Edible Apple

Before Apple’s big iPhone media event this past Tuesday, Robert Scoble made a number of big predictions.

First, he said Facebook would finally release its long-awaited iPad app. What’s more, Scoble said the level of Facebook’s cooperation with Apple was expansive and would literally shock people.

Second, and much more tantalizing, Scoble claimed to have knowledge of a new iPad app that allegedly looked a lot like DirecTV, only without the dish.

There’s a reason Apple built a 500,000-square-foot datacenter (about twice the size of a Facebook one, by the way) and that new datacenter is for video and the data that video causes to be shared with everyone. Will +Reed Hastings CEO at Netflix be on stage tomorrow to help Apple explain its three-screen strategy? I sure hope so, because that would explain further why Netflix split up its streaming and DVD businesses a lot better than Reed’s been able to so far.

That’s some juicy stuff, but alas, Apple’s iPhone event came and went and none of Scoble’s predictions came to fruition.

Scoble looked a tad foolish, and what’s more, he was critical of Apple for delivering what he thought was a ho-hum iPhone 4S presentation this past week.

But in the wake of Jobs’ death, Scoble learned a few more details about the events transpiring inside Apple this past weekend and subsequently penned this apology to Tim Cook on Google+.

Dear Tim Cook: I’m sorry

I gave you a tough time today. I thought you didn’t come up to some imaginary bar I held in my head. I didn’t get why you didn’t come out with bigger news. I didn’t get why everyone in my network was telling me about the big things that were planned that didn’t come out.

Now we know.

Today a guy I know at Facebook told me that Apple just “went dark” this weekend and stopped answering emails and phone calls (they had amazing new iPhone and iPad apps and a new developer platform all ready for announcing). Folks inside Facebook thought they had done something massively wrong. No, they hadn’t. Truth is you had something deeper to deal with.

The fact that you, and your team, went on stage, knowing that Steve Jobs was close to death, is a testament to your professionalism. I felt that you had called it in a bit, but now I know the truth. You weren’t calling it in at all. You were doing an amazing job while knowing what was coming.

Today I feel guilty because I gave you a tough time about your first press conference. Now that I know what was going on behind the scenes I owe you an apology. I’m sorry, I owe you and your team one.

My heart is with you during this tough time.

Indeed, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Apple executives knew the end was near when they took the stage last Tuesday. You might remember an earlier post where we highlighted an empty chair with a cloth titled “Reserved” on it that was frequently the focus of Apple’s video stream of the event. This was likely a quiet and dignified tribute to a man that unfortunately couldn’t be in attendance but whose legacy will live on for centuries.