Apple is so over.

With Ashton Kutcher's recent Jobs'-inspired fruitarian diet landing him in the hospital just days before filming jOBS, Apple's "tanking stock", and Tim Cook's futile pep-talk to his deservedly confused and worried employees, Apple is still topping headlines... just not in a good way.

Everyone and their grandma has an iPhone by now. I have an iPhone 4S, but it just sits in my desk drawer, collecting dust until some dude on Craig's List will give me cash for it.

But the truth is that, yes, Apple had its moment of glory. Back in March 2012, CNBC reported that "half of all U.S. households own at least one Apple product, according to CNBC's All-America Economic survey." And that was last March.

Apple's market value continued to climb until its stock reached a record-breaking $700 per share. Analysts were even predicting a jump to a whopping $1000 per share, though it never happened. Bryan Goldberg, journalist for PandoDaily writes, "The company walked on water. It pissed lightning and shat thunder. It's employees never got sick. Rain wasn't allowed over Cupertino."

Then Apple's Q4 2012 numbers hit:

• $36 billion total revenue.
• $8.2 billion net profit.
• 26.9 million iPhones.
• 14 million iPads.
• 4.9 million Macs.
• 5.3 million iPods.

All in all, pretty impressive. Right?

Goldberg goes on, however... "Now, look at this smoldering crater of cesspool." Apple's share has been plummeting consistently since mid-September, with today's value hovering around a meager $450.

Apple just isn't cool anymore. Buzz Marketing's Tina Wells told Forbes: "Teens are telling us Apple is done. Apple has done a great job of embracing Gen X and older (Millennials), but I don't think they are connecting with Millennial kids."

And it's true. I, for one, am not excited about Apple products anymore. I tried the Macbook Pro, I tried the iPhone 4S. Sure, they're solid products with as much capability as most other Windows or Android devices. But the appeal just isn't there. Apple's designs are stale, boring, and uninspired. The skeuomorphism has simply got to go.

Farewell, Apple. You were good while you lasted. Good luck competing with Google, Samsung, and Microsoft (all of whom massively outspend and outperform Apple in R&D). Better start digging.

Top Gear Season 19, Episode 1

Jeremy Clarkson fits snugly in his ambitious creation, the 'P45'. Photo: Jalopnik

Yesterday at 8:00 PM in the UK, gear heads all 'round the world finally gave a deep sigh of relief. That's right. Last night marked the beginning of Season 19 of Top Gear, undoubtedly the most popular car show on television. And quite a season premier it was: Jeremy's ridiculous P45 mini-car, the aristocratic Bentley Continental GT Speed ripping around a rally track, Damian Lewis' slippery lap in a reasonably priced car, and Richard's review of the immaculate Pagani Huayra.

Americans who can't navigate the Internet so well (*wink* *nudge*) will have to wait until next Sunday night to watch the season premier as it airs on BBC America.

There you have it. Top Gear's back for another round. Cheers.

HYPE: Pebble smart watch starts shipping today

There aren't very many people wearing smart watches yet-- at least not from what I've seen. But, apparently the Pebble E-Paper watch for iPhone and Android has had quite a bit of support, earning over $10 million on Kickstarter via 68,929 backers.

The Pebble starts shipping today to Kickstarter backers who pledged $99 or more before May 18th, 2012, but the company says it will need at least six weeks to fulfill all the orders. Once the Pebble arrives on doorsteps, users will enjoy a variety of functions all supported via Bluetooth connection with a smart phone:

• The official Pebble app available in the Android and Apple app marketplaces. 
• Vibrating notifications and messages, including e-mail, incoming Caller ID, SMS, calendar alerts, Facebook messages, Twitter, and weather alerts.
• Music control
• Connection with your phone's GPS, allowing apps for cycling, golfing, running, swimming, etc.

Pebble's CEO Eric Migicovsky working in his office. Photo: Wired.com

But perhaps the most important feature is its potential for customization. The Pebble Dev Blog details plans for releasing the watch's SDK and APIs and, needless to say, creative techies are already brainstorming possible apps for the Pebble. One comment suggests connecting the watch to the phone's NFC, another would like to see apps for sailing, locating your friends, and walking/work-out routing.

If you still want to get a Pebble smart watch of your own, you can pre-order one for $150 from the Pebble homepage.

Pebble won't be without competition, however. Google has already secured a patent for their smart watch while Apple is only rumored to be crafting one of their own. Hell, Sony has had their own smart watch on sale at Verizon since June!

But I think Pebble will do just fine, considering it supports both iOS and Android devices. Windows Phone users (like myself) will have to wait for a smart watch, though...

Flipping the bird

Twitter's iconic bird logo may have been inspired by these doodles sketched on "brown paper towels acquired from the Twitter rest rooms."

