.avie

Macworld NY 2002 Keynote Address attendees were enthusiastic about most of Jobs's announcements. QuickTime 6, iTunes, Jaguar, Junk Mail Filter, and many more products elicited positive response from the audience.  But when Jobs got around to announcing the discontinuation of free iTools, to be replaced with the $100/year .mac service, audience participation dragged to a halt.  Amidst the silence, one could hear clapping from a joyful Avie Tevanian, head of Apple’s Software Engineering group and former VP of Engineering at NeXT.  He was either excited about the products or his bonus.  Or the fact that he gets a free .mac account anyway.

.smac

I suppose Steve Jobs was caught between a rock and a hard place when it came time for him to announce that iTools , now called .mac, would no longer be a free service.  What better way to drop the bomb than to remind everyone how much the competition sucks!  With a slight of tongue, Jobs explained that Yahoo! had started charging for POP e-mail accounts, and that all the other Internet disk services have gone out of business.  To rev us up even more, Jobs mentioned how Microsoft's .NET service is all .wet.  But was it enough to evoke a positive response from the audience?  Well, let's just say I heard more crickets than usual.

17"

Several owners of the 15" flat panel iMac have reported that their displays have become loose and tilt slightly to one side.  Will a 17" flat panel iMac display eventually tilt like a pinball machine?  Stop by the new Apple Store in SoHo, NYC every week with a ruler and level, and report back to this forum.

Leer Jet

Steve Jobs may only get a salary of $1 per year, but his stock options and bonuses more than make up for his less-than-minimum wages.   To show their appreciation for Jobs bringing the company back to life, Apple gave Steve a $90M Gulfstream V private jet!  The only thing it was missing was that giant novelty bow on the top of all the expensive gift cars in the Lexus commercials.  Saturday Night Live did a spoof of the commercial, in which they were selling the giant bows to add the finishing touches to the gift cars.  So this cartoon is a spoof of a goof of a poof on a roof.  Moof.

Résumé

Apple's iTools offers Mac users free disk space, e-mail, and a personal web site to share with the world.  You can use it to post a photo album, share files, and even showcase your résumé.  Even Steve Jobs has taken advantage of this free service.  His impressive résumé summarizes Jobs's entrepreneurial history, including his fledgling startup company, NeXT Software Inc.  Maybe that bastard redheaded stepchild of a company is marring his otherwise enviable reputation.  Why else would he have not been offered a new job yet?