Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

January 24

Douglas Adams as reported by the rogues gallery of the bbbs, notes a minor tiff emerging from Doug twords the legions of the MacJihad. Seems at titanic.com, there's quite a little expose on how to piss off an author who is otherwise sympathetic to Apple but is at the same time quite critical of Apple's ability to succeed in the marketplace. Take this bombshell for instance, "I am not going to sacrifice other people's money, energy and livelihoods to do Apple's job for them. If Apple had been better at doing that job then this problem would not exist. And let me say right away, that while I am a great fan of Apple's technology, I have been very saddened and frustrated by the company itself. If you want to understand exactly what Apple has squandered over the years, how they have almost systematically set about alienating their developers, their distributors and their users through a mixture of arrogance, greed and incompetence, then you could do a lot worse than read Jim Carlton's book, which those people I know who work for Apple (or used to work for Apple - everybody I know bar one has resigned or been fired) say is devastatingly accurate". Wow Apple fans! Actually putting blame where it's deserved and telling Apple to get it's shit together as a rationale twords game development! What a concept! I particularly like the reference to Carlton's book which is going to make an appearance soon in the biblio section (granted I'm WAY behind in that particular update - but now that it's topical, count on it later this week). Suffice it to say that if more Mac OS fans were realists, or at least had a clue what the computer industry was like (trust me it's not anything like the end-user experience), and took note of all the griping going on from Apple centric former company employees (including ME), then you might find them a little less tenacious or blind - but rather more pragmatic. Speaking of which - here's a little cross-over that made me REALLY take notice of the mayhem surrounding the Wintelishness of this title - Adams speaks again - " We started out developing for both platforms. In fact we started out using mTropolis for game authoring, which as you probably know is a Mac product with a runtime version for Windows. Gradually it became clear that mTropolis v1.0 wasn't going to do the job, and though version 2.0 was promised, we couldn't risk it. Thank goodness we didn't. mTropolis 2 was finally delivered just a couple of weeks ago - eighteen months late - along with the announcement that it was to be discontinued.". Now THIS is rich. Only because I was on the front lines of the company that caused this little fiasco. You don't have to be John Elway dancing in the endzone to imagine my verbal response to this, because it was a mixture of clerical venacular and human excriment. After watching Quark Inc., have this particular title for lunch prior to banning it like the neutron bomb, I only had to guess which developers might be hit from the whole fiasco. Well only Douglas' detective "Dirk" could have put the hollistic eye on this one, because I was blown away. On the other hand it could just be karma, and lord knows - Steve Jobs has been pushing his to the brink with the marketplace and we now see the follies that result. So long - and thanks for all the fish.

January 25
Don Crabb, always a favorite follower of delusional behavior (next to "dear steve"), pines further on what Microsoft is up to and how it might swing a vote of confidence twords Apple....or something. He made a brief giggle into a full-blown editorial for MacWeek.com on the whole - nearly as dull as the Clinton trial - Microsoft DOJ mess. Putting his observations and speculations squarely into the boring column, it made this writer wonder out loud if he got himself a lobotomy shortly after the Steve Jobs/Bill Gates suck-up fest where the almighty Steve himself touted that "in order for Apple to succeed, it's not necessary for Microsoft to fail". Well with that duh-ism out of the way, it's only fair to futher note that if Microsoft has to abandon the Mac OS in order to recoup the losses from a DOJ upset - it's going to kill Apple outright. If you don't think Microsoft productivity apps are important, just ask Steve how NeXT fared without them. Suffice it to say that Don abstains keeping his blowhole shut in leau of admitting he's just another MacJihadder who cares little for the big picture. No matter just how that picture may end up being an early grave for Apple Computer. Keep it up Don - the ADC needs more people like you.

