Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

February 21

Two sources this week have chimed in that the Best Buy deal with Apple is all but dead. AppleInsider.com is looking over the matter with an uncertain conclusion, and MacOS World has decared it officially dead for all intensive purposes. The ADC would be on standby for more offical word from the likes of MacWeek.com or Cnet, but given the feedback from the BBBS members who have been checking out locations coast to coast, there's no sign that the Apple deal is anything BUT dead. Certainly after touting that the "best selling" iMac was being retailed from a location with a 1 in 3 consumer purchase ranking, don't expect Apple to be devoting a brag-alert URL anytime soon announcing that they've once again fucked up. But given the fluff pieces from the likes of "Barney Hadden" I thought I'd have to chime in whilst doing a midnight jig in the graveyard of yet another failed Apple effort. To date, Barney (like his purple dino cousin) and others are citing the ineffectiveness of the sales staff, the management, and just about everyone else on planet Earth for dropping the ball. They of course blow one important party to this scenario. Apple. Chirst Almighty - there's no way Apple would be responsible for over-extending the relm of the retailer away from moving boxes of product out the door. No way. Apple couln't possibly be faulted for requesting advance hand-holding, compromising retail formulas, blowing the specs of low-wage employees that would require "training", or basically everything else that is foreign to a successful retail enterprise. No no no. It's Best Buy's fault for ignoring the "special" requirements for making sure that iMacs get the same exposure as the dozens of Wintel machines that walk out the door everyday without Macintosh "Candy Stripers" walking in and tidying things up. Well I gots news for the Apple fanbase in "La La" land. If one thing more than the usual Apple death-shuffle can be laid into the responsiblity column, the whole Jihad can step right up for a big old slice of humble pie. It's one thing to be badgered by a company responsible for creating a loss-leader in inventory bloat. It's another for the damn fanbase to be harassing the staff, going on a store to store tour and hounding the customers, going online and creating a malestrom of bad PR for a company that wasn't aware that they were going to be the feeding frenzy for a nationwide lunkhead-fest. Between Apple and it's whiney cadre of morons, I'm surprised that Best Buy put up with this shit for as long as they did. In all practicality, the mark-downs and the bad case of units gathering dust - combined with a new request of taking on 5 times the inventory for the sake of a bizzare color scheme - probably had more to do with the affair coming to an end. But in the back of my mind I'm always open to wonder if Apple was only a partial player in an open retail tragedy that has the MacJihad's fingerprints all over it. Certainly if the later party is to blame, I'd have to thank them once again for helping to drive a stake in the heart of the company that they've been gushing over for all these years. Kudos indeed!

