Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

February 28

Don Crabb of ZDnet is busting out all over at Yahoo! Seems that he's got reasonable confirmation that the Newton - or anything resembling one for that matter - is deader than a doornail. Now before you all say "duh", keep in mind that most of the staunch AppleJihadders out there were spending the last year convinving themselves that a MacOS PDA was just around the corner. Not gonna happen gang! Now, I'll tell ya what's worth drooling for technofiles - the Palm Pilot V PDA. That sucker is sweet! It's small, it recharges in minutes, it's internet savvy, it's got infrared file sharing, it's cool looking as hell - and it can actually read your handwriting thanks to Graffiti which means that your PDA can nearly match typing speeds once you got the hang of it's speedy, elegent, and just plain works method of data-entry. The Newton's "handwriting recognition" was pathetic at best, being best known as the largest laughing stock of the 90's. Even if you got past "purple monkey dishwasher", you still were left waiting- painstakingly waiting - for the retarded Newton OS to actually work it's way through it's dictionary to play a game of "guess the word". Well there's two examples of the mentally challenged in this game, and Don Crabb's got the second title all wrapped up. Guess what lunacy he prefers! Apple needs a real PDA for its customers. That real PDA is not a Palm, not matter how you dress it up. That real PDA should be based on Mac OS, - Plus a 56K modem, network connection, wireless option, handwriting recognition (none of that Graffiti crap),. Wow! Not only is the Don dissing everyone's PDA out there that can actually keep up with what you write - but also the most successful and affordable one that actually get's used. I'm not kidding in the slightest when I can say that I saw two of the little buggers actually being used out on the street as I walked less than 4 blocks for coffee. Did I see any Newtons? Puleeze! Those bricks with LCD screens sold so poorly that they're nearly tied with NeXT in flop status - 80 thousand in the first Xmas season making for a scant 7500 a month since it's first year launch (source Apple by Jim Carlton). Not exactly Pilot numbers there Crabb - and you want "the Newton" instead? Go play in your rumpus room Don. There's a market for people who want things that work.

March 1
The new MacOS X apps are ready to ship according to MacWeek.com. All I can say is - RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! The dung heap of NeXTstep developers are on the move again! Let's see the contendors and their wares shall we? "Stone Design of Albuquerque, N.M.". There's a winner bunch for ya. Any company whose developer base of less than a dozen hippies in the middle of the desert living in a makeshift castle can't be anything but "top drawer" for the NeXT developer camp. But wait, there's "P & L Systems' Mesa, an Excel-style spreadsheet.". Uh MacWeek? Those idiots bought Mesa from Mesa via Lighthouse which was a clearing shop for failed NeXTapps. Comparing it to Mesa would be akin to calling the Nazis humanitarians. And rounding out the first-tier developers are stalwart ships of the high seas like, "Sassafras", "Stalker Software Inc.", "TipTop Software", "Frontline Software ApS", " OpenBase International Ltd (much more limted than "International" I can assure you). of Francestown, N.H.". I'm suprised they left out "Fly by Nite", "Bozos R Us", and "Two dips and a modem Inc". If you haven't guessed, Adobe and Microsoft they ain't. Fact is, even "I" am probably still on the NeXT developer list from the days of my pie-in-the-sky effort "Subterranian Software". At least I knew a couple of years into the effort that it was a wasted effort for a sham OS, represented by a sham software company. Seems that Apple's gearing up the NeXTian hype yet again for the same bunch of fringe developers. Why am I not surprised?

March 2

Cnet reports that - initally - Star Wars, The Phantom Mennace's trailer was basking in the glow of Quicktime 3.0 thanks to a love-fest between Pixar gone Hollywood S. Jobs and G. Lucas. I guess that would be well and good for Apple except the Wintel users are already reporting installations that blanch, playback that hangs, and a general hatred of "buy our crap" screens that are popping up all across America. Good PR? You tell me! Aside from 3.0 acting like betaware for Wintel than any previous version of Quicktime, the Apple fanatics are chiming in that it's still a superior version because it has all the cut-and-paste authoring abilities of the Mac version. Well, I gots some news for you. Get me a video-media player that can keep the audio in synch with the video first - and I'll worry about making videos on it later. The deep and dirty truth is QT2.0's viewer could - and still can play videos that don't look like B movies from Japan, and could even run them in different aspect ratios without crashing. QT 3.0 looks more "Macintoshish", but the advantages fall flat at that point. Trust me - QT 3.0 is so bad, it makes MediaPlayer AVI files look like HDTV. How this made it's way to being labeled a "premiere playback format for the Star Wars legacy" is beyond me. Personally, I would have gone with RealPlayer because - THAT - actually works! Seems that some Star Wars fans agree, because they've created mirror sites that eschew Quicktime altogether. In the end, just another example of a good idea at Apple - turning into a farce in the real-world, in real-time.

