Thursday, January 28, 2010

epic comment back to Apple fan boy haters

Just posted this response to the dude who founded Newsvine.
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2010/01/never-dupe-your-readers/

Thanks for the feedback Mike.

First: Hope everything is going well at MSNBC. I respect what you set
out to accomplish with Newsvine and as I've told you I think it is/was
an interesting experiment and fairly well executed--but perhaps a
little too early. You could say I'm a fan of your work.

Second: I don't judge myself by twitter follower count--I think such
things are absurd and I've been fairly clear about that from the
start. Additionally, I never asked to be a "weblebrity" or whatever
folks choose to call folks who get 5x the attention of an average
person online.

I simply build products that I think people will enjoy and find
helpful, and that I enjoy building. The 100+ blogs at Weblogs, Inc,
Silicon Alley Reporter, TechCrunch50, This Week in Startups, Mahalo
and Open Angel Forum (to name a few) are all project I took on and
created because I had a passion for the space the folks who would
consume and use the products.

Since you've made this personal I will tell you that I try not to
judge myself too much, I try to just be a good person and doing things
I enjoy. When I do take the time to reflect I base my worth on if I'm
a good husband, father, friend, brother, son, teacher, mentor, angel
investor and human. There is a human behind the persona that has
become Jason Calacanis.

I certainly do not judge myself on my Twitter count--especially since
half of it was gamed from offing free Nexus One phones and a Mac Book
Air. :-)

Getting that out of the way, in all honesty, I didn't think I was
fooling anyone. I actually thought I was making a joke. What you left
out of the tweets above were the ones where I said:

a) the iPad had a solar panel for charging ($200-300 in cost)
b) the iPad had an HDTV tuner ($150-250 in cost)
c) the iPad had a DVR (a DVR!!!) ($500 in cost)
d) the iPad had a wireless pad you could lay it on to charge ($300 in cost)
e) the iPad had two cameras front and back so you could do augmented
reality video conferencing ($500 in cost)
f) the iPad had facial recognition and that was how you logged in.
g) the iPad and biometrics on either side where you could login with
your thumbpring and flip through pages ($100-200 in cost)
h) the iPad had a mesh gaming network for playing a custom Farmville
application that let lifestock move from one iPad to another.

It was intended to be an absurd joke and 95% of the feedback I was
getting was from folks who were laughing saying it was a brilliant
joke.

So, I went to bed and slept well only to wake up to the fact that a
couple of blogs and the Wall Street Journal took my spec and said it
was fact. They didn't look at the other half of the conversation on
twitter where EVERYONE was laughing and joking.

If it was a performance, and well, the WSJ didn't see the audience
laughing. They didn't look at the RESPONSES to me from that night.

The device I describe above would be well over 7-10 pounds and have at
least $2,000 in parts. The hard drive and memory of that device would
make it a VIDEO GAME LEVEL LAPTOP FROM ALIENWARE! There is no way it
could be designed for $499 in a 1.5 pound package!!!

Only a lazy person or someone who was so hopeful and drunk on Steve
Jobs ability to bend the laws of physics and economics would ever
believe this was possible..... or a journalist who was soooooooo
desperate to get page views that they would print an OBVIOUS joke as
reality.

... or perhaps journalist who doesn't think about the laws of physics
and economics.

In that way my simple joke that the JesusPad was everything and I that
I was blessed to get one for 10 days before anyone AND in that
position of trust was willing to destroy Steve Jobs' keynote, was SO
ABSURD only a zealot, an idiot or someone playing along would believe.

It seems our industry has become filled with Apple zombies who believe
that Steve Jobs can walk on water, and it's obvious that the iPad is
no better than the HP Slate or an HTC running Google's Chrome. In
fact, Bill Gates built better tablets five years ago!

Steve Jobs pulled the wool over everyone by making them believe this
product was a revolution, and I inadvertently exposed the fact that
some folks loose all common sense when it comes to Apple products.

The Reality Distortion Field is strong!!!

That being said, I'm sorry to have designed a device that everyone
wants in the face of Steve Jobs' tablet which, apparently, is
underwhelming when compared to the Jason's Tablet--also known as the
JTab.

If you want to pre-order the JTab please send $2,500 to my paypal at
jason at calacanis.com. DISCLAIMER: If you are too stupid to know that
was a joke, and you do send me $2,500 I will donate it to Haiti under
the name of Owa Tagoose Iam.

all the best,

jason

Jason on Twitter Mahalo.com This Week in Startups

No comments:

Post a Comment