Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

July 12

With all this iMac crap being covered ad-infinitum, it might be nice to get a peek at something that "could" save Apple and serve as a new direction at least as radical as the leap from the Apple II to the Lisa and Mac. It was an all in one set top box. Now these are nothing new since they've been hyped since the early 90's when all the talk of conversion was hot from Microsoft, Apple, Tci and everyone else who seemed leveraged for some kind of all media model that would combine everything but the toaster oven in the kitchen. Well, they didn't - because the internet came in and screwed things up for everyone. The only people getting 500 channels these days (or anything close to those numbers) are the direct satelite dishes. Then there's the DVD boom which is FINALLY putting the last coffin nails in the LaserDisc. Suffice it to say, that aside from sales numbers that put CD's entry into the marketplace to shame, I love DVD. The extra capacity, the extra storage space freed up from all the piles of soon-to-be eaten video tapes that are degrading plus the fact that you can call up any scene in a movie like a track on a CD. This is important if you like sketch comedy like Blazing Saddles or Kids in the Hall Brain candy. Even better, if you're a video game freak of the old school, Dragon's Lair and other games from the Laser era have been ported not only for DVD-ROM, but DVD video for people who like mashing their remote controls furiously. Then there's web TV which - while dumbed down - gets us all further to the family room with a big ass sofa surfing the net rather than hunched nerd-style over a damn desk as if you were at work or something. Well, believe it or not, Apple almost got something right that would actually make convergence more than just a hype phrase. In fact it was supposed to be ready for last week's expo which sad to say was far below turnout both in vendor and in user numbers. Expo stats aside (for now), the device in question was "supposed" to combine all these features, and effectively replace 3 entertainment set-top boxes with one. Imagine, one flick with the remote on steroids and you're on the internet. Bang - another flick and you're watching a movie direct order style off the satalite in a window or vice-versa. Another flick of the wrist and you've cued up a DVD to explore the depths of Debbie and why she seems to like Dallas so damn much. Information overload would have looked like a wimp phrase with the way you could power veg in front of this sucker. So what did Apple do? They ditched it! Instead of trailblazing a whole new multi-purpose infotainment appliance on steroids, they decided to make another all in one Mac in a translucent shell first - and only. Now, cynics and pundits - like me - may argue that such a device would have siphoned a long term revenue plan when short order drills were needed badly. Then do what WebTV and Hughes did dammit. License the crap out of the thing to every consumer electronics maker and get them to take the manufacturing-tab and make the thing pay for itself from day one until the market is mature for your own swanky entry. This would be a win/win situation - where a new leap in communications and entertainment could be bridged with the Apple brand going into as many homes as Sony or Phillips - and at the same time they could extract themselves from the loosing - death march margins war against a computer industry that is already working with a standard - not an also ran niche expensive start-to-finish development and manufacturing firm - the last of it's kind in an obsolete paradigm. Well, it's not to be - at least anytime soon - and the interrest in repackaging dead cows is all over the New York expo. The Apple press - like AppleBits - is already saying that the attendant and vendor numbers have nothing to do with the real showcase showdown. I beg to differ. In fact I'd say that saying otherwise is oppotunistic garbage. I was at NeXTexpo 93 and it was a dog. The NeXTjihad claimed otherwise and tallied it as a good show. I'd say it was a good opportunity to glom onto open bars - and that's about it. Taking notice that at least one MacWorld journalist came to the same booze-soaked conclusion is more than a little ironic in the grand sum-up of things. It's a downright eerie flashback of retro Jobsian proportions. It would have been interresting if they had instead pushed a new paradigm instead of a bizzare re-run of uninterresting same-old, same-old and tried to take the initiative and waged war on the consumer electronics field where it would have made the Japanease line up for production rights that would have burst onto the scene by the next CES. But as always with Apple, it's too little too late for the limelight. The real neat stuff always seems to head for the dumpster first. Perhaps one of the soon to be ex-developers of this little product will take it on the road with him and get a real company to invest in it. After all, I'm sure Microsoft is just waiting for something to knock it's WebTV client out of the ballpark and out of it's niche. Who knows. It's going to take someone with more vision than a person who leached off of Steve Wozniak for the Apple I and II, ripped off Xerox Parc for the Lisa and the Mac, founded a nowhere workstation company with nothing to show for it but a buyout and a billion dollars of cash run-through, and did nothing recently but repackage - again and again Jef Raskin's creation and design. But then Steve Jobs, unlike Bill Gates (who still carries origonal machine code for Basic for the Altair in his head), never actually built, coded or wrote anything - not even Breakout at Atari. The MacJihad still carries on that something about Apple and Steve was innovative - go fig.

