Now 3 years later Walter Isaacson, the author who wrote Steve Jobs biography, joins in on the fun. Isaacson, appearing on The Daily Show with John Stewart, highlights Steve Jobs’ more artistic and mystical style compared to Bill Gates’ brains and business sense.

BirdAbroad:

You have already guessed the punchline, of course: this was a total Apple store ripoff. A beautiful ripoff – a brilliant one – the best ripoff store we had ever seen (and we see them every day). But some things were just not right: the stairs were poorly made. The walls hadn’t been painted properly.

Apple never writes “Apple Store” on it’s signs – it just puts up the glowing, iconic fruit.

And the funniest part:

Being the curious types that we are, we struck up some conversation with these salespeople who, hand to God, all genuinely think they work for Apple.

Check out the BirdAbroad blog for more details and photos.

(via macnn)

AT&T evidently discontinued the $5-for-200-messages plan—cheapest is now $10 for 1000. <headshake> iMessage can’t come soon enough.

Just checked it out, and sure enough the $5 plan is gone. At first I thought it was a response to the iMessage announcement, but then thinking cleary I knew AT&T couldn’t react that fast…even though it is in line with their normal dick moves. I did a little more research and it turns out the $5 for 200 and $15 for 1500 plans were killed in mid January of this year.

Further examination of my texting reveals I send about 2,000 a month, most (~70%) of which are to my girlfriend. The others are a mix of Twitter text (which I have now turned off), iOS users, and others.  Taking out all the people that will be on iMessages leaves me with about 150 – 200 text a month. Right now I’m paying $30 for shared text between my and Chiyin’s iPhone, so $15 per phone for unlimited messaging. Now let’s look at my text plan options.

Pay per text

This is really expensive, at 20 cents per text. So if I send 175 text a month on average it will cost $35 / month.

$5 – 200 Text Plan (no longer exist)

This plan would be perfect, $5 a month vs $15, too bad it’s been killed. If I was on a normal $20 unlimited plan, this would be an even bigger savings.

$10 – 1000 Text Plan (UPDATE: This plan no longer exist now, it’s all or none deal now. Shame on you AT&T, shame!!!)

Looks like this will be my only option. I won’t send anywhere near 1000 text a month, but price wise it’s the same to buy 1000 messages in a package or send 50 without.

So if both Chiyin and I switch to this plan, we’ll be saving $10 a month. Saving anything is nice, but I still feel like AT&T is winning. Text message is the biggest rip off in the wireless industry! Even though they are getting $10 less than before out of their cash cow, that $20 they are still getting is like printing money.  I can send 500 hundred emails without putting a dent in my 2GB data plan, but send 500 text and it will cost you at least $10. I know I’m picking on AT&T in this post, but it really applies to all wireless carriers.

With push notification and iMessage, traditional texting’s days are numbered, but until there is a mainstream ubiquitous system in place that works across iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone, traditional texting won’t disappear. I doubt iMessage will go open source, but there are other apps out there that are already filling this role, it’s just a matter of getting all your friends to use them. I’m now using WhatsApp [Website / iTunes], which works with iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Nokia. It’s only a buck and works great!

Guinness World Records, the global authority on record breaking, today confirm that the Kinect for the Xbox 360 is the Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device.  The hardware, that allows controller-free gaming, sold through an average of 133,333 units per day, for a total of 8 million units in its first 60 days on sale from 4 November 2010 to 3 January 2011.

The sales figures outstrip both the iPhone and the iPad for the equivalent periods after launch

Guess Microsoft isn’t dead yet. Windows 7 was a great step forward after the Vista failure. The Xbox 360 sells well, and now with the Kinect they are reaching a whole new audience.  I never wanted an Xbox before, I was fine with my gaming PC, Wii, and PS3, but now with Kinect, I’m very tempted to buy one. Played it a few times at a friends house and it’s really cool, wish I had one when I was a kid.

Jim sums up how I feel about that comparison perfectly:

Comparing the Nook to an iPad is like rolling up to a new Ferrari with your 1974 Pinto and bragging that your car was cheaper.

Please note: I don’t recommend anyone actually read that Wall Street Journal article.

[LoopInsight]

The App Store review office at 1 Infinite Loop has officially frozen over: we’ve gotten word that the official Google Voice application is on its way to the iPhone in the next few weeks. In fact, we’ve heard from a source close to Google that it’s already been approved — Google just needs to revamp the application to work with the iPhone 4 and iOS’s multitasking capabilities.

You remember the shit storm surrounding the official and third party Google Voice app rejections, with the FCC questioning all the players; Apple, AT&T, and Google. It seemed like all hope was lost…that was until Apple recently changed the app store rules and the third party GV apps started to appear in the app store again. Since then we’ve all been waiting to see when/if the official Google Voice app would be approved, and now it looks like it has!

(via iPhoneInCanada)

Debbie Uttecht from Microsoft Hardware Blog:

After much anticipation, we are excited to announce the Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse! You might have seen the teases we shared on Twitter –we were trying to get you thinking about things that were flat and when you see this mouse you’ll know why.  Some of the creative responses we got surprised us!

You’ll remember just a couple weeks ago we reported on the rumored new device, which Neowin correctly guessed was a new Arc Touch mouse. Also, arctouchmouse.com now takes you to the product website instead of a Bing search. Pre-orders are open today for a release sometime in December.

The big difference, compared to Apple’s touch mouse, is only the silver strip is “touchable”. Also, the gestures are pretty basic when compared to Apple’s multi-touch capabilities. The rest of the mouse just works like a regular mouse. Microsoft’s selling point is that you can flatten the mouse for easy transport and then arc it for more traditional comfort. I can see a market for this, but if they try to get more than $30 for it, I think it’s going to be a hard sell.

UPDATE Here’s the link to the announcement on the main website: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2010/sep10/09-1ArcTouchPR.mspx

On the same day Apple is believed to announce a new iTunes streaming service, Sony has jumped into the game.

Stuart Miles from Pocket-lint:

Today at the IFA 2010 show in Berlin, Sony announced that “Video On Demand powered by Qriocity”, a premium streaming video service, will be available this autumn in five European countries including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K.

…

But it’s not just about video, Sony has said that will also launch a music cloud base service too.

Netflix…uh oh.

Keith from BIT-101 compared the iPad, Kindle, Newsprint, and magazine all under the microscope for our viewing pleasure. You can really see the difference in pixel based LCDs vs the electronic paper display of the Kindle, which tries to mimic real paper. Remember this is compared to the standard screen, not the new retina display seen on the iPhone 4. Check out the BIT-101 link for all the photos, some at 375x!

(via iClarified)