February 22
With a nod to the current cover art - the one displaying the Mug of the current Gov of Minnesota, Jesse "The Mind" Ventura - it seems that the MacJihad have once again confused their scope of reality - with the real deal. At MacTimes.com, Charles Moore takes the concept of lobbiest scumbag to a whole new level. Let's take a look: Responding to our MacTimes news story about Patrick Ferrin, the design engineer employed by the State of Minnesota who may lose his job for the misdemeanor of managing to save the citizens of Minnesota more than $250,000 over the last four years by doing Computer Aided Design work on a Mac instead of a government-issue PC, a reader who identifies himself simply as "Bumper" made this suggestion: "Could some kind soul find the e-mail address for the guv. of MN, Jesse "The Mind" Ventura, and post it for a little fun and info. - Great idea! No - more like BAD IDEA! This pompous little story has made the Jihad's news headlines for one reason - and one reason only. It was on Apple.com. Normally the stuff that fluff is made of wouldn't make a fart on the media landscape. Fluff in this instance being defined as - "another MacBoob refuses to adapt learn - or otherwise make a necessary concession to save his fucking job". But naturally some sob-story like this is great to spark some kind of religious zeal from the followers and make them want to write all sorts of marketing sucker diatribes to whomever might actually spend more money on a product that Apple's supposed to be selling - as opposed to unpaid workers. Call me wierd, but I still have this impression that marketing, sales and product-pushing is the domain of people who are paid for doing such things - at the company that's making the damn things. Anyway, throwing this bit of logic out the window, let's take a look at the target for this call for the blood of the great white northern infidel, and take a gander at what he stands for - and what his reactions might be to such a bizzare cadre of morons showing up on his doorstep. First - a nationwide appeal for computer appropriations in Minnesota would be more than a little suspicious - and largely irrelevent. Because having people from California spout off to the most pragmatic gov in Minnesota history on public policy might not only come off as half-assed, but wholly antagonistic. If this sounds a bit cryptic, try this idea on for size. You're the new gov who just won a victory against bozos who pushed public policy on the backs of taxpayers in Minnesota ala kickbacks and pay-for-play members who lobbied for various commerical concerns. Ridding a backlash against fat-cats asking for concesions and special treatment in the govenor's mansion, you win an election from the unlikely relm of independent voter affiliation. Now you're having a good old time telling the status-quo in poltics to shut-the-fuck-up and are actually pushing reforms from a pragmatic sense as opposed to one swayed by commercial interrests. Suddenly, some idiotic boobs from OTHER states - begin lobbying YOUR state on how they are supposed to spend their dollars on computers - particularly when those computers cost more - and do less than the one's that you've already got in place - and are running just fine thank-you-very-much. What do you think Jesse is going to do in the face of wackos from foreign constituints playing neo-fringe lobbiest poltics on his watch? I'd say that the first word would be "body" and the last word would be "slam". I'll be the one looking to mop up the blood from the mat of this fiasco.

February 23

The Arlo Guthrie fanatics are at it again. This time they're singing a different tune however with the song being the Apple tech-support blues. At wits&bits, Steve Wood pines for the long lost hopes of a working 17 inch monitor that he got from Apple that doesn't work - and how fantastically bad Apple's service and support policies are. In his tome he notes that Apple has been "incredibly arrogant and unhelpful" and that the unhelpfulness hasn't been remedied by anyone in the "Tell Steve" department at Apple's website. Besides the page having it's online and offline moments, he concludes that the whole mess is "just more Apple smoke and mirrors with no real attempt to solve Apple's growing customer service problems. There has been no further contact from Apple". People - if I've ranted once - I've ranted a million times - Apple no longer has the size, employee rosters, or money to spend wet-nursing the volume of problems that it's unleashed on the suckers that actually bought their merchandise. Here's a little tip however - be warry when buying anything "refurbished" - since often times it's an intermittent problem that can't be solved with the usual-repair facitlities of a niche-computer manufacturer. If you're stupid enough to actually pay for barely working hardware with an Apple logo on it, you deserve the tech-support hell that you've signed on with. Particularly when Apple's support arm is in the practice of the following: I worked in austin customer relations, and know the situation all too well... if you try and "help" the customer, it's looked down upon... REALLY! the old apple arrogance is alive and well in austin... much of it stems from "(name deleted)" who runs the place... he moved up the ranks on "disservice"... less cost... . Suffice it to say - Apple's putting shareholders above customers once again. And the only way to do that is to continue cutting corners to create artificial profits - rather than doing it the old fashioned way - like by selling computers or anything.

