Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

February 8

It's finally a slow week after a major slide for Apple, so I've got to fall back on the always fertile ground that the MacJihad are able to provide. Also, it's a great occasion for me to restate what the hell this site is all about, and for those who may have missed the why section may finally get an up-to-date hint. As opposed to what most may lay claim or blame to, this isn't about insulting your choice in computers. Not nearly as much as insulting the company behind it and it's rabid marketing practices that have succeeded in polluting an otherwise peaceful internet with Jihad traffic. Of course this traffic mirrors rabid Amiga users who still occasionally pop up from time to time in pathetic fashion to rally the troops behind a flag whose colors have long since faded. Well, it's a fact that I've been partially responsible for this massive amount of emotionally re-directed bullshit with the advent of NeXT. After getting royally burned with Steve Jobs and his reality distortion field before, it's a minor favor to clue-in others who may be in his destructive wake. And that's what I'm doing. Everyone is basically happy with their computer of choice. But for those who haven't made the choice, the picture is less than clear than from this end. That's why even though I'm heavily biased against Apple (duh) I think it's equally important to counterpoint hyperactive AppleEvangelist propoganda with an equally biased counter propoganda. I'm not being paid to do it - opposite to what most MacJihad memebers would think and have claimed in the past. Ironically, the truth was raised from a Mac user that claimed in the BBBS area, that I'm having too much fun doing this site. That's the point. With my background, it's only pennies on the dollar to fly in the face of accepted logic for a couple of hours a week to host and support this site. The responses are it's own reward.

February 9
More observations along the way - this site is really progressing nicely as an experiment. The BBBS section has it's fanbase now intact on both sides of the fence sending out techie barbs, rumor mongering, and generally having a great time, while wasting tons of the same. The thing that's really interresting is the breadth of the same arguments discarded at increadible length on basically the same stale obeservations from the Pro-Mac crowd, with identical rebuttles when it's not centered around recent Apple mayhem and screw-ups. The screw-ups I defend vigourously since without them, this column becomes a similarly pointless exercise. Fortunately for me, Apple is a well-spring of diatribes that won't go dry until they're dead. We're talking something on the order of the mechanics of a snowball rolling down the hill. As Apple comes closer to the inevitable, the same warning signs will continue to rear their ugly heads, the same way they did for Commodore and Atari Corp. When this happens, the amount of verbage and retorts to reports will begin to pile on in heavier amounts. The difference is that while I'm endevouring to showcase as many new mile-markers as possible, most of the online BBS chats, and even this site's bbbs is pretty much an exercise in recycling. The worst offenders are the pro-mac people who fail to come up with any justification that hasn't already been parroted to them from the MacMarines. Even the use of "Cockroach" and other insults are canned. I mean if you're going to debate something - even a pointless one, you'd think you might at least try something beyond the knee-jerk level. But no, the same tired points are dredged up from the MacJihad as if there was a set of crib-notes taped to the monitor of origon. Which is a pitty, because not only are these diatribes redundant at best, they're long. I mean LONG. I've gotten e-mail that reflects verbatem what you can read on a BBS every day, and it's NEVER brief. In fact these tirades are so long, and so repetitious, that I've had to run interference on my archieving practices just to keep up with the CGI load on my host server. Mind you, a SUN with ISDN and T1 support isn't shabby, but since all of the sites and e-mail load feed through one system, I have to keep the load as light as possible - if for no other reason - that I've not been billed for over a year for this site's hosting. But seeing 50 plus reports coming from the same people dredging out the same old story, makes me wonder sometimes if I'm getting flooded from the files of some warchest of babble from MacJihad central. It doesn't matter either way, because the time it takes to nuke/backup an entire day is only 10 seconds. The drawback is that instead of taking off each thread of logic, I end up nuking an entire day at a time across multiple threads. But even this isn't a concern because often times it's really a housecleaning of quantity rather than quality posts. Long barfs aren't quality - just an expenditure of finger energy. If you'd like to see your post around longer, make it brief, and make it good. You'll find the gang-saying will go down, and I won't have to harvest a ton of verbage away from an otherwise overworked server.

