Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

March 15

What a week! So many news reports and observations - at least a few will have to make it into next week's issue. Naturally none of it is particularly good for Apple, but then I wouldn't be here jagging this column over a merlot at a goth/biker/internet/cajun/pool bar (my corner dive, my watering hole - my ISP) otherwise. I think one of the better observations noted in dialogue spouted in the BBBS section is wonton musing on what Apple's new product orphan policy is and will be for the future. Looking back over the reports of milk and cookies for the Newton folk holding their pittiful little protest in the parking lot of Apple headquarters and getting treats served by Steve Jobs, one almost wonders if the same thing will happen to the next batch of tech to get axed by Apple. I mean, this could be the start of a whole new fad in silicon valley! We ax your electronic wubbie, and we'll give you treats at the wake. What a concept! Sure, the protest brings to mind nuttiness that transpired when Gasse' was terminated, probably the single most dangerous person to Apple's misguided corporate legacy next to "the Diesel", but with 20 plus million Mac users wating for the bomb to drop, there's going to be one hell of a run on Oreos pretty soon. I'm stocking up now.

March 16
Down goes more products. Most of the Powerbook line in fact, leaving a single one left the 1400/166 in fact. Also nuked, the PM 6500. Now this isn't really that significant on the face value meter since their line's been plenty bloated and confusing as hell for quite some time, and they introduce product just about every month it sometimes seems. But under the surface there's two curious takes that the public will surely notice. One, their notebook line is now limited to one very overpriced undersupported one of those - and two, the already bleak shelf offerings just reduced itself considerably, for those that aren't Best Buy, Circut City, Sears, Office Max or the general gammut of retailers that have said "go away" to Apple and their unsellable swill. The long and short of it, is Apple's visibility over the radar just diminshed even futher. Surely this isn't a bad thing for a bloated inventory stream, but it does represent a warning sign of a company that is no longer capable of supporting a presence that it's former self did when it was doing decent in spite of itself. Now it's in crisis mode, and Newtons, a long list of laptops and anything older than 6 months is pretty much orphan fodder. Time to call the people in Social Services, we've got a load of toddlers on the way. It will be curious how small the product line will get before the reality sets in even with the most ardent MacJihaders. I'm just noticing the pieces falling out of the puzzle along the way.

March 17

You know it's wierd. Just when I thought the MacJihad with their continual bashing of the media for saying word-one negative about a company gripped tightly in the act of a nosedive, there comes another pro-mac media pundit that raises a flag to the obvious. This would happen to be Charles Pillar who has popped up in the LA Times, and even CNN with a column refering to Steve Jobs not perhaps being the savior he's being made out to be. Lord knows, the gab has been so prolific about what he's up to that the stock has been rising a bit with short term buyers responding to an endless parade of PR sheets similar to the warm fuzzies that were a staple of NeXT to cover-up the fact that diddly/squat was happening in the good column of the flowchart. Well, the ironic happened, this Charles guy actually got a clue. He sited no less than 4 key points that I've been trumping up around here for months. Like the fact that the profit last quarter was slimmer than Twiggy's waistline in the 60's, the fact that there's still no CEO running the show, the fact that Rhapsody isn't really an end-user solution, and the fact that people want computers - cheap computers - and they are buying them without Apple logos on them. It's scary when the crap I'm crowing on about during the 2 hours or so it takes to spew it over notes and a good wine actually become echoed by jokers who actually still like the Mac and are paid to write glowing words about it. Denmark has never been more rotten - and it's not because the Sex Pistols are playing on the jukebox that I would say something like that. Nope, not me.

