Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

August 9

Latest from the MacOSrumors infantile file, Kinkos employees are reporting that while the noted copier chain will continue with tolken Macintosh equiped stations for their customers, their stance on "full service" or the computers that the employees will use will be Wintels. This policy is proported to be set in stone. And while many workers are threatening to seek other employment as a result. Well, I've got good advice for these wonderful employees. Don't let the door smack your ass on the way out bozos. It almost goes without saying that with 90% or more of the planet using what these poor persecuted and lonely types despise, there's more than enough people to fill their shoes gladly. Of course if they choose to carry this inflexability into their next lucky employer, they're probably going to find themselves on the street for a long - long time. Is it just me? Back when I was getting into the job market many years ago - having as much experience and a variety of tool-skills was an asset. I spent as much as my time jumping into other gigs to cut my teeth on Sun workstations, SGI workstations using Alias render tools, NeXT (before it was obvious what a fuck-up those tools were), instead of being a Mac-only gimp. It wasn't hard to adopt this attitude when I saw people who devoted their life to Quadex AGFA workstations get kicked out on their keister when they refused to budge from their retired consoles. Basically it was either adapt, learn, grow or be dead in a heartbeat. So what the hell is wrong with the Kinko's kids? Do they revel in being perceived as dumbshits? I suspect it's really more of a lazyness thing. They could learn something new if they wanted to - but they're too much of the slackass set to actually go the extra mile and build themselves up. Instead they'd like to pout and throw a temper tantrum. Well hell - if this is the way to weed out the morons in the workforce then I say more power to Kinkos. Perhaps now there's another reason why Wintels are gaining more ground and displacing Macs in companies across America. It's an easy way to get rid of the dead-weight - and get some real talent into the various still warm chairs.

August 10
Lisa Bowman - a total BABE of the ZDnet set - had a little tet-a-tet with Heidi Roizen former head of the company T/Maker and VP of Apple Developer relations. She basicaly spilled her guts out more than Gil Amelio in her accounts of the outright bizzare state of affairs of NeXT taking over Apple in a coup-de-tait when - by all rights - it should have been NeXT's coup-de-grace. Instead the smaller company suddenly consumed the larger. Something she commented to Gil when he entered into this faustian bargin. "Either Jobs was going to take the money and run - or run amok, calling everyone bozos - and Gil would be out of job". Astute stuff. But even more astute were these little sound bites. Quote - "Rhapsody effectively muddled the waters for developer relations. Developers didn't want it - and it made cajoling fleeing Mac software publishers that much harder of a sell". She left the company soon after it became obvious that Jobs was taking over because - according to her anyway - he just complicated matters too much and she had two kids to raise - instead of fighting some perverse holy war for the sake of computers. Hmmm. People first, computers second! How unJihadesque! Well suffice it to say - she found a company that was mature enough to stop the power-trip shit and go after what she could bring to the table with her experience - rather than pass Steve's bozo test. Microsoft. This isn't too surprising either since even the founders of the origonal Mac design are now cranking code on the latest Microsoft projects including IE. What is suprising is that she didn't get into the nitty gritty - and nor did Lisa - the BABE of ZDnet. Here's a little 2 plus 2 for ya. I've already mentioned that Heidi was head of T/Maker software. T/Maker software almost published clip-art software exclusively until around 1988. At that time they released a new - low overhead/slim and trim - word processor for the Mac called "WriteNow". If you opened the about box on this product, you would have noticed that it had a license from NeXT on it. Basically NeXT offered the software to her to market - while NeXT continued on it's merry way developing NeXTstep and the NeXT computer line. NeXT eventually also bundled this program with the NeXT hardware until 1992 when they were playing grab-ass to get any money they could. Speaking of "grab-ass", it's been recently noted that Steve Jobs had dated Heidi Roizen during this same period of time. It's interresting that on his return to Apple that she would bail before his feet even hit the Cuppertino floor. Suffice it to say that the prior history between the two might have also "complicated" things - on the magnitude that she couldn't stand the SOB anymore, and knew his prior bullshit levels from a decade ago and decided that revisiting the past was for the birds, and that the kids might have more to offer in the way of a more rewarding and maturity building experience. Now, I don't know if the MacJihad are going to believe word one of this theory - but then I don't know how many of them are married either.

