Apple: iProfit Maxi

The Observer has a big splash about Apple today. My contribution to it is here.

Prince Harry’s Nazi blunder

Acres of synthetic moral outrage from the British tabloids, leavened only by a nicely ironic column by John O’Farrell in the Guardian. Sample:

“What’s almost as distressing is that taxpayers’ money was spent sending this boy to Eton, and this is the best they could do. Surely some sort of refund must be in order? Did Clarence House check the league tables for percentage of pupils gaining grades A-C in racial purity? So that’s why his art teacher at Eton said she helped him with his A-level coursework; she had to paint over that great big portrait of Von Ribbentrop.

Despite endless scandals and embarrassing gaffes, these privately educated rightwing wasters are still the only people that the royals mix with. It’s no wonder that our royal family have absolutely no idea about what is normal or appropriate behaviour.

The fancy dress party in question was hosted by one of the pro-hunting upper-class twits who invaded last year’s Labour party conference. The fact that one of the guests sold this picture to the tabloids tells us as much about their morality as Harry’s costume. Last time he got into trouble for punching a photographer. This time you can’t help feeling he was a bit slow off the mark.” [Thanks to Boyd Harris for the link.]

En passant, one charitable explanation for the gaffe is that Harry is probably typical of his generation in knowing virtually nothing about the Nazis other than that they favoured funny moustaches amd had preposterous salutes. He had, in other words, the Monty Python view of National Socialism.

On this day…

… in 1941, James Joyce died in Zurich, at the age of 59. Thanks to Pete for the reminder.

Still more from the you-couldn’t-make-it-up department

BBC photograph

In the month in which the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is commemorated, Prince Harry — third in line to the British throne — is photographed wearing a Nazi uniform (complete with swastika armband) at a fancy-dress party.

The graphing calculator story

Ron Avitzur’s truly astonishing account of how the graphing calculator made into the Apple Mac software release. Read it and wonder. Thanks to Quentin and to Seb for the link.

More from the you-couldn’t-make-it-up department

Apple has just released a tiny, cheap iPod called, if you please, “iPod shuffle”.

The fine print on the Apple Store page describing this little gem includes the injunction: “Do not eat iPod shuffle”.

A kind reader has emailed to point out that this may be a rare example of corporate lawyers displaying a sense of humour, in that some of the publicity material for the Shuffle likened its size to that of a couple of strips of chewing gum!

Gates losing his marbles?

“There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don’t think that those incentives should exist.” From a News.Com interview.

Firefox growth

Karlin Lillington has been monitoring the browsers used by people who visit her Blog. Results are very interesting:

“Firefox has an astonishing 27% share. IE is down to only 52.5% with other browers from Opera to Netscape to Omniweb to Safari completing the numbers. That’s damned impressive for a browser that wasn’t even showing up a few months back. Now my visitor base may be a bit skewed towards attracting more non-IE browsers that is representative of the whole web (as it’s a tech blog) but even so what a phenomenal share by this new browser.”

Hydrogen: the Sequel

Meet General Motor’s hydrogen fuel-cell powered prototype. And the price? Oh about $700,000.

[Photo from New York Times.]

O’Hanlon on photography

Redmond O’Hanlon is a travel writer who specialises in going to dangerous and remote places and almost getting killed — and then writing about it entertainingly. He’s full of surprises — for example this lovely piece about photography in yesterday’s Guardian Review. Sample:

“Why are great photographs so powerful? Is it simply that they stop time (as all religions want to do)? Or that they’re one in the eye for death (as all religions would like to be)? Yes, but perhaps it’s also simply that they deal in images, the language of our dreams. Anyway, those photographs, from this magical machine, a camera, a piece of multiple scientific thought that cheats death in reality, produces images that are as immortal as you can get. Make a journey by yourself where you always carry a camera and you’ll find you’re never truly alone: your camera gives you psychological strength because you’ll find that your friends, the people who love you, are with you: if you survive, they can share this alien world of yours.

Now, at 57, I think I can remember every interviewer and photographer that I’ve met . . . particularly the photographers.”