Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

March 29

Well the great Steve Jobs watch is on with everyone, including the board members, giving him more slack and leeway since no one else in their right mind will work with Steve on the board, nor is anyone else interrested working with a company with no future. That didn't stop Ziff Davis from running a public poll as to whether they people think Steve Jobs should be the captain of the goodship Titanic, as if anyone but the Mac faithful give a shit. Everyone apart from boardmember Edgar Woolward that is, "Jobs can stay regardless of his title". Damn, with white-collar welfare like that - count me in! I'll be resident nay-sayer, and I'll do it for less than 5% of Apple stock. 1% will do nicely, with an exit package of course when the inevitable happens. Of course, speaking of people with overtouted severence packages, Gil Amelio is still pissing the MacComrades off with his continual soundbites that go hand in hand with promoting his new book. One so juicy that I'm working at getting an advance copy as soon as I can, because quite frankly, May or June release date, I can't wait to get my hands on it since it's loaded with great tidbits citing Steve Jobs "taking credit for products conceived before he even got there" which explains a lot since - what the hell do you think - Steve just arrived and in 30 days creates the goddamn G3's out of thin-air? Hardly. In fact if you're into subtle observations, you may have noticed the current "Artemis" all in one 1500 dollar plus G3 sitting in front of him during all those wonderful photos taken of him by Time magazine last summer. No, what he's doing is esssentially the same thing Trammel did with Atari with the exception of one product-the Jaguar. What Trammel did was live off the fat stored to the rooftops in warehouses that were unsellable from the Warner/Atari days prior to Trammels buyout and arrival. Even the Lynx was the product of ex-Amiga designers after a failed pitch for Epyx to bring it to market. Epyx failed because they couldn't tread water long enough before they endined up drowning and Atari had yet another product to take credit for. Gil went on to say "if none of this is true - all it takes is a single soundbite from Steve to disclaim otherwise". It hasn't happened - not because of pissy logic touted by another ZD writer asking for Gil to "please shut up" in true Stalin fashion - but because if you get burned something as catastrophic as the Hindenburg disaster, someone in these modern times will offer you a book deal. Well, he's got one - and I want to read the mornic logic that not only allowed them to pay 400 million dollars for a company that hadn't earned a dime of profit (NeXT) and then let the same boob - with no job title to speak of - effectively take over. This isn't CEO of Pepsi fame taking out the president, this is the receptionist taking over the wheel from the whole of the pentagon. Inquiring minds want to know!

March 30
More news on the all on one front - the Artemis - still packaged at an insane level of 1500 dollars stripped, and 2000 loaded for educational customers only - smacks of total NeXT deja-vu in terms of the deployment situation. Education only. No point seeing if the tech actually works before going mass-market with it eh? This is the same slimey tactic that NeXT used back in 1988 when it unveilled the NeXTCube and announced that only universities and educational resellers could be willing suckers - I mean customers. The reason? Well, it was going to be a year more before the OS that drove this great little bit of product was actually going to ready for the masses, let alone the mass-market. That combined that some of the earliest money-givers to the NeXT cause were universities as well as their own damn research ment that for at least a while, NeXT had to play them as dupes before setting out on what it wanted to do in the first place. Bury Apple. Jobs wanted to kill Apple off so bad he could taste it, and even - in bitter fashion - scoured the Apple logo off the remaining Macs that were in place around the NeXT offices before they could be replaced with their own computers - much in the same way the failed Lisas populated the Mac research group, since nothing Mac related actually worked for a hell of a long time (the project started before 1982). The upshot is that the schools and the like had to play beta-ware techs and debug the damn things themselves before they could be distributed to a wider audience through BusinessLand and eventually a larger network of direct sales forces based in various major cities. Well it must have worked because by the time NeXTstep 2.0 was released it actually prevented total lockups and all of the other problems that were the statu-quo for years for the boys in ivy. Well now we have Artemis. This product was largely abandoned during the first exodus of people from the departure of Gil, and then more supporters and quality control left around the time of the second and thrid round of layoffs and re-orgs. So who get's to test drive these expensive babies? The same schmoes who are bailing apple in droves by more than half of last year's installed base to find solstace in computers that come whole in the under 1000 dollar range. Will they be duped again? Time will tell, but the clock is ticking, and the educational institutions may just have a firmer grasp of history than the traditional MacComerades have. At least one would hope.

