Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

December 27

Welcome to the year end official nostalga week where I take some more drinks of Sparkling Wine and pour over the nuttiness that presented itself from the MacJihad and how it's probably going to spill over into 1999. FYI: There's two columns this week since the lag was getting too lame due to holiday concerns (hey you host a private party with 10 foot weather balloons, and massive hangovers and see how that cuts into your writing budget!). Just double check the front door or the back issues to get every word from this extended writing jag on this otherwise slow night of imbibed notations. Well even though the site has hit more than 75 weeks of assorted news and rants, Apple seems to have taken the long road to oblivion rather than the power-dive of 1997. That's the good news. The bad news is it's just going to take a lot longer to endure the agony that is the wierdness of Steve Jobs before it passes into the relm of the passe and quaint. In the meantime there's been plenty to note along the way, and more often than not, it's the user base that is truly square in the wierd zone. Off the cuff, I've noted that most of the truly odd behavior is in the various usenet, news chat areas, and my own BBBS (BTW lamer tweaks out there - the extra B is for bullshitting ok dink-brains?). Whether it's the cadre of mission impared MacMarines that invade from time to time to convert everyone like a bunch of J.Witnesses, or worse Mooneys, to the pimple popping pube that decides that a way to make a mark on the world is to spam various chat areas and giggle about it later. Trust me,drinking a lot of water and spraying the neighborhood is more socially accepted. But these observations aside, the MacJihad have proven themselves as a walking contradiction in terms over the last couple of years. Whether it's biting the hands that feed them in the pop press ACTUALLY GIVING APPLE EXPOSURE, or worse, hounding other sites and news sources to stop talking about the real computing and focus on the Mac. I mean how wierd can you get. One instance they're running full-scale attacks on those that Apple sent PR sheets to, and the other is usually devoid of any personal interrest in how poor the state of Mac gaming might be. Suffice it to say that the flames and the oddball spam to date have been not only amusing but a pretty darn good study. I'll probably write a book on it sometime about mass dellusion and consumerism via marketing schemes gone bad soon. In any case, these were the greatest hits of the year, and the details can be found down below.

December 28
Here's something that popped up recently on the MacMarines Mailing list - or as I call it - e-mail from the dammned. It seems that one lone user is trying to prevent a member of the family from returning their iMac because some crucial software is missing from it. The rest of the family is humming away nicely on their Wintels but this card-carrying MacJihadder is convinced that there must be some hodge-podge of software that will prevent all his lobbying efforts from going to shame. This isn't new in the slightest, since many times in the past MacMarines, Evagelists, and other assorted scum have been pointing people away from tools that have the solutions that others want into the hands of Apple for the mere reason of givng Apple some - make that ANY - sales attention from the next of kin because, after all, they dare not keep their religon to themselves and if their own parents - say - got a Wintel - well, you know they wouldn't be able to sleep at night. I'd go on more about this disturbing trend but suffice it to say, it's one thing to invest too much emotionalism into a tool - it's certainly another to afflict others with your disease.

December 29

Hypocracy. If there's no other word that both I hate and summs up the great Apple year of hype it's hypocracy. It can go from Mackido laments about spamming when their own members do the same to the MacMarines who don't advocate hacking web-sites but don't cajole any sense of reason from their own membership rosters when it actually happens to others. Well my personal fave that comes up into the recent news column is also old news that summs up the year quite nicely. That would be of course recent MacMarines whinning about how American Express is ripping off Apple's and Chiat-Day's ideas about the whole Think Different campeign. Now, coming from advertising, I don't have to point out that the damn Bud Frogs are a rip off of an old early 80's Ranier Beer ad to make a point. That point being that there's only so many knee jerk/hack creative ideas out there to make up before everyone is plagerising the same 2 valves per cam-shaft that is the status-quo in advertising. Given the fact that slapping a tagline and some gushy fave face is such an easy thing to do - even I've made it a mainstay of this site to cut down the hours that I devote to it, and to make an ironic gesture. Chiat-Day compromised client-integrety when they let Steve Jobs walk all over the campiegn short of using his own damn voice in the commercials to the point of the MacMarines believing they were the first with the idea. Well here's some "History is Bunk" for ya Marines! Timex beat you to the punch in 1981. If you dig though your old magazines you'll find large faces next to the line keeps on ticking. These included such notables as the man who strapped all the balloons on his chair and went for a ride (shortly before he commited suicide from depression less than 10 years later) and "boomer" the cat that was blown up by bomb disposal police from a mailing snafu. Fact is, sticking someone's pussy on a poster and throwing a line of copy next to it is as old as the 60's (the golden age of advertising - when 50's cheese went out and some kind of message went in. Hence the BBDO groundbreaking VW ads). So in another ironic display of historical revisionsim - hence "bunk" - the Jihad are at it again trying to become experts in sourcing advertising. And you thought they would just make lame claims about the origins about the GUI? Think Again.