March 18

I just listened to Steve again live via RealAudio on his Seybold coverage and good god - I don't know where to begin. So many ironies, so many observations, so few days to pack it all in. Well, here goes anyway. First rule about Seybold - the graphics design and print forum - it's not fucking MacWorld Expo ok guys? These people have their hands wrapped around mice tied to Scitex workstations, AGFA machines, Lino-Hell toys, SGI workstations, Sun workstations, even Windows NT workstations. Anything that can push data to a rendering engine to film, plates, or even full-blown multi-ton press drums. What works, is anything that is fast - because they usually bid jobs in advance not by the hour. Bottem line - this isn't the damn choir of Apple. That would probably explain why the keynote speaker Jobs wasn't getting "Seig Heils" at the end of every sentance in true David Letterman audience hoots. Smattering of applause sure, but the truth between the lines popped right to the surface. Sure there's plenty of dotheads around (a trade reference to pushers of zipitoni and registration screens) who still crank out product from Macs, but there's plenty of Gateways running into other logos and makes of silicon. That combined with the fact that a lot of new jobs/print assignments are Wintel in origin all make for a witches brew that would make any ISP manager crawl under a rock. The upshot is why in the hell did he lead with all 3 new Apple commercials for Crissake? I mean come on! This isn't the fawning Steve Jobs club, these are people who want to hear - if anything - how Apple is going to help them continue to push print out the door - not show off an ego that has micromanaged an ad campeign into the ground. Now mind you, given the stubborness of art phags to cling to a single brand of anything, I've gotten plenty of hate mail of "how dare you blaspheme the people who have helped make you a designer" and I've got news for you. Apple didn't make me a designer/art phag/ad boob/internet grunt. What rational grunts do is wonder what the hell is the status of their tools. If a Lino-Hell RIP starts flaking out, then it's time to see what the hell there is to replace the damn thing. If anything, I noticed nothing that indicated any spin-control that futhered why in the world these people would think that Apple has finally gotten it's shit together, apart from some dubious benchmark tests presented by the toter of the very same systems. The bottem line - for those in the crowd who were wondering why a dual Pentium box RIP from hell shouldn't be purchased to get postscript out to the web-press during the next 5 year tax IS upgrade, they sure didn't see any reason it should be considered from a shakey company that seems on the virge of going out of business. Way to go Steve.

March 19

Oh it's not finished yet, looking back on the Seybold data a mintue, there's at least a few rants left in there fingers. Well here's a shocker for you. Benchmarks be dammned when you're splitting hairs on the second. The real question is if you're going to bother to be around next year and support the crap you're selling. I mean great - loaded flakey non MMX - test says your stuff just might be a little faster than a Pentium in some operations. Faboo. Wonderful. Nice. How about those dual processor Wintels, or better yet, those nice DEC Alphas that have been chugging away for the power graphic and pre-press people just fine and dandy? No what we have is a campeign that is firmly rooted in the depths of a single non-event rather than getting to the core reason for why you should keep giving Apple money and the time of day. This isn't really a surprise because this is the same crap that Steve Jobs has been shoveling before. The last time it was NeXT and he touted videos showing how much faster it was to do custom application development for a computer that no one actually bothered to buy, let alone use or develop software for. The enemy in the crosshairs this time? Sun Microsystems. The problem is no one gave a fuck. This was on the heels of esoteric nerd arguments and advertising touting the advantages of having a DSP, built in ethernet, object oriented interface builders, Display Postscript and on and on and on. The downside is that none of this actually took into account the fact that what people wanted was software and a reason to buy the damn thing rather than a lecture on Digital Signal Processors. This is otherwise known in advertising as microscoping - missing the big sell in favor of dredging up a statistic while dodging the bigger (and harder) sell of why this product could enrich your life or otherwise make sense to the purchasing department. Well, back to the future we go because there was Steve on stage taking almost half the alotted time that he otherwise ran over anyway, talking about some minute' about goddamn benchmarks to a crowd that has supplanted unix boxes to make up for the fact that Apple is still below the pig-iron curve of power for serious work cranking out postscript. Incredible.

