Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

June 14

I've said it before - which means I'm going to say it again. Some weeks it takes the entire frigging week before I can take in enough information to make 7 frigging days of observational rants, or else I have to fall back onto historical precidence with Steve Jobs, Apple's prior screwups et-al. Some weeks it just pours all out on a Monday. This is one of the latter of the two scenarios. In fact, there's so much bizzare wierdness and anticipation about the iMac, that I could devote a whole week to this nonsense alone. But I don't have to. I can give it a mere couple of days and focus on all manner of nuttiness that is buzzing around the good-hive Apple. In solid proof that foolbaiting equals solid ratings for any website - I give you John Dvorak of ZDnet - formerly MacUser - fame. This guy is so damn burned out on the MacJihad that he can't even contain himself any longer. I suspect - that he's supected - anytime he so much as mouths the words "apple is in trouble" that the hitcount and the loveletters must fly with more fury than the fireworks at the Lantern Festivals of Southern Taiwan (and if that metaphor is too damn esoteric - do a netsearch and learn). Well, he couldn't contain himself any longer - he had to deliberatly foolbait his awaiting public with some rigermoral about Apple's "turnaround" status weaving the best slams into the middle of some diatribe about a dream (and not like that silly faggot at MacCentral's wet dreams for Steve page) about Apple and discussing their future with the present interm CEO. Well of course - the MacJihad ate it up with a vengance, spamming him to the hilt, going absolutely apeshit. Which is ironic because in contrast to his previous Devil's Advocate stories - this one was practicaly flacid. Still the Macfukers felt done up the ass and were going bone-all on Johnny. What I didn't expect was that this - in fact - turned out to be exactly a bait and switch exercise for ZDnet and Dvorak. He plainly mentioned in the follow-up column that he wanted to see what the turnout would be to the merest critique to Apple's pathos. As it turned out, he likened it to Amiga user's tennacity in the 80's - although he left out the really bizzare NeXT fanbase in the equation. Still point taken, and match, for the editorialist who now promisses to suck eggs for Apple till doomsday. Not that I believe him, but it IS interresting that the responses to this particular - "got you" - column was kind of low. At least initially. So much so that I name-dropped this site out of pure curiosity on how long it would take to scroll off his own message board. Aside from wondering how many hit counts I can steal from his merry band of sucksters, I'm even more curious how long it will take the assorted victims to realize I'm doing - and have been doing for nearly a year now - the same goddamn thing.

June 15
The reason that I've been doing this site for nearly a year, has yet to really vary much from why I proceeded after the first week. It's too damn easy with flub-after-flub, blooper after blooper, Apple continues to amuse, confuse, and generally make a general ass of itself. Again this isn't an anti-Mac site - it's an Apple Doomsday Clock. Mind you, several sympathetic corporate mouthpiece sites - (otherwise known as advocacy websites) have openly refered to Apple as a soap opera - I hate to bust their bubble - but Apple is a train wreck in progress. And you don't have to be a Fellini film fan to see the light at the end of this tunnel. It's just too damn easy - for someone surrounded by Apple's dammage - to not otherwise take notice and pound out a few words. But enough near-anniversary rationalization - on with the show! Hot off the Atlanta dead-tree press wire is the observation that more and more Mac software is only available online - and not in the stores. Aside from this pure genius of realization, I particularly liked his soundbites of assorted software publishers (those left anyway) that mentioned that if they were to publish conventionally - making boxes for their products, publishing manuals, and spending the time and money to get it into the various retail channels - that they would be out of business before they ever compiled their code. While this otherwise southern belle of a fluff piece tried to impose the idea that internet distribution is the "new wave" it's really the "loser wave" of companies that have thrown in the towel because their OS fanbase doesn't exist in stable enough numbers to merit making a decent show of effort. Keep in mind, this did kill the Amiga market faster than it might otherwise affect Apple users - but it still doesn't reflect well on a dying platform. One where Wintel companies have no trouble at all packaging their products for the average consumer - while the Mac OS crowd can look forward to endlessly long download times because the development communtiy as a whole has just abandoned you - the meager scraps that are left which don't even give shit-one enough to actually make a serious attempt at serious publishing anymore. Ah well - at least the internet will help the orphans for a few years longer rather than the usual user-group floppy recovery scene I guess. Hooray for the Internet MacFreaks! Hoo ho hooo!

