Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

November 23

It's hard to say what's more annoying. Real Life, or Virtual Reality. People stuck in Virtual Reality wonder if I work for Microsoft. People in Real Life know that I don't work for Microsoft. Virtual Reality is where people don't feel pain when they're shot. Real Life tells me that the red stuff coming out of my arm, when I'm donating to the Red Cross for charity, is my own blood. Virtual Reality says that to consider myself an interresting and unique person - I have to buy an Apple Computer. Real life would rather say that I'm mostly interresting because I don't talk about Apple Computer all the time in public. Get the picture? For these people, life becomes rather two dimensional when their favorite purveyor of hardware tools begins to show some age - or worse - is in outright panic mode because they're two steps from the toilet. The symptoms are as follows: First a cold sweat - because the computer they just bought is going to be as relevant as the RCA CED video disk - and no it wasn't even a laser disk system. They begin to tremble a bit when their technical support dries to a cinder. Not even a lousy 45 minute wait for a technical question - now it's not even available. They begin to give out strange hooting noises when they realize that while their collegues that they've been lambasting for being Pee Cee users are suddenly ahead of the job skills curve. Their own skills on a resume suddenly resembles the net-worth of something to the tune of "Atari ST experience". Then they get annoying. First, they flood the internet with tons of spam telling the Pee Cee users that they are clueless for not being in the same crisis position they are enjoying right now. They form mailing lists to giggle to themselves when some esoteric bug is discovered on "the devils" web browser - one that will be fixed within a couple of days, and will be posted for free - and will be overlooked because the bug was so benign that only the more advanced hackers would even bother with it, even if you actually thought your data was more interresting than the IRS. They make little goofy pictures of someone who actually sold products that worked, and allow the rest of the world to get work done. This is in stark contrast to their favorite icon that has hosed them with inflated prices, discontinued hardware, flakey software, and has overtly been found screwing with the IT budget in the worst conceivable way, and is somehow a hero. But the final phase is when the bomb drops. After the news blips the non-event, the P.C. users just go back to work. The others try to group together like the survivors from a doomsday film and figure out how to keep the obsolete tech running now that the parts are no longer made, the software is no longer updated, and the operating system still has holes that needs patching. Their fall from grace is more like a slide into skid row. Because as work continues to get done elsewhere, they fall into the hobby class, watching their toy trains go around the track all controlled by a computer with a 6 color logo. And if you think I'm laying it on a bit thick - compare the volume of messages on the NT usenet roundtables compared to the NeXT usenet roundtables. For something even scarier - try reading the NeXT posts, but not if you have a pacemaker.

November 24
Finished the book "Apple" over the weekend. Several things hit me besides the author's ability to give away his true knowledge of the computer industry - one heavily supplanted by books I've already covered. The biggest disclosures revealed, everyone was a greedhead - and everyone repeated everyone else's mistakes ad-nausium. This is important because if the current retro-wave brought on by Steve Jobs is any indicator, the ride isn't over yet. My favorite touchstone in the book was the confirmation that Apple attempted to sell itself no less than 4 times in it's history, often to the same boobs. Seeing how these corporate buyer-tits-on-a-stick were weaned several times by a non-decisive crew of wetnurse boardmembers at Apple, it's going to develop into a major case of diaper rash once the inevitable happens. I'm betting on Oracle picking them out of the dumpster, since they now consitute a major portion of the current board of directors. The other revleation is that, the more times they promised to overturn Microsoft and Windows, the more dopey they came off against the tide of user-content. The fact that they are now making jibes against Dell means that they can't even focus on relevant tides for their cheerleading sections. Which is a pitty - because for all their sparring partners that they chose to keep some form of credibililty in their phoney war - they at least chose heavy hitters to give themselves some form of self-importance. But in this day and age, Dell is just another builder of clones that could be supplanted by several dozen other manufacturer of Wintel machines. Dell's big mistake was that they actually gave a damn about Apple - and bothered to actually say something about them. The rest of the Wintel builders out there don't, and it's those members that are actually going to bury apple when the final tally is added up soon.

November 25

Some of the best bits from the aformentioned book is a take on something that I've been tracking for years. That their advertising has been way off the mark with lending any consumer confidence into what is now a dead product. I mean come on. Movies that tie the Powerbook into supplanting a virus into an alien network is NOT the way to build confidence into adminstrators still trying to tie Macs into Windows NT networks. But if you want the power to bomb your best, you can do worse than buy more Apples for your office system. The fact that they actually posed these movie tie-ins and advertising pushes against empty warehouses makes for a whole new definition for the word vaporware. Whereas in the past, it used to be a form of me-too threat against existing technology, it's now a moniker for Apple every time they take the wraps off a model of Mac. This time it means that no matter what model they actually push down the throats of the willing suckers, it's probably not going to be on the shelf anyway. The fact that their new online direct order website that is hawking the current models is already backlogging orders, means that Jobs was only able to change a slight fraction of the Apple tunsami of history. That's pretty much summs up what I think of the book "Apple" in general. If you want to see what is to come - all you have to do is look at the past. I recommend it if you haven't read the books that it alludes to, and even Guy Kawasaki tried to put some damage control on it by writing the forward. This in spite of the fact that he's later admonished for saying one of the goals of Apple is to "kick Bill Gates' butt" - to which the author replies - "yeah, right Guy". I told you I love irony.

