Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

December 13

ZDnet reports that Apple's November sales numbers put's Apple into the 10%-tile of computers sold thanks to the results surrounding the iMac. Now before you go nuts and start declaring this an "I told you so" situation, let's take a look at what those numbers mean. First it's from PCdata corp. A firm so reputable and quotable that DataQuest has already put out the clarifiers to News.Com on what the competition is actually working with. First - it's strictly retail. So GateWay can pretty much go out of the picture as well as Compaq's sales, Dells' sales, and every other massive sales push on the internet and from direct retail outlets that have their creator's name on them exclusively. That's awfully convienent isn't it? Then there's the fact that PCdata only tracks a total of 22 or so consumer retail outlets at that. Seeing Apple's loss-leader in ground to the vast retail community - and their holy war against anyone selling Apple computers without permission - that's a pretty shallow sampling to say the least. Here's my favorite kicker though - the sales are only consumer in orientation. How in the hell are you supposed to go ballistic over numbers that represent the smallest of the computer sales worldwide as a lead indicator tword overall marketshare isn't just a stretch - it's a near-miss in violation of shareholder trust. Of course, I will admit that Apple looks like it had a nice run on their holiday sales vs the other disasterous years - it doesn't seem to add up as much as some of the sweeping quotables that are being swirled around the internet. Let's see how they hold up in the long run shall we?

December 14
Not waiting for the dust to settle - the MacMarines are already touting the skewed and marginal statistical glitch from Apple as if it's manna from heaven. How come when the figures don't add up in Apple's favor they seem to nit pick into the ground such reports - then go on a holy march against the people who purveyed the numbers? It seems that when the tide swings the other direction - all the critical eyeballing goes straight into blind-as-a-bat mode. Me? I'll pick any reports apart - particularly when most people in the industry know that Steve is a wunderkind for taking the most trivial if not wholesale skewed data into the language-faca of religious rhetoric. Usually around the time there's going to be a meeting of the choir in the chapel - or MacWorld expo in this case. Think this won't be the case? I've got some benchmarks on the G3 from a dead magazine still lingering around the loft from the last Apple love fest like so much ticker-tape after a parade celebrating "winning" the conflict in Iraq. So far the best soundbite in my relm of operations, is the one in the bbbs from a reader that went along the lines of "I await the shocking truth about the best selling brand in the Apple only stores. It could be a death blow for Wintel".

December 15

Now that it's only a year to the big Y2K scare that everyone has been running into the ground - I figured it's time to not only break open the bubbly, but to burst a few myths that have become fashionable around Apple circles. One - the Mac is immune from the year 2000 while Windows isn't. Uh huh. Well - that's assuming that everyone in the MacJihad camp is well versed in firmware, because it takes one timing circut or line of hard-code to throw any vendor's parts into the relm of desktop paperweight. Lessie - drives from Sony, HD's from Segate and Quantum, Zips from Utah (lord knows don't get me started on the mormons again), peripherals from everyone under the sun, and those pesky ROM BIOS's that aren't flash. Seems like a lot of parts can do as they please when the big 2000 rolls around - which is why everyone in the life-support industries is going apeshit checking their embeded systems. Speaking of those particular systems, if the power company does end up having a wing-ding, I hope Mac users have a Honda generator handy otherwise there's going to be some pretty interresting gloating going on from dark rooms. But that's just the hardware - how about the software? Well it's irony incarnate that while Apple users like to bash the big M and their software - they love to use the same thing we Wintel users use. Wonder if they'll be affected if there's something not fixed from Seattle running on their Macs? How about extensions? The list of software add ons goes on and on - and of course you can check out apple's own site for a nice list of reports warning of potential problems for the new millenium/century/year (and here's a side-note for the idiots out there that are hung up on the 2000/2001 thing. Take a look at a book. Does it start on page "zero"? Does that mean page 500 isn't page 500 but should be 499 instead? Does that mean you should go back to your prof and fess up you didn't write a 100 page term paper? The calender is a book of time - and that's good enough for me to justify why all the parties will be so expensive to attend a year from now.). Now if Apple is warning it's users on it's own website of problems - why all the giggles from the Apple fanbase? Naivity? Idiocy? Or could it be that rule of thumb from Al Franklen used in his latest book about the whole "pseudo certainty" scene. The one where social scientists refer to group dellusions on fraudulent facts being turned into popular conciousness. You know - being a fucking moron?