June 16

As I said before - slow Monday. Then....BANG! Apple blows another gasket in the scorecards! This one hot off the ZDnet, via MacWeek mentions that Apple has slipped in the only scientific poll it has left. This one is in "user loyalty" otherwise known as how many people bought your product a second time around. Well, whammo! Apple nosedives to number 3 for the first time in recorded memory. How odd considering their "turnaround" with the G3's et-al. Thought they had a grasp of things in spite of their halving of their former sales. Guess not - because now it's Gateway and HP in the 1 and 2 slots with Apple falling a wholesale 11% down in overall repurchasing figures out of 50 thousand polled. Oops! Of course every pro-mac boob out there is going-on about how they will turnaround this last great nosedive and get their former stats in order. Well here's a kernal to crunch on. Apple's biggest culprit of this recent slide was the home or consumer user. Down a whole third actually. And if prior examples for unproven - floppy diskless and sluggish, non-expandable computers are concerned, this figure won't be rolling back anytime soon. Because as a few journalists pointed out, Apple has been blowing consumer sales because the price tags are too fucking high (that's taken from the movie Used Cars for those in need of a metaphor break). While the rest of the market is expanding thanks to low priced - aka: affordable offerings - Apple has yet to even give the 1K mark a nod. Think this is going to make a dent in the buying public? Not really. What I'm really left open-ended on is whether this decline of consumer proportions are merely people running away from Apple, or staying away from Apple? I ask this because the market has - after all - been EXPANDING, while Apple's share has been shrinking. Makes you wonder doesn't it?

June 17

So far the only coverage I've given the MacCentral boobs is the link in the links section for the Steve Jobs wet dreamer. Which is interresting because they're usually the last to clue in on things outside of - oh - MSNBC, CNBC, MacWeek, ZDnet - hell even bullshit Mac sites like - Mackido, and MacOSrumors for that matter. Almost makes you question their self-promotion moniker of "the most read-Mac newsite around". Well along with this bullshit came a doozy that all the pros missed out on. Lord knows - only a hack or a parody site would report on an interview with a product manager before a product actually manages to succeed or fail. But with suckers to serve bullshit to - via another corporate mouthpiece site - you can't go wrong with misplaced hype. Well this marvel of huckster tripe, spewed forth in the form of an interview with (I'm not making this name up) Tom Boger. Let's not dwell on how miserable this person had a childhood in grade school and jr. high, and move on shall we? Well, old Boger - iMac product manager and carrier of emotional scars - had these 5 (count-em!) points to bring to light on his (otherwise known as Steve Jobs' exclusive limelight) baby. Point one: Raves on about the prime consumer market - and mentions "kitchens" as fertile selling grounds. That's a red flag for you and me. This is such an 80's throwback that you don't have to imagine the trouble I had to endure holding back a carbonated beverage from shooting out of my sinuses from this one. Every goddamn computer maker who couldn't waffle out a real market for their wares - all of them now dead - said the "K" word as a fall back to marketing sanity. I wonder if Steve Jobs and his retro Soul Train came up with this soundbite? I mean fuck-all, look around you for chrissake. See a computer in the kitchen? Anywhere? And no - I'm not counting embeded systems into your microwave oven or dishwasher - I'm talking full blown I/O keyboard CPU. No? Then why is Boger Boy talking about them?!!! Hoooly Shit! Apple is in dire need of medication but - in the meantime - here's number 2. Release date? No comment. Advertising campeign? No comment. Uh, would anyone in this "interview" like comments on stuff to otherwise serve a purpose in the grand scheme of things? No? Ok, no sense emphasising MacCentral's true purpose as an Apple fanboy site - let's move onto number 3. Lack of expansion ports - otherwise known as Nazi upgradablility. Response? "Consumers don't need upgradability". Gee thanks. They also don't do backups or need floppy drives - but that's ok - I'm already used to Apple dictating what the market wants instead of them getting a clue and delivering what the market tells them to. Dull surprise there. Number 4: "It's not going to be a killer game machine" - in response to query's about 3D game cards and the like. What? I though Apple was setting the E3 world on fire! Cough. Number 5: "It involks a feeling like the new beetle". Don't even get me started, because knowing the beetle legacy and their new mission - delivering a feature rich auto for less than 20 grand - is just a tad short of a stripped down bit of Apple product, that is overpriced to boot against offerings from even IBM that undercut them in versitility, options, upgradability, and - most importantly - usability. I say this because I particularly like the new beetle - and have since it was unveiled as a concept car. To see it likened to a see-through overpriced tourquoise toy, makes me want to retch. I mean here's a car that looks DAMN neat, is only 1 grand more than my first car purchased in 1990, and is fully loaded with even side airbags - compared to an unreleased product from Apple all from the hyperbole of Steve Jobs. The fact that wet-nap boy of the same site's fame would mention that he wishes he could steal the same advertising ideas from VW, and put them on the iMac does more than make my stomach do a few flip-flops. It makes me taste the mustard or chunky salsa from my lunch. Pick your nose on that one MacJunkies, because I'm going through cold turkey just wondering how Apple will follow such tripe in the future. You don't have to dig hard to guess when and from whom I'll guarantee.