March 31

MacWeek is not coming out in paper form this week. Could be a vacation fluke, but I'm still kicking myself for not talking to my MacWorld insiders to find out what the hell is going on (I just concluded a 1 plus hour conference call with an old friend who knows who he is if I make reference to him, which I just did) with ZD's failing enterprise supporting a load of marketplace deserters who can no longer support a rag that has become more advertising than content. This isn't suprising since the same thing happened with MacWorld's previous owners when they realized that NeXTworld magazine shared the shame dubious honor of being as unprofitable as the computer they were supposed to be supporting. Well past ironies aside, it's cheaper to rumor monger and report on the net, which is why I'm here in the first place. It's going to be interresting if we're going to see the first commercial cross-over fulltime of a web-based publication that previously had it's birthright in pulp - as opposed to comers-on like Slate and Suck that have made a go from the net from day one. Although this isn't really the case with "suck" to be honest, since they are a splinter group from Wired which in true irony, both entities have yet to score a dime of profitiability either. Although I have to admit I like Wired, no other prognosticator can tell you who to run away screaming away from better than Wired. I think the best soundbite on the whole mess has to be from an ex-programmer and manager from "Rocket Science" which was for a time a poster boy of the whole idea of merging HollyWood chic of 1983, and emerging fads involving CDROM based entertainment which - apart from video game consoles that use it as a medium - has strived to maintain their 95% running in the red status. Well their soundbite was a killer as noted by the latest issue of Next Generation Video Games magazine (the only adult pub out there for us aging video farts - and even puts Bill Gates on the cover - so "hey") which had Brian Moriarty, former Sr. Rocket Science Designer's quote - "The Wired cover should have warned us - that was the kiss of death. If Wired is on top of you, then you should know that you're already out of date". Speaking of washed-up, it seems MacWeek may be on the same status as predicted months ago - only this time the tombstone may be for real. Hope I'm wrong - reading Don Crab online is a drag - that fat blowhard is so long winded that reading his drivel on screen is second only to bamboo shoot fingernail torture. But if that's the case for me to continue to take the pulse of the damned - then so be it.

April 01

April fools hit again with assorted online nonsense that otherwise invalidated concrete news that I could otherwise report on. In an ironic gesture, MacWeek online forwarded a report from Macboob-whocares.com and Apple.com and claimed that the later had bought out the former. I'd have to admit that I was totally impressed that even a company - which now has rabid foaming at the mouth supporters that are so humorless that they couldn't find a joke if it came up and bit them up on the ass - still can find a modicum of self-depreciating humor that even threw me for a loop when I first read it. I even took notes on some of the choice soundbites in the fake PR sheet which went on to describe Apple's forthcoming moves to buyout media representatives on the web scene to stem any negative anylisis that comes along from time to time. Of course the irony is that this joke is a direct reflection of Apple's avalanche style PR machine that is 3 parts Steve Jobs ego struggling for attention and some kind of historical relevance by sheer weight of crap, and one part dammage control to keep the stock people guessing as to what the hell is truly going on. In this case, it can be legitamiately said that while Apple still has a sense of humor about the bizzare circumstances and emotions they've whipped up, and the media reflections resulting from a perverse amalgamation of distortions that spread out from the face of impending doom and irrelevance. It's not the sense of humor that is the real question that needs to be asked, it's whether Apple has stopped - or will ever stop - being a joke on the outer fringe of the computing community. I'm laughing either way.

