Month: January 2009

So Steve Jobs is taking half the year off. I won’t speculate on who knew what and when, just that for the sake of his loved ones I hope he pulls through this without to much drama.

Now what are the day to day implications?

For starters, AAPL will take a bath until investors can be convinced that Cupertino is not going to undergo a nuclear meltdown in the absence of Himself. But if you look at the executive team, I would comfortably put them up against anyone else in the industry. You have Phil Schiller, who when he’s not being the sidekick is in fact as ruthlessly effective a marketing wizard as exists in the Valley. You have Jonny Ive CBE, whose industrial design over the past decade-plus has been the heart and soul of the turnaround – everything from the original Bondi Blue iMac to the iPhone has come off his drawing board. You have Ron Johnson, who goes largely unsung in the business media but who is the mastermind of Apple Retail, and that should speak for itself. And then leading the charge is Tim Cook, who was acting chief during the cancer scare four years ago and who has, in the intervening years, taken on much more of the day-to-day operations than anyone would expect. For a long time, Apple has been preparing for Cook to take the controls, and he is as ready as anyone could be.

And after a few months, when Apple hasn’t collapsed into a smoking crater, I think the stock will be just fine.

One more note: we used to refer to Jobs as “Himself” out of fear that he would magically appear, Beetlejuice-like, if his name were spoken. Since Tim Cook is an Auburn man, he will be referred to in these pages as “Hisself.” I hope to God his record is better than Gene Chizik’s.

This is what happens when the head of your party in the legislature knows his ass from a hole in the ground and how to wheel and deal.

Tennessee politics isn’t as baroque as Alabama or Texas or California, but it’s never not entertaining. =)

…while I still can.

* So I have the new Vandy jacket, which fills both the Graduate School and the Outdoor Performance Clothes notches in my Stuff White People Like sweepstakes. It’s the first piece of all-new outerwear I’ve bought in four years – after drowning in jackets for about 15 years, it’s a fairly impressive drought. (In fairness, my wife unexpectedly bought me a simple black thing for my birthday last year which is quite stylish and consequently something it never would have occurred to me to buy myself.) Vandy III is a bit on the big side, but that’s not a bad idea for strategic layering purposes, and it’s a hell of a lot lighter than the leather stuff.

* Plus, since the Vandy women beat UT for the first time since 2002, I’m cised to wear it all week.

* I’m starting to believe that it’s actually a true fact that the sole measure of value to modern conservatism is whether it pisses off people who aren’t conservative. I mean, they actually sent that bald douche from Ohio to be a war correspondent? Seriously? It has become absolutely impossible to take conservatism seriously, with the obvious exception of the very talented crew at TAC.

* Even Pat Buchanan finds a nut once in a while – his shtick hasn’t really budged since he was WHCD, and it’s generally kind of eye-rolling not-again stuff, but his appreciation of the late Sammy Baugh was as fine a piece of sportswriting as you may see all year, and has the added benefit of coming from someone who actually grew up watching the Redskins in the Baugh era. In the pre-television NFL, not many people can say that.

* Speaking of sportswriting, I don’t know what ESPN was thinking, but I accidentally clicked on a Rick Reilly column and was immediately reminded why print sportswriting has all gone to hell. Same thing, over and over, beating a dead horse. Just like me. Except I don’t kill trees to do it and I don’t pretend that what I write is any more important than just some dork on the Internet. The kind of ill-founded logic, saccharine dreck, and general white Boomer foolishness that Reilly brings to the table is pretty much the reason I cancelled my subscription to Sports Illustrated ten years ago. Seriously, all you need is Deadspin and EDSBS and you’ll be just fine.

* NewNewNewJob continues apace. I think it’s going well, although I may have more metrics on that shortly, but I’ll tell you this: I don’t dread getting up in the morning anymore aside from the obvious OMG IT’S EARLY issue. And even then, I made it out the door today by 7:27 AM of my own free will. And less than 20 minutes later, was walking down the platform at my work train stop. Being able to commute entirely by public transit PWNS and don’t you forget it. I could actually have a drink after work with my colleagues if I felt like it. In fact I may be having a drink DURING work later this week, as the department holiday party is Wednesday afternoon.

* The weather is April-ish here. No, really. The high in San Jose today was 77. This is wrong on many levels.

* I am told, via reliable sources, that Washington DC is already basically un-navigable. One of my former co-workers (whose WVU education means that his children are basically being raised by a baboon) missed ten straight lights at the same intersection in a traffic jam today, parked in the nearest deck and walked a half mile to work. I’d love to see history, but I’m not about to wait in line for it.

* If I still lived in DC, though, you bet your ass I’d be out to see Bruce Springsteen, Beyonce, Stevie Wonder et al on Sunday.

* My Buddy Vince Sez, “You know I will always support weed over blow. Unless the blow is free of course.”

Finis.

Just trying out another iPhone client. It’s a beautiful day here on the farm…basically indistinguishable from spring. Like, ditch class, pick up a case of beer and go watch the baseball team weather. Not that I ever did that. Certainly not with the professor bringing the beer. RIP Doc Sloane.