December 30

Another relic from 1998 is the idea and the advertising copy line that the iMac is the "internet Mac" and hence - the easiest to set up and get on the internet. Well tell that one to Germany folks - they're still trying to get on. But regional phone system quirks that blow Apple's marketing message all to hell aside, it's a hell of a twist from reality, and a crappy marketing message that fades even in the face of the computer that this column is coming from. The iMac was supposed to be Apple's answer to the NetPC from Microsoft. Of course this whole concept died in spite of what Oracle's chairman - Larry Ellison - wanted. So rather than marry a crippled PC to an outdated and borrowed concept from Redmond and Oracle, Apple decides to take the fashionable approach and market it on the coat-heels of the hot shit word of the last couple of years. The internet. Now that's brilliant marketing people, except for some of the barefaced lies that went along with it. The set-up for one. Aside from the fact that people trying to get on non-standard ISP's have to go searching for the right software, the steps to setup and get online went beyond my own Thinkpad by an order or several. All my software - including the stuff to get on my current domain - was built right in. So was the mouse which is a joystick in the keyboard. So apart from the power supply, turning the thing on, hooking the cardmodem to the wall and going online, IBM to date has the best solution by Apple's yardstick. But the real joke in all this is the fact that really this whole "steps" argument is a collasal ass-grab for making excuses to buy something from Apple in the first place. If they could actually showcase something - ANYTHING - within the Apple relm as a real alternative to the Wintel market, aside from color and the higher price for a low-end machine, then perhaps people might be more willing to invest in Apple tech. But since Apple wants to invent reasons and split hairs instead, don't expect the future to change much for Apple's downward path.

December 31

To mark this date - aside from investing heavily in the next hangover and cramming people into a loft for a view of downtown fireworks in a room festooned with the by-products of various inflatable rave appointments, I made a custom graphic for the front door of the BBBS that differs from the one that is downloadable. Call this one a custom edition for the online chat-set. And while in reality again - these words aren't coming from the actual party scene - it's enough to make me look back at some of the wierdness that has transpired since the chat area was founded. It was actaully begun around November of 1997 after using the same chat engine from Selina Sol on Quark's website to hold up the belagured AOL arm of tech support at Quark. I checked tonight and yep - they're still using it in the sofa threads area at least. Considering that Quark has spent good money on two high-priced geeks to make a chat area alternate for over 6 months now - I don't understand the hold up that would make 2 days of previously installed shareware code so necessary, unless they're still playing Quake at all hours of the day - STILL. Well suffice it to say that Sol's stuff is so nice that I copped another installation for the ADC. It was a nice ride as well on the lousiest of servers. The traffic wasn't a problem for the first 4 months or so, about a few hundred hits a day, perhaps a couple thousand a week. It was about the middle of 1998 that the hits went beyond 1000 a day, and then the real shit hit the fan. We got pop-press links. That effectively nulled the server's capacity from hundreds a day to hundreds a minute. Even for a lone obsolete Sun station - that's just a tad heavy since I'm not the only account on the damn thing. So at Netherworld's request, I shut it down - but that wasn't the only reason for the ADC unplugged scheme. It was a hard job babysitting. At first I would check and gong a few posts a week. Once the traffic spiked on the first pop-press release this increased to daily. When Spencer Kat linked up the ADC, all hell broke loose. So Instead of watching the site crawl - knowing full well that half the posts would be MacJihad lamers I shut it down for personal time reasons as well. Naturally, this caused a minor influx of people gloating that they hacked the site and other assorted nuttiness from people who didn't know dick or the fact that I'd pulled the plug. A few months later after several lame host sites were pro-offered for a new BBBS, Yahoo and RealCable provided the best proving grounds for server load, member tracking, and best of all - BANNING! Yes not only gongs, but BANS! Better yet, with several "founders" on the case, I didn't actually have to sit every day and gong lamer posts and the like. The result is that the ADC BBBS has the highest traffic per-day of any group, and nearly more members than most of the Microsoft sites. What's even more satisfying is really driving the pubecent MacJihad nuts by throwing them out on their ear. That really riles them up. To the point they've made a copycat BBS which has a few messages on it. Sorry you didn't like the party and couldn't keep a civil tongue, you're not going to like playing the pathetic outcast after the activity levels we've got. This may sound like gloating or spite - but what the hell. It's the new year, and it's time to unload some baggage. I invite anyone to check out the goings on and join the party. It's got an even better IQ ratio than the old days. You don't know the fun you're missing out on. Ok I'll stop with the plugs for the rest of the week.........maybe.

