Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
The major huge Uniqlo behemoth shop is opening. 89,000 square feet, 100 dressing rooms, 50 registers, and clothes that fit Asians better. A statement mentioned that the folks at Uniqlo aren’t eyeing The Gap as their goal in the US, they’re looking more towards Apple! It’s a bold thing to say, but at the same time, at Giant Robot, we eyed magazines like National Geographic over the many street culture or Asian American types of magazines as what we wanted to be like. But Apple? If you didn’t remember this shop boasted a $300 million dollar lease for 15 years, which was a record at the time. Uniqlo
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I’ll admit when I first saw the words, Siri, I thought “Dat Ass!” but I kept it to myself. What am I, 10? It’s a Japanese word. It’s usually spelled Shiri or Oshiri, but Siri can also work, it depends on the translation spelling technique. It means butt. Surely this was brought up a few times by someone at Apple, which can also bring up an image of “Apple Bottom” so maybe it’s all intentional. (msnbc – Siri)
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The world is in mourning. The passing of Apple founder Steve Jobs is truly a tragedy on a personal level; yet, I can’t help but reflect what his life’s work represented on the international stage. “Innovative” is the recurrent description attached to Jobs by various news networks. However, if he were known for just that trait alone, then he wouldn’t have superseded America’s creative reputation. America is the land where technical innovators are born. Whether it’s Henry Ford, Thomas Eddison, or even Bill Gates, that’s what America is known for. It’s what made companies like Apple the envy of nations across the globe and continued to persist after the current Great Recession. In a Giant Robot interview with Shuji Iwai, the dirctor remarked over Japan’s economic and creative slump. He idly commented how few products turn the world the way Apple does. Even executives and employees of Sony boldly strove to compete with Apple’s products during Jobs’s renewed tenure. CEO of Chinese computer company Lenovo, Yang Yuanqing, voiced similar sentiments at the news of Jobs’s demise Creations aside, Jobs’s most recent achievement was a simple one. He preened and maintained America’s stature as innovators of tomorrow. Whether or not this belief of American exceptional is a myth or reality doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that people both abroad is what counts. Steve Jobs has died, but one can only hope that he didn’t take this perception to the grave.
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The news flashed on Tweetdeck while I keyed away on my 2006 black 13″ MacBook and my iPhone 3GS pumping out Explosions in the Sky, that the visionary who helped bring out my life’s greatest purchases, Steve Jobs died. I can’t begin to understand the complexity of what that really means for myself and others in the long run. Perhaps it means nothing and life will just continue, but there’s a legacy of what he’s worked on, and how it propelled and continues to propel a generation or two to dream. I’ve never met him. The closest I ever got was having some editorial about Giant Robot on the Apple site years back. I administered a Q and A with a Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa at the Apple store in SF. I visited Genius Bars in multiple cities. I was never even near him, yet his death affects myself and I’ve sure many of us personally. My life with Apple started off like many of us. It was an Apple II+ in perhaps in 1981. I was 12. I think I was in sixth grade. My family saw a future for me that included computers. I thought it would be cool more than anything. I didn’t know what it was capable of or what it could mean, later. I was just a kid with a great new toy that kicked my Atari 2600′s ass. People would walk by and see the computer through the window and point at it. It was a spectacle and a symbol of a changing time. The Mac came out after a few more iterations of the Apple IIs and it changed my life. Then as the next iteration of Apple product debuted, it changed my life again. Then again and again. It never ends. It’s not like that with other products and tools. I’ve lived through two cars and am driving only my third, but it’s safe to say the make and model has yet to change my life. A Model T from 1900 vs a car in 2011, it’s nearly the same. Apple computers aren’t like that. Each model opens a new door of possibilities. I’ll admit I’ve strayed. I tried a PC, a Blackberry, and a Handspring Visor. Eventually each of them led back to an Apple product. It was one and done each time. I’ve gone so far as to hoard Apples. I once had 3 of the first colorful iMacs and three following. Then there were multiple beige towers with numbers like 7200, 8500, and so forth, three different G4s including the Cube. From yard sales I have two early Mac laptops that were $3 each. Four iPods, four iPhones, an iPad, and a Mac Clone. With all this, I worked on Giant Robot and many side projects for the last 17 years. It’s a lot, but really, that’s all. There’s perhaps another few hundred million folks out there who do things with Apples too. Then there’s a bunch who just...
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Apple loses another phone… IPhone 5 prototype. The money maker? Sell it to China. Some money makers want to bootleg this badly. So a hot job? A middle person agency to broker such deals. Get your hands on the Kardashian Tape? IPhone 5? The prototype Scarlet 2 Camera? Sell it to the right parties in China. One deal might be worth a years salary. For now though, maybe this is all a hoax by Apple. (Cnet – IPhone)
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