"Apple has acquired a company with access to 'the hose'..."

"... the nickname for Twitter’s stream of 500 million tweets per day."

$200 million for Topsy, which I've got to assume is named after the character in "Uncle Tom's Cabin":

A ragamuffin young slave girl. When asked if she knows who made her, she professes ignorance of both God and a mother, saying "I s'pect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me."... The phrase "growed like Topsy" (later "grew like Topsy") passed into the English language, originally with the specific meaning of unplanned growth, later sometimes just meaning enormous growth.

Is it in poor taste to name a company after a slave girl?

Or do you think the company was named after Topsy the elephant, famous for dying of electrocution, captured on film by Thomas Edison in the year 1903?

Initially, Topsy was supposed to be hanged, but other ways were considered when the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals protested. Edison then suggested electrocution with alternating current, which had been used for the execution of humans since 1890.

Topsy was fed carrots laced with 460 grams of potassium cyanide before the deadly current from a 6,600-volt AC source was sent coursing through her body, partly as a demonstration of how "unsafe" his competitor's (George Westinghouse) alternating current design was.

Is it in poor taste to name a company after an electrocuted elephant?



The hose.

"Designed by Doofuses in California."

"Apple’s new ads make the company look lame."

Yes. And let me add: The slogan "Designed by Apple in California" is designed to keep us from thinking about how these things are not manufactured in California or anywhere else in America. You're not supposed to think of any possible suffering that has taken place making this things. You're supposed to imagine — ♫ imagine there's no factories, I wonder if you can — that these nifty items sprang fully formed from the minds of Californians.

Which raises the question: Are we in love with the Californian mind? If so, aren't we crazy?

"The Battle of $9.99: How Apple, Amazon, and the Big Six Publishers Changed the E-Book Business Overnight."

Publishers Weekly has put out a $1.99 ebook.

Little did Apple know when it introduced the iPad in 2010 that it would be setting itself up to land in federal court on price-fixing charges. This blow-by-blow account charts how five of America’s six largest publishers, afraid that bookselling powerhouse Amazon's $9.99 price for Kindle e-books would undermine the industry, spent a few frantic weeks in early 2010 deep in negotiations with Apple to introduce a new business model for e-books, just in time for the launch of the iPad and the iBookstore.

ADDED: I was dreaming when I wrote this/Forgive me if it goes astray/But when I woke up this morning/Coulda sworn it was judgment day/The sky was all purple/There were people running everywhere/Trying 2 run from the destruction/You know I didn't even care/They say two thousand one zero party over/Oops out of time/So tonight I'm gonna read like it's nine point ninety-nine...

"Apple, under direction from head designer Sir Jonathan Ive, has removed the 'textured' design of its icons in iOS 7..."

"... in favour of simple, block colours. 'Installing iOS 7 is like getting a new phone, but one you can already use,' said Craig Federighi Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, pictured. 'We completely ran out of green felt and wood. That's got to be good for the environment."

"I'm offended by a $4 trillion government bullying, berating and badgering one of America’s greatest success stories."

"If anyone should be on trial here, it should be Congress... I frankly think the committee should apologize to Apple. The Congress should be on trial here for creating a Byzantine and bizarre tax code."

"Apple used a 'complex web' of offshore entities — with no employees or physical offices..."

"... that allowed it to pay little or no taxes on tens of billions it earned overseas, according to a Senate investigation unveiled Monday."

While the practice of using foreign operations to avoid U.S. taxes is legal and common among multinationals, Apple’s scheme was unprecedented in its use of multiple affiliates that had no semblance of a physical presence, Senate staffers said.

Why wouldn't Apple do what is legal to avoid taxes?

“Apple claims to be the largest U.S. corporate taxpayer, but by sheer size and scale it is also among America’s largest tax avoiders,” [Senator John] McCain said.

Isn't that exactly what you would expect?

Purchase of the day.

From the March 10, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

Apple TV MD199LL/A [NEWEST VERSION] (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $3.96)

... and 24 other items purchased — at no additional cost to the buyers — through the Althouse Amazon portal.

Thanks for your continuous wireless streaming of positive feedback to the blogger.

"A proposal by the Prince George’s County Board of Education to copyright work created by staff and students for school could mean..."

"... that a picture drawn by a first-grader, a lesson plan developed by a teacher or an app created by a teen would belong to the school system, not the individual."

Board Chair Verjeana M. Jacobs (District 5) said she and Vice Chair Carolyn M. Boston (District 6) attended an Apple presentation and learned how teachers can use apps to create new curricula. The proposal was designed to make it clear who owns teacher-developed curricula created while using apps on iPads that are school property, Jacobs said.

God forbid that teachers might become entrepreneurial about their creations and amass personal wealth. It's important to keep them inside the system, teaching their wards that the government needs to possess everything in order to ensure that no one gets more than her share.

"Google Now does a much better job, moment to moment, in anticipating the information that a user needs than Siri."

"So what can Siri do better? Have an emotional relationship with a user...."

Google Now does not attempt personality, merely efficiency, and given that company’s strengths, I think this is a good design decision. But if Apple cannot compete on sheer efficiency, can it make up for it with charm?

This is in fact one of the main uses for “personality” in humans—to make up for deficits....

Here's an illustration of how that works:



Once you know the programming is designed to smooth over the shortcomings of the product, will it still work? Maybe so. Another question is whether Apple will give us some alternative personalities. Siri comes across as a relatively perky and warm young female. That's not what everyone wants! I'd like to see some more amusing approaches. Why not a witty, bitchy older woman or a comical guy? Unfortunately, Apple won't associate itself with anything sexual, but I'm sure many users would like their computers' voice to take daring liberties with them.

ADDED: "The human brain is built so that when given the slightest hint that something is even vaguely social, or vaguely human... given the slightest hint of humanness, people will respond with an enormous array of social responses including... reciprocating and retaliating."

"There are some good things" about being "robotic."

"Discipline comes to mind. But it sounds like there is just no emotion. People that know me, I don’t think they would say that. I certainly am not a fist-pounder. That isn’t my style. But that and emotion are two different things. One is just a way of expressing it, basically. So, anyway."

Says Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple (picked by Steve Jobs).