February 10

Wrapping up real-world feeback and observations, I alluded to some of the e-mail that I've received being a mime of the longish, redundant BBS posts that I've seen not only here, but all over the net. The saddest, which I'll get updated into the letters of the weak section, ramble on and on, and ON. There's two things that came immediately to mind, and found their way into brief responses inspired from flu-soaked fatigue factor rather than a mere wanton desire to not be guilty of the same flood-like mentality. One, is there really THAT much of importance about a computer that would blow many hours spent composing a passionate letter about a goddamn BOX which could have been spent doing household chores instead? The best example in the last couple of weeks was a Newscaster from Wichita Falls TX. Apart from being a Colorado resident that is well-steeped in the history of animosity that has been kicking around Colorado regarding Texans ever since we stopped them from marching on our Silver mines during the civil war, it piqued my interrest that I attracted the time and energy of someone who I figured would at least be media savvy enough to know when he was being fool-bated. I've said from square-one/day-one that this is an exercise in ratings and general spite building. But it's amazing what the Jihad hath wrought. First blow several IQ points for overlooking the obvious reason I'm doing this. Next, go apeshit enough to compose several hundred words touting how just-darn neat your computer is to someone who has one that works just fine thankyouverymuch, even though it lacks an Apple logo on the front. I mean, just how low can you go? Do people on the UseNet spend days arguing in favor of their VCRs or Microwave ovens? Mind you, given the industry they've spawned being several times larger in impact and scope, I sometimes wonder why you don't find psycho-babble on the internet about them. It's because most - if not all sane people know that they're just tools. But somewhere along the lines of history, Steve Jobs, Apple and general sanity took a left turn. Suddenly computers were cute. Computers were personal. Computers were worth several hours worth of impassioned cathartic writing exercises to defend something most Apple users spent too much money on. Perhaps that's it right there. When people realize that other - if not most - people are getting just as much done for more than a grand cheaper in the process, perhaps a bit of face-saving fury comes with the territory. Lord knows, I've seen worse conduct from dupes.

February 11

Thankfully there is actually some news from Apple, so I don't have to pad this entire week around the conduct of some of the wackos in the Apple user camps. Apple was announcing an alliance for the new MPEG 4 standard using Quicktime as a cornerstone of it. This is fine and good since it's been the backbone of videohouses for years, and admittedly, the latest 3.0 implimentation has a lot going for it that's good - particularly for Windows users who have taken a back seat in toolset implimentation and quality for years. The irony of the story is that this consortum of companies putting their seal-of-approval is weaker than it would seem. Sun, Oracle, and Netscape were the three largest supporters of the new standard. Considering that Netscape is running scared and is rumored to be looking for a buyer pronto, that wouldn't indicate a vertebre in the backbone. Sun? They have announced standards for a decade that have been either quasi-successful or have outright tanked. Interface standards for GUI? Java? CORBA? Only one of these I'm sure you've heard about, and it's implimentation has been sloppy at best. Unless you think long download times on code specifications that are still all over the map is a standard. Oracle? If Larry picked his nose more in public, it would be the only way they could top themselves in product introductions. These guys fart an announcement of a new direction every damn day! This kind of thing can either be a sign of a very forward thinking outfit, or one that's becoming rudderless in the face of crushing opposition. Seeing their stock performance in the last year, I think we have the answer to that one. No, the reason - even in the face of all the above - I'm not more cynical about this introduction is the name of someone who was left off the PR tear-sheets. Microsoft. Microsoft likes Quicktime. They liked it enough to include some lines of Quicktime code in their own digital video prototypes that never left the programming group - and were erased as soon as they got a clue as to what to actually DO. This shocker was the basis for a longstanding lawsuit on the ever high pile of lawsuits that Steve Jobs ended when Gill left the building. Part of the deal was the 150 million, but it also gave Microsoft Apple's blessing to take a peek at code if it could give them pointers on how Microsoft's digital video could suck less. The point is, that with the "sharing" agreement between Apple and Microsoft the real meat that is going to support the Quicktime bones isn't going to come from Sun, Oracle, or Netscape. It's going to come from Seattle.