The images were posted on Twitter's Dribbble.com profile just a few days ago.

Some of the designs look like they could be slapped onto the side of USPS trucks. The one on the top left is quite realistic. And lots of the designs are, well, quite wonky.

Look at these ones. Birds, more birds, and... wait-- what's that?! A picture of someone's hand, flipping the bird. That logo seems fitting to me. After all, some tweets are so dumb that the tweeter might as well be flipping everyone off anyways.

And this last batch is even more bizarre: A smoking bird with a mohawk. A geeky bird wearing thick, black-rimmed glasses and a bowl cut. A couple of birds made of hands. There you have it. They seemed to have made the right choice in the end.

LOVE, LOSS, AND SAMBA...

A review of Black Orpheus (1959, PG)

Black Orpheus is a 1959 film made in Brazil based on the play Orfeu de Conceicao by Vinicius de Moraes, which itself is an adaptation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. This ancient Greek myth (well documented in the famous Metamorphoses of Ovid) of the two lovers, Orpheus and Eurydice, outline basic archetypal patterns of life, love, and death. Orpheus is “the father of songs” and his mother is the infamous Muse, Calliope (beautiful-voiced daughter of Zeus and also the source of inspiration for Homer’s Iliad). Eurydice is an oak nymph, daughter of Apollo, god of light and rationality.

On the wedding day of these two cherished lovers, Eurydice was, unfortunately, bitten on her ankle by a venomous viper. The poison so strong, Eurydice descended straight to the realm of the Underworld, the domain of Hades (also named Pluto, god of riches and the Underworld). There, Eurydice remained. But Orpheus’ love beckoned him into the depths of the dark netherworld to rescue his beloved and young wife—Orpheus would not let Eurydice perish; not if he could help it! Orpheus, playing his lyre (an ancient Greek stringed instrument with an attached turtle shell for resonance) and serenading the gatekeepers as a sort of vehicle of descent, finally reaches the wretched Pluto in the black Underworld.

Pluto is consistently undivided in his dealings with those who sink into his lifeless territory: once a mortal enters his world, they are ne’er to return. But Orpheus, his heart and voice imbued with inspiration from his mother and muse Calliope, convinces Hades to let him lead Eurydice back up to Earth until she is old and ready, at last, for her final admittance into the Underworld.

Hades, quick and clever, agrees with one exception: on their journey up to Earth, Orpheus must not look back to check if Eurydice is still following. So off they go… But in his struggle towards Earth’s surface, anxiety, like each day’s inevitable nightfall, overcomes Orpheus. He can’t bear to think that Eurydice has already fallen away. He mustn’t be toiling in vain!

On the last step of their journey into the light of the bountiful Earth, Orpheus glances backwards… And as quickly as his eyes fall backwards, Eurydice slips away, falling miles and miles down into the grim, gated Underworld. “Farewell, my love!” she shouts as the arms of Orpheus fail to catch her before she’s gone forever. Thus ends Ovid’s classic Greek myth.

Black Orpheus weaves the simultaneously tender and mournful songs of Brazilian bossa nova music with the beauty of Rio de Janeiro to enrapture the viewer with the joyous yet terrible love that leads Eurydice and Orpheus on their dangerous journey. The movie portrays the myth surprisingly accurately even as all the cultural specifics of Greece are translated to the intense customs (dancing, samba drumming, and flashy outfits) of Brazil during its fall harvest festival, Carnaval.

A saying of Joseph Campbell, world-renowned author and mythologist, is that “The sign of a good myth is that it begs to be retold.” Black Orpheus is just that: a worthy retelling of the ancient Greek myth. Orpheus illustrates just how relevant Greek myths can be even in 2013, regardless of cultural and geographical boundaries. Set in a modern context, this film is a perfect introduction to the Greek myth of old.

Why Facebook's 'Graph Search' shouldn't catch you by surprise

If you haven't already heard, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed 'Graph Search' to the public early on Tuesday. There's even a flashy, animated page on Facebook that introduces users to the new service, promising you'll be able to "Find more of what you're looking for through your friends and connections." Go ahead, click the "Try a Search" button. 

However, unlike the infamous Timeline, which Facebook users were forced to switch to last year on December 22nd if they hadn't already, 'Graph Search' won't be nearly as surprising. 'Graph Search' essentially aims to connect you with a digital network that you're already a part of but never had the opportunity to fully explore. You'll be able to type in something like, "Photos of my friends in Los Angeles", or, "Friends that work at my company who like horror movies"-- stuff like that. 

Optimized discovery

You might be thinking to yourself, "Shouldn't this feature have been implemented already?" It's just a search feature, after all. And you're probably right, too. All of the information that will be available through 'Graph Search' is already available to you now-- but your searches won't be nearly as efficient or exciting as they will be through the new 'Search.' Say you wanted to find friends that also like your favorite band. Well, you can right now: just go to your favorite band's Facebook page and you can easily spot which of your friends also liked their page. Not bad, right? On the other hand, though, you won't be able to discover which of those friends lives near you unless you click through to their profiles and sift for that information yourself. 

