Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

May 10

The backtracking with Rhapsody takes an insidious tone as Steve Jobs get's soundbited on the truth of what is to become for this miracle on Cuppertino street. "10 months ago when I took over Apple, their previous strategy was doomed". It seems that Steve knew well in advance that Rhapsody/NeXTstep didn't have any legs - however that didn't stop him from pocketing 200 million out of 400 million in the deal - not counting extranious stock - as part of his interm CEO package. Of course this isn't too hard to predict given Apple's ability to switch gears for 4 years running on it's OS plans as well as overall OS strategy to the detriment of the developer community which had it's hands full just trying to figure out what the hell was going on in the first place. Mind you for everytime that Apple has hinted that a gear switching exercise was comming on, it's been harder to retain the minor pool of coders that they have. The act of commiting resources to a new "standard" whether it be ColorSynch, OpenDoc, or MacOS itself there has to be some rationality with the bottem line - otherwise it's a short road to bankrupcy. Well, Steve came close to that road during his tenure with NeXT for nearly a decade on more than one occasion. It was obvious from the begining that while the underlying code was robust, it's placement and otherwise rationale was less than clear. When all the multiple colored releases of Rhapsody announced shortly after the Apple deal went through - even "I" - had a helluva time trying to figure out what Apple was intending to do - and more importantly - when. Obviously the only real concrete evidence we now have from this strange and bizzare soap-opera that would make even Seinfeld's head spin is that the strategy was doomed, and that not even Steve will give it legs for the long haul. Which is a pitty because another gear-change isn't what the doctor ordered for this Apple, and will surely result in another delay in it's perfect OS - which still has yet to reach parity with NT or even Windows 95 in stability - and further alienate it's developer community. The old saying "damned if they do - and damned if they don't" has never rung more true in this case. There's another metaphor about bells tolling that also fits - but I'll let history write itself in this case.

May 11
Well the shit has hit the fan. Rhapsody is dead before it's even left the gate in non-beta form. Well, beta late than never - and the current release schedule for it's current whimsical designation - Mac OS X - gives the coders at Apple more than another year to figure out how to program their way out of a paper bag. I mean get real - they've been at this exercise for HOW MANY YEARS? Copland, Rhapsody, now this. I think we are bearing witness to the largest exercise in smoke in mirrors vaporware in history! I mean in spite of the Justice Department, Windows 98 looks solid for being released this year. Microsoft has slipped it's deadlines before - but never on this magnitude. It's half the reason that even the sometimes loathsome Esther Dyson on CNBC even commented that Microsoft has had some pretty lousy excuses for competition in the marketplace. No kidding. With release schedules and focus changes like this, Apple is truely flying more blind than the average bat. Of course given the damned do/don't equation it's obvious that it's all damage control from developers in the reamining Apple camp that won't touch anything that makes their code obsolete with a 10 foot cattle prod. To take a page from MacWeek yet-again - quote - "Apple had little choice but to change directions since almost no one bought into the Rhapsody partyline". This is an ironic soundbite because it follows with Bill Gates' assertion with BusinessWeek a decade earlier when questioned if they would support NeXTstep to the response of "develop for it? I'd sooner piss on it". Well the port-o-potty must be getting pretty full for Steve to backtrack on his own meal ticket and supplant his own vision-thing and tech with a series of incrimental bundles into the current OS line. I'm impressed, because this little of double-think transition from the end-all be-all of Apple salvation - has now been sidelined to brain-dead status by the person who invented the damn thing in the first place. Aside from wondering if the real people whose paychecks ride on such "decision making" - the developers - can swallow yet another delay and compromise it's interrest with Apple much further. With Rhapsody dead in the womb - it's obvious that their patience is wearing thin. The next few versions of Mac OS better be robust, combined with decisive sales of better than average tech rather than cripple-hardware, with real reasons for existing rather than niche solutions and preaching to the choir marketing support - or else Apple is going to flatline before Mac OS X even gets out of the womb. At this point, the only self-defeatest epolougue that can be related to such an odd sceneario - of delays on delays for a self-destructive passive exercise - was written by Douglas Copland, and gave way to the namesake of a generation also designated with an X. The Slacker.

