The latest flaming bomb from Mac blogger John Gruber: "How Leander Kahney Got Everything Wrong by Being a Fucking Jackass." Kahney's sin? Writing Wired's latest cover story, ""How Apple Got Everything Right by Doing Everything Wrong." Kahney's thesis: Apple succeeds despite violating Google's "don't be evil" rules of business. Gruber's response? Name-calling, starting in the headline. Gruber attacks with stabbing frenzy:

Wired editor Leander Kahney went up against Forbes editor Dan Lyons's Fake Steve Jobs character in a three-round mano-a-mano debate about Apple. Lyons completely wipes the floor with Kahney. Did Wired ever think this would be a fair fight? This utterly unlevel playing field shows why we're glad we were wrong about Leander Kahney being Fake Steve. This short excerpt really sums it up:

Apple has opened negotiations with the major record labels by offering only $20 per customer for a proposed unlimited plan at the iTunes music store, according to the Financial Times. Nokia is offering $80, but then cell-phone manufacturers have the price of phones subsidized by carriers who've gotten used to paying hundreds of dollars to acquire new customers. Apple has traditionally made its profits on the devices themselves, since iTunes margins are paltry, and are already slashing prices on units in order to meet sales forecasts. Labels are looking to get as much as $100 from iPod buyers and $8 a month from iPhone subscribers. Both sides are really fighting over how much of the profit from music they'll keep. Me, I'll stick with vinyl. (Illustration by Gizmodo)

iPhone's software has much the same outlook on life as an unemployed writer living in a Bushwick bedsit. Type in the word "hell" when setting up locations for the Apple smartphone's weather page, and the following alternatives show up. Did you mean New York, NY? [via Digg]

Congratulations, Portfolio, on that lovely advertising spread for Apple's ultra-thin laptop on pages 2 and 3 of last month's issue. Whatever anybody's said about the magazine's editorial leadership, nobody doubts the Conde Nast title's appeal to advertisers. Ah, but then, again, there's that editorial leadership. Flick forward to Portfolio's feature on corporate polluters: Apple is among the magazine's 'Toxic Ten'. First of all, the magazine was ridiculously unthinking to include any computer company along with industrial giants such as Alcoa. More damning: Portfolio editor Joanne Lipman also forgot one of Conde Nast's golden rules: give an advertiser the opportunity to pull out of an issue containing a critical article. It's both polite, and politic. Apple is said by insiders to be furious, as is Portfolio's outgoing publisher, the normally unflappable David Carey, a rising star on Conde Nast's business side, and someone the embattled Lipman needs on her side. ENLARGE»

Some fanboys say the iPhone actually provides something better than the "real Internet," because it lacks Flash. You kidding? What's the point of Internet-on-the-can without all that embedded Web video? While his holiness Steve Jobs won't go there, Microsoft mobile exec Derek Snyder will, signing Microsoft to license Adobe's Flash Lite technology.

Central City, Iowa, is giving MacBooks to all students in 5th through 12th grades. Now, we're all for giving laptops to students — maybe some of them will read Valleywag — but let's be realistic. "The laptops will be strictly for school subjects, and will come equipped with filters and blockers." Yeah, right. It will be mere days before some enterprising student gets caught reading one of Melissa's informative posts on high-class escorts. Why not just let them get sex ed via YouPorn? That seems easier. (Photo by AP/Michael C. York)

Apple has announced its Worldwide Developers Conference will take place June 9-13. The invite, above, reminds you to mark the week as "hellish traffic" on your calendar. And the two bridges? Most likely they reflect Apple's dual developer tracks, one for iPhone and one for Mac. So much for the notion that it's all the same operating system. [Gizmodo]

Who knew Rush Limbaugh was such a...geek? In mid-February, the conservative talk-show host publicly asked Steve Jobs for help fixing some bugs that had been plaguing him. Limbaugh then described the problems he was having and told us that Apple had gotten in touch and was working on the problem. Now, a month later, Rush says Apple has fixed the bugs. Read on for some impressive detail.