No shit folks – the Pre is Palm’s last best hope to survive. It is the first thing in years worth criticizing from the company that made the PDA a reality, and it actually does some interesting things. The UI is certainly attractive, and the presence of real multitouch will let it play right away. Whereas the iPhone had the whole Apple digital-media ecosystem as a selling point, though, and the G1 had both Google and the promise of a broader platform (and conceivable multiple carriers), the Pre’s party piece is its Webkit-based system where all applications are basically local web apps, which should offer developers a tremendously low barrier to entry.

(An aside: the iPhone and the first two legitimate competitors all use Webkit as the basis of their browser. As soon as I have the Bold in hand, I’ll have a look and see what the mobile web looks like without it. Not sanguine about the prospects.)

Problem is, though, they tied up with Sprint.

A phone is only as good as its network. It’s understandable why Apple went with AT&T – they didn’t really have a choice from a technical perspective as the former Cingular had the only dual-band national GSM network. It’s plausible why the G1 started on T-Mobile – they needed something to replace the aging Sidekick line as their tentpole device, and again, GSM. If you make your device GSM, you can pretty much sell it anywhere in the world right off the jump other than South Korea. If you make it CDMA, though, you’d better be HUGE in Seoul and North America because that’s as far as it’ll go.

Sprint is, to put it nicely, limited. It’s a PCS carrier, which means 1900Mhz coverage only, and it is proverbial for its coverage issues and the general inefficacy of its customer service. Too, CDMA devices are known for having less batter life than their GSM equivalents. Put it all together and it’s tough not to wonder if the network is going to be the weak link in the chain, and unlike the iPhone, there’s no way to unlock it and pop a SIM in there.

Still, this is Palm’s best opportunity. The iPhone is still the best-selling phone in America, but the presence of competitors means the time is ripe for somebody to pop out a compelling challenge, and Sprint seems committed to selling the hell out of it. Now, all they have to do is bring it in at a reasonable price point (and it’s becoming clear that anything over $299 is untenable in this segment, and under $199 would be much better) and maybe they’ll have a chance.

Hopefully, that’s an end to all the “Big” 12 caterwauling about what a great conference they are, how their offenses are the best in the world, how they really do play defense but it just doesn’t look that way because they are JUST! THAT! AWESOME! – well, three of their top four teams have just gotten the beatdown in bowls, and the fourth struggled and needed a last-second TD to beat the second-place team from a Known Not Good conference, and none of them blew the roof off scoring, and – more to the point – none of them could stop anybody. Yes, Virginia, the Big 12 has overrated offenses and plays less defense than the WAC.

And please, please, please lay off Ohio State. The Sooners have now shit the bed in five straight BCS bowls, including THREE title tilts, and will be known as Chokelahoma in perpetuity, or until such time as they can actually avoid taking the beatdown on national TV. That’s not bluster, or message board yammering, that’s MATH.

Your final rankings:

1) Florida. Look, Ole Miss – much as it pains me to say it – is just a good team, better than Oregon State (see below). They beat the top team in the country in each of their last two games, and convincingly. I know they’re the damn Gators, but what can you do. They didn’t back into it, they didn’t stumble into it, they just went out and took it.

2) USC, with a bullet. The Pac-10 was a lot better than we thought, and as a result, USC is better than we thought, and if you saw the Rose Bowl, or the Ohio State matchup – those weren’t games, they were autopsies. I still think there’s a certain measure of hype there, and the soft underbelly of the Pac-10 was softer than one can imagine (Washington and WSU, anyone?) but with the departures at Florida and Georgia, you have to think that USC will be the consensus preseason #1.

3) Utah. I know, I know, but look: it wasn’t a championship schedule, but they did beat everyone put in front of them, and looked plenty convincing against Alabama (their offensive line issues notwithstanding). I don’t think they’d beat either of the teams above them, but I bet they would hang just fine. Getting the first legitimately convincing BCS win for a non-BCS-conf team deserves something.

And therein lies the rub: the bowls mean that you get a whole month to wargame your final opponents. A month to scheme and watch tape and find the holes. There’s a reason that #2 almost always beats #1 in these title games, or that a middling team can suddenly look like a million bucks against their bowl opponents: prep time is everything. If, in 1992, Alabama had played Miami the week after beating Florida (barely) in the first SEC title game, they probably would have gotten their clocks cleaned. Instead, Brother Oliver had three weeks to solve the ‘Canes, and the resulting beatdown was one for the ages. (I own the DVD.)

BTW, the Heisman curse is real, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

Okay, I admit that “Bridge of Sighs” is probably a little too poetic. But it is an elevated overpass walkway between two buildings, it is floor to ceiling glass, it is in an academic setting, and look, if you were surrounded on either side by redwoods and morning fog you’d probably get all poetic ‘n shit.

