By Kelly Faircloth 6/12/12 7:00am

Linkages

WWDC. (Photo: flickr.com/deerkoski)

Booting Up: While You Were Out at WWDC Edition

Apple went all-in on Steve Jobs’ vision of a PC-less future at WWDC, says Steven Levy. [Wired]

Speaking of Mr. Jobs, in 1987 he applied for security clearance and had to admit that yes, okay, there was a chance someone one day might try to blackmail him. [Threat Level]

Meanwhile, you might want to make sure LulzSec hasn’t jacked your Twitter password. And that is why you reel in those third-party authorizations. [PC Mag]

Here, for the love of God, we’ll even be a little servicey and direct you to directions for better passwords. [Information Week]

Feeling a little… targeted? Perhaps it’s because Microsoft and Yahoo are offering politicians the ability to sell highly customized ads. Will this election ever end?[ProPublica]

When we were freshmen, all we got were dorky lanyards. Now the incoming class at Seton Hall University gets Lumia 900s. [Engadget]

It’s not a cyber cold war until the wild-eyed conspiracy theorists show up. [MSNBC]

By Nitasha Tiku 6/07/12 4:04pm

Apple in Your Eye

via @MatthewModine

Matthew Modine Is Cast as Rival in Steve Jobs Biopic Starring Ashton Kutcher

Ashton Kutcher has found his nemesis. Entertainment Weekly‘s Inside Movies blog is reporting that Matthew Modine will play John Sculley in upcoming Steve Jobs biopic called jOBS. As Jobsian scholars will recall, Mr. Sculley was the former Pepsi CEO personally recruited by Jobs in 1983 with the pitch, “Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?” Um, door number 2?

Jobs resigned after clashing with Sculley, who was forced out in 1993–a move we imagine will be accompanied by a triumphant classical score.  Read More

By Jessica Roy 5/28/12 9:33am

Apple in Your Eye

ashton-kutcher-steve-jobs

People With ‘That 70s Look’ Needed for Increasingly Pathetic Steve Jobs Biopic

Oh look, someone at Forbes found this vaguely sad Craigslist ad soliciting extras for a “movie on Steve Jobs” filming next week in Palo Alto. Cult of Mac and Gizmodo both conjecture that, probably based on the general paltriness of Craigslist extra trawling, the ad is for serial entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher’s Steve Jobs biopic, jOBS, though it doesn’t explicitly state that. Read More

By Steve Huff 5/19/12 1:30am

Apple in Your Eye

ashton-kutcher-steve-jobs

Steve Jobs Biopic To Film On Location in Original ‘Apple Garage’

Makers of the other Steve Jobs flick–you know, the one starring Ashton Kutcher–must be feeling pressure to ratchet up the publicity since Aaron Sorkin has been attached to Sony’s big-screen version of the Walter Isaacson biography.

On Friday Five Star Feature Films issued a press release announcing that when principal photography begins in June on jOBS, early scenes will be filmed  “in the actual Los Altos home where Jobs grew up and in the historic garage where he and Steve Wozniak founded Apple.” Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 5/18/12 5:43pm

Betabeat Goes Moviegoing

Mr. Sorkin (flickr.com/politicalpulse)

Oh Hey, More Details About That Sorkin-Penned Jobs Biopic

We almost missed it amid all the excitement, but yesterday Aaron Sorkin let slip a few more details regarding Sony’s upcoming biopic of Steve Jobs, based on that doorstop of a Walter Isaacson biography. For one thing, they’ve hired Woz as an advisor on matters both technical and Jobs-related.

It also sounds like Mr. Sorkin will once again be making free with the poetic license:

“I know so little about what I am going to write. I know what I am not going to write. It can’t be a straight ahead biography because it’s very difficult to shake the cradle-to-grave structure of a biography, ” Sorkin told Reuters in an interview for his upcoming HBO drama “The Newsroom.”

This is just going to be Citizen Kane, but with computers, isn’t it? Too bad Mr. Sorkin isn’t enough of a nerd to make Mr. Jobs’s blue box into the twenty-first century Rosebud.

By Jessica Roy 5/16/12 7:10am

Apple in Your Eye

Mr. Sorkin (flickr.com/politicalpulse)

Aaron Sorkin is Officially Doing a Steve Jobs Biopic

One Steve Jobs biopic isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? TWO Steve Jobs biopics. At least according to Hollywood.

Though it’s been widely-rumored since late last year, a press release issued by Sony Pictures yesterday confirmed what is either your worst nightmare or dream come true, depending on how pearl-clutchy you are about the tech industry: Aaron Sorkin will be adapting Walter Isaacson’s bestselling biography of Steve Jobs for Sony Pictures. We’re positive it will be every bit as packed with heavy-handed dramatic irony and “so bad it’s good” euphoria as The Social Network is. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 5/14/12 10:13am

Internet Famous

Mr. Wozniak. (Photo: flickr.com/koeln_de)

Steve Wozniak Has a Cold

There is a certain level of unenviable überfame at which every utterance and twitch merits a headline. Steve Jobs sent an email! Mark Zuckerberg wore a hoodie! On this plane of celebrity, every step is a statement.

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak is one such überfamous personality. (We even covered the time he made $781 working from home.) Essentially retired, Mr. Wozniak, or Woz, as he’s lovingly called, is good-natured enough not to mind being used as a proxy for the tight lips at Apple. He also has a low filter between his brain and his mouth. Repeatedly shunned by his former cofounder, Mr. Wozniak continued to speak out—about the white iPhone, about Bing, about whatever—and made multiple appearances on reality TV. We noticed that today, the Woz is featured in no fewer than three stories on Google News, partly due to a speaking tour in Australia. Roundup time! Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 5/01/12 12:06pm

Kickstarted

pebble-alerts

The Pebble Effect: The Spotlight Is Suddenly On Hardware Startups

The last time Betabeat checked in with Pebble the smartwatch, Y Combinator alum Eric Migicovsky had raised some $4.6 million on Kickstarter for an idea that struggled to find venture capital backing despite, you know, actually making revenue. (For those of you keeping track at home, Pebble has added $3 million on top of that for a total of $7.6 million–and counting!–with 17 days left to go.) Yesterday, Mr. Migicovsky got The New York Times treatment.

Now, all the fuss seems to have migrated over to the agenda for TechCrunch Disrupt. The conference just announced that for the first time in New York, the event will feature something called “Hardware Alley” alongside its standard “Start-up Alley” showcase on May 23rd. “We’re looking for promising hardware startups,” writes TechCrunch. “Got a disruptive Kickstarter project?” Gee, wonder who they’re talking about there. Read More