'Graph Search' is just optimized discovery. But people are already worried about privacy (as they should be). When 'Graph Search' rolls out publicly, detailed history of your entire Facebook profile will be available to your friends (and, depending on your privacy settings, anyone who logs into Facebook) with a quick search inquiry. Suddenly, all your friends know that you 'Liked' some cheesy boy band you thought were cool five or six years ago. 

How embarrassing!

... Not. First of all, you can delete anything you want. Here's what Nicky Jackson Colaco, Public Policy Manager at Facebook, has to say about the subject, "Just to clarify, anything you delete from the site is deleted. Activity Log is really the place [to delete content]. It’s a summary of you on Facebook.” So, when you go sifting through your profile to make sure future employers don't see how much time you spend sifting through spam-laden Facebook pages that promise to reveal never-before-seen nude pics of celebrities, just make sure you delete content via your Activity Log. 

Bing to the rescue?

"But even if I delete a post or a like from my Activity Log, somebody out there will still be able to see it, right?" Wrong. 

Facebook's Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg considered working with Google on search, but privacy concerns with the Internet search giant ceased and potential collaboration from moving forward. Instead, Facebook opted for Bing to power parts of 'Graph Search' that Facebook's internal services wouldn't be able to handle. Microsoft's Bing Team the collaboration in a company blog post on Tuesday:

“As part of this [Graph Search] product, our two engineering teams worked together to advance a unified search experience. That means that when people want to search beyond Facebook, they see web search results from Bing with social context and additional information such as Facebook pages.

To the Facebook user, they will not only see useful results, but we think have serendipitous experiences. Imagine searching for Jay-Z concerts on Facebook, and not only finding Facebook content, but also web results from Bing including concert tickets, news about the tour and other web results—annotated with Facebook Likes and Shares. We think this is a powerful combination.”

Bing will be all over it, okay, we get it. 

Here's where Zuckerberg's choice over Google really matters: Google wouldn't allow Facebook to de-list content that users had changed to private. As Bloomberg Business Week reported: 

“When asked why the company was not working with Google, Zuckerberg said that previous discussions collapsed over Google’s unwillingness to accommodate Facebook’s privacy needs. For example, he said, Facebook wants its search engine partners to remove certain pieces of content from its index, such as photos, when its users change the privacy setting.”

That's a big deal. Facebook users can rest easy, knowing that their details on Facebook can be deleted-- and for good.

An onslaught of un-liking

We all know that, with Facebook, the product being sold isn't the service we receive. We are, quite literally, the product being sold. Facebook has been advertising's dream come true since its public release on February 4th, 2004. According to Steve Cheney, an engineer and entrepreneur, "For the past several years big advertisers on FB have actually been directing massive amounts of paid media to acquire fans. They quite literally bought likes."

Why? Because much of what keeps Facebook's value high in the stock market is the fact that every time someone likes a brand's page, all of their friends will see that he or she liked that brand on their newsfeed! And all it takes is one measly, little click.

He says that, for reasons previously stated, "the link between query intent and your social interactions for interests and aplces is much weaker than FB wants you to believe." He adds that much of the stored data on Facebook is actually "dirty"-- not in the traditional sense but rather that much of the data is "totally irrelevant" and old. 

Out of the thousands of 'Like' buttons you've clicked over the years, how many of them can you truly still stand behind anyways?

Steve Cheney makes a salient point: 

"That the mainstream population who live inside FB day in and day out expect more out of the service without paying is in a word... fitting. After all, FB users are NOT Facebook's customers. The advertisers are. YES, Amex and Coke and the advertisers are Facebook's customers, not you!"

At best, 'Graph Search' will be a boon for advertisers and users alike, I think. After all, doesn't anybody remember what Cleveland Brown from Family Guy has to say on the subject? He's sitting in Peter Griffin's living room, just watching TV, when somebody (I think Brian) complains about how there are too many commercials. But Cleveland cleverly responds, "I like commercials! They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on research so they know exactly what you want to see a commercial for! It's like they do the shopping for you!"

So, not only should you remove all those embarrassing details from your Facebook Activity Log, but you should obviously unlike everything you no longer like too. 

'Graph Search' today

Facebook's new product for social discovery won't be ready for awhile. Tom Stocky and Lars Rasmussen, product leads on 'Graph Search,' told CNET that the "rollout will take months, not weeks." Stocky said the "slow rollout is so that people can get used to this new world." 

If you want, though, you can join the waiting list for being a beta tester by clicking the green button at the bottom of the 'Graph Search' intro page.