Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

August 3

Well the rumor mills are now doing nothing more than damage control to avoid anyone telling them "I told you so" with all of the hype with Jobs and the chairman position at Apple. Of course with The macworld expo coming up on the 6th there are still plenty of speculation going on regarding anything that Jobs might be up to in the meantime. There are bets that he's talking to Larry Ellison about taking the chairman position or the CEO slot. Either way the idea that NeXT and Oracle tech might supplant what was origonally a consumer product does not bode well for the current user base.

August 4
The Rhapsody story continues with more verbage at MacWorld and MacWeek that the NeXT software structure will supplant the current development stream which would be a very bad thing indeed. It would seem on the surface that Steve has decided that the world WILL want NeXT tech even when it's been painfully obvious for a decade that this is not the case. Personally why he would even really care to do so when he's got a good golden goose at Pixar is beyond me.

August 5

Well the realaudio templates are up at MacWorld for the keynote address by the Christ Figure himself Steve Jobs and his second coming. I recall watching one myself at the NeXTworld expo of 1993. The crowd was so thick with his assorted apostles that they had to create no less than 4 overflow rooms with big screen televisions to cover it all. This one will undoubtedly be as origonal as those he's had since 1988 and before with a large big screen, some nazi style banner partitions with assorted logos and the crowd applauding and reacting like puppets on every word. I'll wait for the book version instead.

August 6

Well well well. If you believe the pained screams from the Mac jihad memebers you'd think it was the end of the world. In fact for many it is. From where I sit - I'm wonderig what all the hubub is about. In the last week rumors have all pointed to Stevey pushing back the clock with overtures to Chiat-Day to handle the advertising, a public lynching of every tech group that didn't have Steve's signature on it (read newton), and a general push to get more geeks on the board. The upshot is Steve is making everything like 1984 before he left. You know who he was in bed with in 1984? Bill Gates. Of course with over 10 years of religious brainwashing the masses of asses have forgotten this little detail in their log books. GATES IS BACK WITH APPLE - AAAAIGH! Oh my how they hooted, booed and shouted. I think the upshot to this reaction is best summed up not by Jobs' comments of "juvinile rudeness" but by Gates comments from an interview years ago. "We had the largest margin of software development for the Mac platform, and how did Apple thank us? They sued us. Perhaps in the future Apple will be a little wiser in dealing with it's vendors." Well in this case perhaps Apple did get a clue. The line from Jobs about the crowd showing a little gratitude for the software that is keeping the platform from going into Amiga mode. Only time will tell if those that were booing will get a clue. I somehow doubt it, and the 150 million dollar investment/settlement will make no difference as the Jihad do their best to crucify their god.

August 7

The dust has barely even begun to settle from the Microsoft investment of a paltry 150 million. You want to know how much of a threat this is - aside from the fact that they are non-voting shares? Well lessie, In the early 90's microsoft spent over 400 million dollars on interactive technology and internet research. And around that same time they lost a lawsuit to a compression software firm that was allegating patent violations (which if you remember anything about Compton's patent on search engines and CD-Roms you would think twice about what patent violation means these days). The settlement from this particular courtroom? 120 million. In effect the amount that Microsoft has "invested" amounts to an out of court settlement for some b.s. that a dying Apple was truming up much the same way that a flagging Atari did 14 years ago. So all those boos in the audience are only morincally matched by the covers of Time and NewsWeek which are hot on the trail of nothing significant.

August 8

The Time and NewsWeek covers still stare at me like some bad joke on the corner of the desk. If you were to stop for a moment you might realise that it's interresting that the pop press has given the Apple Boogyman thing the time of day. After all, you don't have to read webweek to realize how inherently dull the computer business has been. When was the last time "Time" gave the nod to the business outside of the internet? Well it might be around the same time that both Time and Newsweek were hyping Jobs and NeXT. Without the computer industry's poster boys, Bill and Steve there might be a serious lack of coverage to the business. And that's the big story really. Steve can make melodrama out of anything. I'm convinced that if Jobs sold paper clips we'd be witnessing market-share headlines on the dominence of a certain brand of paper clips vs. what paper clips that Steve has which of course are "insanely great". Well once you use computers for a living you realize that they are about as interresting as any other office supply. But the hype engines continue to turn.

August 9

I wasn't kidding about the last line of the last diary entry. The hype now has even hit the editorial cartoons. Oh boy, if you really want to see what happens when someone who know's nothing about the computer industry-and perhaps about computers in general-you have to look no further than the funnies. I think they should stick to kicking Bill Clinton in the nads because when they try to summ up anything in the industry they end up not only coming from left-field, but often just look like morons. The type that were last seen plucking banjos on the porch. So far only one has gotten it even slightly right. He depicted an end of the world freak screaming about the selling out to the devil and how everyone should repent. The bystander near him remarks "Jeez, I can't stand these mac users". Now were getting close to the truth. I dare any of these freaks to rent "Triumph of the Nerds" and see how many times Bill Gates was caught sitting next to Steve Jobs, and see if they get a clue. I'm not betting on it myself, but it would make for a good deprograming session of some kind.