March 3

Specs, lies, and boredom. The BBBS has it's share of splitting hairs when it comes to tech-talk, Specmarks, and the usual littany of geekspeak. This is fine and good, but in my opinion it's really a no-show of an argument. Whether or not you think "mostly" RISC or "mostly" CISC, is something to jabber on about and pass the time - it's all really a load of bullshit. The best sentament behind the whole affair can be expressed like this - "what if they made a microprocessor - and no one came"? Seriously, I think the only decent chip-head arguments out there are those debating AMD, Cyrix, and Pentiums. Anything else is an also ran unless you're interrested in what Motorola is doing with embedded systems, because at least those are selling in higher quantity than those destined for Macintoshes. Sure Apple can attempt to make hack-arguements in shrilly pompous advertising campeigns, but for 9.5 out of 10 of us on Earth, we really don't give a shit. Because the apps are done, the OS is supported by a company that is large enough to actually support a large user base, and it's not going to change dick for the Mac faithful - or Apple - to shove biased tests down our throats from a dead computer magazine. Since the MacJihad are really into car metaphors, it's akin to evangelising electric cars and how great and wonderful their specs are to everyone at the monster truck and tractor pull. As I side note I think Japan's hybrids are interresting because they're everything electric cars aren't - IE: crap. Bottem line, even if Motorolla makes the killer of all chips, I won't give a crap. Nor will the rest of the planet - including those that go to monster truck and tractor pulls.

March 4

If this is democracy - give me fascism anyday! That's what I think everytime I see the cute conduct that goes on nearly bi-weekly from the MacMarines evertime they issue a call-to-arms and issue marching orders for their rank-and-file to flood a webpage - ANY webpage that has a "vote" of any kind involving: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Microsoft, Apple, the iMac, MacOS, G3 chips, Windows or anything else that includes any refrence close to all of the above. Why? Because for some pubecent reason it's widely believed that a vast amount of public perception about what computer to buy - might be swayed by a small band of nerds playing "stuff the ballot box". Newsflash! The public doesn't see "Steve Jobs is Jesus Chirst - up 75%" and run out to the car, speed like a bat-out-of-hell to CompUSA and suddenly que up to blow 1500.00 dollars on an iMac because you clicked "yes" to "Steve Jobs is Jesus Christ". This could be considered an obvious thing to deduct by grade school logic, but it's equally obvious that many of the MacMarines haven't gone out of the 3rd grade. Because I can gurantee - nearly once every two weeks - there's going to be a poll that's geared for a lopsided Jihad-charge, and the MacMarines are going to be spreading the word about it. I'll keep you posted on what passes off as fun for these guys from here on in, because it's a hoot for them, and a real head-scratcher for me. Perhaps then someone can clue me in why this is such a fun obsession for those resembling nerd stereotypes, because I'm sitting on this side of the screen wearing a large question-mark.

March 5

Speaking of chips - and the people who worship them - here's a bit of news that's got them all in a tizzy! From Cnet comes this report headlined "PowerPC chip hits fork in the road", where Brooke Crothers informs the nerd-set that: Motorola and IBM have very different plans for the PowerPC chip, raising questions about its future as the processor powering the Macintosh - fallout from the dissolution of a seven-year partnership between the chipmakers seems to indicate that IBM will now focus its PowerPC chips on internal server computers, leaving Motorola as the sole supplier to Apple. What this means for 95% of us on the planet that don't care, is the possibility that the MacJihad will shut the fuck up about the chips, specmarks, and other nerdy chest beating on how great they're brand of silicon is - and perhaps - just perhaps - a few less snails will find themselves glued to Pentiums for the sake of a few giggles from Apple Computer on TV. Lord knows, there's better things to do with snails - and they all involve butter, garlic and your choice of spices.

March 6

More nerd news - getting it out of my system so bear with me. LinuxWorld, the purveryors of news about operating systems that run great, host web-servers really well, and don't have dick for application support (yet), rants on about Apple having all but offically deep-sixed any hopes of Linux ever attaining critical mass on hardware emblazoned with fruit. Seems that after some song and dance during the Gil Amelio administration, hopes of Linux music at Apple were dashed with the return of the iCEO, Steve Jobs. Somewhere between NeXTstep and MacOS X - Rick Cook found 2300 words to describe how much of a fiasco Linux has become on the Mac. I'll spare you the bulk of it because it really boils down to the - one line - Today, Apple's official position on Linux is simple: The company has nothing to do with Linux, doesn't want anything to do with Linux, and won't offer Linux on its machines. What this means for the rest of us is that for all intensive purposes, there's one less OS available for the Mac (after loosing Be no less), and one less reason to buy an Apple - if you're looking to partition your hard drive with a plethora of operating system choices. Not a huge market by any stretch, but one that Apple could have actually done something about. Oh well.