• one During a demonstration of the new iPhone, the phone hangs on the loading of the New York Times.
• two After telling everyone to get off the network (after getting ripped by a Verizon fan), FaceTime freezes up.
• three Apple announces a new version of Safari before the browser itself is up. Then they retract. Oops. source

• 33% the immediate increase in salaries for Foxconn workers announced last week, in wake of a bunch of suicides
• $300 the monthly amount they could be making in three months – $75 a week, or double their current salaries source

• jobs, Steve Jobs Dude develops a flair for showy marketing, gets kicked out of his own company, spends a decade in the wilderness, comes back and makes Apple even bigger. Subject of great parody.
• woz, Steve Woz Helps develop the early computers that are the basis of the company, including the popular Apple II. Then spends about fifteen years riding a Segway everywhere, dating Kathy Griffin and dancing on reality TV.
• wayne, Ronald Wayne Bet you didn’t know about this guy, eh? Wayne drops his ten percent share of Apple after 12 days because he thinks that it’s gonna flop. Now spends days in casinos as the ultimate “what if?” source

• 30% raise to help limit workers’ suicidal thoughts source

• You know, when this whole thing with Gizmodo happened, I got advice from people who said ‘you gotta just let it slide, you shouldn’t go after a journalist just because they bought stolen property and tried to extort you.’ … I can’t do that. I’d rather quit.
• Steve Jobs • Speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s D8 conference – very frankly in many ways. He touched on a lot of topics in the Q&A segment, noting among other things: He had no idea this e-mail thread was with a dude from ValleyWag, iPhone OS was originally designed for a tablet like the iPad, Adobe made a big stink about Flash only after the iPad’s release, and, well, this. This is the money quote from the whole thing. source

• 20% the size of the raises Apple is giving FoxConn employees so they stop committing high-profile suicides
• .7% the amount the raises will raise the outsourcing cost of the iPad’s sale price, from 2.3 to 3 percent source

• 2 million sold in just 60 days; they’re totally just showing off source

• It was the first truly social music service. While Lala took a little while to get its footing, when it finally did, it was nothing short of magical. With Apple’s purchase of the service back in December, we knew this day was coming, but May 31st will still be a sad day for a lot of music fans like us. Here are some reasons we’ll miss Lala but will remain hopeful about its future as part of iTunes.

A quick history of Lala

• 2006 Lala launches as an easy way to trade CDs, similar to Netflix in some ways.
• 2007 Lala adds a free, on-demand way of listening to music. It doesn’t work at all.
• 2008 The company finally nails its most popular form, a 10¢ cloud music model.
• 2009 The company runs out of cash and sells itself to Apple for around $20 million.
• 2010 Apple shuts down the site, possibly to launch a similar iTunes version. NO! *sob*

What Lala had that nobody else did

• Simple, cheap options With songs available for a mere ten cents a piece and completely free to listen to once, it created a low barrier of entry that encouraged new listening habits.
• Easy sharing You could put a Lala embed on your site and share music with other people, legally and free; a number of sites took advantage of this model, from the AV Club to Pitchfork.
• Cloud-based freedom You could put your entire library on the site and listen anywhere. Sadly, Lala never got a chance to do what would’ve really made it a big hit – put it on the iPhone.

Why Lala got away with it

• We said, ‘consumers shouldn’t have to worry about where their files are, they should be able to play their music.’ It’s actually a huge benefit for the labels, because once Lala knows the music that you listen to, it makes perfect sense to say, ‘hey, Wilco has a new album coming out.’
• Lala CEO Bill Nguyen • About the benefits of the cloud music service to record companies. They were able to sell the model to them on the idea that they could provide information that might encourage future purchases. One thing that Nguyen noted is that when people were billed by the service, they bought one out of every five songs, most of which they found through discovery. On Lala, people weren’t simply listening to their collections. They were trying to find new songs. The model worked for eMusic already, but they broadened it.  source

So, what’s next, anyway?

• Well, it could be the next iTunes. Or not. With the service’s recent acquisition by Apple, it’s entirely possible that they’ll take this model and completely make it theirs. Or they might ditch certain parts of it and focus exclusively on the cloud service. Lala was out of money by the end, so they couldn’t see the idea through. But Apple, as you might know, has a ton of money and clout to pull this idea off. Or they could stick with their walled garden approach. We’ll see.

Let’s remember how great it was, guys.

• Post on Twitter about how much you’ll miss the little music locker that could, and we’ll reflect it here. Might as well, right? The tags #riplala or “lala.com” will work just fine. source

• good It will reportedly be based on the lightweight iPhone OS and focus on streaming content.
• better This iPad-sans-screen will only cost $99, which is a solid $100 less than the current Apple TV. source