November 2007 – Crazy Apple Rumors Site

Friday Feature: Crazy Apple Help Desk

Every Friday, the staff at Crazy Apple Rumors Site answers common help questions based on our vast experience with Apple products and our fervent belief that we know more than you do.
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Q: I just bought Call of Duty and I’m trying to play it on my iMac with Leopard running and the frame rate is terrible! It’s practically unplayable. It’s like .5 frames a second!

A: Oh? What are the specs on your iMac?

Q: 2.4 GHz with 2 GB of RAM.

A: That should be plenty. What are your settings in the graphics options?

Q: Uh, hang on a second. I’ll just fire up Screen Sharing on my MacBook and launch Call of Duty on the iMac…

A: Uh, that’s OK, because I think I found your problem.
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Q: I was thinking about whether I should buy an iPhone, because I’m concerned about the limited set of software available for it, and…

A: You know there’s a software toolkit coming out for developers, right?

Q: That has to do with my question. So I saw this Greg Jozwiak guy talking about the SDK and security, and he made me feel so… safe.

A: I know where this is going.

Q: He seems like a nice guy. Is he seeing someone?

A: He’s married. Yep, he’s married to the woman with glasses that appears in all the Tiger iChat AV video conference screens. And they have three children: Clarus, Luxo and, um, Open… Doc. And, um, they’re very happy.

Q: No he isn’t!

A: How do you know if he’s happy?!

Q: No, I mean he’s not married to her with kids with those names.

A: Yes he is.

Q: But…

A: You really need to drop this.

Q: …I could make him truly happy.

A: I don’t think he’s into men.

Q: I’m a woman!

A: Oh. Well, that’s awkward. Are you sure?

Q: Why are you trying to deny Greg Joswiak and me true happiness?!

A: I’m not. I’m sure you two will be really happy together. You’ll get married and live on a farm in Vermont and have a couple of kids and a dog. Maybe raise some chickens. You’ll grow old together and bask in the glow of your love long into the twilight of your years.

Q: Yes!

A: Well, that would have all happened, except that Joz just called and he said to tell you he wants to see other people.

Q: NOOOOOOO!

A: Like his wife.

Q: [sob] We’ll always have Vermont, Joz!

A: Oh, my god…
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Q: I’ve just upgraded to Leopard and I’m totally pissed. iChat just doesn’t work.

A: Uh, well, I need a little more information. Can it not establish a video connection? Are you having trouble replying to text chats?

Q: I don’t know. It’s just busted. I’m logged into AIM, but none of my buddies show up in the Buddy List.

A: Ah! You probably accidentally blocked your buddies. Make sure your privacy level in the Accounts preference is set to “Allow anyone.”

Q: I checked that, and “Allow anyone” is selected.

A: And, uh, you previously had buddies before?

Q: Yes, five of my friends.

A: Did they all upgrade to Leopard, too?

Q: Yes.

A: Did they by chance disappear one by one over a period of the first few days you had Leopard installed?

Q: Yes! You’ve seen this bug too!

A: Um, no. They’ve all just set their statuses to Invisible so you can’t see that they’re online.

Q: Oh. Well that sucks. Hey, want to see a video of me going down some crazy roller coaster in the background?

A: Crazy Apple Rumors has gone offline.

Q: Oh, very funny.

iPhone Sales Stop. AT&T Exec On The Run.

According to sources at Apple and AT&T stores, all sales of the iPhone suddenly dried up this afternoon.

While sources could not state definitively why no one is buying iPhones all of a sudden, even as the holiday season gets into full swing, most speculated that the comments of AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson indicating that a faster phone would be coming “next year” probably didn’t help.

“Stephenson pretty much screwed the pooch on this one,” said the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg. “I would be surprised if one of Steve Jobs’ elite lesbian ninja strike forces isn’t already on its way to ‘correct the mistake’, if you know what I mean.

“And by that I mean kill him. Possibly with piano wire. However, I understand that they are all well versed in the ancient Japanese art of Hashido, the method of killing someone with a chopstick. Usually they just jam one in the victim’s ear. Fast, efficient and deadly.”

This may explain why Stephenson was seen fleeing an area Apple Store having just purchased a pair of Bose noise-reducing headphones.

“And you can just bet those lesbian ninjas look so sexy doing it,” Mossberg added, his gaze wandering off to nowhere in particular.

“I’m sorry. What were we talking about? Oh. Stephenson. Yeah, he’s a dead man.”

According to sources who attended the meeting where Stephenson made his comments, not only did the AT&T executive indicate next year’s iPhone would be faster, he made several other claims about it.

Comes with a lifetime supply of chocolate pudding.

One word: lasers. And lots of them.

Allows phone calls to be carried over IP, Bonjour, EDGE, 3G, WiFi, Ethernet, Sneakernet, LocalTalk and an iPhone tied to a can with a piece of string.