August 11

I've tried to steer clear of the iMac this week, since the arguments are getting a little redundant even I'll admit. BUT because the whole damn world is hanging off the nipple of this tit - it's hard to pass up another suck. According to multiple press sources, Apple announced 150 thousand pre-order for their retro box. Of course, this was easy to fill for the most part since the backlogs of lower end Power Mac laptops are gathering dust and don't require any more production runs for the time being. Anyway, while it's good news for Apple to have a reasonable launch, the fixation on such hype is not so much a curiosity as much as a lesson in history. Back in the Glory days of NeXT - 1991 to be exact - Steve in September stood on stage holding his latest "save our ass please" computer (or interpersonal black workstation - whatever the hell that was supposed to mean) and going on about 15 thousand advance orders. Notice that it's just one 0 less than the recent proported numbers. Well, I hope these numbers are a little more credible - because in NeXT's case, it was really a phone poll which resulted in many people not following through on their orders - and more than half the remainder being sold in the form of 040 board upgrades to the lackluster, underpowered 030 "workstation" (which shared the same processor of the Mac Cx, Ci, and Fx - amonst others - whoduthink that Apple was in the "workstation" market too! I thought they were a computer company.) Anyway none of this was revealed at the time - or much later for that matter - since NeXT was a nice private company that didn't have to deal with icky things like units shipped or anything like that. Of course now we have the SEC watching Apple's numbers - so I hope they're not pulling the same retro BS. Anyway, the real nostalga comes when we remember how Apple was supposed to sell 2 million Macintoshes by the end of 1985 - when - after a nice enough start - they only managed to ship out the door less than a quarter of that amount. The key question here is - can Apple sustain it's entry burst - or at least carry it's sales into Xmas? Or will it go bust like the Mac 128K did - or worse NeXT which after 7 years only managed to sell 50 thousand of the buggers - an amount that Apple in 1993 (their glory days) shipped in 6 days. What's an even more historical is this. After the failure of the inital Mac 128K - saved from oblivion only after Steve was cast out on his sorry-ass, the demise of NeXT - which never recovered from the pathetic and well hyped launch of the NeXT cube in 1988, there was one thing they both had in common. In both cases both Apple and NeXT "bet the farm" (a quote even from visiting NeXT reps in relation to the optical drive and floppyless cube) on one horse. They litterally put all of their eggs into one basket. In Apple's case, the Apple II was looking long in the tooth - and was getting the living snot beat out of it by the IBM PC. The NeXT was the only thing they had to show for 4 years of work and 150 million dollars in investments. Both flopped and in one case almost cost Apple it's life. Fast forward to today, Apple is rolling out almost nothing but iMacs, has become a hard-to-justify (or sane for that matter) purchase - and in a wierd twist of fate - finds itself begging for developers to hang on and give Mac a chance - in spite of massive dollar losses from all those that stay on the bandwagon. So we have a niche - against the grain - unproven design computer - going after the world again - without a floppy. Does Apple have it's eggs in one precipitous basket again? Ask the person who put them all together not once - but twice - in the past. Steve Jobs.

August 12

During a recent influx of love letters from recently aquired traffic levels - plus the current move of the BBBS to eastern servers - I've found more evidence of really bad historical revisionism - precipitated by a total abject lack of knowledge of past products and the past in general. What's odd is that same "quaint" mail that occasionally fills my box, also seems to have infested the brain of Apple Veep Phill Shiller. In this case it was a soundbite aside regarding the design of the new iMac and how it outclasses previous offerings. Quote - "it won't be like the performas - The "beige" minitowers looked too much like PC's". A great sentament. Except that APPLE NEVER MADE BEIGE MINITOWERS! In fact Apple hadn't made "beige" computers since over 10 yeas ago! They switched to "platnum" according to the sales lit that went with my Mac Plus. So I just have to beg the question. Does Apple know what the fuck they used to sell a scant year ago - as far as "Performas" were concerned? I mean I know they changed a lot of higher management. So has Chrystler. I don't see Dailmer-Benz execs saying they look forward to pushing the envelope of making "horseless carridges". Seriously, what you've got is a higher exec bozo - who probably doesn't even USE a Mac - working off the idle advertising copy for the iMac which currently reads "sorry no Beige". Instead of knowing that it's a reference of their 1984 product - the stupid gimp (I'm guessing) imagines that it's the PC's and their previous product lines that were competiting against them. And this is the genius that is going to help Apple and it's "turnaround"? Well, I can't say all that because of one Quale-like soundbite - but I can when he goes on to say "although the Performa didn't do too badly for Apple". I guess bleeding 2 billion dollars out of your ears and almost missing mere payroll by 12 days - IE: Bankrupcy boys and girls - isn't "too badly". Be afraid be very afraid.