December 16

MacWeek columnist Rick Ford points out Jobs has turned Apple around into being a hardware company after the final advent of the OS liceses running out. Well aside from the big hit on the obvious charts, it's also a nice footnote for the doomsday clock. While the seriously delluded MacJihadders will still wish for the big day when the Mac OS will take it's serious contender role seriously against Microsoft - it's a futher heads-up why this will not only never happen - but will insure that Apple won't survive into the next decade/century/millenium very far. You see, there's this really big company in Seattle. They don't make hardware (unless you include slapping your name on a mouse "hardware") - but they seem to push a lot of boxes out the door with really high margins under the guise of "software". Pretty kinky eh? Well I don't believe that Apple going all software would actually propel it into sustainability either after NeXT cut it's own throat of relevance by axing it's hardware before it had the time to make NeXTstep run on more than 10% of the Wintel boxes on the market - but still - Mac OS could make for a real nice alternative on Wintel hardware (if it worked on most Wintel boxes) instead of me having to get current on Linux all over again. But since Jobs has determined himself to prove that the Apple II wasn't just a Wozniakian fluke for his own ego - we're not going to see the last jitterbug of hardware from Cuppertino's loins by a long shot. Of course I'd go into detail what that last soundbite really means - but that would blow the next day's sandscrit away now wouldn't it?

December 17

This isn't really going to be that long of a day in of itself, but is actually a plug for checking out the long overdue for an update letters section. In it you'll find one of the most comprehensive guides to one of the biggest blunders Apple ever commited this side of the Macintosh. It is the killing off of the only thing that could have given Apple a serious run against the IBM PC before the cloners decided what they were going to clone in the first place. The Apple II. Now having a site like the ADC doesn't really sound like the place you'd go to hear some complimentary prose about any of their products - but as I've stated before - it's not about bashing things, but the morons building them. In this case it's the fact that the very same morons that killed off one of the neatest and most long-lived computer product of all time are running the show again and will pretty much commit to the same mistakes over and over again. In the past it was making sure that the Apple II would always take a back seat to the Apple III which self-destructed itself before it was turned on for 100 contigious hours, or the overpriced/underpowered Lisa, or the Mac which was for years, overpriced for the fact it didn't really do anything until someone wrote an applicaiton for it. What do all these post-Apple II progeny have in common? They almost killed Apple outright for years and years if it weren't for the fact that the Apple II was still selling and keeping Apple afloat. What's not so well known is how badly Apple - and Steve Jobs personally - wanted the Apple II to go away like some embarrasing mutated offspring that would have been better served to be kept under the floorboards of the rear porch. Lord knows, they certainly treated most of the employees in the Apple II group that way for years - it's small wonder that most people don't really give Apple credit these days. After all - it's small irony that most of the hardcore geeks I know these days, who are NT freaks and sysadmins, were the first to flash code on their latest Apple II GS emulator experiments. Everyone knew Apple had a good thing going - except Apple. Something Apple has adopted as it's new corporate mantra as of late. Anyway, I highly suggest you check out the letters column for the most comprehensive and most foot-noted text about the biggest screw-up from Apple Computer in history. It's probably the best nugget of bibliographic corporate blooper of all-time that doesn't come from a single source. That is - until now.

December 18

The LA Times is already going hardcore curious about all these PCdata reports and soundbites that are flourishing faster than Apple's PR people can say "batch-fax". They take an interresting gander at the fact that in spite of the sales fart of the iMac, Apple's other toys aren't really going into Furby-mode by a longshot. And it's 10% for November figures comes squarely behind Compaq, Packard Bell, HP, and IBM in that order for retail sales. So even with the skewed numbers and all of their "relevancies" it seems that Apple still can't grow a rose out of all that manure. Funny that.

December 19

Well it's nearly the end of another year, and that makes 1.5 for the ADC - and still going strong. Although some pussies suspected of still pimple-popping age made the argument that the win section has a de-facto experation date on it, don't believe it for a second. We'll be covering the death watch for as long as it takes, and with Apple - it won't take too much longer with global (not retail boobies) figures of 4% and business figures of 1% marginwise and falling. Certainly with lead balloon figures like that it's only a matter of time. And since I've still got 2 hours a week to blow exercising my fingers and my writing ability over imbibements, it's not going to let up anytime soon on this end. Besides. If these last 1.5 years have shown anything - it's that it's a hoot to write, an easy research, and brings out the nuttiest behavior from the largest group of loonies on the planet for the rest of the geek-set to enjoy on a daily basis. You think I would give all of this up? To paraphrase Sean Connery - who said it best when muttering about a certain pussy galore. "you must be dreaming".