Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

February 1

You know the more I think about Microsoft's problems with the DOJ, I'm reminded why you don't see very many American brand labels on most of the technology that we invented. VCR's, audio equipment, video games you name it. We made them, but we sure don't sell them. Now for various reasons we still make most of the technology responsible for home computers. Sure Asia supplies us with many components, but the basic design of the box, and the operating systems that run them are true blue Amercian. At least they are for now - if we can ever stop shooting ourselves in the foot. As mentioned before, Japan's government doesn't run interference over it's businesses. Selling goods at higher margins locally and then dumping them overseas is just another way to run a large-scale focus group. There's many other practices that while not popular with the SEC and the DOJ, are perfectly legit in Asia. Does that mean we should push harder to get them to comply with our laws and trading practices? Perhaps. But on the other hand perhaps we should examine what practices are really ethically unsound and those that are just unfashionable to ourselves - but not the rest of the world. If we want to compete on a level playing field, I propose that we at least examine what we're doing to our own assets in the marketplace and let people continue making their own choices rather than run endless political contests. Because if we don't, I'm sure a number of other countries would love to have the technological clout that goes with a 95% OS marketshare courtesy of Microsoft. With Microsoft's global precense it's really not that big of a challenge to pick up stakes at HQ and move elsewhere. This happens all the time with other companies as they vie for better access to tax incentives, resources, and job pools. Denver itself if seeing more companies move more operations this way. Both Sun and Nike are in the process of expanding with new facilities or are making final decisions on the benifits the region offers. If the goverment doesn't want to do anything but antagonize a company that the majority of the American public endorses, then I suspect we may loose on another leadership position in favor of assinine political grandstanding. And where the leadership goes, even more may follow. Of course perhaps I'm giving too much weight to a wierd-case scenario. I mean, if Microsoft left the country, we'd still have Apple right?

February 2
Another nuke fuse is primed for Apple's party at ground zero. This time the plutonium is delivered by the bombshell that Sears and Best Buy dropped on Apple. To paraphrase the message - get the fuck out of our stores and stop wasting our time and shelf space with your crap. Ok, so that was probably a little more terse than the tear-sheets that made their way to Ruetters and Ziff-Davis, but you get the idea. In greater detail, both stores reported that the income Apple generated amounted to less than one-half of one percent of income in computer sales. If you consider the cost overhead in dealing with numbers that low, you can see why they dropped the fruit from the computer aisles. They were loosing money sacraficing inventory bandwith that could have been allocated for real computers that the people actually wanted. You see, enthusiasts aside, no one really wants a looser computer. At least one that's loosing marketshare faster than Clinton's pantline - but I digress. Since Apple became invisible in the marketplace, the public demand moved on. Sure the MacMarines/Nazis will scream that the sales people were weak at best, but here's a hint. Retail outlets sell things that are supposed to sell themselves. You're not supposed to expect people to make 6 bucks an hour and suddenly be consultants to the techno crowd. Most of them can't even afford a Mac - and they're supposed to give them the time of day? No, what they do is stock the shelves, tell people what isle they can be found, and where the customer service department is. To assume otherwise is to bend reality to the whims of delusion. But then this isn't anything new to the MacJihad.