May 12

Looking futher on the work of fiction that is presently the spec-list for OS X, you have a lot of references to "Carbon Code". Talk about dating yourself. The ability to saddle yourself with the past is what makes Pentiums a RISC/CISC hybrid, and slows hardware calls with the G3 line to a crawl, when even the OS is hardly native enough to run without some emulation on Apple's own hardware. This isn't going to be fixed very soon - or with solutions that are very fast given the same paradox that Intel/Microsoft has been fighting for over a decade. The difference is at least the Microsoft software makes as much as it can of the resources it's given, and Intel has found - sometimes bizzare - ways to expand it's function and speed while not bringing down the whole house of history. Apple, with it's memory leaks - applications after applications that refuse to hand over previously used memory, to insane crashes that cause total system lock-ups - will undoubtedly be a mainstay for Apple as it tries to maintain it's link with the past with it's future OS strategy. I mean given the otherwise solid design with the G3 and soon G4 line, Apple has manged to increase the gross-tonage of steel and place more catalytic converters on it's power plant than the worst example of 1970's detroit automotive tech. Still - given the fact that the developers were abandoining Rhapsody because of code-tweaking that would be required to run on the damn thing - it's interresting to note that Mac OS X will still require.....MORE CODE TWEAKING. Someone explain to me how this placates developers that weren't interrested in re-tooling marginally selling software to a dying platform? Otherwise it's just one contradiction trading places for the relm of hypocracy. Truly bizzare.

May 13

Well the new "SteamRoller" ad has debuted from camp Apple - and these rugrats are shrinking down their marketing message futher than they promise to shrink down their processor dies. What you basically see is a steamroller crushing wintel laptops while they mention that their laptop is twice as fast. Pitty it's also twice as useless for most things the Wintel crowd actually do with their laptops given the occasional glance at the local software shelves. Disparages aside, it's still an odd throwback to 80's style Chiat-Day marketing that is otherwise wholly unremarkable. Back in 84, Lee Clow of Chiat-Day and Steve Jobs of Apple decided to placate each other's ego in a bizzare creative love-fest that discharged on the scene in the otherwise milkey obscure trash-campeign. With visions of the Plasmatics running through their tiny heads, their collosal egos decided that trashing computers on TV would somehow sell them. Well - they didn't. In fact, the backlash against the onscreen destruction created more unwanted attention than they otherwise hoped for in the positive column. But, given 10 plus years, watching stuff get busted up is not as shocking as it once was. What is shocking is that with the double speed for nothing argument comes the interresting aside that in spite of all the money thrown at this high-budget agency, all at the cost of salaries that are now so low at Apple that the brain drain makes any schlock horror movie come to life, there's still no compelling reason provided to use the damn product that occupies still less than 5% of the on screen time. Which is a pitty because to tell you the truth, the new powerbooks, cosmetically, make my otherwise satisfactory and useful ThinkPad look like a Russian one of those. Perhaps if they spent less time crushing other laptops and showcased theirs as truely usefull, as well as stylish, in the normal relm of ad-equity, they might find their way to sell a few of the overpriced things. Oh well, missing the obvious for Steve Jobs micromanagement has been Apple's strongest suit to date. No sense changing clothes now.

