Author: John Moltz

Wozniak Opens Mouth Again

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has opened his mouth again today setting off the latest barrage of analysis over what it could possibly mean. Long-time Apple followers will remember that Wozniak frequently opines about the company, usually causing people to confuse his opinions and misperceptions with fact or the company’s official position.

Adding to the complexity this time, however, Wozniak appears to have spoken in tongues, issuing a series of seemingly nonsensical statements to reporters.

“Abbu blabba!” Wozniak said. “Hepta blinga ooza. Mabba. Mabba. HEYOOOOO! Ack tak tooey. Hooma tetty. Eska tappa badoor mak moodo. FAK ZAAAA!”

“I’m sure it means something,” said TUAW‘s Mike Rose. “Possibly about new MacBook Pros? The timing would be right. Or the iPad 2. Does any of that sound like ‘front-facing camera’ to you? Crap, I have no idea how to write this up.”

Other Apple followers suprisingly expressed certainty over the meaning of Wozniak’s utterances.

“He’s obviously talking about the Xserve,” said AppleInsider‘s Kasper Jade. “While Apple itself has canceled the device, it’s contracted out the continued development of the Xserve to a Chinese firm.

“It’s so obvious and Woz is perfectly positioned to know about that kind of thing. You don’t get to ride a Segway without being in the know.”

Later in the day, Wozniak held another press conference in an apparent attempt to clarify some of his comments after becoming concerned that he was being misinterpreted.

“Mondo wacka,” Wozniak explained. “Zin zooey isska badoom. HENDO RICKTAN! Eeen gakko tazookie. Hoooooooooora! Hoooooooooora!”

Reporters struggled to make sense of this further statement but dutifully reported it. The inexplicable repetition of Wozniak’s pronouncements is in its 30th year and shows no signs of abatement.

Macworld Pundit Showdown

No words. They should have sent a poet.
Yours truly appeared on the Macworld Pundit Showdown with Andy Ihnatko, Adam Engst, Dan Moren and moderator Jason Snell. Thrill to the sounds of vacuous Mac jerks as they pretend to compete for points and something resembling a thin veneer of respectability. The competitiveness, pathos and excitement of a professional sporting event are, sadly, completely lacking from this hour of entertainment that the Des Moines, Iowa Macintosh Users Group newsletter called “Not worth reviewing.”

For you, however, sitting in your first floor apartment, eating Fiddle Faddle and watching episodes of the original Battlestar Galactica on Blu Ray while Googling cheesecake pictures of Maren Jensen and trying to resist the temptations of the flesh, well,
Yours truly appeared on the Macworld Pundit Showdown with Andy Ihnatko, Adam Engst, Dan Moren and moderator Jason Snell.

Thrill to the sounds of vacuous Mac jerks as they pretend to compete for points and something resembling a thin veneer of respectability. The competitiveness, pathos and excitement of a professional sporting event are, sadly, completely lacking from this hour of entertainment that the Des Moines, Iowa Macintosh Users Group newsletter called “Not worth reviewing.”

For you, however, sitting in your first floor apartment, eating Fiddle Faddle and watching episodes of the original Battlestar Galactica on Blu Ray while Googling cheesecake pictures of Maren Jensen and trying to resist the temptations of the flesh, facing yet another Christmas alone having alienated everyone you once held dear, well, it might be good for you.

The Stan Sigman Experience

The world of mobile telecommunications was shocked this morning to discover that former AT&T Mobility CEO Stan Sigman is not the man people thought he was.

Just 12 hours after the event honoring his induction into the Wireless Hall of Fame and his rambling 5-hour acceptance speech, Stan Sigman was revealed to be not a man at all but a piece of performance art.

Speaking to gathered media, San Francisco performance artist Julian Leflaunt said that for the past 40 years, he has been playing the part of “Stan Sigman” as part of a piece entitled “Corporate ‘Leadership’ and The Folly of the American Enterprise”.

“I created everything about Stan,” said Leflaunt. “From his horrible public speaking ability to his post-retirement goatee.”

Working as a Bell stockman the 1960s, Leflaunt says, he became aware of the vapid nature of our vaunted executive class.

“I was determined to show the CEO for what he was: a long-winded oaf concerned with nothing more than achieving personal glory off the back of the worker. These emperors of our economy have no clothes, I thought, and I set out to devote my life to showing them to the rest of the world as I saw them.”

Cleverly manipulating the bureaucracy at Bell, Leflaunt recast himself as “Stan Sigman”, the name being a play on “standard signal man”, which the artist says represented the conformity enforced by corporate America on the proletariat.

So his life’s work began. But then, Leflaunt said, something strange happened.

“As much as I wanted to hate him, I grew to love Stan,” he said. “My feelings for him as a rising CEO did not change — I still believed him to be the most useless of cogs in the capitalist machine — but as a person I found him to be sympathetic and even tragic. His love of golf for its moments of platonic camaraderie and closeness with other men, a closeness he always craved from his father but never got. His passion for quarter horses, driven by his recurring childish fantasies of being a cowboy on the frontier of the late 1800s. The more I rounded out his character, the sadder he became to me.”

Leflaunt admits that the piece got out of hand.

“I really had no intentions of carrying it on for more than 40 years,” Leflaunt said. “But I couldn’t stop. I needed to see how it ended! And then the iPhone deal just fell into my lap.”

Leflaunt was concerned the deal was almost his undoing.

“I was frightened that I had overplayed my hand at Macworld Expo in 2007,” Leflaunt said. “I wanted to deliver a truly dreadful speech, I felt that was important to the piece, but when I shook Steve Jobs’ hand after I was done, I thought I saw him give me a look. I flew home in a cold sweat.”

For his part, Jobs says he was completely unaware that the man he had worked with on the most significant product release of the decade was an utter fabrication.

“I had no idea,” said a disbelieving Steve Jobs. “I mean, one time he was chuckling in the middle of a meeting for no discernible reason, but… wow. Incredible. My hat’s off to him.

“Anyway, this totally voids our exclusivity deal with AT&T so… Verizon iPhone in January.”

Asked what he will work on next, Leflaunt says he plans on taking his first vacation in 40 years, claiming the others were in character so they don’t count. Then he plans to devote time to cat memes on the Internet.

“That’s where all the cutting-edge work is being done nowadays,” he said.