Category: Event Coverage

[Crazy Apple Rumors Site sent its high society reporter Thor Samson to C4 over the weekend to cover the “it” Mac conference of fall 2006.

What Thor discovered about the conference celebrities may shock you.

Or not, depending on how jaded you are.]

I went to C4 with my mind as open as my expense account. These events are great because they allow the Mac community to showcase its stars in their element, right?

Wrong!

Many of these so-called “stars” of the Mac community are ne’er-do-wells at best and criminals at worst. Let’s take a look at C4’s “luminaries”.

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John Gruber: Long considered the most respected Mac blogger, recent evidence indicates Gruber is addicted to online gambling.

Not a lot of people know this, but only descendants of the founders of ARPA can open online casinos, as they are considered Internet natives who have to put up with the rest of us yahoos who invaded their homeland.

Now, sources say, Gruber is in six large to these online tribes and is being forced to shill for online gambling to avoid having Daring Fireball repossessed.

Just don’t lend him any money.

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Jonathan “Wolf” Rentzsch: The organizer of C4, Rentzsch actually is a lycanthrope as his nickname implies and must shave his face and hands six or seven times a day. By my reckoning, he devoured eight C4 attendees and a waiter at Jaks Tap.

Also, he seems to think it would be really funny if Mac users adopted goatse as their gang symbol.

Clearly, the pain of living with the knowledge of the havoc he has wreaked up on humanity has driven him insane.

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Brent Simmons: Simmons’ dark secret is not so secret: he sold out to the man. Further compounding his guilt, however, he has also been accused of not keeping it real and a failure on numerous occasions to holla back, despite repeatedly being given the opportunity.

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Drunken Batman: Drunk? Frequently. Batman? No.

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So there you have it. The Macintosh community is full of gamblers, werewolves, sellouts and frauds.

…

OK, that sounded a lot more surprising when I wrote it on Sunday night…

Apple announced its quarterly results yesterday, easily besting the Wall Street estimates.

The company shipped an astonishing 1.6 million Macs in its best quarter ever. Analysts indicated that proved that the “iPod halo” effect truly is working for the company.

It’s easy to understand how iPod sales could drive Mac sales, as Apple shipped 360 million iPods for the quarter, with many customers buying 3, 4, even 10 iPods each, sometimes giving one to their pet.

While a low margin product, Apple moved over 1.5 trillion units of the Mighty Mouse, one to every third person on the planet. The company has not yet determined if these were evenly distributed across the globe or not.

“It’s possible India bought them all,” said CFO Peter Oppenheimer. “Or China. I don’t know why they’d do that…

“Party favors, possibly. We’re still looking into it.”

Oppenheimer also said Apple’s margin increased to 230%. The company sold 9 trillion copies of iLife, 180 trillion movies and television shows and 4.4 quadrillion songs on iTunes.

“We also renewed four .Mac accounts,” Oppenheimer said.

“That’s up 33% from last quarter.”

After today’s blockbuster Special Event – in which Apple announced movie downloads via iTunes, all-new iPods and, most importantly, a set-top box to be released in January – late-breaking news from Cupertino says that CEO Steve Jobs will hold another special event tomorrow.

And then another on Thursday.

And another on Friday.

In fact, Jobs apparently intends to hold a Special Event every day until he has revealed everything that Apple has up its sleeve.

According to sources, Jobs will reveal Apple’s plans for the following items over the next few days.

• Wednesday – The iPhone and Apple’s new ringtones download service.
• Thursday – The iTablet and Apple’s new service for downloading whatever kind of shit people look at on tablet PCs. Possibly some kind of industrial assembly line-management software. Who the hell knows.
• Friday – A lightweight laptop that runs OS X “Lite” and Apple’s new service for downloading “lite” apps. Ha-ha-ha! Ahh… OS X “Lite”. Jason O’Grady, you crack me up.
• Monday – Sexbots. Eeyup. Sexbots. No online service. But, you know, I don’t think anyone’s really going to be complaining about that.

Sources indicate that Jobs has grown tired of the cat and mouse game with rumor sites and is simply going to publicly announce everything from now on.

“Screw it,” Jobs said. “I work my ass off trying to make something nice for everyone and all the rumor sites do is piss all over it.

“Well, I’m done. You guys are the kings of everything. Knock yourselves out. iTV. iTablet. iPhone. Here you go. I put all the specs on my .Mac account.”

“Go on.”

“Go ahead.”

“I don’t care.”

“I don’t.”

“Really.”

Apple, obviously, did not decline to comment for this story.

This morning, Apple sent an email to members of the media announcing a special event in San Francisco on September 12th.

While many believe this will mark the company’s initiation of the the online movie downloading business, a small subset claim it will showcase the new Apple cell phone, which is reportedly now ready for production.

But Crazy Apple Rumors Site has learned that not only is this a “special” Apple event, it is a “very special” Apple event. While sources were unable to specify the specific nature of the “very special” event, they were able to narrow it down to the following possibilities:

• Senior Director of Desktop Product Marketing Tom Boger thinks about trying drugs and is talked out of it by Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller.
• Head of Mac Hardware Engineering Peter Mehring loses his virginity.
• Vice President of Worldwide Developer Relations Ron Okamoto learns a valuable lesson about sharing or not cheating or some shit.
• Senior Counsel Mark Aaker gets knocked up.

Apple declined to comment for this story, but a star trailing a rainbow was seen passing over the Cupertino campus earlier today.

Since last Monday’s WWDC keynote, Apple pundits have been falling over themselves attempting to explain what many felt was a lackluster performance by Apple and CEO Steve Jobs.

Some fear that the company has simply fallen behind the curve and that – contrary to Jobs’ protestation that he couldn’t reveal Leopard’s secrets because Microsoft was watching – Apple’s upcoming operating system simply doesn’t have any exciting secrets.

Others even believed that a poor keynote meant that Jobs might be sick.

But Crazy Apple Rumors Site sources close to the Apple CEO revealed over the weekend that the keynote was sub-par simply because Jobs had his period.

According to sources, Jobs was irritable the entire weekend before the keynote, threatening to fire even more people than usual. By Monday morning, Jobs was not feeling particularly “fresh.”

“I don’t want to speak for him,” said Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller, “but I know that Steve was feeling bloated, crampy and, more importantly, not pretty.

“Several times he asked me if the black turtleneck and jeans he was wearing made his ass look big.”

According to Schiller, Jobs’ performance is predicated on his image of how others perceive him far more often than Apple followers might think.

“When Steve feels pretty, you get a good keynote. When he’s not feeling pretty, you don’t.

“Fortunately, he’s almost always feeling very, very pretty.”

Jobs declined to comment for this story, but did burst into tears as he ran away from reporters.