May 14

Just when you thought the story was dead, intuit rears it's ugly head. MacWeek's Marty Cortinas tries to tie some crediblity to the flip-flopping of Intuits decision to double back and support - under subsidies - another version of Quicken for the Mac with the assertion and quote - "Think about it - do we think Intuit would risk flip-flopping - again - after backing the iMac?". Well, golly-gee have I got news for Marty, Intuit's current flip-flopping to back the iMac has already made them look like idiots, since it's painfully obvious that the board of director proxy and Steve Jobs has twisted fiscal reality to the free winds. While we're on the subject of flip-flopping, MacWeek is dead. Their new moniker will be emediaWeekly as of August. Normally I'd be dancing in the streets with this one, but I've already forcast this enevitable from nearly 5 months ago - if imbibed memory serves. The fact is, this little rag of a tabloid has been held on life support for so long because of a Wintel endevour that is now pulling the ad revenue plug. Obviously ZD doesn't give a damn because they've got plenty of realistic soundbites that confer what I assert week after week over a couple of bourbons and the same number of hours. Well, it's pretty much over for this lethargic ZD entity, and Mac the Knife will have to find other stomping grounds to swarth his blade with the MacJihad. But with many low-budget websites broadcasting the likes of Don Crab, there's plenty of bandwith for his ilk. Of course the die-hards in the Mac community - including Mac OS rumors - have claimed that this is not indicative of a turn-off by the computing public is laughable. All you have to do is look at the thickness of the publication and the most you can otherwise feign is dull surprise.

May 15

Lets make no bones about it. I love ZD net. Not only because they allow entry to their otherwise top-bandwith-heavy sites for free, but because they resemble the truly average computing Joe who doesn't give a shit about Apple per-se but just wants to report the news that the rest of the computing public cares about. Well in stark contrast to what the soon to be offically dead MacWeek has to say - or more accurately has NOT to say - about the iMac, David Coursey poses quote - "if this is thinking different, it's not thinking right". All this is thrown against observations about the lack of a floppy drive, the parallels with NeXT, and how in the hell with ma and pa get files from home to the office in any cheap or sane fashion - let alone print to the rest of the low-cost printers that are out there. The thing I have to say against all this is why - when I beat similar writers doing the same thing with a paycheck - do I not collect dollar-one for my brief time invested in the equation? Well, the bottem line is in less than 2 hours weekly I can observe the painfully obvious with minmal resources. Why it takes the paid writing community longer to latch on to the obvious demise of; MacWeek magazine, MacUser Magazine, and the shortcommings in the Apple strategy, and just how much Apple is on the ropes financially, would be the bigger question to pose. However I won't gloss by the fact that at least the popular - and otherwise PAID press - will eventually come round. But if you want at least a 1 week lead time on their conclusions, then you can bookmark this site. Because one person's hobby - is another author's mealticket. Just call me a free lunch for the time being.

May 16

Well to tell you the truth, I'm writing this week's update on a thursday - rather than the weekend - because there's so much shit to be shovelled that there's plenty of manure to spread around into the following update. This is rampant when both Apple and ZDnet AGAIN flood the pop press with so much guano that the average bat would die of methane gas poisoning. Well, here's some more choice crap from ZD inter@ctive - quote "if you're going to be an active trader and must have an Apple, just remember to toss it before it rots". This is an end-line from an article that minces words about Apple's overevalutation given the weight of a 4 billion dollar a year Apple (down 2 billion from my own observances - so hey, I gave Apple SOME slack) against Compaq's 50 billion. Dull surprise goes to the feedback norm for a company that just swallowed Digital whole, Vs one that still has no concrete future in rationally minded circles. The two things that stand out in my eye in such verbage is how much leverage Apple is giving it's flood of PR notes vs what the rest of the industry does. Which is, continue to make money and be successful and release information when something important rolls around. The stock ticker as we know it feeds on PR, and Apple is trying as hard as it can to stage as many important rollouts as it can. Even if those rollouts are anywhere from 4 months to more than a year into the future. Never have I seen a company gain equity stake from hyperbole than Apple. Microsoft's big drawback is that they didn't give enough time to lobbysts and PR when they should have. Make no mistake, Microsoft has solid advertising - but it's strategic marketing has created more problems from not showing it's plans in advance for a company in it's position. Mind you, many companies - including Apple - would kill to be in such a position. Not Apple, they are stuggling just to exist, and are trying to give some semblance of rationale to what their company is truly worth in spite of it's heavily leveraged equity that makes my own credit problems look like a wet-dream (why I still get pre-approved credit cards is a mystery to me). But when you're a company that looks at it's survival on Wall Street as a massive circle jerk, you cannot help but get covered in the spooge.