February 12

Other news from the valley of fruit - Apple is re-evaluating their Newton operations. This one isn't going to be pretty. After all the last division they "evaluated", Claris was pretty much deep-sixed shortly after they opened the case-file. What we have here is a combination of cost-cutting, and vendictiveness from Steve Jobs twords John Scully. Newton was actually just now showing a profit stream on an otherwise lean operation from selling Newtons into verticle markets. They were spun-off - in an ironic deja-vu play ala Claris - only to be spun back in for whatever reason that only Apple could fathom. Well it's fathom time, and guess who's headed for the briney deep? The Newton represented at best, an ill-timed rushed product from the mind of John Scully who, after years of insecurity, found a product in Apple's R&D group that would give him the limelight that gave Steve Jobs all of his glory 10 years previously with the Mac. No longer would John have to sulk in the historical shadow of the person responsible for Apple's income. Now it was his turn. Of course it flopped around for several years before actually turning into a legitamate product - just in time for cheaper devices from Pilot to come in at a lower price-point and effectively stall any new sales. The current sales have now stalled at less than 50% of the same rate a year ago partially because of the baggage of being associated with Apple instead of being their own company and their own boss. Now Steve can avail himself of the last single carcas that remains as a reminder of the man who kicked his sorry-ass out of Apple more than a decade ago. It's the same old story. CEO blows founder out of the company, CEO makes gadget, CEO get's blown out of the company when gadget fails, gadget gradually succeeds all in time for founder to return and blow gadget out of the water. I'm sure there's a top 40 radio tune in there somewhere. Probably composed by Radiohead.

February 13

At the risk of covering old ground, I have to bring counter-argument to the still irreprecent stream of MacJihad/Nazi members who still tout 1 billion dollars of corporate equity as being significant. Sorry, to dissapoint and update, but the reason Apple is severing limbs at an unhistorical rate is because they have such a huge overhead in operating costs, they are effectively 1 quarter from the grave. Let me elaborate again, last quarter? The one they made 45 million on? They spent over 1 billion in opening their doors every day. This is such a huge accounting nightmare that Apple has come 30 days short in the last year just making payroll and had to get letters of intent from Sony and other suppliers to hold off a month or so while they catch up to their tide of red ink they are constantly bleeding. To say that 1 billion is a lot of money is only relevent if you're not buring billions every quarter. So give the bank account stories a rest, read the damn book Apple which shows how close to the margin Apple is cutting it, and get a clue. The next time Apple does a major round of layoffs is because they're eating money hand-over fist and need to stop their binge pronto before they die faster than even I can predict.

February 14

One mind-numbing factor that is being trumped up more often than not is the fact that the G3 chips may (or may not) be faster than the average processor from Intel. Whoop-de-shit. First, since so much of the MacOS is STILL, after 4 frigging years, un-native you need that kind of horsepower to pull that boat of a Buick up a hill. I mean we're talking 70's luxury car here not seen since the Corodba in bulk and slowness. If you're running an OS now as hackney'd and unoptomized as the Mac, you'd better have some pretty heavy engine blocks under the hood. Of course, the MacJihad think that this kind of performance makes them faster. Here's a hint - it makes BEos faster not the MacOS. Of course the future of the BEos with the G3 is still in limbo, without dev-specs, but the previous incarnations flew. I mean 4 simultanious 640X480 30FPS Quicktime demo flew. And it didn't fly because of Apple, it flew because the Power PC did in fact provide the kick it needed to blow the doors off of the MacOS. Of course, having a new OS upstage your klunky and slow OS didn't sit well with Apple so they've since cut them out of the developer loop, thus insuring that the only OS that can be viewed on the Power PC is Apple's. And my doesn't it look fast now with the G3's? Um hmm. Speedy as hell. Until you look at a multi-scalable Alpha workstation running Windows NT. But that's another story.