With working conditions and security policy down Apple’s supply chain under serious fire , an Apple insider reached out to us. Apple’s blasé attitude toward its manufacturers’ labor practices, he says, is old news. Our tipster, who wishes to stay anonymous, was a member of the Newton team when Steve Jobs made his return to Apple in 1996. In an effort to bring the Newton group into the fold, we had a meeting at which Steve laid out his vision for the future of Apple. “Apple will be the Nike of consumer electronics” was his mantra. The Nike of consumer electronics

According to Steve Jobs , running Flash video on the iPad would cut its battery life from 10 hours to a measly 1.5. At least, that was his pitch to Wall Street Journal execs recently. But could it possibly be true? Well, yes and no. Jobs is picking and choosing here between hypothetical versions of Flash.

There’ve been many books documenting the life of Steve Jobs , attempts to worm inside of Steve’s brain. The NYT reports that Walter Isaacson , Time magazine’s former managing editor, will write the first authorized biography, however. Steve’s supposedly invited Isaacson to tour his childhood home, even. I wonder what kind of conditions Isaacson had to agreed to in order for this to happen. Isaacson’s previous two bestselling biographes were about Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein , if that tells you anything. [ NYT ]

Apologies to all the other brilliant Valentine’s e-greetings at someecards , but this is really the only one you should need to truly prove your love. [ someecards ]

What bothers me about most videos using autotune is that they go overboard with the effect . A bit of subtlety works so much better. Take this short clip of the iPad keynote for example. It’s definitely worthy of imitation. Up, down, sideways.

The rumor that Apple is building its own search engine “isn’t credible,” according to a source familiar with Apple’s operations. Our source tells us “there’s too many options” for search on the market, so there’s no reason for Apple to build its own search engine. Another reason Apple might not want to build its own search engine: It’s getting over $100 million a year from Google in its revenue share deal, according to our source. For Apple, that’s not a lot of money.

A series of emails that surfaced in an old Microsoft antitrust case have come to light, the most interesting of which show Bill Gates admitting his company was “flat footed” in the wake of the 2003 iTunes launch. Microsoft executive Jim Allchin responded to the Gates admission succinctly enough: “We were smoked.” You might remember Allchin as the guy who later took the fall for Vista and coped by, naturally, putting out a rock-n-roll album . It’s not the first email that’s caught Gates owning up to his company’s faults , and I’m sure it won’t be the last. What’s interesting about this one, though, is his encouragement to “move quick and match and do stuff better.” Seven years later, and I’d say they’ve still got a ways to go. ——- Original Message ——- From: Bill Gates Sent: Wed 4/30/2003 10:46 PM To: Amir Majidimehr; Dave Fester Cc: Will Poole; Christopher Payne; Yusuf Mehdi; David Cole; Hank Vigil Subject: Apple’s Jobs again.., and time to have a great Windows download service… Steve Jobs ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right and market things as revolutionary are amazing things

It’s a funny thing, really. iTunes has somehow managed to become the world’s largest seller of music in just seven years, yet it’s easily one of the buggiest , most resource intensive and altogether unlikable pieces of software to ever come from the labs of Cupertino. From Microsoft’s perspective, however, they’re really just interested in the first bit, and in particular, why it wasn’t able to take advantage of the market opportunity in the way Jobs and company did. Groklaw managed to dig up a handful of email chains that were made public after the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust litigation, and the content is nothing short of eye-opening. One particular snippet from Bill Gates was exceptionally juicy, as he noted (in a number of words) that Apple had somehow managed to “get a better licensing deal than anyone else has gotten for music.” Jim Allchin’s terse reply consisted of two statements, one of which was “we were smoked.” Frankly, this unearthing couldn’t have come at a better time

Publishers joining Apple’s iBooks store are turning their back on Amazon and its vision of the flat $9.99 ebook. Apple forced the music industry to charge 99 cents per song, so why are they helping publishers set their own prices? To screw Amazon. The difference between Amazon and Apple is this: Amazon is very much in the ebook business to sell ebooks.

In 1994, Steve Jobs was not on top of the world. Which is why he was willing to let Rolling Stone probe him at great length in this classic, must-read interview . The insights—into Steve and the industry—are astounding. This quote is actually more true today than it was in 1994 when Steve Jobs said it: “The problem is, in hardware you can’t build a computer that’s twice as good as anyone else’s anymore. Too many people know how to do it. You’re lucky if you can do one that’s one and a third times better or one and a half times better.