*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

UPDATE: This post was posted on April 1st and thusly is an April Fool's.  It was posted about 5.5 hours after another post that was also an April Fool's that started the whole thing.  Maybe now the emails and phone calls will stop.  :)

I spent weeks writing up the previous article I posted to this blog this morning about how I had joined the silver card carrying members club at Apple.  Congratulations poured in from the community congratulating me on my accomplishment.  My Macbook Pro and iPhone were already on order as well as my wife and I were shopping for houses in California.  For once I thought, I might be able to make her happy.  A few moments ago my world came crumbling to an end.  I received an email from legal at corporate.

Mr. Elder,

...... (legal blah blah)

.... as you are aware each employee at Apple must sign an employment contract.  Any violation of that contract may result in immediate termination.  Due to the article you published this morning on your blog about your new job at Apple, we regretfully must inform you that your position at the company has been terminated, effective immediately.

...... (more legal blah blah)

......our legal counselors will be contacting you soon.

I spared you the legal jargon in the body of the letter but the main reason my tenure at Apple was short lived is because I used certain words that hadn't been approved by marketing in my previous post such as:   iPrize, iTalk, and iNet.  Ultimately the word that drove the nail in my coffin was iWeb. 

To those of you who wished me farewell in numerous emails, Twitters, personal phone calls and more, I say thank you.  All of your warm wishes and congratulations make this blow seem easier to swallow.

I received an order cancellation moments after my termination email.  My dreams of owning a shinny new silver Macbook Pro and an iPhone are all but faded memories now.    The hardest part was telling the real estate agent in California the bad news.

My words of wisdom for anyone getting a job at Apple.  Just don't blog about anything. 

For those in the Microsoft community I only hope that you can forgive my transgression of wanting to work on really cool technology that could have changed world.  Please let me back into your circle.

Sincerely,

Elder, The

UPDATE:  This post was posted on April 1st, and thusly is an April Fools post as is the follow up post.  Maybe the phone calls and emails will stop now. :)

Today publicly, I am announcing for the first time that I will be going to work for Apple Computer.  It is no doubt monumental news that I've been holding back until the final contracts and NDAs were signed.  This evening everything was finally settled.

You are probably wondering what in the Wide Wide World of Sports is going on!  What would Apple want with someone who refers to himself in the third person as The Elder?  It turns out a lot. 

Apple for years has been trying to break into the Enterprise, slowly and secretly.  Sure they are known for building end-user devices but the company has realized they can only convince about 5-7% of the population to switch to Apple products.  There are countless rogue Apple computers throughout corporate America that are breaking through silos and mindless thinking but it isn't enough.  A top down approach must be taken.  If Apple is going to fully embrace the enterprise they are going to need someone who has not only used their products, but someone that also knows the competition as well as how corporate America thinks. 

As a result I will be heading up their iPrise division at Apple.  This division will be solely responsible for getting Apple products into the enterprise and fulfilling the destiny of the underlying BSD operating system. 

In my new role, I will be working with the XCode product teams to fully port Mono to Mac OS X to make sure the majority of existing .Net applications run flawlessly on the Apple platform.  Apple realizes just like Novell there is a large investment in .Net technologies and this move is imperative to make sure existing applications can be used on Apple products.  This is going to be very tough so please be patient as I breakthrough new ground between Steve Jobs and businesses throughout America.  Apple has always been secretive about products and SDKs so it is going to be a very tough, long, and rigorous process.  Please be patient.

New products will also be released to help enterprises everywhere.  A few of the first things planned is to replace some existing technologies with Apple specific ones.  Here are a few items on the list.

1. iTalk - This will replace BizTalk Server, services and message platforms. 
2. iHibernate - An easy to use ORM mapping platform.
3. iNet - The Mono .Net replacement for Mac OS X.
4. iWeb - An Asp.Net MVC framework built using Mono.
5. iLight - A WPF / Silverlight implementation for Mac OS X.
6. i* - Anything else that is missing.

In the end I have no doubt we'll prevail.