Donna Highfill: Motherhood, Apple Pie and Manipulation

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Let me begin with my honest but necessary motherhood disclaimer -- I love my two children with my entire heart, even though my daughter told me when she was little that I only got a piece of her heart because she had to save the rest for others.

I think my children are miracles and will always be the best thing I've ever contributed to this crazy world. Like others, I believe that children are the future, etc.

I also believe that motherhood is a state falsely glorified by Hallmark and Mother's Day. The actual holiday was birthed in 1908 by a woman, Anna Jarvis, when she held a memorial for her deceased mother and then lobbied for recognition of all moms. Yes, her mother was already dead. Sometimes, the gifts we receive on Mother's Day might make the rest of us wish for the same.

The entire marketing push that comes with motherhood took me by surprise when I gave birth to my son.

It began with the La Leche league, a well-meaning group of women who let you know that if you don't breastfeed your baby, you might as well be Norma Bates. Actually, I bet Norma fed Norman Bates for an extraordinarily long time.

I agree that breastfeeding is good for your baby, but I don't appreciate the guilt that was piled on me in the hospital by woman who kept coming by my room and fondling my breasts. And I didn't even get a free dinner out of it. Instead, I was supposed to provide the meal.

Guilt grew as my son became a toddler. My then-husband's family was wonderful, but none of the sister-in-laws worked outside of the home. I kind of enjoyed working; I'd been doing it since I was 14 years old. I compromised by turning my current full-time job into a part-time job.

This action resulted in snide comments from other mothers who didn't work. Wow, I could never, EVER leave my baby with anybody. I'm so tremendously grateful that I can be at home with my children.

The working mothers resented me for another reason entirely. Wow, I can't believe you get to be with your son 2.5 days a week. You are SO lucky.

I was lost in this no man's land of complete guilt. Motherhood was a bitch.

Once I got pregnant with my daughter, I made the women who didn't work outside the home extremely happy by quitting my part-time job. For almost two years, I put all of my time into raising children, and most of the time it was wonderful. Other times, I wanted to slit my wrists.

My despair was driven by conversations with other mothers who could talk about their child's loose stools for hours or the fact that their sweet little angel only took a one-hour nap yesterday as opposed to the normal three-hour nap they took each afternoon.

Neither of my children napped. When I shared this information with other women, I was accused of not setting a regular schedule and was told that this would eventually really screw my kids up. I mistakenly thought being at home would give me some kind of motherhood judgment immunity, but it only made it worse.

I spent my days fixing meals and snacks, wiping down counters and bottoms, taking the kids out for a walk to 7-11 and reading Goodnight Moon and Hop On Pop until I would get them confused and end up saying goodnight to Pop and quietly whisper hush while hopping. Once all of this was done, I would try to figure out what I was going to do for the rest of the day, because it was only 10:00 am.

Grocery stores were the worst, because the kids would be tired and hungry and would develop a desperate need at the cash register for a pack of gum, a mini-flashlight or Triple A batteries.

And the cashier would inevitably say, I wish I could be home with my kids. Just as I was about to hand them over and congratulate the cashier on her new family, my kids would quit crying and we would wander out to the car to drive by the house that we drove by every day because it looked like a castle and it took five additional minutes off the clock.

So, forgive me if I'm not just wowed by the marketing of motherhood. Men have gotten more involved, but women still do most of the cooking and laundry and accept blame for everything that goes wrong with the kids while fathers get credit for their strength or sense of humor or success.

If Hallmark wrote honest cards for moms, they would read like this:

To Our Mother
Thank you for wiping counters and ass,
Thank you for releasing any semblance of class,
Thank you for staying awake without sleep,
Thank you for not calling my best friend a creep,
Thank you for hopping on pop once a week,
Thank you for ignoring the solace you seek,
Thank you for reading us story after story,
And accepting a job that takes guts without glory.

Yes, I love my children, but motherhood is not the same thing as being a mom. Motherhood is a state created by guilt and judgment and is reinforced once a year with bad breakfasts and corsages.

Women, if you love your kids, but aren't so crazy about the state of being a mother, don't feel guilty.

Because it's the toughest job you'll ever do, and it doesn't need to be as tough as it is. Others around you have arms and legs, and can pitch in. Other mothers don't get a right to judge what you do. Remember, they're secretly as miserable and tired as you are.

Stand tall and repeat after me:

I love my children, but if you insist that I love the 24-hour a day state of guilt and activity and exhaustion called motherhood, then I'm going to show you what a mother I can be.

There -- I feel much better.