February 3

It's fun to wax nostalga about your hobbies and interrests as you get older. You compare waistlines, hairlines, and how gravity effects your skin and butt. Looking back to the early 80's we saw two contenders enter into the computer business each with their own tact on the situation. Apple had a lock-down on the burgoning home-user market with nice looking - albiet expensive - computers that could run Visicalc and most of the same software that was being used at Schools for the kids to hammer on at home - when they weren't pirating the beejezus out of every computer game that was being released for it. A few years later a group of techies wondered if it was possible to reverse engineer the BIOS that IBM used in their office desktop computers. One year and several million dollars later, Compaq ushered in a new line of IBM compatables in many configurations, and more importantly, cheaper price-levels to firmly establish the IBM PC as the standard-de-rigour for offices and small businesses. Flash forward to 1998. Last week, Compaq decided that they wanted to break away from the Wintel clone market and play host to enterprise computing on the same level that IBM continues to rake in the money. And they spent a ton eating Digital to do it. Not bad for a 14-15 year old company. Apple meanwhile is floundering from dated technology, high overheads in doing both hardware and software, diminshing marketshare, vanishing sales presance, dwindiling software support, erroding service and support, layoffs, an endless string of bad quarterly results, oddball random marketing, brand erosion, and general lackluster returns on public perception. Very BAD for a 20 year old company. What does the future bode for these two contenders? Well Compaq's main concern is to make their investment pay off where SGI's purchase of Cray didn't. But with Compaq's ability to seize momentum and mind-share I don't doubt we'll see an example of how SGI could have done things differently. In fact if I was at IBM, I'd be a little nervous because Compaq always has the hunger. But if Compaq has the hunger, Apple's starving to death. Not since Chrystler was going down in flames in the 70's and required the direct interference of the government to keep alfoat, have we seen such a massive steady downturn on each and every front. The MacJihad have been touting that people have claimed that Apple was in trouble before, and it's never going to happen. Don't count on it. Before now, the worst Apple had was a couple of bad quarters and a CEO that needed removal pronto - back when they were much smaller in scale and the overhead wasn't nearly as bad as it is today. Now that same nutty CEO is back, and Apple's game-plan has very little to do with selling computers in today's marketplace as much as trying to foist another menagerie of bizzare solutions from left-field like NCs and Rhapsody. Which company will succeed in the future? It ain't the fruit baby!

February 4

At the risk of sounding redundant, old news is new news. This time the deja-vu only took two days when Apple, Circut City, Office Max, Computer City all decided to call it day. Apple claims this was a mutual break-up. And Lady Di was cool with Prince Charles after her divorce. Apple is getting really wierd on me when their PR man, Mitch Mandich, steps forward and says that their refocussing with CompUSA is "a redefinition of the retail buying experience". Uhhhh huh! I thought it was just a shrinking retail buying experience. I guess if you think that a single retail outlet with a special alliance for demonstrating bad produce is an experience for the luckless Mac owner, think again. Now they can pray that there's a CompUSA on their side of town - if it's in their town at all. Now they can wait forever for the customer service department to get around to their problem after they deal with everyone else in the state who ownes an Apple. Now they can see if those competive shelf prices change after the competition leaves the scene. Now we can see if the same tact that served the Atari ST and Amiga will do Apple any good in the long-run. Back then, only specialty chains sold these orphans to be, and no-one really even knew if the company was even in business amid a background of stealth sales and marketing. It didn't work did it? But then again, that was then - and for Apple - this is now.