Each iPhone 2.0 contains a shard of the Ark of the Covenant, protecting the owner from all evil.

Will also have copy/paste.

Stephenson was last seen driving through Santa Clara at a high rate of speed with several black helicopters with white Apple logos painted on the side in pursuit.

Apple e-Book Reader Captures The Market.

At a surprise late afternoon press event, Apple announced its new e-book reader, the Apple Book, which will compete directly with Amazon’s Kindle. In a stunning move that has vaulted the e-book industry from sputtering to red hot, the company said it had shipped 14.5 million units in the three hours after its announcement.

“What the fucking hell?!” said a visibly angry Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

“I spent like four years of my life working on this stupid thing! Now it’s been out like three weeks and it’s dead. Poof! Kaplooie! Game over, man!”

Muttering to himself, Bezos walked off, kicking the dirt and loudly slurping on a juice box.

“I fricking hate Steve Jobs.”

Essentially an iPod touch with a larger screen, the Apple Book downloads e-books via WiFi or syncing from the now horribly, horribly misnamed iTunes Store thanks to a partnership with Amazon rival Barnes & Noble. While these features actually trail those of the Kindle, the feature that is likely the primary cause for the device’s immediate success is the fact that the Apple Book is free and books are priced significantly lower than what Amazon charges. Customers simply supply a credit deposit upon receiving each Book and will be charged $500 less the amount of media they’ve purchased over the five year term of a contract.

Further, contrary to Amazon’s system, the Apple Book does not use DRM for e-books, relying instead on the same god damn system that’s been used for, you know, actual books for hundreds of years: making stuff that people want to buy.

Asked to explain how Apple could do this and still expect to turn a profit on the venture, CEO Steve Jobs said “We’re going to make it up on volume of books, movies and music sold. The reason Amazon has to charge $400 for the Kindle is because they don’t think it’s going to be adopted that quickly or that they’re going to sell that many e-books. Also, it’s fricking butt ugly. Have you seen that piece of crap? Holy hell. Makes me want to stab my eyes out with something pointy. Hey, Jeff! 1992 called! It wants its design ethic back! Ha-ha-ha!”

The gathered Apple executives, particularly Jonathan Ive, howled with laughter.

“Anyway,” Jobs continued, holding his aching sides and wiping tears from his eyes, “we’re going to move a ton of these suckers and sell a shitload of media.

“Razor blades and handles, my bitches. Razor blades and handles.”

Jobs was suddenly taken aside by senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller who whispered in his ear briefly.

Returning to the stage Jobs said “Actually, I’ve just been informed that we recouped all of our hardware costs about fifteen minutes ago. And we made enough to buy every Mac user a pony.”

Seeing the hopeful looks on the faces of the collection of mostly Mac-using reporters in the audience, Jobs quickly added, “But I’m not going to do that.”

Reporters then sighed heavily.

The Apple Book is available at an Apple Store near you immediately.

The Tera-Post Lives!

Don’t say we never gave you anything.

Er… back.

It needs some cleaning up, but Masako’s added pages to the comments for you to more easily enjoy digging and ponies and Glaarku and whatever the hell it is you people do in there.

I hope it’s not smoking pot. That would really disappoint me.

ADDENDUM: Oh, and you know what this means, right?

Yep. Looks like the Giga-Post is back.

And guess what Masako’s working on right now?

Please stay tuned to this station.

Some Dude In Nigeria Has Your .Mac Sync

In a disappointing announcement, Apple admitted today that some dude in Nigeria has your most recent .Mac sync.

“We’re not sure how it happened, said an embarrassed senior vice president of software development Bertrand Serlet. “But everyone’s .Mac syncs have been going to this dude in Nigeria.

“For, uh, like five years. Whew! Boy, is there egg on our faces!”

Serlet indicated that he wasn’t sure why anyone hadn’t noticed until now.

“There are only about 14 people actually using .Mac syncing, so that might be part of it. Also, Mac users don’t really have any sensitive information. It’s all phone numbers, recipes, comic book collections and kitty pictures.

“Really. They’re the lamest bunch of losers I’ve ever had the misfortune of trying to sell crap to.”

While this raises serious issues for OS X security, testing indicates that this announcement does not impact Leopard’s Back to My Mac feature, which allows a user to connect to a Mac remotely using a .Mac connection.

“Yeah,” said Macworld’s Chris Breen, “Our testing shows that Back to My Mac is not affected.

“‘Cause ‘Back to My Mac’ doesn’t work. Seriously. I’ve been trying for days and I can’t get the damn thing to work at all. So, no problemo there.”

Further, sources in Nigeria say the dude, Ajani, is totally cool and would never use your .Mac sync for nefarious purposes anyway so…