February 24

For a classic romp through history - you can't do worse than some of the classic-pop-media sites. This one came through the BBBS, via an east coast book reviewing concern (ok I lost the link - shoot me - it's lost-the-link seasion), which took a quote from Jef Raskin of former Apple fame and his take on the Steve Jobs inventing the Macintosh scenario that's been validated by books on Apple as well as numerious articles. Smelling a scoop - this literary magazine thought they were on to something. They weren't. Because although Jef Raskin began the Mac project - it went another direction entirely. Here's a quick rundown on the whole mess. The Macintosh group was started as an R&D project to faciliate the building of a cheap - like under 1000 dollars cheap - small and portable computer - hence the term "information appliance". The eventual Macintosh group was Jobs' domain after Jef resigned in disgust from Steve's boardroom reassignment from the Lisa group - and the direction, purpose, and product were radically different from anything Jef Raskin envisioned ergo - The Mac, was only called Macintosh by name - not by product, design, price, theory, infuence or anything else Raskin had in mind. Oh yes, I suppose the information appliance moniker was still there but - again - who cares? I thought it was cute that Jef was keeping things murkey by "debunking myths". Uh - huh. I guess Steve Jobs shooting his own mouth off on Truimph of the Nerds must be another source of those "myths". Jeez Jef is quite the grudge-bozo. The lines were pretty much drawn this way (warning simplification from 4 sources at the ready - Jobs, the Jouney is the Reward, Accidental Empires, The Little Kingdom, Apple). Jef Raskin starts the group - one of the first R&D groups as the Apple II nets enough income for the board to start thinking in that direction. Within a year, Steve Jobs visits Xerox Parc after a stock swap with Xerox around the relm of 11 million dollars of Apple stock. Jobs gets his audience and brings along other developers like Bill Atkinson who watches the ALTO demo so closely that Bill's nose is touching the screen looking at the display. Jobs - by his own and other reports - sees Display Postscript (John Warnock's stuff - before he bails and founds Adobe), Ethernet, Email, Laser Printing (w/Postscript), Object Based programing languages, and the GUI metaphor. Within 2 years (1980/1) Xerox unveils the Star, which shifts several programs into high gear. VisiOn from the makers of Visicalc, Microsoft begins to sweat when VisiOn is shown running on a basic IBMPC while the Lisa is in development with more than a couple of people from Xerox now in the Apple Lisa group. Microsoft also grabs people from Xerox. The Lisa team gets fed up with Jobs and has him removed. Jobs takes over Jef's team and starts to downsize the Lisa project to a cheaper form. Cheaper than 10K sure - but a hell of a lot more than 1K. Jef bails. Microsoft continues working on the Interface Manager, buys a Xerox Star - rips the stuffing out of it - and in tandem begins to support the Mac Developer teams with their largest third-party development contract. At the same time Digital Research is playing with GEM, Amiga - a bunch of Warner Atari offshoots begins their stuff, and some wackos are telling Commodore about GEOS. The upshot between the survivors - Apple rips off people and stuff from Xerox and rolls it into the now irrelevant Jef Raskin group after Jobs is out of the Lisa group. Microsoft rips off EVERYBODY, VisiOn, Xerox (people and the Star dissection team), and of course get's a feel for the Mac toolbox while being a legal and licensed developer for Apple (this is in order of importance and chonology since the Mac group at Microsoft was the LAST thing to be instated in the timeline). I'm always pet-peeved by the Microsoft rips off Mac crap because there was a whole lot of GUI going on - from everyone except Tandy for all intensive purposes. Sure Microsoft was interrested in the Mac development tools and the Mac scene - but Microsoft was also interrested in VisiOn, The ALTO, the Xerox STAR, and of course the Lisa. The fact that Mac fans can't even remember the damn Lisa always gives me a good belly-laugh.

February 25

During the rant against Apple's tech support it's been noted by some of the more niave Jihad members that sloppy tech support is just an aftereffect of working with computers. Oh how wrong - how very wrong. It's akin to Mac people creating a blind spot regarding daily crashes and the like - as if computing is unable to become something larger than the Mac experience. Well, with tech support - Apple is also far behind the curve. Harking back to mid 1998, I can recall my own experience with IBM after knocking a Merlot into my laptop - a nearly full glass in fact. I dabbed as much of the offending grape-juice off as possible, but the keyboard already began acting like an epiliptic, and there was far too much wine not accounted for to think that it was going to be a simple matter. I left the laptop front-forward down on my desk and retired. I woke up and found several warning sounds on boot, a non-functioning CDrom dive, and a very dead keyboard. The hard disk indicated that it was sane - as did the CPU and memory so I knew I wasn't doomed as far as data and backups. The fun began when I took out something I paid 70 bucks for - an insurance program from a third-party represented by IBM in the packing materials. I filled out the material and activated it over a year ago and didn't think about it since. It allows for replacement and repair - no questions asked - for theft, fire, owner or third party dammage. I called the 1-800 number that weekend, and within 12 hours had a Fed Ex box with packing instructions to be overnighted to Memphis' repair center. After 72 hours, I had a tracking number phoned back to me and a "paid" invoice for 500 bucks worth of repair for an el-cheapo circa 1996 clearance laptop that cost me 1400.00. Not bad, and aside from a BIOS update for the year 2000, I strongly suspect that they replaced my CDrom with another that is twice as fast (at least it's behaving twice as fast). The 70 bucks lasts 3 years, and apart from a modem driver that needed all of 3 minutes of replacement from IBM's website (the rep at 4am Sunday gave me the URL), there's been no problems with the tech - and even less problems with the support when I needed them. It's only a small reason I just wince and grin at the same time when I hear the latest horror story from Macintouch.com or the usual fodder of terror from the Apple buyer in the field. Think we all suffer with tech-support problems? Think Again.

