Steve Jobs, RIP

The Apple website homepage says it all:

Farewell to a business and technology genius.

President Obama or Steve Jobs: Whose Speech Was Bigger?

We'll leave aside the obscene modern media atmosphere in which this blog post's title would even be taken seriously. Of course the president's State of the Union speech was the bigger and more important speech given yesterday.

But from a fun angle, can we ask which will have a bigger impact on American life? Don't rush to say Obama's; we know his work will have a big impact on our lives -- that comes with his job. But was his speech something that itself will cause a change or was it a one-off bit of political theater that won't have much effect on the actions of the government or its citizens in the coming year?

Ah, but don't rush to say that Steve Jobs' was necessarily more ground-breaking. After all, he was just announcing a new computer from his company. The iPad is basically a souped-up iPod Touch made bigger and flatter and updated with the latest Apple geegaws. It might be true that in our world today where successful business people are worshipped like emperors or gods that Jobs will get more mileage out of his hyped-up presentation. But Apple's competitors (from Google to Nokia) are decreasing the distance between the Mac-maker and the rest of the pack.

The New York Times' live blogger of the Apple leader's speech couldn't restrain himself from sending up the famously self-promoting Jobs for all of his hyperbole. That's nothing new; I remember the same thing from past speeches of his, including the one I attended as a member of the press many years ago. What's more irritating is that many members of the "news" media in attendance react as if they were Charlie Bucket being handed the keys to Willy Wonka's factory.

Meanwhile, much of the breathless love-affair with Barack Obama from leftwing writers has died away, replaced by a stunned disbelief that the Chosen One would have to actually compromise in the world of politics. Personally, I would like to see him be a bit tougher in dealing with the political opposition, which has given him less than nothing in return for all of his olive-branch proffering. His speech last night was a believable merging of feistiness and intellectual adherence to higher standards of political conduct. More of this, please; and I think we'll see more of this, so in the end, I have to say Obama wins.

I want to own an iPad. I want to have my political life impacted by Barack Obama. Big difference.

So It's Called the iPad, not iSlate or iTablet

Anywho, The New York Times is live-blogging the Steve Jobs sales pitch. When will they shut up and tell us how much it costs?

UPDATE: Naturally, the Apple web site won't post a word about the new product until after Jobs stops yakking.

Once You Go Magic Mouse, You Don't Ever Go Back

I love technology. I don't get fundamentalist about it and go all extremist, but I do love the high-tech stuff that works beautifully and is designed with great skill. Such as the Nexus One.

The thought occurred to me as I was using my Apple Magic Mouse. Some people rely overwhelmingly on keyboard tricks to do all of their moves on the computer screen, other people rely mostly on their mouse and use the keyboard only when absolutely necessary. Me? I use 'em both. It's faster. And now I've found that the Magic Mouse for Macs works -- oh, so perfectly. It's top is basically a track pad. Its design is sleek (isn't every Mac design sleek?). And it was a great replacement for the wireless Microsoft (yes, Microsoft) mouse I've been using with a succession of Macs since 2000 (just one of the perks of being an editor at Internet World magazine). (Not that you care.)

To put my love with this little device in perspective: I remember hearing in college that a friend of mine had included the microwave oven in a list of inventions that were absolutely essential for life, and I found that hilarious. I still find it funny. I did not -- and I still do not -- think a microwave oven is crucial for a long and happy life.

But as I was just using my Magic Mouse to scroll down a web page, I found myself thinking that it would be incredibly difficult if this magical li'l mouse were taken away from me. Its functions are so perfectly thought out, so well executed, and so appreciated by moi that its future absence would leave me definitely feeling its absence.

So much of computer use makes one contemplate the future -- gee, wouldn't it be great if I had 10 times the memory on this old crate? What if this thing ran faster? Why can't they just integrate the two programs so I don't have to do it manually? And so on.

Well, in the age of broadband and smart phones and Steve Jobs, there are a good number of products and services that don't make you yearn for the future. You'll still welcome the future -- but you won't be hating the present because it's not the future.

And the Apple Magic Mouse is one of them.