Steve Jobs — The Lost Interview is on iTunes, but don’t tell anyone

My little film about Steve Jobs has finally made it to iTunes (now on Amazon and YouTube as well!) as a $3.99 rental, but you wouldn’t know it. Deeming the film “too controversial,” Apple has it on the site but they aren’t promoting it and won’t. The topic is “too sensitive” you see. It isn’t even listed in the iTunes new releases. You have to search for it. But it’s there.

Maybe I’m not even supposed to tell you.

Of course there is nothing controversial or insensitive about this movie, which everyone including the critics seems to like. It’s a different look at an interesting guy and some people seem to take […]

The tablet computer rumble

Last week Microsoft kinda-sorta announced its new Microsoft Surface tablet computer. This week will come a Google-branded tablet. Both are pitted against the mighty iPad. Both companies see opportunity because of what they perceive as a Steve Jobs blind spot. And both companies are introducing tablets under their own brands because they can’t their get OEM’s to do tablets correctly.

For all the speculation about why Microsoft or Google would risk offending hardware OEMs by introducing name branded tablets, the reality is that neither company really had any choice but to make the hardware.  In the commodity PC market, no one company is likely to be willing to make the investment necessary to compete with the […]

Death of the Mac Pro

I know I promised a third part in my crowdfunding series but the first two parts have generated a lot of backchannel discussions that have put part three in a bit of flux. We have a chance to do something really amazing here so please give me another day or so and I promise to be back with something fun to read in part three. In the meantime there was something I found especially interesting about Apple’s announcements yesterday….

Not all of Apple’s new and upgraded products were even mentioned in yesterday’s WWDC keynote. I was especially interested in Apple’s tower computer, the Mac Pro, which was yesterday both upgraded and killed at the same time.

The […]

The next Japanese nuclear accident (it’s inevitable) will be even worse

quake-probThis is my sixth column about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that started last year in Japan following the tsunami. But unlike those previous columns (1,2,3,4,5), this one looks forward to the next Japanese nuclear accident, which will probably take place at the same location. That accident, involving nuclear fuel rods, is virtually inevitable, most likely preventable, and the fact that it won’t be prevented comes down solely to Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) incompetence and stupidity. Japanese citizens will probably die unnecessarily because the way things are done at the top in Japan is completely screwed up.

Understand […]

Facebook IPO defies Cringely (would you like that in BOLD?)

Proving once again that I am an idiot, Facebook went public this morning with neither a whimper nor a bang. Back in January I predicted that Facebook godhead Mark Zuckerberg would implode during the company road show and the social media giant would back into becoming public simply by buying another company that’s already traded. From recent stories it looks like Zuckerberg did implode (blowing-off investors, hiding in the bathroom, etc.) but it didn’t matter: the deal was sealed long before any of that happened.

What’s next for Facebook of course, is fulfilling its promise as a public company. I still don’t think the company will ever […]