April 02

I still watch the other sites filled with posters going on about Rhapsody, a secret weapon that none of them has ever seen before - even though it's been in front of them for 10 years solid. Rhapsody, if you've not heard it before is NeXTstep and OpenStep or whatever the hell they changed the name to over the last decade. Don't laugh - while writing PR memos about new software for that stinkburger of an OS, NeXT kept e-mailing us to remind us of the capitalization of the month - NeXTstep, NeXTSTEP, NEXTSTEP, you name it. With each version, they tied in some bizzare trademark scheme to keep the end user guessing what the hell they were buying - even if it all just boiled down to an exercise in semantics for an otherwise identical pile of crap from year to year. And what a pile it was. The question for every damn letter writer and poster who refers to Rhapsody as the end-all-be all, all I have to do is ask, then why do you have so much faith in a sight-unseen product that you could have gone right out to BusinessLand, or Alembic Systems, or NeXT's own direct sales forces and actually bought? Ever wonder why anyone else didn't either? I mean 50 thousand workstations in 5 years of hardware manufacturing and a few thousand of software upgrade purchases. What a fucking revolutionary product eh? Oh ya - that's really going to make people stand up and take notice! Particularly when people were only just slightly financially entrenched in Windows NT enterprise networks - not NeXT enterprise systems. That was way back in 1993 when around the summer they actually foisted their sophisticated Intel-based alternative - which while nice on some merits, failed to garner even a nod from the hard-core enterprise customer which happens to take several critical things into opinion when they drop 7 plus figures onto an enterprise network. Well, it's 5 years later babies, and this overvauled orphan is destined for sudden infant death syndrome. With the amount of massive networks present marching in step with Windows NT, or at least a stable offering of Unix, it's going to take more than a less-than stable translation of Openstep running on an Apple logo to be considered anything other than a laughing stock. I mean get serious. The best they could hope for is what-ever box color they port, that acts as the front-end version of OpenStep that ran on NT for existing clients sells to customers that need to upgrade to better user-end hardware from existing configs. Well I've got news for you. I can count all of these clients that still even give Openstep the time of day for custom-enterprise net operations on both hands. Although after helping to personally drive a buttload of junked NeXT hardware from Wiltel, it's hard to imagine that the few remaining high-seat installations still would give a damn to what would be considered a high-risk move to any IT director worth his salt in today's enterprise world. Still, perhaps some of the more intrenched and out-of-the loop administrators out there will sucker-in, after all sometime when you're knee deep in shit, you've got to keep shoveling it, and hope for the best. That pretty much describes the optomism that I've experienced from the MacComrades in any case.

April 03

Just when you think Apple couldn't blundner any more than they can - particuarly when the marketplace is so focused on their future, you could roast an ant on an anthill from the heat - they can - and still - outdoo themselves is screwing up a a good thing. At first, it was the inclusion of Java into an otherwise stable equity product like Quicktime - as is the case. Well, they've gone from insult to serious injury with the worst crowd they can. The developers. It seems, much in the same way they jerked around the clone people until they couldn't afford to be in the business in the first place, now they're playing soda-jerk with Quicktime licenses. Now they either want manditory content plugs - IE:commercials for Quicktime or who knows what Apple propoganda - or want increased per-product inclusionary licences per seat or per copy etc. Well faboo - nothing like muddying the best technology that has ever come from fruit. Sure I like quicktime - but unlike what Jobs says - it's not the end-all be all of professional video editing. It's still a toy, for all of you out there who thought otherwise. Sure it's cute for CDROM games that include some Quicktime stuff, but the serious pig-iron out there - namely Avid and Media 100 Digital Video workstations - pretty much have their own compression formats to insure broadcast standard quality that is set by the FCC and the usual estoric requirements of your average professional video editing bay. If they handle quicktime at all, it's for importation - but it's no where in the final product the same way that Microsoft Word code has anything to do with the postscript code generated for the final raster image processing device - be it laser, liquid, or film. It's all mere file handling, and quicktime is not the CODEC at the end of the process. The funny thing is, this doesn't really affect the pro-vid people one whit. What it does is piss of alot of develeopers out there who handle Quicktime inclusions into their copies of Myst and the like that feature video. One wonders if they just threw enough confusion into the equation to make them migrate to AVI formats Microsoft style instead? Personally, I don't think what Apple is doing ads up.