February 26

Mactimes.com - another amusing one of those deserving of an MST3K treatment. Enjoy - I'm in italics. by Mark Anthony Collins

Many people who have been fighting for so long for Apple because it wouldn't stand up for itself have gotten into an antagonistic relationship with Apple as a resort. We feel that we have to tell Apple what they need to do. In the past, maybe that was so. But Steve's in charge now. You can now sit down and relax. Everything is being taken care of. Much like Steve Jobs took care of NeXT, it's users, it's retail sales and support, and it's developers. No need to worry with a track record like that, I'm sure. Yes, the situation at Best Buy and CompUSA needs work The understatement of the month. You, as a consumer, see the "horror stories" coming all across the web. However, you do not see Apple in the background stealthfully working on the problem. But not nearly as artfully as Apple fucking it up with creating additional retail headaches like divided product lines - for ONE product, channel loading, harassment over their sales model and nefarious training programs. How many of you knew the iMac was coming before Apple announced it? How many of you knew what efforts Apple was doing to make the iMac a reality? I thought so I'm confused here since Apple.com has pages devoted to it's designers and devlopers on the project, and MacWeek.com talked about the iMac since before January of 1998. Either this guy is insulting his cadre of Apple fans - or isn't aware that even the ADC knew about the iMac/NetMac since Jobs put Larry Ellison on the board of directors. Could be that old Apple arrogance again - or he's just a fucking moron - a pompous one at that. No person or company can fix absolutely everything at once. However, they can focus on one task at a time, and fix each problem successfully. Or they can be like Apple and create 3 problems for everyone they attempt to solve. Worried about marketshare? Many people have counted Apple out because they haven't competed with Wintel machines in the following areas: marketing, price, compatibility, and "keyword features". Don't worry. Really. Relax. Take a deep breath. Get ready for a ride. The ADC has been taking notes on the "ride" for nearly 2 years now, and trust me it's going to be one hell of a ride indeed. The first dip alone will make the Beast in Cincinatti look like a kiddie coaster. Apple is working on some serious marketing strategies. I have no idea what they are since the MarketSource Rep I spoke to could not say anything. However, he did assure me that Apple's plans in the Marketing area would put the Windows 95 blitz to shame. I'm not talking just TV advertising. I don't even know what form this will take. However, it will be big. It may even be mammalian... The ADC has noticed the URL www.mammals.com being refrenced by Apple - and still openly wonders how much wierder Apple can get. Suffice it to say that with the Win 95 rollout still unaccounted for - with estimates as high as half a billion dollars - it's more than a little speculative chest beating for Apple to even come close to this - regardless of what Steve Jobs and Lee Clow of Chiat-Day might wet dream about People questioned Apple when they dropped OpenDOC, CyberDog, QuickDraw GX, PowerTalk, Mac Clones, Copland, etc. People demanded that Apple adopt BeOS, PReP, CHRP, Windows APIs for Mac, MacOS for Intel, the Apple Media Player, and much more. They keep second-guessing Apple. They think they know what Apple should do. However, only Apple sees the "whole" picture. And what a picture it is! I wager that I only have 10% of the pieces, but it's already looking awesome. Considering the littany of R&D projects that went into the shredder to the tune of billions of dollars that's been forgotten - I don't doubt his 10% of info. Let's see the other percentages that have eaten major amounts of R&D dollars at Apple - and resulted in dick - ranging from the Aquarius chip project and it's 15 million dollar CRAY toy for engineers to develop on, to the Jaguar project, to Pink, to PIE, to the Newton, the Pippen, the now dead-Claris, Kalledia, various Sun workstation projects, Apollo workstation projects - resulting in the "barely more stable than plutonium" Mac IIfx, MIPS workstation projects, and many - many more. These aren't instances of the customer base second guessing Apple - this is Apple second guessing Apple. However, there are still those who feel they need to do something. Mac users going into CompUSA and Best Buys stealthfully and pose as shoppers. That does no good. It does more harm. However, if you do happen to want to buy something, then by all means do so. However, make sure that you be very careful. Apple is working hard to reach these people. Your "fanaticism" can work against Apple. Here astonishingly I agree. However it's hard to take him seriously when he then falls over himself giving a checklist on how to "do the right thing" in these very same stores. If he'd stuck to "go there and buy shit - and then leave", then I'd have nothing to say.