July 13
It's a MacWeek heavy week, but with their new daily newsupdates and their - "fuck Apple, we're going to be a dead in a month anyway as far as our print equity is concerned" - it's as juicy as watching Eric Bogosian go ballistic on Talk Radio. Well here's a bit of pulp without the pits. According to James Staton of DataQuest - another statistical cheerleading section of Apple now turned to reality (otherwise known as the darkside to the MacJihad) they don't seem to be swallowing the iMac bullshit. Quote - "The iMac, at 1300 is too expensive, and with no floppy doesn't seem to be getting any cheaper as far as add ons are concerned". Wait there's more - "The design of the iMac may actually turn off as many customers as it may otherwise lure". This is true on several levels. Given the fact that the stuff you're going to need to make the damn thing sell-worthy you're going to be pusing closer to 1500 to 1800 all for the configuration of least flexability against a backdrop of Portable Pentium II's which are pushing Pentiums with MMX - of all configurations and speeds down beyond even the 800 dollar price point - FOR LAPTOPS for chrissake! And this - in 2 months is supposed to be the savoir of Apple? Jeezus. The design argument is a fave. Just as in past articles most people don't give a shit about the design for computers since the better ones just end up under the desk anyway - provided the cords for the monitors and what-not are long enough. That's been true even when I was ball and chained up to a Mac IIfx in 1991. And yet even with reports of convention goers hugging damn computers like Beanie Babies, I have a feeling that seeing a "visable" computer - guts and all - just "might" turn some people off. At the very least it makes the damn thing look flimsy and prone to cracking like a cheap toy. I guess now I know why everyone's comparing it to the first 128K mac design. Anyway - Saratoga based media, the Hartbook report's Peter Hartbook was also quoted for saying - "Apple's strategy of relying on the iMac for growth is risky". That's an optomistic requiem given the fact that the same people giving it hugs and fawning over the damn thing are current users - which are still leaving Apple in droves. Marketing to them exclusively is a big error Flynn, and the fact that anyone else who uses a computer has never heard of it - is a testament to this basic fact. So, we have a risky design that might repel users, a price that isn't even current before it's released - much in the same way the NeXTstations were overpriced against even the Mac when it debuted - and the fact that no serious computer user has heard of it and isn't even considered first-tier in the marketing strategy. That's a formula for disaster if I ever heard one. Thank God Microsoft only gave them 150 million instead of double dipping when they were looking to unload the Newton and Claris groups. They coulda been ripped off otherwise.

