Grand Central Station. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

by Adel Manoukian

Apple is under scrutiny after State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office released an audit claiming the company had an unfair advantage when the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) let it secure a spot in the Grand Central Station.

In December of last year, Apple was allowed to open up a store in the iconic building’s balcony.

The audit states that the MTA and Apple negotiated a lease for over two years before the Authority asked other companies for proposals on the space.

Before that request was released in May 2011, Apple tried to get reimbursed by NYC taxpayers in July 2009 for the $2 million it had paid the restaurant Metrazur to occupy the space at Grand Central. This was rejected by the MTA. The audit claims that the MTA allowed Apple to set a hurdle for rival bidders–the authority required companies bidding for the space to pay $5 million upfront, something Apple was able to do, according to NY Post reports. This gave Apple the competitive edge, according to DiNapoli.

The State Comptroller performed the audit after a 2010 review of MTA real estate practices revealed issues and a second audit that year revealed that only two of the 12 recommendations to better their practices had been enforced, according to the comptroller’s office.

But MTA Chairman Joseph Lhota believes that the audit lacks accuracy and is “worthless” opinion, according to the NY Post.

Jeffrey Rosen, the MTA’s real-estate director wrote in a letter to DiNapoli’s office that the authority intervened in negotiations between Apple and the restaurant because it saw an opportunity to have the restaurant surrender its lease which ends in 2019 because Apple would pay a higher rent and generate more revenue for surrounding businesses. The MTA says that Apple is paying $1.1 million in rent, four times what the restaurant was paying.

The comptroller wants to have more oversight on public authority contracts worth more than $1 million so this is less likely to happen again.

Photo courtesy of Samsung.

The Samsung Galaxy S III is just the thing to make Apple loyalists question the sanity in their devotion. Apple should do the same.

In 2007, when everyone was running around with RAZR flip phones in one hand and an iPod nano in the other, Apple gave us a sea change. Nobody who has ever bought movie tickets with Fandango, decided on dinner with Yelp, or wasted actual precious chunks of their lives playing brain-hole games like Angry Birds or Temple Run (e.g. me, sadly) can deny that the iPhone changed the way we interact with the world and with each other—by changing our understanding of how we could.

But, yo, people. That was five years ago. That thing caught everybody of guard. We were silly with it; remember? People paid $999.99 for I Am Rich, the arrow-pointing-up-I’m-With-Stupid-shirt for the new millennium. An app called iFart Mobile famously inhaled $10,000 dollars per day in 2008. iFart. iFART! Yes. We were silly, turns out it was all worth it, but we were super silly, y’all.

But now all that stuff that ooh’d and genuinely awed us is standard issue. So many people have smartphones that the New York Times actually thought it was news that a handful of contrarians choose not to join the fun. I wonder if they ran a similar article when that wacky Internet was all the rage. Remember that? I could Google it, but why bother?

What I’m trying to say is that unless the next iPhone is a G.D. spaceship, or transmogrifies the raw materials of the cosmos into Popeye’s famous popcorn shrimp, anything it brings to the table will likely be nothing new.

Will it have maps? Not Google Maps, which now runs offline on the SGS3, and all Android phones (lightning fast!). Will it have crazy good resolution? Likely. Retina? It would behoove them to do us the favor, but the SGS3 has an HD Super AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screen which, at 4.8” feels a little bulky, but dang if that thing doesn’t look cleaner than Starbucks bathrooms in TriBeCa. Will it have Facebook? Instagram? Will it have…what? A camera? Will it have a phone?

It may be time to face the facts: the rest of the world may have caught up to the iPhone.

Now, I’ll say this, Samsung may have been being real smart and all, but they came super cocky with it. Not a good look, y’all. They seem to think that the coolest thing about the SGS3 is how easy it is to share pictures, music, or just any pseudo-tangible item made of up to 3GB worth of binary. Like, that is cool. Certainly. But it’s not easy. Not unless all your homies also have the SGS3, and even then it involves permissions and settings and really, nobody’s sweating that stuff when it’s already very easy to share electronic data without forcing friends to resent each other cause they had to buy the same phone (if you want to twist our skivvies, stick a USB on that doggie, dawg).