Follow Donna Highfill on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DameDonna

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Microsoft Vs. Apple?

If you ask me, Microsoft will now take over the computing world. Without Steve Jobs, Apple is nothing.

A clear indication of this is the constant decline in their share price. It was around $ 700 last year. Now it's at just $ 440.

R.I.P. Steve.

R.I.P. Apple.

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Apple Should Create Stolen iPhone 'Kill Switch,' Says Top City Prosecutor

The top prosecutor in San Francisco wants Apple to design a "kill switch" for iPhones that would render devices useless after they are stolen.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said he pressed an Apple representative last week to embed such technology in every iPhone to diminish the product's value on the thriving black market for stolen mobile devices.

Gascon described the meeting as “very underwhelming," and said he now wants to meet with Apple chief executive Tim Cook to discuss development of an iPhone "kill switch."

“Given how nimble our technology companies are and how they can develop so many new features, I strongly believe that is a very doable thing,” Gascon said in an interview with The Huffington Post.

An Apple spokesman did not return a request for comment.

Across the country, police have reported a surge in thefts of smartphones and tablet computers -- iPhones and iPads in particular -- as criminals snatch mobile devices and resell them on the Internet, on street corners and inside local convenience stores. Of the 3,190 robberies in San Francisco last year, nearly half, or 1,470, were smartphone-related, according to police figures provided to HuffPost.

The spike in thefts has forced police departments to create special undercover units aimed at catching phone thieves. The human toll of phone robberies is also rising, as some victims lose not just their phones, but also their lives.

Last April, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile agreed to begin sharing a list of serial numbers linked to stolen phones. Once the policy goes into effect by the end of this year, a phone reported stolen will no longer work on any major U.S. wireless network.

Gascon, however, said the stolen phone database “looks good but is nothing more than smoke and mirrors."

A similar stolen phone blacklist launched in the United Kingdom a decade ago has not stopped phone thefts. Instead, it drove the black market overseas, because foreign wireless carriers don’t participate in the database.

Even if an iPhone is blacklisted, it can still connect to Wi-Fi hotspots to download games and music, browse the Web, make Skype calls and send text messages using WhatsApp, a popular Internet-based texting application.

“I’m very disturbed by the fact that the mobile communication industry, both at the carrier level and the manufacturer level, is so slow to respond to a problem that has been emerging for easily the last four or five years,” Gascon said.

“There are not a lot of times when we can create technological solutions to a problem,” he added. “This is one we can.”

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Apple registers Retina as trademark

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Steve Jobs Email Reveals That He Threatened Other Firms With Lawsuits If They Poached Apple Employees

By Dan Levine

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple co-founder Steve Jobs threatened to file a patent lawsuit against Palm if that company's chief executive didn't agree to refrain from poaching Apple employees, according to a court filing made public on Tuesday.

The communication from Jobs surfaced in a civil lawsuit brought by five tech workers against Apple Inc, Google Inc, Intel Corp and others, alleging an illegal conspiracy to eliminate competition for each other's employees and drive down wages.

The defendant tech companies have attempted to keep a range of documents secret. However, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California rejected parts of that request, which led to details of Jobs' 2007 communications with then-Palm chief executive Edward Colligan becoming part of the public record.

Jobs proposed eliminating competition between the two companies for talent, according to a sworn statement from Colligan cited by the plaintiffs.

"Mr. Jobs also suggested that if Palm did not agree to such an arrangement, Palm could face lawsuits alleging infringement of Apple's many patents," Colligan said in the statement.

A 2007 email from Steve Jobs to Ed Colligan, who was then president and CEO of Palm.

An Apple representative could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday. A spokesman for Hewlett-Packard Co, which acquired Palm, also could not be reached.

Colligan told Jobs that the plan was "likely illegal," and that Palm was not "intimidated" by the threat.

"If you choose the litigation route, we can respond with our own claims based on patent assets, but I don't think litigation is the answer," he said.

In 2010, Google, Apple, Adobe Systems Inc, Intel, Intuit Inc and Walt Disney Co's Pixar unit agreed to a settlement of a U.S. Justice Department probe that bars them from agreeing to refrain from poaching each other's employees.

The Justice Department and California state antitrust regulators then sued eBay Inc late last year over an alleged no-poaching deal with Intuit.

In a separate court filing on Tuesday, eBay asked a U.S. judge to dismiss the government's lawsuits, saying the company had done nothing wrong.

Antitrust law "does not exist to micromanage the interaction between the officers and directors of a public company," eBay said in its filing. A Justice Department spokesman could not immediately be reached.