August 13

Well the numbers are in for Adobe - and boy have they got Johnny Warnock pissed to the hilt. In this instance they've got a massive 25 million dollar revenue shortfall from the previous year - resulting in the severe possiblity that they're not going to make money this quarter. And this was after they re-orged behind making more money to begin with. Well there were several reason cited for the revenue shortfall, one was the Aisan market softening - and here's a not-so-shocker from Adobe's own press release - quote - "the continuing weakness in demand for Macintosh applications and printers". Well - ain't that a bitch! I guess if Adobe wants that turnaround so badly they're going to have to do something about it. Like shed it's Apple support from a mere 38% and falling piece of the revenue pie and focus on where the money really is. Wintel software. We already know that in better fiscal days, Adobe was well past the 60% sales margin for Wintel sales - but now they're going to have to placate investors who want to know why they're loosing money on supporting the Mac. Well John-boy, have I got a plan for you! Drop everything Mac related down to perhaps 2 core products, Illustrator and Photoshop - which you have for every other OS under the sun - and go bonkers pushing the envelope of NT savvy DTP apps. These aren't some 200 dollar upgrade types - this is a vast market that is still untapped. Loose the boat anchor Apple crowd - who can't even support game publishers let alone serious app hounds and go Wintel nuts. At least the investors won't think you're nuts - nor will 90% of the planet. Of course you'll have to deal with the MacJiahd - but they're not buying anything from you anyway - who cares!

August 14

All hell breaks loose this week if you hadn't noticed - and it's a small token of irony that the cause of the havoc - would also cause it's suspension and move to better waters. Of course, I'm talking about the "Katt" from PCweek fame who noted this column in his first paragraph of his weekly verbage - particularly the online version which held a direct link to the front page. What he was refering to was a bit of odd news that sprouted up in the bbbs section regarding a version of Xenix at Microsoft that could otherwise compete with Linux, and include a 32 bit Win api - all under the code name of Winux. Now I didn't really get into it when it broke the headwaters of the chat area because lord god knows there's plenty of Microsofties, Apple and ex-Apple people crusing around in there that every leak doesn't get my attention - particularly when they're talking about box design on Alpha software. God knows - it's not exactly NDA to say that Alpha copies of Quark software doesn't get this kind of consideration. But it was curious enough to get a shit-load of people hitting the front door in furious search for this info. Nearly 3000 a day in fact - wheras the 1000 a day to the chat area was bad enough, only 1500 or so a week was the norm for the front hit counter that has been spinning since January. I thought, in spite of having a website with a URL as long as your arm, those were fairly good numbers. Then the flood began. Most of it was fairly new users because yours truly noted a lot more than the front door being hit according to the accounting software that was online. However, the BBBS was already at critical mass before the deluge - and promptly collapsed for all intensive purposes at around 930am that monday. Big whoop I thought - I needed to move it anyway - and I didn't exactly relish the thought of moderating a chat area to keep the IQ levels above the WWF, with a surge in traffic on the order of 4 times normal levels. So good riddance to the old server - say hello to the new. Hopefully you'll be able to spam each other to your heart's content within the next week or so. Besides the files having been moved and awaiting some ISP help on the config end, there's also a realtime chat ready to go - with my finger on the ban button to keep the morons at a safe distance. But, other site section asides, there was more to note from the onslaught of attention. First, shortly after the piece broke - the MacMarines/Nazis/full-goose-bozo-squad peaked their eyeballs at the website and threw a fit. The hate mail was spooky not that it was intimidating mind you - but that it had the single mindedness and unorigonal arguments befitting your average cult that couldn't otherwise think for themselves. I mean this is rich. They even had their own sig files of quotes and arguments from archieved literature that insured that they wouldn't have to think too hard - or seem to bright for the wear. I mean how "Mooney" can you get? Personally, I'm suprised it took them so damn long to get a clue to this site's existance - after all - it's been what over a year now? I can only speculate at the wierdness that will befall the chat area (once it's back online) when the goddamn Evangelistas get a whiff of the site. Still - they did enjoy the iMac tits on the front door signaling the iMac introduction. But that's another story.