July 14

The thing about Mac the Knife I like - is that in one sentance - he can overlook the bombshell of the year. In this case - of course - it's iMac related. Here's the poop - the OS and hardware hooks that otherwise would allow the USB peripherals to handshake with the I/O stack are non-existant, and far from being finished. This is bad Ray. I've heard see-saw arguments that all the USB peripherals on the market are NOT spurred by Windows 98 and it's existant deverloper driver hooks - but instead is all because of the iMac. With the aforementioned info - I'd have to resoundly say - BULLSHIT. The iMac if nothing else is way behind the curve apart from the mere concept. In fact, it's so damn far behind the schedule - that there's talk that the initial wave of USB boxes won't work on the first series of iMac's made - since the drivers won't have anything to talk to. But again -this is nothing new in the historical scheme of things. The Newton - besides being released with an incomplete recognizer system from Russia of all God-Awful places - had plenty of non-existant hardware hooks not giving dick one about PCMIA cards, serial port mangement - you name it. The fact that it didn't work but with a select few exclusionary Apple products worked well for the bottem line since no one thrid party could make heads or tails of the damn thing. But considering that Apple isn't giving the floppy drive the time of day - it might be "nice" to get the damn specs in order so that the stuff will function. Mind you - a lot of toys were announced with the rollout of the iMac - it does however explain why the realease dates for these suckers were well into the end of the year compared to the end of summer rollout of the computer in question no? You tell me! It would seem that - yet another - Apple product is being foised onto the world in beta mode. Not since the NeXT cube was released with version 0.8 system software can you find such idiocy. At least Microsoft has the balls to call it's shit 1.0, even if it DOES require patches for the myrard of configs out there - at least the printer drivers, and the various disk drives will work on the whole. And again - this is why the MacJihad are giggling their brains out in leu of a real product - Windows 98 - being released to the public. How fucking wierd! Then again - you know what they say - those who laugh last laughs best. I don't think we'll be hearing nothing much from August till January 1999 but a trail of tears.

July 15

USB, we've heard about devices compliant with it working on with Windows 98, then we've heard that those same devices will work with the iMac - and even worse that the iMac itself is behind these devices being developed in the first place - sans Windows influence. Well, apart from the case design of the late-comers, I somehow doubt it. Consider the following, according to MacWeek and their soundbites garnered from VST technologies - a person on the front lines of USB peripherals, "The USB doesn't have the performance and speed that people require". Well no shit - at 1.5 to 12 mbit per second vs antique SCSI's 10-150 mbits this sucker looks like a dog in progress at best or a leap back in time at worst. So before the MacJihad start dreaming of iMacs being sold in droves to power users that might otherwise be interrested in paltry second rate, obsolete out of the gate bullshit, they'd better think twice before they think that this overpriced underwunderkind is going to do dick for Apple's bottem line. The rest of the add-ons don't fear much better in the long and short scheme of things. For instance, the cost of getting dick in devices to take your file off the computer in any shape or form are adding to the price-tag in short order as well as the ability to print. Let's take a look at the contestants shall we? Lessie it will cost you 150 for a zip drive that will work with USB - where they're going for 80 bucks today retail with no special concerns regarding a missing floppy disk, 200 for an imation superdrive, and 150 to even print to localtalk printers that wouldn't know ethernet if it bit them on the ass. And this is an economy Mac? Sounds like nickel and dimes have taken on a whole new twist in screwing people as far as the bottem line which ads at least 500 dollars to the cost of the 1300 dollar iMac in the end - run scheme of things for something that won't attract power users that are looking for something affordable to gain ground in graphics or high-end publishing. But that's the status-quo with Apple. Opportunity targeted, Opportunity lost.

July 16

More from the iMac attack. Just who do you think might be interrested in such a beast? Already we've discounted the power users out there - but now you can count out the graphic design groups in-totum. That would at least be the conclusion reached when you consider the lack of expansion ports for a respectible monitor, coupled with the pathetic speed of the USB system, and lack of standard outputs for scanners, printers and the like you've also got MacWeek first person testimony from the show floor of the likes of John Elmore - graphic designer (and as we mentioned last week - underpaid victem of society) who went on to say, "I'm looking at it as a second computer - for email and simple tasks". Oooookkkay! So just what IS the market for underpowered secondary computers anyway? Don't answer since this is the same bizzare logic that pervaded NeXT oddest days when they claimed that their market was those offices that had two computers on every desk. Even their own senior staff concluded that was about 12. This isn't a market - it's another example of Steve Jobs grabbing for straws for a product that is not only misplaced - but almost certainly doomed. It's interresting if only because obviously old habits die hard, and if you can't make a definable product - invent a defenition and a marketplace and sell the hell out of it. Impossible you say? Don't ask me, ask the MacJihad - they'll buy anything.