April 04

Here we go again with Quark cross-over information with the usual disclaimer that my observations, opinions, and general take on the news is now public knowledge is NOT QUARK'S opinions, and they don't give a rats ass on my observations as long as it's public knowledge - not insider info (and wouldn't you love to know all about THAT - well sorry - I'm under contract still with them). Here's a little repeat of the Newton flameout - mTropolis from mFactory is dead. I mean really dead. Dead dead dead dead dead, is it dead. About a year ago Quark saw some really neat patents and nabbed them from under Adobe's 8 million dollar already invested nose, since the deal for an Adobe buyout of a faltering Mac developer was heading into the ground faster than an British SST doing a nosedive at MACH 2. So Quark got them, made a website, and supported the product to the handful of users that couldn't otherwise stand what the hell Macromedia has been foisting since their product was a mere late 80's derivation of VideoWorks from MindScape (I've had it since version 2.0). Well, that pile of Macromedia product hasn't really done anything but complicate itself into a series of expensive tools for multimedia shops to loose money on via worthless products that are sold in 10 disk value packs littering bargin basement bins all over the country. I think the only way these shops stay in business is making kiosks that have touchscreens to show you where the hell you are in an office building or shopping mall. Macromedia and multimedia aside, even Quark has had similar jags of difficulty with QuarkImmedia - not because the product sucks mind you - personally I think there's some really neat things under the hood. It's because the market for multimedia is even smaller than software exclusively made for Mac hardware. I mean it's DAMN small. Well, cool as mTropolis is - and yes it's pretty damn cool (object oriented elements, families of code, you name it - it's got bells and whistles up the ass) - it's still a product in search of a market that is drying up in favor of web-based multimedia and video game consoles. Call me a purist, but for me multimedia is a nintendo cart or a playstation disk that makes up for a 5 billion to 8 billion dollar revenue stream that is selling into millions of homes planetwide everyday - with damn fun product to boot. Not some frigging point and click baby-crib busy box for adults. Although, I think the content present in say - the Monty Python and the Holy Grail CD is cute - it's not a game, it's not product - and whodathunkit - it's not sellable. The entire 93 fad of CD multimedia is still hard pressed to break out of the 95% loss statements, and the developers are packing up and moving on. Unfortunately for mFactory users - the game is over. The offices that were aquired, were demolished pretty much in the first few months with lemming style attrition (ie:programmers getting the hell out while the gettings good) and the rest were nuked down to the number of one whole worker (and I don't even know what the worker IS) after the second (and last) version of mTropolist was released. Of course it's not for sale, it's a free upgrade to present customers - which is fine for them, but future sales are pretty much a null-unit now that the source code is being absorbed into the other products Quark thinks it might be applicable to - lord knows what the hell those are. I don't, such stuff is the legend of corporate security and contractractual obligations telling me to shut the fuck up on such things. Mind you, even the opinionated observations of the above have been expressed in even the local newspaper business sections, so I don't think/hope Bob Monzel would even notice or care about it - ok he might squirm a bit - but I'm in legal bounderies as far as I know. The bottem line is, another MacOnly product is dead and buried and some of the vocal users are pissed enough to make their own protest website. Even these pathetic hanger-ons openly admit that Quicktime 3.0 future support - or lack thereof - makes the potential usefullness of the product as moot as artificial hair in a can. The sad fact is, the whole aspect of a "protest movement" again shows that MacComrades aren't just restricted to hardware and OS tennacity for limp-wristed fist shaking exercises, they also will be damn annoying on the application end of things. I only thank god I'm on a sabatical from the server to avoid having to deal with all the pouting flame-spam that's piling up on Quark's "lounge" section. Good God, a few of the rumor mongering posts ironically echoed many of the same questions that were answered officially on Quark's pr section less than 2 weeks later. All of this makes me wonder if they were the direct result of some futile act the dearly departed programmers, but were more ironic and applicable to THIS website, in noting the demise of yet another developer that put all of it's eggs in one Apple basket - and died promptly of neglect. Naturally most of the whole mess is merely the mechanics of last-minute business buyouts, which are generally just an exercise of figuring out what to do with a company whose code no one really cares about. Sounds like Apple and NeXT strangely enough doesn't it?