Mike Daisey slams AllThingsD for not pressing Cook with hard questions

Tim Cook’s little opening-night chat with technology columnists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the D10: All Things Digital conference certainly made rounds, but also drew a critique from controversial Mike Daisey who slammed his colleagues for not being tough enough on Apple’s boss…
Here’s what Daisey wrote in a post over at his personal blog.

Kara and Walt – do you really think you asked hard questions tonight? Goodness, you got Cook to admit… that Ping was a failure! That’s amazing.

If only you had another hour, so you could get him to tell us who he liked best on Dawson’s Creek and what kind of ice cream is best: vanilla or cookies and cream. (Trick question: it’s always cookies and cream.)

He didn’t spare Kara Swisher either, who at one point asked Cook to comment on Apple’s “fictional” critics, which might be interpreted as an indirect criticism of Mike Daisey’s recent writing about the Foxconn topic.

First, Kara, this isn’t even good wordplay—I’m not a fictional f*****g critic. The word you would want is fictitious, though that wouldn’t really work either—you probably knew that, but I think then you got lazy and just said, what the f**k…who is really paying attention to that shit, anyway, right?

If he had been sitting in Mossberg’s chair, Diasey would have admittedly asked much tougher questions.

What kind of questions?

Well, how about this:

Recently you went to China for the first time as CEO to tour Foxconn’s production lines. Apple’s first outside audits of Foxconn happened in 2006, after media coverage back then, and the report recommendations made six years ago are the same as the ones made by the FLA in 2012. Did it not seem important enough a priority for the CEO go until now, six years later? Why did it take so long?

According to our poll from yesterday, nearly sixty percent of respondents liked Cook’s D10 responses a lot and nearly one in four think he could have done a better job answering the questions.

Personally, I think Cook did good, but he spoke too slow at times and some of his answers had too much marketing talk or sounded like something that just came out of a politician’s mouth.

Daisey had the nerve to touch upon the Foxconn topic, pointing out that “The New York Times and others have pointed to the squeezing of that supply chain as a big part of the problems at Foxconn”.

That’s saying a lot coming from a guy who fabricated some of his stories alleging that Apple has been seriously mistreating workers who assemble its products in Chinese workshops.

Thoughts?

iPhone goes pre-paid on Cricket beginning June 22

Apple continues to roll out its iPhone to regional carriers in the United States with the addition of Cricket Communications, a Leap Wireless company. What’s interesting about this particular announcement is that Cricket is a pre-paid carrier so basically they’be just become the nation’s first pre-paid wireless operator to offer the device…
According to a press release, come June 22 you can get an iPhone 4S or iPhone 4 without committing to a long-contract by opting for its $55 a month offering that includes unlimited  voice, text and data for smartphones. Of course, there is fine print so expect data throttling once you go past 2.3GB.

The luxury of not having to pay service fees for the next two years will cost you in hardware: the iPhone 4S is priced at $499.99 for the 16GB model and iPhone 4 will be available for $399.99. Note that this is  cool $150 cheaper compared to Apple’s asking prices for unlocked iPhones.

Once you get a Cricket iPhone, you can take it on other networks as it’s not locked, which could be of interest to jailbreakers.

Being pre-paid means you can cancel your service at any time, no questions asked (that’s why they sell you the hardware unsubsidized). If you won’t be using the service for a certain period – for example, while traveling abroad – you can temporarily stop paying for your monthly plan and continue whenever it suits you.

Both the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 will be available in Cricket company-owned stores and select dealers in nearly 60 markets. You can register your interest online.

This is really interesting.

To my knowledge, this is the first time Apple partnered with a pre-paid carrier to offer the iPhone – and at lower prices than its own stores.

With the Cricket deal and the Pioner Wireless announcement earlier this month, the iPhone has now become available across fourteen carriers in the United States.

Moreover, if Apple dropped the iPhone on a relatively small pre-paid carrier, perhaps the device will soon become available via Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile, both Sprint properties.

I wonder how such an aggressive roll out across U.S. carriers affects iPhone sales going forward.

Indie app devs start massive game sale

I’ve always been as much of a sucker for not-to-be-missed deals on App Store games as the other guy. And why wouldn’t anyone want great value for their hard-earned cash?

If you’ve been on the lookout for deep discounts on dozens of notable games for your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, you don’t wanna miss out on this insane deal.

Organized by a bunch of independent developers who banded together for greater cause, it spans application stores across multiple platforms…
Aptly named Because We May, this one’s in celebration of application marketplaces which allow developers to set their own prices.

Discounted games include items found on Apple’s App Store and Mac App Store, Google’s Play store for Android, Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace, as well as the Steam platform and direct distribution channels.

According to the official website:

We believe that developers should have the freedom to price their games how they like, without interference from the online stores that sell the games. Why? Because it allows us to promote our games more freely, as we are doing here! We rely on the ability to promote our games for our livelihood and control over pricing is an important tool for this purpose.

Siri by the numbers: interesting stats about Apple’s assistant

Ever since Apple unveiled Siri at its iPhone 4S media event last fall, the digital assistant has remained in the spotlight. Whether it’s celebrity-laden TV spots or class-action lawsuits, it seems like it’s always making headlines.

But some would argue that Siri is more of a black eye for Apple than an accomplishment. It’s spent the last 9 months in beta, its location services still aren’t available abroad, and its functionality in general is still super limited.

In fact, is anyone even using the feature anymore? Infographic time!
The folks over at t3n News just published a sizable infographic that is loaded with interesting facts and stats on Apple’s digital assistant. Check it out:

As WWDC approaches, and the unveiling of iOS 6 draws near, you have to wonder if Apple has anything planned for Siri. Will it receive performance enhancements? Third-party API acces? Where will the feature be in two years?