So the cowardly Lyons has been banging on about Jobso’s health again, has he? Hold on to your hats, boy and girls, because it looks like our favourite fake journo may accidentally have stumbled arse-backwards onto a valid point. Even if you don’t subscribe to the childish fantasy that Steve personally handcrafts each and every iPod, you can’t doubt that his synonymity with Apple goes far beyond being its public face. So what happens when he shuffles off his mortal coil? It’s hard to say because we effectively know bugger all about the rest of Apple’s management. Even the most obsessed Cupertinologist would be hard pressed to name more than a few of the bland b—s. So what can we deduce about them from what we know of Jobs? His choice in henchmen could go one of two ways, and neither of them is particularly pretty. If he’s surrounded himself with a bunch of spineless yes-men, they’re likely to spend the months after Steve croaks it standing around, mouths open, scratching their backsides in blank stupidity, like the Tories faced with a moral dilemma, waiting for someone to tell them when to take a dump. This may be just the opening some opportunistic c— like Carl Icahn needs to swoop in and buy Apple, which would totally b—s things up for everyone. Alternatively — and a little more likely — if Steve’s employed the Führerprinzip he’s surounded himself with ruthless sycophants who only ever take a break from kissing his arse to snarl at each other. In this case, in the wake of Steve’s kicking the bucket, we can expect Apple to quickly implode into the kind of civil war which makes the former Yugoslavia look like a mild falling out. Either way, I think it’s in the best interest of all concerned if Apple were to pump their $25 billion of cash into keeping Steve alive.

Good God. Some mad cow has got her knickers in such a twist over this MacWorld business that she’s suggesting we all go to the keynote and give Phil Schiller the silent treatment. The crazy bint sounds like most of my ex-wives. When will these sad cases get it through their dented noggins that Apple couldn’t give a flying f— what you do as long as you keep buying their products. In fact, I dare say they’d welcome a break from your incessant whinging. “This new thing doesn’t work exactly like the old thing.” “Where’s my FireWire gone?” “Jobso should come and give the Keynote to me in my lounge.” Wah wah wah. Actually, I think I’m coming around to the silly mare’s idea. Maybe silence is exactly what’s called for. So please, for the love of all that’s holy, can you all please, please, please! shut the f— up now. Thank you.

Editor Stewie, obviously feeling the pressure of having to run this blog all on his lonesome, has sent me a pissy little e-mail full of links and passive-aggressive threats. One of these — links, not threats — was to the website of Freetard wankers ‘Defective by Design’, who are currently running a ‘35 Days Against DRM’ campaign in an attempt to give their pointless little lives some shape or meaning. Their Apple-relevant targets so far have included the MacBook and iTunes, while other low-hanging fruit like the Zune and NetFlix have also received a fine misting of their impotent bile. I think I was meant to ‘rip into’ these sad c—s, but frankly I think I will be far more entertaining to just sit back and see if they manage to keep up the momentum through all 35 days. For those of you wishing to keep count, they’re currently on day 12 and already seem to be flagging slightly. (It may also be enlightening to find out why exactly they’re counting down to January the 9th. Is it some form of Freetard Holy Day? Perhaps the blessed Stallman’s birthday?) I shall also suggest that this site adopt their little iPod-wearing snowman silhouette to 1) drive a few customers towards that annoying Amazon iPod carousel which had to date, I am reliably informed, raised exactly $0.00 in revenue, and 2) piss them off. I believe that is my right.

So poor little Poguey-woguey has suffered a flaming from the BlackBerry fanboys. Boo-f—ing-hoo. Maybe he can write a musical about it. But it isn’t the world’s campiest tech journo — irksome though he may be — who is causing me discomfort today. No, that somewhat dubious accolade goes to the engorgement of pricks collectively know as BlackBerry fans. It shouldn’t really come as any surprise that they are, to a man and woman, a monumental collection of cretins. Recall, if you will, the BlackBerry’s unique selling point. Not for them the mundanity of the plain-old mobile phone. Oh, no. The BlackBerry owner must be able to receive e-mails at a moment’s notice. Heaven forfend that they should be unreachable during the split second between Obama deciding to offer them that cabinet position and his coming to his senses. You will notice the bizarre dichotomy here: BlackBerry users consider themselves so important that they must make themselves always available, whilst the rest of the world thinks them so unimportant that they decide to communicate via e-mail rather than telephone. Is it then any wonder than when someone criticises their latest wonder toy they quickly deluge the miscreant in a lake of whining and piss? Certainly, they are no worse that the average Apple fanboy, but I always find myself rooting for this later group in the same way that, should things regrettably kick-off during an International, I find myself rooting for the English football hooligans: they may be an almighty bunch of c—s, but at least they’re our almighty bunch of c—s.

“In CS3, there were some serious problems that customers faced and the time it took to resolve those issues in customer support made the initial experience with CS3 painful for some customers,” bleats Adobe’s Barry Hills on John Nack’s blog. “Wouldn’t it be great if there were someone at Apple writing a weblog like John Nack’s?” coos Gruber. “Oh please just shut the f— up,” say I. I suppose I shouldn’t expect any better from someone like Gruber. He hangs around with programmers and somehow thinks he’s contributing. (And the first person to utter ‘markdown’ will have their teeth kicked down their throats.) Why are we still mistaking soul-searching wankery like this for doing your job? Bursting into tears as you admit to your kiddie-fiddling support group that you have a problem with kiddie-fiddling is not a break through. Stopping the f—ing kiddie-fiddling is. Apple has no need of introspective toss like this because for all their hippie-trippie Californian bulls— image they are a proper grown up company with a culture of quality. If you wrote a steaming abortive turd like the CS3 installer for Apple you wouldn’t be around long enough to f—ing well blog about how sorry you were.