January 1

HAPPY NEW YEAR - HOOOOWSSS YOUR HANGOOOOVERRRRR!!!!!????? I'M GOING TO TYPE THIS WHOLE DAY IN ALL CAPS! JUST IN CASE YOUR EYES ARE FULL OF PIEEEEEE!!!!!!! Well now that I've gotten that one out of my system, I've taken a great interrest - scratch that - slight interrest in all the Mac OS only jobs that seem to have sprung up on the MacMarines mailing list and the EvageList over the last year. Ok, who am I kidding - I don't give a fig about some company that is part of the great 1% of businesses that has invested in Mac only tech and has to pedddle it's sorry ass on the internet to get anyone to work the damn machines. It's really pathetic when you think about it. All you have to do is open the paper and lookie - look at all of those Visual Basic and Wintel jobs that are out there to see the envy mode lights just wink on in the average MacJihad brains. It must really steam them up something ferce to see manditory Wintel positions being advertised by the hudreds with not a single "Mac experience prefered" classified to be found. Well - that's what 1% of the business market means folks. Sorry to tell you from the 99% side of the fence. Ok I'm not sorry to tell you, but I can fake it really well.

January 2

This is a bit of an advance on new news from Connectix and InsideApple.com (via the BBBS) that has already hit the convention floor by the time you read this - but since that coverage is for next week, here's the debate that has already made the rounds of the ADC. There's an emulator that is supposed to come out for the Mac that emulates something the Wintel people have been doing for most of 1998 - which is - play Playstation games (oft refered to as PSX games). This little wunderkind of a rumor surfaced early on when PSYCHE and other notables made their quasi-legal, usually very ILLEGAL splash on the Wintel side. Now the Mac people have been waiting for an equivelent because here's something the Mac gameheads (all of them since the Mac has dick for games) have overlooked in the great scheme of things. Sony and every other console maker doesn't like emulators. They also don't like ROM copiers, and games being played on non-brand hardware. Nintendo spent tons trying to keep a mere cartridge adapter from plugging into Nintendo console systems for more than 6 years just because the cart plugged into IT - not a nintendo device. This unit was called the Game Genie and was harmless enough because without a Nintendo to play it on, it was a paperweight. Now with emulators, people are getting really pissed. So far in Next-Generation magazine, Sony is being polite in saying they aren't interrested in giving away the farm to any org that would make their software run on non-Sony products. Here's the kicker though. Even if a Mac emulator does arrive - it's hardly going to pass unoticed from the BIOS ROM briggade. Unlike the IBM BIOS that was cracked by Compaq legally - which later was scooped up by Pheonix tech (sound familiar on your startup screens Wintel fans?), Sony has many, MANY lines of legality backing up their tech as does SEGA with it's security schemes and BIOS, as of course does Nintendo with it's lockout chips. The reason is to keep software running on their own damn systems that they paid to create. Now if some pissant prarie pup of a thrid party thinks that SCSE isn't going to be VERY annoyed at people avoiding PSX consoles to play it's software - and that it's not a question of IF the lawsuits are going to fly but WHEN - then you've got to ask that ever famous question from Apple. Think Different. By the way if you want to tell Sony about any of these interresting developments, SCSE's corporate headquarter Fax number is 650-655-5578. Feel free to forward any press releases from Connectix or any other illegal or quasi-legal emulators that require propriatary ROM BIOS' from Sony. I'm sure they and their legal department will be interrested.