Once again Facebook is apologizing to users. But what do you think Zuck would really like to say? If he could just be totally honest and obnoxious? My “open letter to Facebook users” is up on the Beast this morning.

My latest on the Beast, regarding the rumors about Google and everyone else wanting to buy Yahoo. Money quote:

Yahoo has turned into the Paris Hilton of tech companies—a ditzy, dopey outfit that remains enormously popular even though nobody, including Yahoo itself, seems to know exactly what Yahoo does for a living. And like the heiress, for reasons that most sane people can’t understand Yahoo continues to attract a string of potential suitors and to find itself the subject of constant rumors even though it long ago ceased to be interesting.

That’s the title of my piece that just went up on Daily Beast, and it’s what I kept thinking as I pored through the Isaacson biography, which landed on my iPad last night. Much of the stuff in the book is not new, but much of the stuff that is new is kind of disappointing to people who want to view Steve Jobs as a kind of messiah figure. The stuff with Lisa, the complaints from Jony Ive about Steve taking credit for things and being hurtful to people, the stuff about Steve never seeing his kids, his obsession with Android, the unkind comments about so many people around him, the crazy attempts to cure his cancer with carrot juice and acupuncture, the demand that Obama call him personally to request a meeting, the strange Montgomery Burns suggestions to Obama about deregulating businesses so they could be more like China and about making kids go to school 11 months out of the year and stay in session until 6 p.m. — these things do not add up to a flattering portrait and and they stand in stark contrast to the hagiography we’ve seen in the 19 days since Jobs died. Maybe this is a good thing. I’ve always felt that people did Steve a disservice by portraying him as a holy man, some kind of silicon saint leading us into the promised land. It seemed to me that Steve had a deep reservoir of darkness inside him, and that this dark energy was what fueled his genius. WIthout it, he would have been just another Silicon Valley marketing guy in a pair of khakis and an Oxford shirt. His challenge was to harness that dark energy and use it without being consumed or destroyed by it.

A town in Mississippi figured out a strategy. If you’re in Cupertino, you have two hours to swing into action.

“New York Stankees.” Heh. Dear Lord, please make this TV show.

That’s the headline on the article I posted on the Daily Beast last night after Apple reported its earnings. Gist is: Everybody take a deep breath. Apple turned in amazing numbers. The forecast for holiday quarter was strong. The stock hasn’t bounced back yet, but it will. Also keep in mind that Apple didn’t miss; Wall Street did. Apple forecast $25 billion in revenues, and beat that by quite a bit. The number that Apple “missed” was the Wall Street consensus. To be sure, in past quarters Apple has always underestimated its numbers, so you can’t blame Wall Street for starting to expect more than what Apple tells them to expect. Fingers crossed on the holiday quarter, but I’d bet it will be a barn-burner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YMatBdXqnc

Says on Cult of Mac that these rambling inbred hate-mongers are planning two protests — one at Cupertino High School and another at the mothership. One is tempted to ask why, but with these people what would be the point? “Because we’re crazy and nasty, and we believe in some ridiculous ancient superstitions but in fact don’t even correctly understand the meaning of the superstitions we supposedly believe in and have built our lives around,” would be the honest answer, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting to hear it.

Praise the Lord and pass the mescaline, as Shawn Colvin Willis Alan Ramsey once said.

Episode 9 of The Double D Guys podcast, titled “Losing face,” is ready for a listen right here. Or you can get it on iTunes, as always. This week Dave Thackeray and I wonder why nobody would buy any Facebook shares in the recent SecondMarket auction. Then we try to talk each other into getting an iPhone 4S. Dave doesn’t want to commit to a two-year contract. (He has issues.) I am eligible for a new phone on Verizon but I want to hold out and see the Nexus Prime. However, I’m not heartened by the fact that Google and Samsung are announcing it in Hong Kong, in the middle of the night. Not a good sign.

Meanwhile, I just came upstairs to my office after lunch and found that somehow iTunes had turned itself on while I was at lunch, and was playing Jimi Hendrix’s “Power of Soul” from the “Live at Fillmore East” album. Must be a ghost playing games with my electronics. Thank you, ghost. You made my afternoon.