February 5

Speaking of wierd, I mentioned it a few days ago in the BBBS area that I saw the most frightening thing ever on the web. No, it wasn't the Apple Online Store, that was sad - not scary. No, it was none other than Charles Martin and his weekly letter to Steve Jobs. Let me fill you in on a little backgrounder experience of mine first. Back in 1993, I was working for Alembic Systems a vendor of NeXT hardware and software for the government and whatever sucker actually bought one of those black elephants. The odd thing about a computer that is an utter failure in the marketplace, is the people who still manage to buy one are either misinformed - like I was to the advertised porting of publishing software to an otherwise slightly affordable graphic workstation - or are just a little different. It's not just irony when Apple talks about "the crazy ones" in their ads. About twice a month I'd be forwarded a call from some wacko who would ramble on and on and on about how great his computer is, how clueless everyone else is, and why there's got to be a conspiracy afoot. I'm not kidding you - the worst was some guy from Detroit. Apart from feeling a bit like a late-night talk-radio host on these occasions, it was more than a little case of uncomfortable flashbacks when I saw Charles' column. Woof! I mean sure, UFO freaks and JFK fans are a little cracked, this guy is crazy-8 bonkers! Here's the gist of it. In his column he writes a personal letter to Steve Jobs outlining what he should do to correct Apple's woes. Harmless enough - odd - but harmless. It get really wierd when he starts using the word "we" - as in "we know we can do better and here's how we're going to do it". What the fuck?! I mean aside from the fact that this guy is effectively insulting the man by telling him how to do his job, aside from the fact that this guy has no experience in what the heck he's talking about, aside from the fact that the chance that Jobs is reading the letter or even knows who the hell Charles is - is roughly the same that the earth will shift orbits and plunge straight into the sun by next Thursday, this guy seems to be taking his libido for a walk with Steve! I mean this is downright spooky! Almost as spooky as another wacko who was sending endless e-mail to Apple trying to take the position of CEO that Apple is still offering. It got so bad that Steve and Larry sent joke responses - and then threatened to arrest the dumbshit if he stepped foot one onto Apple property. But given the shameless marketing practices of Apple over the last decade, whipping up nerd-sentaments into the roof, it just goes to show that karma is alive and well. But wait, there's more! This nutball is the proverbial straw and camel thing. You'll now be able to find a path to his weekly neurosis in the brand new Links section. Also you'll find saner minds that I've been promissing to link properly rather than burry them into my column. I'll try to keep it to the best, and include a review of where you'll be headed if you click there. Of course your site better be damn good if I'm going to give you a whole page and write-up, or damn unique. In Charle's case, it's so unique that it's analogous to our own private spectator window into projection, dellusion, and possibly narcissim. As I said in the BBBS - is this a GREAT country or what?

February 6

Saw the new Apple commercial depicting wildlife and computer components. Aside from feeling sorry for the snail, being abducted and strapped to a chip to make Apple fanatics chuckle, it doesn't really accomplish very much. So what if there's nothing that actually backs up their argument on chip speeds except for an outdated Byte article that admitted it neglected to include any MMX functions - something akin to running a drag race with one car lacking tires. Never mind, that benchmark tests are now so esoteric that you can effectively compare Nintendo 64s to Crays. The real story is that while Apple users are giggling to themselves, no one else is going to give a rats ass. When Apple's marketshare continues it's tailspin, it's high-time to start at least ATTEMPTING to get new buyers into the fold. Like people who don't even know why CPU's tethered to marine life is a supposed laugh-riot. It might be just a little more cost-effective advertisingwise, to tell these people what you can acutally do with the Mac, what people who like the Mac find are it's assets, or at least tell people Apple's not dead. Yet.

February 7

Another laugh riot, Bill Gates gets cream-pie'd. Ok, even I think that seeing the richest man on the planet - one almost 10 billion dollars ahead of the Sultan that grabbed the top spot in Forbes Magazine getting the love and affection that only a pastry can give in ballistic flight is pretty darn funny. Aside from harboring a guilty pleasure watching the 3 stooges (the one's with Curly, not that damn Shemp), you gotta love well timed slapstick. Although Gates looked plenty annoyed at first, he still seemed to force a smile on CNN after he was cleaned up in a decent show of hubris. No, the only drawback to this story on flying deserts, was the last tidbit indicating that rather than being a fantastic prank, it may have been a PR stunt by a man who makes his living by delivering pastries in an unorthadox manner. NOOOO I screamed when I read that. I want a clean-untarnished practical joke! Not some cheesy PR execution! One has a backbone of humor rather than the dissapointment and general wierdness of an advertising scheme. I mean if there's really a kook who makes money doing bizzare marketing exercises, it ranks only second to the level of oddity becoming of a computer company that relies on advertising a sense of pompacity and creating a religous zelotry in the hopes of foisting their own twisted agenda on an uninterrested public. Then again, that's probably why Apple users were enjoying the prank to the hilt. They're pretty good at ducking logic and irony, unlike Bill Gates and his loosing track record when assaulted with a tasty weapon.