So that’s not a bad way to improve your outlook first thing on getting to work. Of course, the best way to improve your Outlook is to rip it out at the roots and install the Zimbra client instead. =)

Well, I’m just now getting around to watching my former boss’s boss’s boss do the MWSF keynote this year. Listening to the early returns, though, it should be fairly obvious why Himself skipped this one: there’s literally nothing new to report. New versions of iLife and iWork, and the new MacBook paradigm comes to the Pro 17″ model, and iTunes changes its model ever so slightly…

Om’s people are right about iTunes, I think – tiered pricing where the top tier is only $1.29 isn’t that big a deal when the same 30 cents is coming off other tracks. Internet pricing tends to be a race to the bottom – after all, once you adjust for infrastructure costs and rights, there’s not really much else you can do for a value-add and the main competition has to be on price. And if people get used to the idea that everything but the latest hottest American Idol dreck should be 69 cents rather than 99…well, could be a problem.

Anyway, there’s nothing revolutionary today. There’s nothing, really, that wasn’t there in some form previously. Normally we’re used to getting game-changers at MWSF – the Mac mini and iPod shuffle in 2005, the surprise Intel launch in 2006, the iPhone reveal in 2007, the MacBook Air last year. Nothing this year is a radical change or a new product category or the sort of thing that takes all the air out of CES. And at this point in Apple’s history, where we’re preparing for a post-Steve world, you don’t waste the big man on this kind of stuff. Sure, he got up there at many a MacWorld past and made chicken salad out of much more fragrant feces than were offered today, but that was Back Then – before Apple was the top music retailer, the overwhelming owner of the digital music industry and the maker of the #1 selling mobile phone in the country. In 2009, a couple of software updates and a slight hardware stretch aren’t that big a deal, and Steve only does big deals.

Phil Schiller was always amusing as Steve’s sidekick – especially for those who knew what an absolutely relentless hardass he was in real live, whether it was rooting on the Red Sox or cracking the whip in Product Marketing. But let’s face it – there’s a reason you’ve never seen Robin: The Movie. He’s not terrible – let’s face it, he kicks the shit out of Gil Amelio or the kinds of drudgery during the Spindler nightmare. But he’s not Steve, and he will get grilled for it.

Oh yeah – at a beer bash a couple of years ago, we went at it mouthing off about the Sharks vs the Predators. A couple of hours later, one of my co-workers said “I can’t believe you had the sack to talk like that to Phil Schiller.” At which point I blasphemed at the top of my lungs and demanded to know when exactly they planned to tell me who that was and now my expletive badge wasn’t going to work in the morning. As it turns out, it did – but only because Vokoun stopped only 40 of 43 and the Preds lost. I hope he gave all his defensemen a wood shampoo when they got back to Nash Vegas. But yeah, if you’re curious why I’m not into hockey, it’s because deep down, I feel it could still turn out to be a career-limiting move.

You know you’re not in government sub-contracting anymore when you walk in and there’s already a big smokin’-fast Dell under your desk, pre-configured so your AD account will let you in.

You REALLY know you’re not in government sub-contracting when you’re told you will be issued a phone, and your options are the iPhone 3G or the Blackberry Bold.

And government sub-contracting is a wee tiny speck on the distant past horizon when, almost as an afterthought, they ask whether you want a MacBook Pro or a MacBook for a laptop, and the MacBook is not the correct answer, apparently.

If this job goes awry, it won’t be for lack of material resources, and you can put that on a float in the Rose Parade.

Anyone who thinks Utah deserves a piece of some mythical national championship needs to sign a pledge, in writing, to never ever ever bitch about another league’s non-conference scheduling ever again. If Utah deserves a title, then strength of schedule means nothing, and no team should receive any scorn whatsoever for maximizing the number of automatic wins in their schedule.

if anybody has a beef, it’s USC, whose 11-1 run through the Pac-10 suddenly looks a hell of a lot better given the Pac-10’s beatdown of all comers in this year’s bowl derby. And at the very least – given Oregon and Ole Miss – the people arguing that the Big 12 plays defense and that their offenses are JUST! THAT! AMAZING! plainly need to do some rethinking. I mean, Texas Tech gave up in a half what Vandy gave up the entire game (and the ‘Dores won, to boot)…

I think your four team playoff was set pretty well before we started: Florida, Oklahoma, USC, Utah. Nobody else has a case. The ACC and Big East are barely better than the MWC, and let’s not even get started on the Big Ten. Once again, if you seriously want to settle this on the field, you don’t have to go deeper than four. (Bama and Texas have a beef? Shoulda won your conference.)

Honestly, at this point, if the 1990 rules are still in effect?

ROSE: USC-PSU

SUGAR: Florida-Texas

FIESTA: Oklahoma-Utah

ORANGE: Alabama-VaTech

COTTON: Cincy-Texas Tech

If everything works out like you’d expect, USC, Florida and Utah are all clamoring that they deserve a piece of the title…and fat fucking shocker, that’s EXACTLY what we have now.

Blow it up. Blow it all up. No playoff, no BCS, nothing. Go back to the way things were in 1990 and not one single thing will be any worse off.