Thursday, April 28, 2011

Apple : South Park takes on Apple and the iPad

Apple : South Park takes on Apple and the iPad

South Park takes on Apple and the iPad

Posted: 28 Apr 2011 10:50 AM PDT

Apple and Steve Jobs are the latest victims of South Park's vicious satire after a new episode took the company to task over recent privacy and location tracking fears.

The new Human CentiPad episode, which premiered in the US on Wednesday night, lands young Kyle in trouble when he agrees to an iTunes update without reading the terms and conditions.

Kyle is kidnapped by Apple and made part of a three-way human daisy chain (pictured) with his lips sewed to another man's rear end, in order to power a new version of the iPad.

"They don't track anyone"

Steve Jobs is the star of the episode, with his minions constantly able to track down Kyle and the rest of the crew through their iPads even though the devices are switched-off.

"Apple stuff is pretty neat, I just don't like the idea of a big company tracking me everywhere I go," says a cafe waiter as Kyle proudly shows off his new tablet.

"That's just a rumour, they don't really track anyone," retorts Kyle before a team of Apple spies charge in and take him away to Cupertino, citing that he legally agreed to everything.

The episode also pokes fun of the Genius Bar at Apple Stores and also the whooping and hollering at Steve Jobs' keynotes.

Meanwhile Cartman is aggrieved when his mother will only buy him a "Toshiba Handybook" when all the other kids have iPads.

The episode will be aired in the UK on Comedy Central on May 6th.

Steve Jobs speaks out on iPhone location tracking

Posted: 27 Apr 2011 02:24 PM PDT

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has brushed-off the notion that Apple is using the location-tracking 'bug' in iOS to keep tabs on its users.

The Cupertino-based company today admitted that the iPhone 4 does back up historical location data but doesn't need to collect quite as much and promises to resolve the issue with a software fix

Jobs, who remains on hiatus from full-time duty with the company due to illness, moved to dismiss the ever-present naysayers who suggest Apple might using the data for ill means.

"We haven't been tracking anybody," he says. "Never have. Never will."

Investigation

Jobs also chose the interview to defend Apple's delayed response to the controversy, saying that they wanted to identify the essence of the problem before rushing out a statement.

The stance has echoes of the antennagate fiasco that accompanied the launch of the iPhone 4, which also took Apple plenty of time to respond to.

"Rather than run to the P.R. department," Jobs says,"the first thing we always do when a problem is brought to us is we try to isolate it and find out if it is real,"

"It took us about a week to do an investigation and write a response, which is fairly quick for something this technically complicated."

"Scott (Forstall - Senior VP of iPhone software) and Phil (Schiller - Apple's marketing kingpin) and myself were all involved in writing the response because we think it is that important."

To find out more about Apple's response to the controversy, see our earlier news item on the matter.
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