June 18

In spite of the Evangelistas, the MacJihad, and the general nuttiness backing MacOS - as if it were a form of giant marine mammal needing saving - you gotta wonder, just where is the king nut of them all these days - Guy Kawasaki? You remember him don't you? He's the Goerring of the information age that has rallied a whole host of shock-troops into line to guile, defile and generally run amok on anyone and any entity that would say dirty-word one against the Macintosh (salute when you say it brother amen!). Well he's not at the thone at Apple I can guarantee that. But has anyone lately wondered why? Well the people at the San Jose Mercury did - and followed the inventor of the term evangelist outside of cheap-gag religious freaks around for a few weeks and scored an interview with his wierdness. Most of the piece read like a day in the life of a guy making a few fast bucks doing what he does best. Nothing in particular. He's spending other people's money helping those who actually do something for a living get a leg-up from someone who can always use an easy piece of the action - the otherwise miserable captial investment community. What did stand out as memorable in this tome, was his reaction to an assocate he bumps into that asks if he's still at Apple. Good question Mr. Associate! I mean - what is he doing with Apple anyway? He hasn't quit - and he hasn't been fired. So what is the greatest Apple cheerleader up to? Not much - because the soundbite comes in the form of two incomplete sentances. Assocate"So are you going back to Apple?", Quoting Super Fly Guy - "I'm not there now". Wooooo-hoo-hooo! Do I detect a bit of tension in his text? Well, perhaps it's because of two things. First: Guy has NOT been a big Steve Jobs fan - something he's only managed to keep burried in the footnotes of one of his books - the Macintosh Way - away from the Apple faithful who are crazy-8 bonkers for Jobsian rhetoric. As pointed out ages ago here - there's a passage that reads "Many origonal Mac developers left Apple for NeXT to work with Steve Jobs and relive their childhood. - pause - Then they returned because childhood is overrated". Well it's no shocker that this would be the case because his claim to fame came without Steve Jobs - and rather grew as a result of his vacuum. That's point Two really: Guy was the surrogate Steve Jobs in light of his absence and that was his payroll part onstage when Scully couldn't muster up his own reality distortion field. Guy however, was all to keen on picking up the grand emotional con-where Steve Jobs left off. The combination worked because Apple got the largest increase in developer support during his riegn. When Steve returned - his modis operandi vanished. In fact, I suspect that he didn't want to see NeXT reduix at the cost of everything he's built. And looking at the dismal numbers of developers still fleeing from the Mac end of the pool, you don't have to guess how painful it might have been to otherwise stay. One might even speculate futher that Steve Jobs probably didn't like Guy equally as much as Guy loathed Steve. Because it wasn't before Steve was back for more than a couple of weeks that Guy must have entered squarely into the "bozo group" that Steve began refering to those he didn't like. This is all open speculation - but it IS echoed in San Jose who correlates his stealth departure from Apple to not making waves in light of Steve's return. But as we know - there's always more to it than that. I just doubt the person chasing after Guy's ankles ever had the balls to delve any further. Too bad really. Talk about a lost opportunity.

