Apple Provides Fabulous New Feature Free of Charge

iPhone owners were delighted today to learn that Apple has, unbeknownst to them, been providing a spectacular feature free of charge for the last year or so.

“I can’t believe my iPhone’s been tracking everywhere I’ve been!” said iPhone owner Rick Tansley. “This is terrific!”

According to results revealed by two researchers, the iPhone and the 3G iPad keep track of the user’s location at all times using cell towers.

“Oh, my god!” said 3G iPad owner Elliot Cornin. “It tracks everywhere I go and I don’t even have to pay for it! It’s incredible! I mean… I just found my keys!”

After the news broke this morning, experts quickly detailed the many benefits of Apple’s amazing pre-Easter egg.

“Everyone will love this feature,” said Macworld’s Dan Moren. “Never again will you wake up from a drug and alcohol-fueled haze and wonder where you illegally drove last night. Was it you who ran that bus full of nuns and orphaned Internet kittens off the road? Now you’ll know!

“And think of the many benefits for mobsters. If you’re going to whack someone, just give your iPhone to a lackey for the night and have him go to a baseball game. The applications for this are almost limitless. Kudos to you, Apple!”

Moren’s enthusiasm was shared universally in the Apple community.

“This is vintage Apple,” said Instapaper developer Marco Arment. “All the while it’s been providing us this amazing feature and we didn’t. Even. Know it.

“Standing ovation.”

This revelation may also lend credence to rumors that Apple has sneaking into your house, standing over your bed and watching you sleep.

But not in a creepy way.

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.

Schiller Describes Wild Weekend

According to sources close to Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller, the Apple executive had a wild weekend as he followed the San Jose Sharks go from the thrill of victory to the agony of defeat.

“Friday night was awesome!” Schiller told his moderately interested coworkers. “The Sharks were down five times and rallied back each time! I just about lost it when Pavelski tied it up in the last minute of regulation.

“And when Setoguchi scored the winning goal… well, me and my hockey buddies — Donnie, Automatic Tony and the Spaz — well, we just went berserk.”

Schiller sheepishly admitted he may have had a little too much to drink on Friday night.

“We partied hard after that one! After we left the [HP] Pavilion, we just hit one bar after the next! But we were on cloud nine, I tell you what. Most of that night’s a complete blur! Ha-ha! I seem to remember a goat and some clowns or… no, mimes! Oh, my god, it was mimes! Ha-ha!

“Whoo-eee!”

The man in charge of Apple’s global corporate marketing efforts said he spent most of Saturday “sleeping it off” but then was back at it to watch Sunday’s Sharks loss with his friends in C & J’s, a Cupertino sports bar.

“Sunday was a major letdown and we had to drown our sorrows. We drank until C & J’s closed and then walked along the railroad tracks, drinking some more. The Sharks are in a hole now so they’ll just have to go out there and give it their best. That’s all they can do. That’s all any of us can do.”

Schiller paused before continuing.

“Me and my buddies, we’ve followed the Sharks through some tough times. Donnie’s divorce. When Tony got laid off at the mill. The Spaz’s repeated suicide attempts. My LASIK surgery. Tough times.

“Watching the Sharks and blowin’ off steam, that’s just how we do.”

Schiller fell silent for a moment, looking reflective on the sport and what it says about the human condition.

Suddenly his hand felt for his pocket.

“Wait…

“Anyone seen my phone?”

German Court Sets iPhone Free To Be Locked.

In welcome news today, a German court ruled that Apple could lock sales of iPhones to T-Mobile accounts only.

The moved was hailed by Apple followers.

Macworld magazine editor Jason Snell said “Now German customers will be free to experience the iPhone in its pure, locked state. Just as god intended it.

“Did I say ‘god’? I meant to say ‘Steve Jobs’. Ha-ha! How silly of me.”

Many expressed their sincere joy that Germans of all political parties would be able to come together in the warm glow of iPhones at their locked best.

“The iPhone will only truly work properly if it’s locked to one network,” said lolPogues’ David Pogue.

“For example, visual voicemail requires special setup on the part of the cellular provider’s to really work.”

Pogue paused as he turned his iPhone over in his hands.

“And, uh, I think that’s it. But visual voicemail is a pretty important feature. When people are asked to rate the iPhone’s features, it’s consistently number 13 or 14. It’s after YouTube and just before Stocks.”

When reached for comment, Apple and T-Mobile said they were pleased to be able to offer the iPhone all locked up and shit.