StevenLevy
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Steve Jobs was top choice for Google CEO
Steven Levy's new book, In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, has some interesting insights regarding the relationship between Steve Jobs and Google throughout the years. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that when Sergey Brin and Larry Page were looking around for a new CEO, their first choice was Jobs. Jobs turned them down, but he saw enough in Google to see that it could be a success; he offered to mentor the two founders, going so far as to provide them with access to his closest advisers. After Jobs declined the Google CEO position, Brin and Page chose Eric Schmidt as CEO, and Schmidt also later joined Apple's board of directors. That's when things quickly took a turn for the worse. As Levy states in the book, Jobs was "furious" when he visited Google's Mountain View headquarters and saw that the Android OS sported iOS features like pinch to zoom, among others. Shortly after that visit, Jobs told an Apple town hall meeting what he really thought of Google: "We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake: they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them [...] This don't be evil mantra? It's bullshit." The book also states that after Jobs found out about Android's similarities to iOS, he felt betrayed enough to somehow keep the development of the iPad hidden from Eric Schmidt while he was still a board member of Apple. [via The Daily Mail]
Steven Levy shouts out Engadget in his new book
It's always nice to be recognized, especially by those high-caliber tech journos like Steven Levy, who gave Engadget a shout out in the intro to his new book, The Best of Technology Writing 2007:"It is nonetheless true that some blog writing doesn't translate well to the medium of print. And so the excellent ongoing work in places like Engadget, Scripting News, TechCrunch, and other real-time dispatches doesn't appear here. ..." [Page 6]Granted, we'd prefer to have a piece in the book, but the first to get namechecked? We won't kick it out of bed. Much love, Señor Levy.
Steven Levy's iPhone NOT almost stolen on live TV
Update: A close analysis of the audio (thanks Brian and commenters!) indicates that the perp was actually going for the Fox reporter's microphone and not the iPhone itself. Stranger and stranger.Oh, man, this is just getting completely out of hand. Dailymotion has a clip of Fox News interviewing Steven Levy outside the 5th Avenue Apple Store today, and just as the Newsweek writer was saying how he's one of only four people to have gotten an advance look at the iPhone... blammo, in swoops a would-be thief who accidentally grabs the reporter's microphone in his attempt to get at the iPhone.Nobody hurt, and they apparently grabbed the guy... but c'mon, everybody, please settle down before someone gets hurt. See the video after the jump.via Daring Fireball / Valleywag
Guitar Hero kills desire to start a crappy band
This week, Steven Levy writes for Newsweek that Guitar Hero lowers the time required to feel like an accomplished musician, which may seem like a good thing. The bad side is determining if this cheap fulfillment of rock-star fantasies keeps us from learning to play an actual instrument.Isn't that the whole point of games, to satisfy fantasies vicariously through pixels? While we think so, Levy still raises an interesting question; does a flight simulator save us the need of flying lessons or rob us from real-world accomplishment? Does a basketball game keep us inside and uncoordinated, or let us pretend we're NBA stars? Maybe Guitar Hero with a real guitar would be the best of both worlds.
Review: The Perfect Thing
'The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness' (Simon & Schuster, 284 pages) is the latest work from Steven Levy, available in finer booksellers on October 23rd. You might recall some of his other works: 'Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution,' and 'Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything,' to name a few. We were able to get our hands on an advance copy, and you know what that means! A review just for you, dear TUAW readers.Mr. Levy is clearly enamored with the concept of 'shuffle.' He mentions it numerous times throughout the pages of this book, but he has also taken it a step further. The book, itself, is composed of a number of stand alone essays. These essays have enabled the publisher to print four different versions of the book, with the chapters 'shuffled.' Only the first and last chapters remain in the same place for each printing. This is a great marketing gimmick, but sadly it negatively impacts the quality of the book.I sat down and read 'The Perfect Thing' from cover to cover in one sitting. Since each chapter was written to stand alone Mr. Levy couldn't guarantee that you would know a certain tidbit about the iPod that was uncovered in another chapter. He must repeat himself in order to make sure you get the whole story. This is a sensible approach given the shuffled nature of the book but a slightly annoying since one, presumably, is going to be reading the book in the order it is presented in. I would suggest, for the paperback printing, this shuffle idea be abandoned.Despite the repetition at times, Levy weaves a very good tale about the creation of the iPod, and the impact it has had on us. Levy had access to Jobs, Schiller, and Ive so he can really tell the whole story (and yes, Levy backs up the claim that it was Phil Schiller's idea for the scrollwheel). One of the more amusing stories involves Bill Gates' first encounter with an iPod, but you'll have to read the book for all the details.I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Levy might go a little overboard in his praise of the iPod. He often fetishizes the device, imparting upon it almost religious signficance. The iPod is an important device, but I'm not sure it is the greatest invention of the 21st century.Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed Levy's other books, or anyone looking to get the full story behind the iPod.
Steve Jobs worried about the Zune? In a word: "No."
Any wild guesses as to which big tech exec isn't a fan of the new Zune? If you guessed Steve Jobs, you'd be completely correct; in a recent interview with Newsweek's Steven Levy, Herr Jobs says that he's not at all worried about the Zune. "I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable," argues His Steveness. You make a good point, Steve, but we've heard you sing this tune before, like when the original Mac didn't have networking capabilities and you basically told people to resort to sneakernet -- of course, eventually Macs were able to connect with one another. So, we'll agree with you that the wireless capabilities on the Zune kinda suck out of the box, but we'll also bet that you're already at work on some wireless action for a future iPod, no matter how hard you might deny it now.