June 19

I don't know if this is still up for me to mirror in time - let alone for this link to work but check this sucker out. It's At Geocities, you might find an interresting reinvention of the phrase "dammage control". Because now the MacJihad have taken it on themselves to create dammage to control the minds of others. For those who haven't seen it, didn't go there, or found it not there - I'll summ-up what was there a minute ago. There was a frameless page declaring that this "anti-apple page" had been quited. It then goes on in pompous and arrogant form to explain why they "fixed" the site by removing it from it's origonal address, and critique it point for point for it's crimes against Mac users. Or something. Well in spite of the hope that the thoughtcrime they were covering up was something juicy to have wasted their times hacking into a second-rate ISP and doctoring up someone else's account, was otherwise good or anything, I'm afraid to report that the origonal site was pretty lame. It had resided elsewhere because I recalled the bad artwork and short prose. So in some respects they've actually helped him by at least putting on a front door that is readible, and with paper-bag over porn like aplomb, makes the otherwise dismal read actually titilating beyond it's lackluster merrits. It IS interresting that they left the site intact, somehow providing some naive defense that they didn't do any real dammage if they were to be dragged into court. Well, they wouldn't be protected in the slightest. And if I catch these fuckers doing so much as a port scan on my ISP I'm going to get Secret Service on their ass. I've got 3 attornies, and connections with the government which looks down on the slightest hacker shit these days with vicious efficiency. Lord knows, I'd love to retire off some kind of monitary reward for this 2 hour a week BS, and doing it at the expense of the MacJihad would be a fine irony indeed.

June 20

This one almost got overlooked but it's actually quite large in the grand scheme of Apple's slow cantakerous, cancerous death march. The printer division and product sphere is all but dead. Yep. In leau of Apple's new mission to "focus" (aka: slash and burn till they make money like the CEO of Sunbeam did) on their core assets, the printers have been chucked out the window like an Apple III monitor. The product line is now sitting at one single product - the Laserwriter 8500. No Imagewriters, no Sylewriters, no ColorLaserWriters. Just one printer left. Of course MacWeek noticed and is running rampant panic that Apple is just one model away from pulling the last plug out of the technology that made people give a shit about the MacOS - long before the world turned their back on propiatary computers in droves. Well, you don't have to wonder - count on it. Apple's own soundbites in the matter confirmed that they are looking for more 3rd party support in the future and are not puruing this market anymore. Well, for the USB vendors which have been slow to sign on to this serial port - I should hope so! It would be tragic if the drivers and the low-cost printers for this consumer targeted - all in one - iMac would manage to avoid showing up to the debut party. But then that's the gamble the MacJihad are going to have to settle for because Apple doesn't have the time, money or personel to do what it did merely a few years ago. Which was to justify the all-in-one vendor solution for dewey eye'd dreamy desktop publishers who didn't want to figure out how to do the same thing on the Wintel platform. Well, I hope they can stomach doing driver installs like the rest of us from now on, because without Apple printers, there's nothing that is going to be very plug and play under the hood from the get-go at Apple. Because now, it's all in the hands of 3rd party members to pick up the slack in terms of what goes into the system folder. But don't worry, I'm sure some Wintel user can show them how we've manged for so long under the same circumstances. Bang goes one more reason to buy Apple.