Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

November 22

Another publisher note: the site is back to the old schedule of being updated on the weekend instead of the middle of the week to preserve weekdays for the lifestyle and workhabits of the normal type person. Check Sunday (or hyper-early Monday morning for your weekly fix.

ZDnet does another year end round-up of computers for holiday purchases, and guess whose left out in the cold? Not Dell, not Compaq, not Micron, not Gateway, but Apple. Seems they came up sub-par in the areas of repair, repeat buys, and tech support - as well as reliability. This would usually be front page news, but Apple scored equally well a year ago so it's no surprise. Really - given their reports on tech support hell - I expected much worse. But suffice it to say - another pin prick has burst the balloon of Apple's pundits that claim their computers are the end-all be all of OS work and play. Perhaps one of these years they will actually get their hands on a Wintel and figure out what the hell every one else is talking about. Don't ask me to hold my breath in the meantime - because I'm not a big fan of suffocation.

November 23
More on computers and colleges came up in the hyperbole in the BBBS area served up by Yahoo (the user/poster known as Cable has a new consumer of pampers - congrats all around - save me a cigar!). I've harped on business penetration of the Mac OS in the numbers touted by the various trades (hovering at 1% - and falling to Zero), and how this jibes in the tragic logic of educational institutions that continue to shove Apple products down kids throats. Some arguments were made that what brand of OS isn't important - because it's the skills that are set into motion that make the final sell to employers. Well, I gotta tell ya - after 9 years in the private sector - this kind of thinking is utter bullshit. About 12 years ago I might have taken the time to give the argument of on the job training some credence - but now it's such a blattent exercise in brand names that OCR software is keyed to match up resume scans to flag prospective employees to the hiring manager. Guess what? Apple skills aren't on the menu. Again - this isn't a hard one to imagine with only 1% of the job purveryors out there actually using the damn things - but the bottem line is that "computer skills" are out - "C++, Visual Basic, Perl and Oracle database skills" are in. This point only needs proving by opening your Sunday edition of your local paper - and taking a look at all the names and trademarks that are being dropped on the copy. See anything from Apple in the list? No? Then why are you being forced to buy Macs for your kid by several secondary educational institutions, colleges and specialty degree schools? Could it be Satan? Or a marketing scam that's selling out your kids future from Cuppertino? Don't blame me when your offspring is spening more time in the unemployment line than in the office. You can thank Steve Jobs and his sales lackies for fucking their future.

November 24

Don Crabb - the largest of my fave writers to watch go wacko in size and scope (mostly size) - goes gushy apeshit AGAIN! This time in waxing poetic about the AOHell and Netscape merger (I usually don't go for sophmoric name calling with companies - but with AOL I make a very special exeption). In his MacWeek.com diatribe, he describes how the merger is great for the industry - and a sore thorn in the side of Microsoft. Well, shut my mouth and pass the bong Crabb - MGabrys wants a bit of what you're smokin'. Considering the Wall Street Journal, Knight Ridder, MSNBC, CNBC, Bloomsburg and every other serious follower of the Microsoft DOJ square dance points to the spin this gives Bill Gates in buidling a case for a competitive marketplace against charges of them being too successful for their own damn good. How this is supposed to hurt the largest company in the world - and the richest guy on the planet is beyond me. But then the logic circuts often cross wires that only the most ardent supporter of Freud and general sociopathic behavior could relegate to the couch of empathy. Chalk me up as bamboozled by the Apple pundit status-quo yet again.

November 25

Ach Du Leiben! Der Apple Computer is raising a stink in Germany worse than rancid bratweurst. Seems the ever-pragmatic German MacOS user sect is just a little peeved by the continuing state of afairs in the Fatherland. MacWeek.com points out to an open letter website and petition group in Duetchland that is getting a little tired of all of the hype - and none of the action that is preventing their fave OS from slipping into Atari/Commodore oblivion. Obviously, after getting twice burned by the Atari ST and the Amiga - they can see the writing on the wall and don't want to be scorched a third time running. In the letter they make specific mention to lousy prices, low exposure and terrible ads, terrible retail representation, high educational prices for students, long waing periods for anything with an Apple logo on it, and imac modems that can't connect diddly-squat to their ISP's without a 10 year old kid and a dog present....I guess. Funny thing in all this is twofold. One - all of these complaints have been reported and ranted here at the ADC for more than a year. Two - you'd never hear this crap from an American Mac freak (with possible exception of a few Apple users in the BBBS). Why? Because no American consumer holds any high regard for pragmatism, when high emotion purchases are at stake via lame marketing programs from Corporate HQ. But when you're on the other side of the world, the hype seems to fall-off just a bit. And when you're in Germany - results talk - bullshit walks. This is due to the fact that Germany has the highest per-capita core of computer users in the world - there's no room for gushy, "Apple is always right" crap. Lord knows, in a tasteless aside, you don't have to forget what happened to the German people the last time they blindly followed something fashionable rather than rationally. In the words of the some of the survivors of that last debacle - never again. Hats off to Apple users in Germany for having more brains - and more class than the American counterparts.