July 17

This little tidbit isn't so much of a rant, but a farce. According to Time Magazine's Daniel Eisenberg, Belinda Luscome - and fuck knows who else from the mechanical media that stack up on bylines that are merely 50 words long - Steve Jobs got a reminder that there's two equations at work for two kinds of people. Nerds and the rest of humanity. For Nerds, 90 of life revolves around computers - what they're doing, when a software upgrade is released, and just how annoying the owners of Macs really are. The remaining 10 percent of life is spent getting laid, eating, scratching one's self, and how to get laid after being seen in a bar scratching yourself. The rest of the world sees computers perhaps when they're at work or at home doing some mundane tasks in front of a piece of silicon and plastic that takes up about 10 percent of "their" mindshare. The rest of the 90 percent of their life is spent getting laid, going skiing, eating, going out with friends, and staring at strange people in bars who scratch themselves. It would seem that during the MacWorld Expo Steve Jobs - Christ of the Apple nerd set - ran into someone "not" of the nerd set - who demanded to see his floor pass for the convention he stayed up all night bleeding from his palms over. Stigmata aside, Steve and his pocket protector posse were threatened by house security if they didn't get their shit together, admist cries of "dont you know who this is?", and Jobs had to actually walk over and get his pass. The computer community finds it ironic, wierd, and something funny to giggle about in bars while scratching themselves. The guard was just doing his job, and didn't know Steve Jobs from Andy Mertzfield. Even I don't know Andy Mertzfield, but I'm sure I'll get e-mail from him if he ever reads this. The point is - besides perhaps dubious curiousity for someone who at least should have been briefed on the guest list, it's just a non-event that summs up further the yawning chasm between the MacJihad and the rest of the world. Because even given the odds that at least 10 percent of Wintel users probably think about computers 90 percent of the time - it's more ironic to consider the fact that, by all appearances, 90 percent of Apple users seem to think about computers 90 percent of the time. At least that would explain the reactions heard to this little bit of news the world over, as well as all the people seen scratching themselves in bars all over New York after the expo.

July 18

And now the weekly wrap-up of bits and pieces that have been flung against the wall to make scatalogical wallpaper. This just in from several sources: The G3's may be toasting something, but it sure as hell isn't the Pentium II. It would seem that due to typical Apple quality control, they're creating "painful hot spots" around the groin area for users of G3 powerbooks due to either unforseen operating temperatures, or just shoddy design. It's more than likely the former of the two - since even MacWeek has been refering to this tale of smoke and impotence as something much harder to fix then the video problems, and display problems that Apple seems to be infamous for. Also, the Doomsday Clock salutes the BLF, with new links in the (whoduthunkit) linkssection, new sightings of their recent escapades in the downloads section, and even a mirror of their site on my account since lord knows, we already know that Tripod is an open target for censorship by the goose-stepping MacMarines and their swastika wearing ilk. If you haven't already been to the above links, the BLF are the people who have been "adjusting" billboards in an exercise of creative commenatary on bad advertising. It seems that the Billboard Liberation Front have been climbing up into dangerous places since 1977, to fix errors and omissions for Exxon and other companies ripe for social commentary or just bad advertising. The fact that the BLF is made up of advertising people is beyond ironic. I came across them looking for information on Think Technologies - makers of supercomputers, but also famous for comissioning Maya Lin - designer and architect of the Vietnam War memorial - to design the coolest looking housings for multimillion dollar supercomputers. Talk about a mad scientist type - she's cute as hell too because she's even graced the advertising of the Gap. Probably because she's still alive unlike the vast majority of people depicted in Apple's current series, which as we all know shows dead guys who have been sold down the river by their grandchildren. Also in the news, from MSN investor, Apple's stock was downgraded to neutral by Robert M. Cohen and CO.'s Keith Bossey from a speculative buy after "a 100% gain, the easy money has already been made". Nothing like hearing the end of an overvalued run. Meanwhile Microsoft stock has been sitting pretty at 117 for a bit, making Gates worth 66 billion on paper. Which goes to show you, that the Microsoft holders just keep getting richer, and the Apple shareholders sell short on speculative buys for a cheap buck. Probably the only time Apple has ever been considered cheap by anybody in the general public. However in accordance to the first newbit, I at least now have a theory to explain all the scratching seen in bars lately.