No. The coolest thing about the Samsung Galaxy S III isn’t htat it dims to save power when you look away from the screen, or that it’s got wild facial recognition capabilities, or that you can watch video on a pop-out player while multitasking. No. The coolest thing is TecTiles.

This: little squares about 1” x 1” or so that can be programed to activate whatever stuff on your phone. The example I keep seeing is that you can put one nightstand to activate your alarm just by placing your phone on the thing. But there’re tons of potential uses for these TecTile deals:

• Put one: on the door and tap to open your subway app;
• near the table and tap to open your morning news;
• on your amp and set your phone down to open your guitar tuner;
• bands should have one on the merch table so that fans can FB Like them
• businesses might have one on the counter for a quick 4^2 check in;
• put one on your wallet and tap your pocket to open your camera (HOT!)
• etc. etc.

So, whatever, is the Samsung Galaxy S III going to be an ‘iPhone Killer’? Maybe not, but not for lack of guns. This little buddy is about as good as they get. If you’re looking to buy a phone this summer, it’s a good time to go Samsung. The Galaxy S III has everything you need, and a whole lot of stuff you probably won’t even know what to do with.

Photo Courtesy of Wikicommons.

by Adel Manoukian

U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer expressed concern today over Apple’s and Google’s plans to create a digital mapping system which would publish distinct images that may be considered an invasion of privacy. The companies’ digital mapping plan would use military-grade spy planes to map communities with technology strong enough to capture objects as small as four inches, even catching private activities in one’s backyard.

The companies do not disclose to communities about when the mapping occurs, which is something Schumer thinks should be changed.

In a letter to Apple and Google’s CEOS Tim Cook and Larry Page respectively, the senator requested that the corporations provide notification when communities are mapped, blur photos of individuals and any sensitive infrastructure detail, and give property owners the option to opt-out of having their property mapped in such programs like Google Maps and Google Earth. He also asks that Apple and Google explain the safeguards that they plan to put in place to protect privacy needs and security in greater detail.

Schumer also expressed concern that the companies’ competition may compromise basic privacy expectations and create security risks as criminals and terrorists may have access to secure locations. The maps would possibly provide these criminals and terrorists with detailed views of sensitive utilities. This might mean they could have more control over the power and water grids of the city as many power lines, power sub stations and reservoir access points will be made visible, unlike their state in the current maps. With any sort of measures, Schumer believes it would be impossible to secure every location.   

“We must strike the proper balance between privacy and technology,” said Schumer in a statement released today. “And while the use of this technology may well have very functional and important uses, we need to make sure that reasonable protections are in place to protect individuals and the public.”

Google plans to create these three dimensional maps that cover over 300 million people's homes by the end of 2012.

Break In, Steal, Repeat
From Thursday, May 3 through Saturday, May 6, an unknown criminal broke into 18 different cars in the Upper East Side and stole personal effects ranging from loose papers to GPS devices. The robberies took place between East 94th and East 98th Streets on Lexington, Park, Madison, Third and Fifth avenues between 4 p.m. and midnight. In each case, the perpetrator would break the driver or passenger’s side window to gain access. A number of the cars were luxury vehicles, most of them Mercedes-Benzes. Multiple iPods, iPads, phones, glasses and even a hard drive were stolen. No witnesses have been discovered so far to the crimes and the crook remains at large.

Look at the Fine Print
An Upper East Side man was duped on Craigslist over what he believed to be a good deal on concert ticket. The victim believed that he had found a rare ticket to a sold-out Drake concert on the website. On Wednesday, May 9, at about 3:30 p.m., the victim met with a black man who was sporting cowboy boots and called himself “Martin Lester.” After the victim handed over $500 for the ticket, the two parted ways. The victim returned home to find several inconsistencies on the ticket. He later called Ticketmaster only to discover that the ticket was faked.