January 26

According to Macintouch, the waffish pleas of the Microsoft intolerant MacJihad have been heard in Redmond Washington. After months of Gates bashing - they now find themselves deprived of a title that helps the Mac OS from having any net-worth in all those entry-level educational markets. Encarta for MacOS is dead. Long live the Wintel version. Now I'm not saying I really hold much net-worth for educationalware like some school districts might, but I think it could be the rock before the avalanche. It's a little redundant to point out again what Apple's future would be, missing a few more Microsoft applications, but it's also tedious hearing time and time again how "evil" Microsoft is for merely existing on Apple's application line-up and then hear writers complaining when those very same applications vanish. For Microsoft it's certianly damned if you do - damned if you don't. For Apple it's damned if we keep hearing anti-Microsoft advocacy from the user base, double damned if we end up with a few more empty spaces on the software shelves. But to expand beyond this oft-cited argument is to go beyond the obvious Apple doomsday scenario. If Microsoft blows away it's Mac OS support groups, it's only going to become the starting pistol on the mad-dash by developers running away from Apple like the plaugue. I mean - lord knows - it's bad enough as it is (see Jan 24). The problem with writing predictions like this, is that prior evidence shows that this will probably happen pretty darn soon. Given the current ADC track record, I only wonder why I'm not being paid for this - or given a position as a corporate analyst at some stock shop somewhere. Course that's ego talking, but I wouldn't say it if this site wasn't 75% on target.

January 27

Apple flips and flops on the Super Bowl. This tirade is a bit behind the times, but I'm playing catch-up so I'll try to layout the course of events and what they may indicate in the broad scope of things. First - in mid January, Apple makes a big to-do about it's 2 (count-em) 2 SuperBowl commercials that it will show during the big game. Then about the 3rd week of January, a scant week before those commercials are supposed to actually air - Apple announces only to Fox that it needs both of those slots sold off. Reason are not given - so it's time to begin speculation. Well this site provides pointers to AdWeek after it's found by ADC BBBS members to MacWeek.com and all hell breaks loose with Apple being tight lipped while other latecomers like Yahoo start follow-up articles (I'm not convinced I tipped them off - but the timing and URL linked in newbites was suspicious within 6 hours at best). At the end of the week, Apple announces it will in fact run 1 (count it) 1 slot instead of the two it tried to sell-off, quelling the whole shennanagins about the 2 slotter with the pitch that it's going to showcase the infamous and otherwise cryptically forgetable HAL commercial. The HAL commercial ends up being not only microcosmic in rationale, but questionable in even being a point of contention to the Mac's infalability to the year 2000 (it isn't). Suffice it to say, Apple making sweeping techie rationalizations of infalability is much the same as making sweeping generalatizations about speed. Y2K - meet ByteMark. ByteMark - meet Y2K. Putting the obvious future media questions - about how long Apple's argument is going to be proven bunk - aside, I have a much wierder bone to pick. Namely why did Apple go from 2 schduled ads - to a selloff attempt - to running one? I mean sure people compared the Super Bowl's showing to Apple's 1984 appearance - but I didn't expect to find the same behind the scene attempted selloff for a one-time showing to be part of that nostalga. How's this for open speculation? During that week where Apple flip/flopped, I got a gander of the two commercials that were being run for about 2 weeks - before they were pulled off the air in several markets - of the candy iMacs introduction. If you didn't get a look they were both blattent rip-offs of the recent BBDO inspired VW campeign commecials "flower" and "UFO". Now aside from these commercials holding some major trademark and copyright titles to their names - as well as good creative from the agency in question that used to do Apple's own commercials (ironically enough), Chiat-Day asumed that they could just rip them off lock stock and barrel - even using the same music that was painfully aquired by VW's ad representatives. The iMac spots didn't even attempt to be creative - rather they sought the ever-knee-jerk attempt to ride the coat-tails of a successful product (the VW beetle), with their own "fashionable product". So we find two highly suspect commercials based on a blattent knock off of another company's commericals - and - two Super Bowl slots suddenly being dropped around the same time that the spots were dropped from general rotation. Now I'm not certain that the two incidents are related, but given the exposure and the timing of the fiasco - I'm certainly open to wonder. Did someone get pissed off at the VW knock-off ads, tell Apple to knock it off, causing Apple to withdraw the slots that they purchased for the big-game, causing one of the slots to be retained due to low ratings demand (what do you expect from a blowout against the Falcons), causing Apple to back-fill it with a cryptic and otherwise cloudy markteing message? And this is the stuff that the MacJihad are fanboying it up at the MacMarines and other fansites with phoney testimony about cheering crowds around the bar for Apple? Somebody PLEASE wake me up when the bullshit is over - it's already requiring me to buy a set of waders.

