Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

August 24

Time to stop bashing the Mac for a day and take a look at something Apple still owns 100% of the stock of - but has "spun off". Newton. Granted the sucker didn't work better than a rock when it first came out, and the early models still owe a big round of thanks to Palm Computing's Graffiti to turn the thing into something that resembles a tool rather than a flying projectile out an office window. Now that the sales of the Message Pads have actually churned out past the break-even mark, what did Apple do with this profitable division? Chuck it. Granted being untied from the Titanic is probably a good thing for Newton Inc., but why would Apple get rid of something that was actually working? Perhaps it's a grudge thing from Steve Jobs to get rid of the last of the nasty Scully smell from around the core. In other news-for what ever reason the latest Message Pad is selling well, even though it looks like a wierd micro-laptop with no OS that is standard with the rest of the desktop market, and holds a pricetag that matches laptops. A whopping 1 grand. Aside from Thinkpads and other brands there's much to be had at that level. My fave at the moment has to be the Liberato from Toshiba. For double the cost of a Newton you can have a full blown laptop with external connectors for big hands, screens and mice all in a package the size of a VHS cassete with a weight of under 2 lbs. Now THAT's darn neat! Remember when Apple used to put out stuff this cool? Neither can I.

August 25
Was thumbing through the newsrags after the big Apple circus and came across the quip from the designer who claimed that if Apple went under - that they'd be in big trouble. If you can't figure out what to use instead of your current design software, then you're already in trouble. Take a look sometime. All of the tools - and I mean each and every one is already win 95 native and behaves the same darn way as they do on the Mac. Better in the drag and drop department in most cases. I'd have been loathe to get rid of my own rotten Apple if this wasn't the case. But don't take it from me, Adobe has over 50% of it's revenues coming from PC designers rather than Apple designers. Now isn't that interresting? You mean that Adobe's tools are robust enough on the PC side that it's being used as a serious graphic tool? Horrors! In fact I'm still trying to figure out why my pokey 133Pentium at work outclasses Photoshop running on Macs around me (8100's). Granted I haven't done all the biased tests that the Mac rags have done, but I've spent 6 plus years watching and sleeping in front of Macs for most of Photoshop's lifespan and I know what "faster" feels like. Once you use Photoshop on Suns, SGIs, and Window equiped PCs you realize that it's all boxes. If the app runs the same quit your whining and open your mind to the rest of the world. At the current rate that Apple keeps screwing up - you may not have a choice in the long run.

August 26

You know, I don't recall if I mentiond it before, but I wonder how many Apple users have even tried Windows 95? I mean here's a thought. With the ability to really multitask, I often have at least 4 actions happening at the same time, with at least 12 apps open, and a hell of a lot of windows. The last time I had to negotiate such a mine field it was in front of NeXTstep or more significantly Alias for the SGI. The neat thing about Alias was that each window had a nice tab at the bottem of the screen to pop any window forward. This was good not only to surf screens like a banshee, but because the bottem of the screen is where I find my mouse most of the time. It was a major drag to be pulling from the top and trying to hide whole applications on the Mac when all I wanted was to hide a single window. Sorry hiding everything but the title bar didn't cut it. Of course when I point out such nice OS features like this to the MacJihad they do something along the lines of the playground rebuke "I'm not hearing you - LA LA LA LA LA". Imagine my surprise when those same MacJihad started crowing about the new tabbed windows at the bottem of the screen in OS8. So whose ripping of whom now eh? God you can't pay money to watch this kind of irony in the movies. Someone give me a refund for the ticket. What's next? File management within save/open dialogue boxes?

August 27

Still harping on interface issues. I love it when Mac users crow on about how nice it is to have one mouse button. I loved having 3 on Sun and SGI. The fact that I can work with one hand tied behind my back for most basic functions in Windows without having to hit a million option X keyboard strikes, occurs to me as a good thing. Most of the time you read about such a thing being a burden to the Mac set. Why this is I also have no idea. It's nice to decide when to make an alias, a copy or a move with a mouse click and hold rather than go dragging to the top of the damn screen or whip out my other hand that would rather be holding my Camel Light 100. Then again most Mac users don't seem to smoke either. Oh well.

August 28

Still going to rant on the OS side of the coin. You can't stop me now. Here's another biggie Mac users like to drag out. I don't want to manage System.ini files or anything else that you have to do in Windows. Well I've only done the .ini thing once when an obsolete modem driver decided to put error messages on my startup diag notes. It took me a whole 5 minutes to remove the offending lines. When was the last time you found that extension that was brining your crashintosh to a complete halt on the first try? I'd guess that for all the systems hastles I've had to deal with in the year I've switched to windows (one so far) I'd have logged no less than one man week trying to figure out what the hell in my mac system folder was seizing me up every other hour. I've also noted that apart from one piece of shit Mac e-mail application, I've never had anything seize up or for that matter blow my whole OS. If any one app goes nuts, I can shut it down, and not loose the dozens of other apps running. I've gotten so cozy with the stability of the Windows OS, that I've been pretty loathe to save like I used to in front of the Mac. There if I'd had more than 20 minutes of constant work without saving, I'd break out into a cold sweat. After watching the daily - "oh shit I crashed" and restart sounds around me I still wonder why in the hell the MacJihad think they have such a great deal? Sounds like one trumped up by P.T. Barnum himself.

August 29

Power Computing's CEO has bailed out. I guess we're seeing the start of the license storm. If this squal line of an OS 8 issue doesn't get resolved soon, it's going to be tornado time this fall. I'll be watching from my basement where I'll see mass hysteria and tons of OS converts banging on the doors to get in. At least that seems to be the general premise with soundbites of "it will be all over for Apple they'll be dead" as per MacWeek. You know, you gotta wonder. For a Mac booster rag, there's a heck of a lot of "Jane stop this crazy thing" from the user base that writes in. For every single letter that get's through to their pages there must be mailbags full of the same. Of course if they printed them all it would be a more cynical read that this website, but it does give one pause doesn't it?

August 30

It's interresting that most of the MacJihad that pelt the writers of various magazines seem pretty hyped up on the bad-press thing. It's interresting that when Windows has a bug or IE has something that needs fixing, and when it's mentioned in the press, no one comes forward like a mad bomber to say "how dare you offend my tender ego"? Probably because once you use a tool, you don't care if there's a problem noted as much as when the solution is going to come out. In the case of a dying Apple there is no solution. And BOY do the Jihad hate to hear that one. Much in the same way that the Amiga users used to waste everyone's time in the marketplace and online with their tiney shaking fists, the MacJihad have taken their place nicely. This time it's getting tiresome. Even the average columnist has taken a page out to say stop the frigging whinning. The point is, your passion doesn't change anything. Public dollars do. If Apple is ever to be taken seriously, they have to be sending out messages that don't sound like crazed fringe loonies from their user base. Why would any sane person want to be like the MacJihad anyway? Big clue - they don't and won't buy into Apple until the userbase shows either some sense of humor or restraint whenever Apple blunders and the press notices. Since this won't happen anytime soon, you know the real reason I'm skeptical that Apple will ever become a major force in the computer industry again, and why I switched. I decided to stop being an asshole like the people around me and get work done instead.