Mother’s Day Break-in
Two Upper East Side women who share an apartment left for Mothers Day weekend only to discover that their home was ransacked while they were gone. The crime took place on East 83rd Street and was suspected to have occurred on Saturday, May 12, at about 6:30 p.m. One of the victims returned home from an excursion to find the front door only partially locked. A cursory investigation turned up empty beer bottles in the trash, both bedrooms combed through and an I.D. card belonging to a Brooklyn man. The victims were robbed of their MacBooks, a loss valued at $2,000, and one of the women lost a watch valued at $150, while the other was robbed of her camera valued at $350. There were no witnesses to the crime and the crook is still on the loose, despite the ID found at the scene.

A Startling Awakening
A late-night traveler took the ride of his life when he hailed a cab and fell asleep in the backseat of the car, only to be awakened by an angry cabbie. After a heated verbal argument over the fare, the victim was attacked by the seething cabbie. The victim was picked up at 1:45 a.m. on Sunday, May 13, at East 6th Street and Sixth Avenue. After he nodded out in the backseat, the cabbie drove the napping rider to East 67th Street off First Avenue. The cabbie awakened the passenger, who then began to argue about the fare. The victim got out of the car and was followed for four blocks by the cabbie, who finally smashed a glass bottle over the victim’s head. The victim received lacerations to the face and top of the head. The cabbie then returned to his car and fled. The car has been identified as one of the thousands of yellow medallion cabs that roam the streets and the driver was described as a black man in his 40s with a bald head.

Cash Grab
A popular chain store on Lexington Avenue in the Upper East Side was a victim of grand larceny by two of its employees. The two women were both managers at the store. Over a period of several months starting in March, the two continually made cash refunds for themselves, embezzling over $82,523 in cash. The company became suspicious when they saw that there were so many cash refunds but no customer receipts to go along with them. The two women stopped showing up to work and a fellow employee reported the crime on Saturday, May 12.

In what should come as no shock at all, retail mega-giant Apple is set to expand one of its New York stores; this time, in SoHo.

Apple SoHo, at 103 Prince St., is set to re-open with an additional 5,000 sq. ft. in July 2012

According to Real Estate Weekly, the building was renovated in 2001 to utilize about half of its 30,000 square feet space. Until 2009, the back end of103 Prince St. had been occupied by the United States Post Office.

However, when the space became available, Apple ceased an opportunity to claim a stake of downtown for itself. The Apple SoHo store, which has been open for four years and operating in the space left vacant by the USPS, is set to receive a 5,000 square foot expansion (laid flat, that’s a 50×100 foot space). The renovations comes at the heels of a $20M expansion by Real Estate Space and Investment Firm Imperium Capital. .

“After Apple completes this renovation, we believe it will be the company’s most attractiveManhattanconsumer location,” said Daniel Glaser, co-founder and managing partner of Imperium Capital, who acquired the building in 2011.

While construction is underway, Apple has temporarily relocated to72 Greene St. However, when the Prince St. location re-opens this July, Imperium Capital anticipates nothing but growth for their star techno. tenants.

“We are very bullish onSoHo, especially thePrince Streetcorridor. We look forward to Apple’s continued growth and success in this world-class retail location,” added Samuel Schneider, co-founder and managing partner of Imperium Capital.

Mike Daisey, called a “master storyteller” by the New York Times, has developed a special blend of personal history and gonzo journalism in his hilarious and touching monologues. This time around, Daisey narrows his laser-sharp wit on the empire of Apple in The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, playing through Dec. 4 at The Public Theater at Astor Place.