January 28

Speaking of advertising the real problem with Steve Jobs and his micromanaged Lee Clow of Chiat-Day efforts is still the ever bizzare and outdated "let's compare ourselves to the competition". Now I've beaten this horse to flatline before but it came up again when I read the words (at OSopinion "I think" I've screwed up my memory on this one) "What Mac zealots really want is IBM back. When IBM was big, there was this wonderful dualistic worldview. You had Apple on one side (read, God) and IBM on the other (read, Satan...more about these religious metaphors later)." The reason you find ads like this as well as observations like this is because the competitor syndrome starts right at the top - Steve Jobs needs an enemy - always. It's this particular Jihad that has not only cropped up in it's dated advertising - but on the show floors time and time again. And not just at Apple mind you. Whether it's NeXT vs Sun, Apple vs IBM, Apple vs Wintel towers, Apple vs Wintel laptops - and most pathetic - Apple vs Dell (with the CEO making an appearance in the middle of a target. What's sad is not only the fact that they constantly give someone else airtime, but spark the fires of zelotry in the userbase that we at the ADC know so well. Apple unlike most of the industry - just - can't - go - it - alone. They can't showcase their solutions like Microsoft or IBM does in their ads with mind-blowing sucess. They can't showcase their product in real-world terms instead leaving it up to asthetics and misdirected arguments of an esoteric (and I'm not talking specs) nature. Most importantly, and the biggest mistake Apple has made, they can't show the product for what it's good for in everyday use. Perhaps instead of asking about the amount of cords on the imac in the majority of it's rollout ads, perhaps actually showing what the internet looks like on the screen would help. How about users actually using the damn thing? Either that's an embarrasing way to showcase the CPU's bottlenecks, or perhaps it's just too obvious and knee-jerk for the people at Chiat-Day's conference table. I suspect Lee Clow for constantly blowing the obvious off due to the higher-ground concepts that keeps Nissan in their till. Car's after all have gotten pretty dull and sundry arguments are the de-regur standard. After all - the last time I saw practical ads about the damn thing that prevented the continual comparrison game, they were from BBDO about the powerbooks. They spiked a sales surge that always exceeded Apple's ability to make them. I guess results like that are too much for Steve Jobs/Lee Clow to ask for.

January 29

There's a minor notation that there were two letters from German MacOS users running amok around the likes of MacWeek.com and other news-sites. One was a legitamate compaint one of those from a peition of German Mac OS fans, which was noted here, and the other about a week thereafter which was spurious in nature. The irony is that both of the letters in question claimed the same problems, from the same types of users, and - whoduthunkit - both got about the same response from Apple. The first got a rep from Apple Germany to do some spin control which resulted in diddly/squat squared by the cosign of dick. Naturally the problems are still there - and the users are still pissed off - real users or otherwise. The fact that MacWeek took the time to try to defend itself from being pulled in by the second letter is beyond wierd - let alone other people's reactions and speculation. Because in the end what you have is a bad case of splitting hairs, and everyone involved missing the big picture. Apple has lost the Fatherland for all intensive purposes. Whose next from the European retreat? France?

January 30

I was debating between making a retort about another columnist who discovered the ADC or finding something else to write about. Mind you, I usually enjoy using my bandwith to engauge in petty disputes, but some disputes are too damn petty when the authors involved are beyond lame - or are otherwise a total abject PR shill for Apple that I can't bring myself to waste more than two sentances on the matter. Suffice it to say that the author is a member in the BBBS, and is available for abuse and taunts whenever he actually decides to dine on his foot rather than food. In the real-news file, Connectix got a reprive from it's lawsuit in question via a Judge who recinded the cease-and-desist portion of the legal fireworks. The upshot is that Connectix may have won a legal battle - but they have now insured it's own death. What-ever dammages Sony were seeking of the trademark, patent, and copyright infringments were probably too horrible to imagine. Now that they can alay the cost of dammages caused by a product released to the general public - and you can pretty much wave bye-bye to Connectix. For prior evidence of this scenario you can look to the tome and the saga of Nintendo and Tengen in David Sheff's "Game Over". Within that particular mess, Nintendo cornered Tengen on a copyright and trademark blitz involving the game Tetris. The game had been on the shelves for months via Tengen, and when Nintendo won that little lawsuit in question it required: damages, an inventory of code by the developers and their computers, all copies to be removed from warehouses, and all copies removed from the shelves. On top of that there was a monitary penalty sought on the cost of all copies that sold up untill that time that the game was recalled. The upshot? Well - that's easy! See anything by the company Tengen around anymore? Seen anything for nearly 10 years? Guess what Connectix just did by not with-holding themselves from distributing a product already in the legal cannon barrel. Guess what this site is called.