I'd have to epologue here and mention that the draft here is pared down from the usual repeat-speak that infests most Jihaddian diatribes. In no less than 5 places he reminds the reader to not worry about the Best - Buy and CompUSA situation but then spends at least 70% of the peice talking about Apple perceptions and fiascos that are wholly unrelated. Otherwise known as getting caught off-focus, or digressing. He concludes by the atypical Apple modesty of how this is all "thinking different" and the usual littany of sophest crap. I've already railed on the metaphysical implications of taking advertising too seriously, so I'll take a different page than those from the MacJihad, and not create a sense of Deja Vu. I'll leave that to the Denver Broncos.

February 27

There's a whole lot of really good crap coming down the pipe for Seybold from Adobe in the mass-media - and most of it has Quark squarely in the crosshairs. The inital reports have already been hinted here and in the various newsites to date in the form of K2 otherwise known as InDesign, otherwise known as the Quark-killer. Before going into the meat of the matter - let me interject - that unbenownst to just about everyone in America, Quark has more than one product (XPress). It just brings a smile to my face that all of Quark's other products have failed so badly that even the New York Times can't say "QuarkXPress-killer". Not so much a digression - just a segue that makes me giggle at the keyboard. Back to the pre-Seybold tease from Adobe and the New York Times take on it specifically. As far as XPress fans, company history, my internal knowledge of Quark and it's products - there's only one thing I have to say about all this...Quark is dead. The transition to XPress 4.0 hasn't been all that spiffy if you've tracked MacWeek.com or other sites like Seybold etc - or even if you track Quark.com's chat areas (like sofa threads). It's been "ok" for some "a nightmare" for others. I can't really go into intimate detail - but suffice it to say - what the media knows, is the proverbial tip of the big ice-cube that sunk the titanic. With Quark getting ready for XPress 5.0 - Quark really hasn't gotten out of it's "transition" from it's 3.X line. This is the WORST time for Quark to be hit with a newcomer since lots (and I mean LOTS) of customers who use Quark are getting tired of the whole mess. Speaking of fans - there might be "2" diehards out there - but on the whole Quark hasn't exactly been placating the customer's best interrests - and that's not even a secret opinion out there. Unlike Apple's disaster - Quark users have been more hostage ladden than anything else. If they found a cheaper solution that WORKED BETTER, Quark knows it would have a massive mess on it's hands. Adobe isn't exactly unaware of this either. There's been other stories about Adobe's push into training pre-press hutts you name it. BTW: Here's a nugget that the "times" missed. K2? It can read and export XPress format files. That in of itself is making people at 1800 Grant Street shit bricks enough to build a house. An Adobe house perhaps?