Starting out as a techie and devoted worshipper of all things Jobs, a chance sighting of photos of an iPhone assembly line compelled Daisey to voyage to Shenzhen, the Chinese city where many Apple products are made. What he found on the expedition was shocking: factories that hold 430,000 people, 13-year-olds working over 12-hour shifts and twenty-something workers crippled by the chemicals used to clean iPhone screens. Daisey, once a worshipper at the altar of the upgrade, found himself forever changed by his most recent shows.

Is this piece a departure from your previous work, in terms of focusing on broader cultural and social issues?

A number of them have been in this vein, like If You See Something Say Something. It is a form of what you might call journalism—I research these broader issues and canvass people. Not every monologue is this kind of monologue, but I have been tending to do this for a while now.

Why do you think your work is going in this direction?

I think in large part I am interested in stories that I feel our culture is telling.

The Steve Jobs biography just came out—it is about 700 pages long. It is a comprehensive view of him, but through one lens. If we put on a different lens, Jobs’ story is fundamentally one about a man who made things. In the book there is not even one paragraph about how these things were made. Those are the stories that bind us together, but it is hard to see them and what they are.

Throughout the piece you mention “seeing” and how we are often blind to the things in front of us. I noticed that as the show ended, people whipped out their i-devices, but I bet everyone felt differently about them after seeing your piece.

That is the idea of the metaphor shift. Everything is back the same as it was a moment before, but now we see things in a new way and it changes our world. It changes the dialog.

Something that resonated is how Apple is helping to continue this First/Third World socioeconomic dynamic, which seems like a similar narrative to the Industrial Revolution. Looking at his work through this lens, would you say Steve Jobs was truly as revolutionary as some might say, if this narrative seems to be repeating itself?

This echoes something I wrote about in a New York Times op-ed column. I think if we are going to export these jobs [to other countries], we have an ethical responsibility to uphold fair labor practices. Steve Jobs choosing not to do this was actually the conservative thing to do.

Shenzhen invokes all of the images of the Industrial Revolution, but we didn’t need it to work this way. To say that this is simply the way a global economy works is an inherently false worldview. These changes are very recent. Shenzhen has really only existed for the last 30 years, and the factory was made only in the last decade or so. The whole reason the systems works the way it does now is to avoid U.S. labor laws. Change is not only possible, it is inevitable.

It is interesting that the sense of apathy is changing even now. I see it doing this monologue…and through Occupy Wall Street. There is a paradigm shift. People are remembering that it is possible to protest something.

What can people do to more ethically interact with Apple products?

One can educate oneself. There is a lot of information that is available about how this world works and Chinese labor laws. A large part of our responsibility is thinking about our upgrade cycle. I, for instance, haven’t upgraded anything since I went to Shenzhen.

Did you feel a quick pang of lust when the iPhone 4S was announced?

It was like a pang, but I am doing OK. It was far from torture.

Monologist Mike Daisey turns his eye to his beloved Apple and its creator, in the The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, extended through Dec. 4 at The Public Theater. Photo courtesy of The Public Theater

Tech-hungry criminals got a hold of two boxes of Apple iPads, straight off the UPS trucks that were delivering the new devices, which start at $499.

Apple Store on Broadway and West 67th Street. Photo by Laughing Squid/Flickr

According to police, a UPS deliveryman was stacking boxes of iPads outside of his truck June 15 at 9:55 a.m. The truck was parked on West 67th Street, around the corner from the Apple Store at 1981 Broadway. A witness told police that a man walked up and snatched a box of iPads and ran west on West 67th Street, then south on Amsterdam Avenue. The box contained five iPads.

A similar robbery occurred two days later, June 17, right in front of the Broadway Apple store. Police said that at 9:55 a.m., a UPS deliveryman was putting the boxes on a hand truck when someone asked him for directions. While the deliveryman was distracted, another man took a box of five iPads and ran south on Broadway.

An NYPD spokesperson said that no arrests have been made and the 20th precinct is obtaining and reviewing video. The NYPD cannot say if the two incidents are related. A police source, however, said it seems that the thefts are by the same person.