upgraded iPhones’ ability to actually be used as phones, I’m betting that’s just a matter of time.