November 26

Sorry to keep harping on the book "Apple", I told you it was a goodie. I have a hard time deciding what was the best nugget of "I told you so" info. It's often a toss-up between the years that they decided to hang doing anything different and thus create any inate worth in their presance in the marketplace, and the fact that more than a few times they tried to give-up in the face of a superior onslaught. The fact that they were crowing that they were out to change the world - ten years after the fact that they were doing anything of the kind - is overshadowed that they didn't really give a shit, and were trying to find a suitor that would take the whole stinking mess off their hands so they could find a nice cushey safety net for themselves while they went down as the last executives to run from the sinking ship. And these are the guys that deserve all the attention from the media as the rebels without a cause? Puuuleeeze. It's all enough to make you believe that Microsoft is serious when they say that they've been the people that have tried to change the world all along. When all is said and done, marketshare is a better indicator of world changing all along. And the fact that Apple has slipped from 10 percent to less than 5 percent during the last 6 years tells you that they've had little interrest in changing the world, as opposed to keeping their heads above water. The fact is, cheaper computers getting into more hands have changed the world. Free internet browsers integrated into operating systems in their latest releases have changed the world. Application software that is cheaper, and responds to consumer demands - rather than foisting their own standards on the public - have changed the world. Microsoft has changed the world. That's why Bill Gates and his croneys are so filthy rich, and Apple is near bankrupcy court. Guess which one is changing the world - and will continue to do so well into the next century?

November 27

The thing that sticks in my mind that seperates Apple from otherwise real computer companies is both their hype and how badly it misses the mark with reality. Either this is due to the most massive reality distortion field in history emminating from Steve Jobs, or he's playing the MacJihad for bigger saps than I can even fantisize. After hearing how Apple was going to reinfuse it's sales force, and it's retail precence, I took a little holiday gander at how this goose is cooking. Stopping at a major retailer that sells every form of consumer electronics - I counted no less than nearly 20 different configurations and makes of Wintel compatibles. I saw one - that's O - N - E - sickly low-end Macintosh in the whole batch. If that's the big improvement in the retail marketplace hyped by Steve a month or so ago, then I'd hate to see what it would be like otherwise. This was no small town store either. This was a superstore in the middle of consumer heartland. I mean all you have to do to sell stuff in this place is have it on the shelf. But with Apple's shelf-space, I doubt they are going to sell much of anything this quarter. I mean get real. When you take less space than a pack of laser disk players, you're going to get passed by as an also ran by the general public. And that's what most people were actually doing. They were playing with Wintel after Wintel on display, and were particularly curious about the Toshiba Liberato. I told you that was a cool computer, even if it's impossible to type on. Of course there was one big improvement from previous years. The damn Mac was actually plugged in. Yep. It was actually running it's demo instead of being turned off or displaying some kind of error message. So perhaps its not all a disaster compared to last year when working Macs were rare to see anyplace. Perhaps this means that System 8.0 actually is good for something.

November 28

Aside from observing retail disasters in progress, I've been careful to note that this is the quarter that is going to be the deciding factor for Apple. I mean come-on. If you can't sell computers in the Christmas quarter of the year, you're doing something totally wrong. Well, that's my bet on the table (and in the win section), and the cards still don't look good for Apple this year. Apple is crowing that they have wracked up several hundred million dollars worth of orders in the first few days of the website's activiation. Considering that they've been loathe to sell much of anything recently, this is a nice change of pace. Until you realize that Dell, and just about everyone else with direct order services from the web have been selling dozens of times more than this for months - it suddenly looses it's newsworthyness. But of course that doesn't hinder a person who makes press releases about selling 30 thousand NeXTs after 6 years trying. That's the kind of man Steve Jobs is. What we won't hear about are how many of these people ordering Macs are current owners upgrading rather than capturing marketshare from Wintel, nor will we hear about the defectives, the flaming Macs, or the return rates that occur whenever there's a large product shipment from an assembly system that is less than 30 days old. Considering that they barely have been able to fullfil orders in the past, it's a tall invoice that says that everything with this latest push is going to go according to plan. But look on the bright side. At least the T-Shirts they're throwing in the first orders won't catch fire on their own. Or will they....?

November 29

The funny thing about Apple's supply and demand shortfalls is the driving force behind them. The reason that the sehlves were empty of Powerbooks for most of 1996, besides the usual parts supply shortages that they've had for the last 5 years, is that they had to issue a recall of all 5300s to fix a number of quality control problems that creeped past the assembly lines. In fact, in the last 3 years they've had to issue dozens of service warnings and recalls. This wouldn't be such a big deal, except for the fact that they often like to compare themselves to premium car brands. Well, I've got news for you. Only the cheapo car manufactuers have had the quality controll problems they've had for the last half-decade or so, and they haven't charged near the gap in percentage pricing that BMW places on it's cars. To date, only Infiniti has had minor tweaks to do to it's car's suspension systems as they relate to crumple zones as a result of discrepencies in international crash tests. None of them have behaved like a Pinto. But of course, they've never had the logic that is pervasive behind Apple with their flaming laptops and failing monitors. So if you wonder why an IBM'ers laptop hasn't melted a busnessman's briefcase into a pile of molten plastic slag at the airport, you may further wonder why he's paid less for his otherwise safe computer choice at the same the MacJihad have doled out thousands of dolars more for an Apple flambe.