Giant Robot Store and GR2 News

The Steve Jobs biography reportedly is having brisk sales in Japan, but the cover is causing some minorproblems with the nit picky Apple fans who are channeling the ultimate pickiness of Steve Jobs himself. Would Jobs approve a cover like this? The English version cover is much more stark and has a large photo of jobs with almost no text much like some of the Apple packaging. The Japan version does have two volumes hence the Roman “I”, which is often the case for huge books including Haruki Murakami’s IQ84 which appears as one volume in the US. The reason for the cover change includes a) a sign off from the Author, b) the fact that Steve Jobs by name may be known in Japan, but face perhaps not. (WSJ – Steve Jobs Book)  
Continue reading

A few photos that illustrate the day of a visitor like myself in Hawaii. That’s Goh Nakamura below. He played an awkward set at a bar that was louder than he was, but then he figured out the amplification and made it work. Anytime walls are red, you get interesting shots. This took place at a bar called Ichiriki.

 

 

Yes an SLR can catch moments like this. I like the light from the phone. It was quite dark, but it still showed up.

 

Continue reading
  This logo was spread just a bit after Steve Jobs died. The guy behind it, is it really the guy in the photo? The truth is the fella who created it, did it without knowing about the already made logo. He’s quite open about communicating it, etc, but in the end, it’s all been done more than once before. The fella behind it named Jonathan Mak lives in Hong Kong and is 19 years old. It turns out the logo was done earlier by Chris Thornley, and you can see his at the link. Either way, people should leave the kid alone. It was a tribute. (Yahoo – Apple Bite)
Continue reading
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 However, if he were known for just that trait alone, then he wouldn’t have superseded America’s creative reputation.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.
Continue reading
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...
Continue reading