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Howdy, I'm MG Siegler. I’m a general partner at CrunchFund and a columnist for TechCrunch. This is where I collect things.

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The Thin, Retina MacBook Pro

Mark Gurman of 9to5 Mac first reported this morning that a forthcoming 15-inch MacBook Pro refresh would feature a new, thinner design (though not quite MacBook Air-thin), USB 3.0, and, most importantly, a “Retina” display. Bloomberg has since corroborated the news.

I’ve got nothing specifically on this, but it sounds about right to me. As I wrote back in November of last year:

Maybe it’s time to separate the Pro line by doing something like a super high resolution screen and maybe insane battery life (10+ hours). 

Or maybe the 15-inch thin MacBook is meant to be a hybrid of a Pro and an Air. Maybe it has more ports, better battery life, and a higher price — but loses the optical drive. It’s dead anyway. 

No word on the battery life, but that would be icing on the cake at this point. It’s all about that screen. 

The 13-inch MacBook Air is the best computer I’ve ever owned. But a, say, 2880x1800 resolution MacBook Pro would probably be impossible to pass up. Especially if they got it under 5 pounds (the current 15-inch MacBook Pro is 5.6 pounds).

Tags tech apple macbook pro

The iPhone Bleeds Lumia Cyan, According To Siri. Or Wolfram Alpha. Or Best Buy. Sometimes. Maybe. Actually, No.

Well, Jim Dalrymple beat me to making fun of this, but what the hell, it’s Friday.

Earlier today, a thread starting passing around the Internet pointing out something worth a chuckle: when you ask Siri what the best smartphone is, it responds with the Nokia Lumia 900. The cyan version from AT&T, to be exact.

That’s it — end of debate! Shut Apple down and pay the money back to the shareholders. The Lumia 900 is clearly killing off the iPhone. Well, except if you consider sales. And user happiness. But whatever, Siri says so!

But wait. Does Siri even say so? After a series of never-ending clicks, I believe I was able to trace this “story” back to its roots. Dalrymple linked to AppleInsider, which links to TheNextWeb (hi Robin!), which links to ZUnited, which links to WMPoweruser. (CNet tried to insert itself into the conversation too, but well, it was this guy.)

Appropriately, it was a game of telephone that led to “Which is the best cellphone ever?” evolving into “what is the best smartphone ever?” Along the way, there were several reports of different answers — for example, I get nothing when I ask about the best smartphone ever and I get “I think you’ve already answered that question, MG.” when I ask for the best cellphone ever. Cute.

But people definitely are seeing the Lumia 900 pop up, the screenshots prove it! How could Apple let such a thing fly? Because it has nothing to do with Apple. The answer comes from Wolfram Alpha, Siri’s top data partner. And the fact of the matter is that in this case, the data sucks.

Wolfram Alpha passed the Lumia 900 to Siri simply because it’s the first on this list. But if you look closely at that list, you’ll note that several phones receive the highest “5” rating — 29 of them, by my count. And that list includes three models of the iPhone (two different versions of the iPhone 4S — the 64GB white model from Verizon and Sprint, sorry, AT&T). They’re simply not the first listed.

But again, this list is shit. It’s data from Best Buy based on user ratings. The Lumia 900 in question is “#1” with a whopping 5 user reviews. Number 2 on the list is this phone — I mean, just look at it! — which has a whole one five-star user review. Number 3 on the list is the HP refurbished Touchpad. Yes, the Touchpad. Number 3 best smartphone ever.

Need I go on?

Tags tech mobile nokia lumia 900 apple iphone 4s siri bestbuy

iOS 6 Non-Google Maps

Mark Gurman:

According to trusted sources, Apple has an incredible headline feature in development for iOS 6: a completely in-house maps application. Apple will drop the Google Maps program running on iOS since 2007 in favor for a new Maps app with an Apple backend. The application design is said to be fairly similar to the current Google Maps program on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, but it is described as a much cleaner, faster, and more reliable experience.

The biggest step yet in the de-Googlification of iOS.

Tags tech google maps ios 6 apple google

Apple's Hold On Hollywood

Yet another subtle, but important advantage Apple has over competitors: their products are all over popular television shows and films — and Apple doesn’t pay a dime for such placement. The creative talent uses them because, well, they use them.

I mean, did you see Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol? It’s one big iAd — but again, not paid for by Apple. (Though Pixar alum Brad Bird may have played a role in that.) It’s a billion times better than any ad. It’s something money could literally not pay for.

This is also interesting, Peter Burrows and Andy Fixmer reporting:

In the 1990s, Apple’s PowerBook laptops included a company logo on the lid that faced the user sitting at the computer. When the lid was opened, the logo was upside down. Holtzman knew this was inconvenient to filmmakers and had stickers printed to cover the actual logo and have it appear correctly onscreen. A few years after Steve Jobs returned in 1997, he flipped the logo for good.

Hard to believe the logo was ever upside down, but I remember it. It looked incredibly stupid.

Tags tech apple hollywood film

“I remember asking the question: Are we investing in a business model, are we investing in a product or are we investing in Steve Jobs? The answer to the question was, you’re investing in Steve Jobs. Let’s go after this thing. And we went after it, and the rest is history.”

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson (then Chairman of Cingular) on the early iPhone negotiations. 

Lots of good stuff in Brian X. Chen’s NYT post.

Tags tech iphone at&t apple steve jobs randall stephenson

Poor, Extremely Profitable AT&T

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson:

“You lie awake at night worrying about what is that which will disrupt your business model. Apple iMessage is a classic example. If you’re using iMessage, you’re not using one of our messaging services, right? That’s disruptive to our messaging revenue stream.”

Here’s an idea, instead of laying awake at night waiting for someone to disrupt your business, why not try actually innovating? What a losing mindset.

SMS has been a colossal rip-off forever. That carriers knew this. They knew such a scam couldn’t last forever. Yet they did nothing, sealing their fate.

This also proves that Apple was smart not to tell the carriers about iMessage before they launched it. They would have bitched and moaned and tried to kill it before it ever saw the light of day.

Tags tech mobile at&t apple iMessage