You may have read that the EFF [Electronic Freedom Foundation] has spoken out against Apple’s gagging of a bunch of ‘hackers’ planning to heist the iTunes music database. Or you may have better things to do with your time. God knows I do, and this is meant to be my job. Anyway, “Apple Confuses Speech with a DMCA Violation” scream the EFF. Allow me to provide a quick glossary for the slower amongst you. By “speech” they mean freedom of speech, as enshrined in the first amendment to their beloved Constitution, and by “DMCA” they mean the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a strangely fascist piece of legislation which the Land of the Free chose to enact late last century. What follows is the kind of whiney point-by-point rebuttal you’d get if the Macalope were a lawyer. I’m sure that this kind of wankery is exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind. And I’m sure I’m not the only one to enjoy the irony that the EFF does not open itself to commenters. Today I shall be giving thanks that I live in a civilised country.

The shills at The Mac Security Blog would like to bring to your attention a TechNote from Apple recommending that you install anti-virus software on your Mac. This is hardly surprising, given that The Mac Security Blog is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intego, a company which makes anti-virus software — in particular something called VirusBarrier X5 which gets top billing on Apple’s list of must-have prophylactics. It’s hardly surprising that Intego thinks you need anti-virus software, in the same way that it’s hardly surprising that the tart who hangs about outside the newsagents on the corner thinks I need a handjob. And while I’ll concede that she may very well be right, you’re probably asking yourself, “Do I really need anti-virus software? I though Macs were virus-free. Has that tosser Justin Long being lying to me all this time?” Well I’m here to tell you that yes, you do need anti-virus software. If you haven’t got a f—ing brain.

I remember a time when Mac viruses were rife, and that day has passed. There was a time when you could catch God-knows-what from a scrofulous floppy, but UNIX-like security has neatly kicked most of that in the nadgers. The few viruses we see today are a pale imitation. I mean, honestly: politely asking for your password before they can infect your Mac? Don’t make me laugh. The latest one apparently poses as a codec needed to watch some porn. In this day of Flash video? Who honestly bothers? When I’ve got my trousers down around my ankles the last thing I’m going to be bothered about doing is installing f—ing codecs. But if you like to turn your brain off when you log on to the network, by all means buy yourself some anti-virus software. The rest of us will save our money.

According to the latest round of prattling to have briefly occupied the gnat’s genitals-sized attention spans of the network-lurking keyboard-botherers, talks between Apple (iTunes) and Apple (Beatles) have ’stalled.’ Thus spake none other than Sir — that sound you can hear is the perforated corpse of Lennon spinning in his grave — Paul McCartney himself, or so we are lead to believe. So what do you imagine is the sticking point? Bitrates? DRM? Billing? Royalties? Surely by now the record companies have realised that Steve Jobs, in an attempt to free their lives of complication and confusion, has only one deal to offer them: his. And if they don’t like it them they can always f— off to Amazon and see how much coke and Rollers royalties from the runner-up will buy them. But are The Beatles likely to stand for this? Not bloody likely. We shall soon find out what happens when the irresistibly smug Fab Four meets the immovably objectionable Jobso.

There are several groups of people with whom I instinctively feel sympathy. They include among their number the homeless and refugees. Absent from this list, however, are people who have nothing better to do with their pointless lives than whine about DRM. They, as far as I’m concerned, can go f— themselves. So your new aluminium MacBook refuses to play iTunes downloads on non-DisplayPort displays? Boo. F—ing. Hoo. I thought we had this problem solved years ago: buy the DVD. Play it on anything with a DVD drive. Rip it to all your other devices. Stop your f—ing moaning. And learn a little patience. Because until iTunes starts stocking emergency medical how-tos, there isn’t a film out there you need so urgently that you have to suffer the disadvantages of digital downloads.

So Dan Lyons’s been told to stop blogging, has he? It’s long overdue if you ask me. But rather than coming in response to general reader apathy, this appears to be at the behest of his bosses at Newsweek, and all because he called a couple of Yahoo! PR drones ‘lying sacks of s—.’ So it was a firing for crass unoriginality, then? Or, given that on closer reading one of the lying sacks of s— turns out to be Yahoo’s über-lawyer, for unnecessary politeness. You know, it’s been so long since I’ve had a steady paying print job, I’d almost forgotten what it’s like when your Editor has you by the balls like that. Although in Dan’s case, he’d have to grow a pair first.

You will recall, Mac faithful, that Dan Lyons first rose to prominence through his Fake Steve Jobs blog. Now, there’s nothing I hate more than someone writing — and here I’m using the word in its looses sense, the one which encompasses blogging — under an assumed name. The last person to be justified in doing so was George Eliot (Google it, stupid). Everyone since is simply a spineless cretin — Dan Lyons more than most. At the first sign of old Jobso looking a little peaky he shutters the site and runs away. Pathetic. And then we’re all shocked to discover that ‘Real’ Dan isn’t actually funny. Well good riddance to him, say I.

 

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We are, as you may have noticed, trying out something new here. The boy Stewie, our august editor, seems unsure what to do when faced with some real writing talent. His response is to give me a masthead — taken a good few years ago, I’m afraid — and an open remit to pontificate in short bursts on whatever vaguely-tangental topics catch my eye. Apparently he doubts my stamina when it comes to full-length articles. He should really consult his mother on that score.