Ever since Mark Zuckerberg launched an iPhone-friendly version of its website last August, MySpace's Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe have been scrambling to catch up. The two have put a small team, likely under Jason Ling, MySpace's head of mobile development, on a MySpace app for the iPhone. Electronista thinks the rumored app is being worked on by part-timers. Our sources say it's a larger project, with the codename Operation IFMD. Anyone know what that stands for, other than "I'm F—-ing Matt Damon"? And while we're at it, screenshots?

Apple's retail staff increased 44 percent from September 2007 to December 2007. Over the past two years, the retail division's staff numbers have risen between 2 and 15 percent per quarter. The company now has 11,400 "equivalent" full-time retail positions. At this year's shareholder meeting, head of Apple Retail Ron Johnson pegged the number of retail employees at 15,000, indicating that a huge percentage of them are considered "part-time."

At Apple's iPhone SDK announcement today, Steve Jobs had "one more thing..." to reveal. Venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins came onstage to announce a $100,000,000 "iFund" to help "young developers with funding." This is a huge amount of money for developers, but no details on how it will be invested or allocated. Compare this to the $10 million Android programming contest that Google introduced with its Android mobile phone platform. Thanks to the dedicated gadget-hounds at Gizmodo for the pic and info.

The development kit for the iPhone has been released to the wild and Apple's servers are getting slammed by people looking to download it. I can barely get through to the info page and am having no luck actually downloading the SDK. I guess Steve Jobs should have gotten Amazon's S3 storage service.

The best thing about the iPhone has always been how it allows you to avoid work emails. "Sorry, dude, it doesn't support Exchange! Text me!" If you wanted to give your boss an electronic leash, you'd have bought a BlackBerry, right? No longer true: Apple is adding enterprise support to the iPhone. In a presentation at Apple's headquarters, CEO Steve Jobs announced that Microsoft Exchange-compatible email, calendar, and contacts software would be added soon. Also on tap: Cisco VPN support and other security enhancements. Congratulations, early adopters: Your symbol of indie cred is now a tool of the man. This will increase Apple's sales, but somehow that just makes it worse: Jobs will laugh all the way to the bank as you cry into your no-foam soy latte.

At the iPhone SDK Roadmap event at Apple today, Steve Jobs revealed this tidbit about the iPhone: 71% of mobile browser usage is from Safari. On top of that, Apple has 28 percent of the U.S smartphone market, number two behind RIM's 41%.

Some whiners say what the iPhone provides isn't the real Internet, because it lacks Flash. No kidding, donkeys: It's way better. Thank you, Steve Jobs, for saving us from Flash websites — the 2008 version of the <BLINK> tag. [Macworld]

A further revelation in Peter Elkind's Fortune profile of Apple CEO Steve Jobs: In a June 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, he told students, "About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer." Jobs first learned he had a form of pancreatic cancer in October 2003. [Fortune]

At Apple's shareholder meeting today, Steve Jobs said the Apple board has many potential successors to choose from should something happen to him. "We've got great talent ... we talk about it a lot." Candidates include COO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer. Have you ever seen either of those guys talk? Jobs is said to be worth $16 billion in market cap to Apple. Apple PR could spend that much on media training for Apple's stiffs-in-waiting, and they still wouldn't fill the seats at a Macworld keynote. Our vote is for design guru Jonathan Ive, who'll shut up and let the gadgets speak for themselves.

From October 2003 through July 2004, Steve Jobs hid the fact that he'd been diagnosed with a form of pancreatic cancer, according to a profile of Jobs in an upcoming issue of Fortune, now posted online. A serious charge: Jobs should have promptly disclosed his health scare to Apple shareholders, since he seems practically irreplaceable as Apple's CEO. (Only now is he admitting to thinking about a successor.) But Jobs's cancer scare is old news to most readers. Why is Fortune bringing it up now?

Warner Music has signed a deal with 7digital.com to sell its entire catalog DRM-free in the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Spain and France. What's 7digital, you ask? An online music store that's not Apple's iTunes, which seems to be Warner's only requirement in a partner these days. [Crave]