March 20

Between Seybold, and many other pieces of data that have been piling up, a unique conclusion has presented itself. Is Steve starting to believe his own micromanged hype? I mean here's a few points on the radar. First, Steve has been holding out on the CEO position for a decent package - one that now even represents 5% of Apple's stock - something that he's liquidated every time he gets it. Steve has been sending out so many PR sheets that the stock market has even managed to overvalue an enterprise that is otherwise a high-risk investment. Steve is showing off his commercials like they're actually product - rather than actually working to get product out the door. I mean, what the hell is going on here? Well there's been some side research that I've been doing in musing another writing project in waiting. It was name dropped last week in fact, it was Wendy O Williams of Plastmatics fame. The question that is begged in both very extreeme examples is who is jerking who? WOW as she was known, made a brief appearance as the most obvious blattent and loud pile of dung to grace a stage. Put together by a Malcom Mclaren wanna-be ex-porn filmmaker, this "band" took 80's exess to a whole new level in the form of a talentless stage destruction Beavis and Butthead wet-dream band. They sucked so bad that even the juvinile fans of the stage show never even bothered to buy their records. The interresting thing is - in a real life version of Spinal Tap - she kept at it even when everyone else moved on. First she was Punk. Then she was Heavy Metal. Then she even tried Rap for god-whatever reason. The conclusion is that she appeared to actually think she had talent, or a clue in spite of the fact that apart from some brief television exposure in 1981 to 1983 no one cared. Flash forward to Seybold, and Steve Jobs is playing the second coming of Jesus pushing dated messages and arguments that are practically vintage years to any California loving wine freak. If the market has moved on, how long can someone keep doing the same thing in a display of true ineffectiveness before it's painfully obvious that someone is seriously dellusional? I'll be parked in front of a good coffee, bourbon or merlot watching every weekend to find out.

March 21

O - fucking - K. Time to remind all of you jerkwads who are mailing my ISP (Netherworld) and my employer - (Quark) - they DO NOT give a shit about this site, endorse it, or even care about it's existance. It's done outside of work, therefore, has nothing to do with work. And, no I didn't get into any hot water at the office with this site - because - again - they don't give a cuss about it. Some are aware of it, but that's pretty much the extent of it. It's even sillier to send mail to "webmaster" at Quark because I'm the goddman webmaster. What the hell are you thinking people? No, cute e-mail aside, there's another reason for the above vent and disclaimer. I've more-than-just-a-little noticed some interresting developments that have Quark's name on them - and so for the first time in a while (if ever) I'm going to make comment on them. HOWEVER, these are not Quark's position, opinion, PR spin (hi Bob Monzel!) or anything of the slightest. If anyone claims otherwise I'll sic a lawyer on your ass for libel and retire. Ok - this is too good not to re-iterate outside of the press releases outside of Quark's own site. They're in bed with Microsoft. Oh yah! They've got some new database heavy stuff that - whoduthunkit - isn't going to be on an Apple server anytime soon. Quark, like Apple have also shaken hands with Bill Gates to help grease the development wheel. Granted there's Mac clients supported and Quark XPress for Mac isn't going away until Apple croaks or more likely until the last Mac rots into the dirt. So Mac people? Chill the hell out - Quark still loves you. Smootchies all around. Buy Quark's crap. In the meantime it's just further fun watching all of the freakouts that have been piling up online and around the office servers. I mean if an Apple software vet so much as farts the word "Microsoft" - the entire MacJihad goes into fullgoosebozo mode. I mean seriously I've been intercepting up rants all over the map. Of course, there's valid concerns on all this - certainly it's been documented in the past that without a solid software title that justifies a given share of the market, your computer is as useful as a doorstop. Just ask NeXT, or better yet, read the last section of "Steve Jobs' NeXT big thing". It glowingly notes that without Quark XPress, or PageMaker for that matter, the well-touted tagline that NeXT was the ideal publishing solution - somehow didn't wash. The upshot is serious designers would leave like rats from a sinking one of those in a heartbeat if Quark stopped supporting the Mac. Of course QuarkXPress was also just released for DEC Alphas so really who cares? Quark is covering as many OS's as possible because they love money as much as Macs - it's a business not a charity. Duh! Yet it's damn amusing to giggle at all the panic induced corrispondence that has been piling up along the way from everyone who regards associations with "the dark side" as open traitorism. Of course I'm not new to the same syndrome, when I sold my Mac for a Wintel laptop I pretty much watched the same silly crap transpire. It's just worth noting for the irony. And if you're a habitual reader of this site - you know I looooove irony.