China Not Only Makes Counterfeit Apple Products, But Entire Stores too!

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An almost unbelievable account posted on a blog called BirdAbroad:

Being the curious types that we are, we struck up some conversation with these salespeople who, hand to God, all genuinely think they work for Apple. I tried to imagine the training that they went to when they were hired, in which they were pitched some big speech about how they were working for this innovative, global company – when really they’re just filling the pockets of some shyster living in a prefab mansion outside the city by standing around a fake store disinterestedly selling what may or may not be actual Apple products that fell off the back of a truck somewhere. Go read the entire post. The lengths they went to copy 90% of the details of an Apple store is amazing, however, any regular, perceptive, Apple Store customer can spot the parts they got wrong if you look at a few of the photos hard enough.

John Siracusa Reviews OS X 10.7 Lion - The Review To End All Reviews

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John Siracusa has released his OS X 10.7 Lion Review. In case you aren't aware, John Siracusa is the king of Apple OS reviews. The PDF of his review is 105 pages long and has a table of contents for pete's sake. A Kindle Edition is available for $4.99 to get the article all on one page. Other notable Lion reviews that are out: 1. Shawn Blanc's review, "OS X Lion". 2. Benjamin Brooks, The Brooks Review, "Time for the Big Cat". 3. Jason Snell, Editor in Chief at Macworld Magazine, "Apple Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)". 4. Wayne Dixon, a friend of mine, reviews both Lion and Lion Server in a combined review. 5. Not really a complete review per say, but a brief commentary, Matthew Guay wrote on tech inch, "First Thoughts on Mac OS X Lion". In addition to Lion being released, Apple released new MacBook Airs, new Mac Minis, and a new Thunderbolt Cinema display. I've been using Lion since early May, due to the fact that I'm an Apple developer and I've had access to the developer previews since earlier this year. Developer Preview 3 and 4 were stable enough for me to run as my main machine, with the GM Seed (retail version) having been released 2 weeks ago, it was just icing on the cake. My system has been very stable, with perhaps the only app to semi-regularly crash being Chrome, which was the norm for me on Snow Leopard as well. I highly recommend Lion. Mission Control, Launchpad, Versions, the recovery partition, the new About This Mac panel, I could go on and on. This is a good upgrade. Get it.

"They’re Selling a Screen With a Giant Calculator Attached to It. It’s Not a Cool Device Anymore."

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Jonathan Geller at BGR posted an excellent article about the inside working of RIM based on interviews with current and former employees at the company:

RIM was hoping to blow through the 500,000 units and have carriers take orders for millions of additional PlayBooks, but that has not happened yet. Mike Lazaridis looks at it as, why aren’t people buying this tablet when it has the most powerful engine with respect to multitasking, and supports Flash? But consumers have spoken pretty loudly a number of times, and Mike unfortunately leads the product side and continues to miss the mark with the masses, a former RIM executive told me. “I don’t even see anyone in Waterloo walking around with a PlayBook that doesn’t work for RIM,” another former RIM employee said. One of the better quotes from the piece, as highlighted by John Gruber: They’re selling a screen with a giant calculator attached to it. It’s not a cool device anymore.

Jawbone's Next Product: Up

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Kara Swisher writing for AllThingsD:

The new product is described as “an intelligent, wearable wristband with an application that combines tracking, analysis, social and motivational elements.” Jawbone, which makes a popular Bluetooth headset and also the Jambox wireless speaker, said Up will track a user’s movement, sleep patterns and nutrition. I love my Jambox. If Up is as good I can see this hurting the sales of Fitbit. My wife owns a Fitbit. She has difficulty in charging it and getting it to sync sometimes.