Another odd moment from Tuesday’s unveiling that several sites noticed was Steve Jobs’ use of the term “Web 2.0”. Many expressed surprise that Jobs would stoop to using such cheap industry jargon, but sources say the mercurial Apple CEO has been doing this with increasing regularity.
“I’m not sure but I think someone might have left a copy of Business 2.0 in his office or something,” said senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller. “I walked by there the other day and I heard him say ‘That paradigm is a total meme.’ That doesn’t even make any sense.
“At least I don’t think it does.”
Oddly, Schiller said, Jobs wasn’t on the phone and had no one in his office.
“I think he was just trying it out. There might even have been a mirror on his desk.”
Chief operating officer Tim Cook said he heard Jobs say “We’re gonna mashup that SOA and deploy it throughout the enterprise on a go-forward basis.”
“The weird thing is,” Cook said, “He was talking to some squirrels on the campus.
“But Steve works in mysterious ways,” Cook noted, nodding sagely.
“Plus, I think some of those squirrels are venture capitalists. And venture capitalists eat that shit up with a spoon.”
Jobs declined to comment for this story, but did send over some business plans that consisted of spreadsheets, graphs about market penetration and a bunch of completely incomprehensible gibberish.
The reason Apple neglected to emphasize this in its presentation may have something to do with a small warning at the bottom of the new iMac’s web page: “The effect of seeing the iMac disappear as you move around it can be quite startling. Users should be warned that it may frighten horses or induce labor in pregnant women.”