Koh is currently mulling whether the civil lawsuit can proceed as a class action, which would give the plaintiffs more leverage to extract a large settlement. Plaintiff attorneys have estimated that damages potentially could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

At court hearing last week, Koh cited emails between top executives as key evidence for plaintiffs, though the judge also said plaintiffs' economic analysis had "holes."

The Tuesday court filings detail how Google developed its no-hire agreements. When Google's human resources director asked then-chief executive Eric Schmidt about sharing its no-cold call agreements with competitors, Schmidt - now the company's executive chairman - advised discretion.

"Schmidt responded that he preferred it be shared 'verbally, since I don't want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?'" he said, according to the court filing. The HR director agreed.

In an email on Tuesday, Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said Google has "always actively and aggressively recruited top talent."

Schmidt is scheduled to be questioned by plaintiff lawyers next month.

The civil case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is In Re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, 11-cv-2509.

(Reporting By Dan Levine; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

Earlier on HuffPost:

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How Apple Sets Its Prices

Comparison-shopping for new electronics can be fun and addictive. With a bit of patience, some luck, and an eye for good deals, you can find everything from TV sets to hard drives at a significant discount. In fact, in our economy, discounts are one of the primary mechanisms that retailers use to compete against each other.

But all bets are off if you happen to be in the market for a product made by Apple.

Read the whole story at Macworld

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2012 Taught Apple How To Say Sorry

By Sarah Kessler

This story originally appeared at Fast Company.

While Apple's new products are generally met with fawning praise and long lines, its first map app inspired nothing but complaints. It mislabeled cities, flattened the Statue of Liberty, didn’t include public transportation and is, by one estimate, three-times more likely to get you lost than Google Maps.

The company at first defended its work. “We are continuously improving it," a spokesperson argued, "and as Maps is a cloud-based solution, the more people use it, the better it will get."

But the problem was not necessarily that Apple Maps was a terrible product. It just wasn’t as good as Google Maps. "What Apple has learned is that maps are really hard," Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told AllThingsDigital in an on-stage interview shortly after Apple Maps went live. "We invested hundreds of millions of dollars in satellite work, airplane work, drive-by work, to get the maps accurate."

From a business perspective, cutting Google out of the iOS home screen makes sense. While the companies once happily played in different industries (with Schmidt even serving on Apple’s board at one point), the rise of Android makes them competitors with diverging interests. From a product perspective, however, Apple's maps app replaced an important feature with an inferior one, and that was not a good move.

Apple CEO Tim Cook acknowledged his mistake in a public apology letter. It's not the first time Apple has apologized. Steve Jobs made a similar concession regarding problems with syncing system MobileMe (Apple has also apologized for antennagate and other mishaps). But it was the first time the apology read like a sincere admission of a mistake rather than a response to a customer service complaint. Cook went as far as to recommend using competitor map products while Apple gets its own up to par. Not only did his apology calm the uproar, but it demonstrated a kinder, humbler Apple.

Read this story at Fast Company.

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Customers Flee Apple Maps

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Google dealt another blow to Apple today, announcing that its Google Maps for IOS app reached 10 million downloads in just two days.

Jeff Huber, SVP of Commerce and Local at Google announced the news on Google

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Visiting Australia? Apple Maps May Kill You, Police Warn

Travelers visiting parts of Australia are being urged by police not to rely on Apple Maps to guide them. The warning comes from the Victoria Police and follows a couple of incidents where people have got lost and could have died from heat or exposure, according to Australia's ABC News.

"If it was a 45-degree day, someone could actually die," said Victoria Police inspector Simon Clemence, who has become increasingly concerned that errant Apple Maps users are getting lost. "It's quite a dangerous situation, so we would be calling for people not to use the new Apple iPhone mapping system if they're traveling from South Australia to Mildura."

Apple Maps is one of Apple's few stumbles, and has been criticized since launching. This is the first time it has been suggested that using it could kill you though.

After its failed launch Apple CEO Tim Cook apologized to users for Maps, and added that the firm was working hard to find out where it went wrong and fix it.

"With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better," he wrote in an open letter. "Everything we do at Apple is aimed at making our products the best in the world. We know that you expect that from us, and we will keep working non-stop until Maps lives up to the same incredibly high standard."

Cook suggested that users turn to rival navigation providers like Google Maps or Nokia Maps.

About a month later Scott Forstall, head of iOS Applications left Apple amid rumors of a falling out with Cook over that apology.

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.

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