August 15

Well, if it's today - it's the 100 million dollars going up in smoke in the name of the iMac's introduction. Good to know that Microsoft's investment of 150 million is going to good use - or that Apple is conserving it's low cash position. Still, PT Jobs has still managed to get over 1300 articles written up which would be considered a record unless anyone bothered to remember what the hell happened when Steve Jobs got onstage in October 1988 with the NeXT. Well, inspite that the 100 million is a mere 3rd of Apple's yearly expenditures in advertising I can safely say that Chiat-Day must be cleaning up. Still, it's nowhere near the landslide of the record holder Microsoft when they released Windows 95 with Bill Gates getting guest slots on David Letterman - and hiring Jay Leno outright for entertainment for the troops in Redmond Washington. Still, you'll have to look past the MacJihad claiming this the biggest computer rollout in history - because AGAIN - they've never had a good grasp on history to begin with. One of the nutty iMac promotions did get my attention though. It's the Willy Wonka inspired, Golden Ticket jaz. It seems that Steve is personally signing 5 tickets - that will be hidden in the boxes of iMacs sent to 5 different global regions - and the lucky winner will get (after already buying one) 5 more iMacs over the course of 5 years - as well as a plant tour....or something. Well Oopa Loompas aside, there's one question - which I still haven't gotten an answer from without actually going down to the corporate legal department. There "might" be the very real possibility that this "promotion" is downright illegal. Coming out of advertising - I'm usually horsewhipped if I compose an advert that controvenes stuff like state and federal laws. Suffice it to say that I smell wierdness from a mile away. Well, here's a stinkburger to whiff on. Company giveaways - MUST allow ALL people the same chance to win. They can't just say - you must buy our product to qualify because this runs afoul of lottery laws where people pay to win. Now granted, you can cross a state line to play the lottery - but the taxes are accounted for - and you have to go to that state to claim your prize. That's why food companies and the like ALWAYS allow people to approach fast food counters or to mail in self addressed stamped envelopes to recieve free game peices, wrappers and bottle caps. Otherwise it's called UNLICESNSED GAMBLING. At the same time, it sure as hell isn't covered under rebates - because rebates go to all purchasers - not a select few randomly chosen people. When was the last time you bought a car to take a chance on a 2000 dollar rebate? So if Apple hasn't talked to the State of California's gameing body, and they're not flying people out to claim their out of state prize - then what the hell are they doing? Violating the law I suspect safely now since no one has provided a counter-argument at ZDnet or MSNBC, or even amongst co-workers involved in marketing. At least McDonald's doesn't force you to by a Mac to win - why does Apple? Lastly on this great day of the iMac's introduction there's always a level head in the crowd. In spite of Charles Cooper of ZDnet making a point about all the hype - while contributing to it at the same time - he at least makes the grade in noticing that - quote - "considering the world is hyperventelating over a computer what is at best - a mildly interresting 1300 dollar machine that incorperates not one whit of the revolutionary design of the first mac". Strong words perhaps - but never the less very true. Because in spite of the MacMarines, and the MacJihad thinking that the performas WEREN'T a consumer foray into Mac sales - and that the NeXT wasn't the first Steve Jobs computer without a floppy (accounting for the fact that Steve Jobs in his own voice called the NeXT an interpersonal computer), they still think that it's the most amazing computer ever - instead of a redressing of the same old thing. But then, 100 million and 300 stories later - you've got a lot of suckers to show for it.