November 26

I've been wondering out loud around here for a while on several non-news related musings from time to time - because it's my site and I can do whatever I want on it goddamn it. So with that swanky opener let's ponder the conundrum of the week: Does Apple really hate to be exposed in the media - particularly when anylitical shortcommings and opinions on success/failure are the rule, or would they perfer to be left alone to become both irrelevant AND obscure? Apple and it's all-star Jihad jaw froth brigade seem to really enjoy pointing out group hug fests by MacWorld, and where the latest billboards and TV ads are showing - but REALLY hate to find themselves in the press as a whole. They cringe at the probability that in the relm of objective and even-sided reporting that something - nay, ANYTHING - negative, critical or slightly dismissive might be pointed out about their beloved Apple. It's already been the focus that the outcomes from these situations are a flood of lamer-emails to normal people, but how would they like the flipside of reality? Commodore almost never sent out significant PR sheets to the press and as a result - never got any serious media exposure outside of the geek-sheets. So when Commodore did garner a byline by the popular press it was mostly for it's epitath when they slid into bankrucy court. Even more tragic, most of the pop-media didn't even notice this last chapter in the story of the Amiga and computers hawked by Captain Kirk. The fact that Atari made the same fate, isn't much of a follow-up since they shared the same CEO in the first place. NeXT only got out of the pit of obscurity when they launched a product in 1988, and when they got bought out in 1996 for failing to sell said product. The upshot to all of this musing is I seriously doubt that it's even in the MacJihad's interrest to harp on media exposure since the alternate is usually more pathetic and embarrasing in the long run. If they know this internally, and refuse to admit it - then either they're in denial - or are masochists for the mass-media. Too close to call on this one folks.

November 27

More classroom notes from the crazy-8-school of bonkers. Apple VP Johnathan Ive via MacWeek.com and ArizonaReplublic.com lays some pretty trippy soundbites straight from the Kool-Aid pitcher of Jonestown. In this interview into the soul of those sold to South America, he eschews the competition while extolling the virtues of the iMac's industrial design and how it lacked sundires of focus groups which hold down the rest of the Wintel market into boring designs for boxes. Well here's a bit of reality undistorition folks - focus groups aren't part of the Wintel process - customer sales are. And guess whose loosing in this particular market barometer by 97% for the general public, and 99% for the business market. Hint - it's not Dell, Compaq, GateWay, Sony, HP, Micron or the gang. Second non-rose tinted observation - there's some damn neat boxes out there running Windows. From the OEM down the street from me putting boards and disk drives into wood custom cabinets, to the little blurb from Intel that was in Wall Street Journal - the one hidden on the front page of the industry section with a photograph to boot. Puleeze - do you get the feeling that Ive is spending a little to much quality time with Steve Jobs, or needs to do a little less male-bonding in the executive suite? Either way, I'm laughing my ass off. So much so, I think I'll cancel that liposuction appointment I was making for myself as a 50th birthday present.

November 28

Apple is readying another awe-inspiring single aired (no doubt) Super Bowl advertising to harken back the warm fuzzies of 1984 for the Apple Choir. In a total deja-vu move, it's the Steve Jobs vision thing coupled with the yes-man of Chiat-Day - Lee Clow - ready to astound, perplex, get an Addy and a Cleo - and totally fail in selling machines with a confusing (but expensive) advertising slot. Let's just hope this one is just a tad less pompous than the best flop of all time, the 1985 "Lemmings" spot. I've reviewed it before - but here's a recap - Computer company makes commercial showing businessmen walking off a cliff. Computer company giggles to itself that it's scored another hole in one on the heels of an accidental - we couldn't cancel the 1984 ad in time - success. Computer company watches in horror as sales to businesses plumit with the aformentioned "Lemmings". Businesses come round to mentioning that Apple not only pissed off their target audience, but didn't have anything to sell to them for another goddamn year in the first place. Computer company tosses CEO out the door in a power play. Computer Company's new CEO tosses Chiat-Day out the door for BBDO. New story. Steve Jobs tosses former Computer Company CEO out the door. Steve Jobs tosses BBDO out the door. Steve Jobs makes Chiat-Day create micromanaged ad campeign that perplexes and offends everyone who doesn't use a Mac - IE: most of the planet. Steve Jobs creates new Super Bowl ad. Trust me folks - you don't have to Think Different on what the hell the results are going to be this time around. Think 1985.