Hard to believe this is even real, and there is no way I can even speak to this quite yet, but oh my god!
Schiller University is real!
Google Ads are pretty amazing I guess. Who knew that such a place even existed, but there is was advertised right on the side of the page there. I’m stunned.
Merriam-Webster, by all accounts a big player in the word game, decreed that the Word of the Day for February 27th was:shill
Apparently a verb (I had been thinking of it as a proper noun, or sometimes just as proper), their definitions follow.
1 : to act as a decoy (as for a pitchman or gambler)
*2 : to act as a spokesperson or promoter
I will focus on definition 2 for now, and leave the first to those more clever than I. Clearly from this information we can see that Phil is the perfect man for the job (of Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing) and the job is perfect for him. It’s what he was literally born to do.
Which brings up the question, is he descended from a long line of spokespersons? Like a long dynasty of protectors of the sacred art of promotion, when you are born into that name it becomes your destiny.
“But wait,” some of you object. “Schiller has a c in it and shill does not!” Well that is easy to explain my friends: the extra c is for Canadia.
This is what I’m talking about: Phil Schiller getting some major air time … well at least his fingers and velvety voice get some air, check it out:
Today Apple introduced the iPhone and Phil Schiller became the second person to publicly take a call on one. Also, Phil was carefull to warn people not to read too much into his movie date with Steve later; they are just friends.
Phil played his customary right-hand-man role during the keynote, demonstrating AppleTV’s ability to stream video from a MacBook (did Schiller like that clip because of it’s market demographic content?), as well as the phone call stuff from the iPhone. Phil apparently rocks a black MacBook, which is a sweet ride. It shows that he has no pretense about what he is using a computer for, but the upgrade to the black confirms his sense of style. On a sad note, Steve apparently uses Apple’s lame official marketing pic of Phil for his Address Book contact and has no candid shots.
Schiller’s contributions can be seen elsewhere too. Steve closed the Keynote with a quote from the great Wayne Gretzky: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.” and proclaimed it similar to the principle Apple tries to follow. I trust I will not need excessive evidence when I suggest that this quote could have come from none other than Apple’s most senior Canadian Executive.
More on the way.
MacWorld reported recently on the new Poker game for the iPod, noticing that some of the opponents bear a striking resemblance to Apple Execs. Phil’s name is apparently Killer, and and Greg Joswiak is cleverly named Shark (Jos, Jaws, Shark: get it?).
Schiller the Killer though, that has a hell of a ring to it, no?
It’s a little too early for Schiller-mania to jump into the MacWorld speculation game, but we were just talking about the iPhone when thoughts turned to Schiller.
If Apple did introduce a phone, who would announce it? Surely something this big needs Steve to tell the world about it, but how would it be presented? You can’t just hold a phone in your hand and talk about it. You have to show it’s cool design, nice buttons, and awesome interface. You have to call someone with it.
Who do you call? You call Phil Schiller!
We’ve seen in his many iChat AV appearances that he is the ideal candidate for this. Maybe you even use iChat AV to show the call to Phil via iPhone. That would be sweet.
Hopefully Phil isn’t too wrapped up in the Keynote planning to think of a better name than iPhone.
In another scandalous article at CARS, the Crazy Apple Rumors crack reporting team once again gets some exclusive fake quotes from Phil:
“I think you’d have to really be looking for a couple of penises to see that in the Shuffle button,” Schiller said, squinting at the screen of his MacBook Pro.
“I’ve been looking for about a half an hour and all I see are two arrows.
We’re just glad to see Phil in the press some more.
If anyone out there doubted that Phil was the king of demos, check this out:
YouTube Video from New York MacWorld July 1999
To the usual applause and enthusiasm his appearances generate, Phil took the stage near the beginning of the Keynote at the World Wide Developers Conference. He announced the final and best Macs to make the transition to Intel processors: the Mac Pro and the XServe.
Phil didn’t waste any time before getting dirty with technical specifications, much to the delight of the nerdy audience, but he also elegantly described the decisions that lead to the more subtle improvements inside the Mac Pro and Xserve: 2 optical drives, 4 internal hard drives, a double wide graphics card slot, and redundant power supply on the Xserve.
“In addition to amazing performance, we’ve also added some highly requested features. With more space in it now, thanks to the better thermal environment of the Xeon, we get to add redundant power.” The crowd goes wild!
Phil is great at rattling off tech specs while making a larger point, and those skills were well used at WWDC. But while this Keynote gave many usually hidden Apple Execs the chance to stand in the limelight, Scott Forstall and Bertrand Serlet both deservedly got to make many new fans, Phil got the juicy segments when he announced the MacPro (and XServe) and also took a dig at Dell when he showed that their most similar config to the Mac Pro costs a clean $1200 more.
Awesome Phil, can’t wait to see you in January!
At a Special Event held by Apple in the California Theater in San Jose, Steve Jobs held court and introduced new iMacs, new iPods, and new features of iTunes.
While demonstrating the new iMac G5′s built in iSight camera, Steve called on his main man Phil Schiller for the iChat AV video conferencing demonstration, as usual. Phil has a special affinity for this demo, have participated in every demonstration to date.
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