Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

October 5

I've been bashing Apple a ton - and - loving it, but I'd like to clue the Jihad about something they gasped in terror at the MacWorld circus a few months ago. When Apple announced they'd go with Microsoft on the web-browser end of things, the faithful went nuts thinking that Netscape had been slighted under sympathies deserving of an underdog. An underdog that not only controls the browser and net-server software market, but made off with something that Microsoft has paid for. The real reason I like to bash the Jihad so much is that they have no sense of irony. Most of them have no clue that Netscape used so much code that was owned by the university that Marc Anderson attended when he and other students made Mosaic, that Mosaic itself blanched when booted-up and alerted professors that there were two copies of Mosaic present on the computer - even when the other copy of Mosiac was actually Netscape's Navigator. That didn't stop Marc from building a company on the backs of the school. In fact, if you want to know how much of a "ripoff" Microsoft's Internet Explorer is of Netscape, you only have to talk to the people at Spyglass technologies. They paid for and secured the rights to Mosaic, and then established a license to Microsoft which while giving away their browsers for free, have been sending cash to Spyglass and the university for using Mosaic code. If you don't buy this fact, take a look at the credits in Explorer's "about" window. The fact is, Microsoft legitemately has been paying for browser technology, while Netscape has been using identical code for years without so much as a thank-you to the people that own it. Considering that the real rip-off artists here, have control of over 60% of the desktops out there surfing the web, and are considered underdogs by the MacJihad only makes me smile everytime I see them shaking their tiney little fists at Microsoft and their "unfair and unoriginal" grand-daddy of web browsers.

October 6
I thought I could give the bashing of the current Apple marketing efforts a rest, but the fact is - after seeing the print material and the outdoor advertising - I just have to perform an encore. In each of the examples of work is a giant photo blow-up of one of the personalities in the television commercial. The redundancies tells me that each estate or personality has given up multiple-rights usage to the use of their image, which is different from single-use which obviously is much cheaper. The other fact is that given the size and scope of this campeign, it's going to piss off more people than a single method of exposure. In fact, given the exploitation angle of famous people that carry a lot of emotional baggage and worth with the general public, the 50 foot high visage of Ghandi hawking computers will probably leave an aftertaste far longer than it would have done if it was in the confines of 60 seconds. This is not a good thing. In fact, it's already so ironically bad, that again - Don Crabb of MacWeek - has come out against the spot as egostistical fluff. The fact that everyone should have a double helping before October is over, means that I'll be sure to highlight this faux-pas in action for November. Probably using the same line Don used. Think different? Think again! Thank you Don Pardo.

October 7

The results from Seybold are back and it's surreal as usual for Apple. Within all the gregarious pushes from Adobe, Quark, and Macromedia into the higher sales numbers of the PC, and specifically the NT side, Apple is doing as much dammage control as it can muster. Particularly bringing in Steve Jobs. It's getting wierd when Steve appears as much as former President Carter as a crisis demogogue to salve the wounds of the faithful, and yet, there he was. Respite in his splendor, introducing the best minds of the CEO department for all of the above companies, bizzare was the first thought that hit me. Bizzare because he personally attacked Tim Gill, head of Quark - Alienated Warnock of Adobe with the TrueType direction and then the NeXT debacle - and Macromedia has been showcasing their tech running on Compaqs and other PC clones in exchange for Compaq paying for their booth space. The fact that all of these companies have been making a push into the PC market with great results only adds insult to injury. After Quark announced it's intentions to develop for Digital's Alpha class NT workstations, after Adobe announced the sales results for the PC versions of each and every title in their inventory, and after Macromedia has been milking the multi-platform thing and the web for PC's to death, has Apple noticed that the market they have claimed was all theirs less than 3 months ago, is acutally up for grabs. The fact that they discovered this so late in the game is the big question for the day.

October 8

Saw Kurt Vonnegut the other night here in Denver Colorado, and besides having as much, if not more, charasma as - say - Steve Jobs, he mentioned a couple of things that hit home for me. One of them, being creative and just farting around for the sake of being creative and farting around's sake pretty much summs up what I'm doing - and the Second - the collosal waste of time that computers can be in general. His point was summed up along the lines of "invest in laxatives" since the general public will be sitting on their ass too much for gravity to do it's work. My nerve with the technologic Jihad is that there's far too much dialogue on what is just a pencil. Laurie Anderson compared the computer to a pencil that is expensive and breaks down a lot. If you have been reading the Evangel-list from Kawasaki's martyrs, you'd think that to say that the computer is just a tool - you'd be spouting heresy. More than a couple of posts lately have rambled on chastising those that would condem the computer as something to merely get work done on. One would presume, that to be a true Mac follower, you should spend as much time ranting and raving about how lame wintel computers are, and why the Mac is so great. Well whether your pencil is a number two or a number three, makes no difference to me. The fact that anyone would say otherwise does make a difference. Because you're not only deluded and wasting your life, you're trying to pull others into your warped sphere of influence. The fact that 90% plus of the computer buying public thinks that their pencil gets the job done and is affordable, somehow throws the MacJihad into an utter frenzy of wasted dialogue is not only a tragic joke, it's also a bore and is probably keeping people from ever taking Apple seriously. Because in all seriousness - when your company's customers are going full-goose-bozo about the state of affairs for the maker of your pencil, other customers might think twice about buying your number.

October 9

More reports are coming in from Seybold about the rumors about the great Mac shortage. It seems that the "fastest desktop computer in the world" Mac - ignoring full-well that many SGI's and NT boxes that outpace it also seem to fit on desks - is on indefinate hold owning to a shortage of Power PC chips. All within a month of IBM and Motorolla abandoning their clone efforts at no small loss of dollars. One might suppose that the animosity that I hinted that could result, might come back to haunt them indeed. Whether this is the case is mere speculation - but behind every move in a mega-corp, there's a world of intentions. I'd be hard pressed to not think that the boys fabricating the brains for all of Apple's boxes, might somehow not be knee jerking their deadlines when the orders are placed. In any case, the "fastest" PC is on hold, and Apple has to figure out how to put on a good face in the meantime. In other news, there's betting pools on how much money Apple will loose this quarter. At least whoever is behind it has a sense of humor. Or at least more of one than the people who were ranting about it on the Evangle-list. I find it offensive only because I didn't think of it first. Here I sit cranking out copy, not getting a dime, while some schmoo is taking side-bets on whether the reports of loosing 12 million or 71 million will be matched by some lucky gambler. Well here's a gamble I could propose here and now. E-mail me when you think Apple will slide into oblivion and the closest man wins. Make any amount of wager, and for a small 5% handling fee-deducted from the wager, I'll throw it into a pot within a secure savings account for the future. Apple can either get bought-out, or file for bankrupcy and not recover. Either way you could be a winner. I'll post all bets and the jackpot on this site, and if you guess the day, the month and the year that Apple tanks - you win! If Apple files for a re-org it doesn't count. If Apple ditches it's name in a reorg it does count - unless it's some cheesey name like Apple Software or something with the same logo (don't laugh - NeXT tried it). People who work for Apple are out, as are the members of the Mac-specific paper published media. No sense letting some shmo who has a back door into Apple's e-mail account get an edge on the rest of us. Trust-me, I don't. That's why I open the jackpot and place the first wager at 10 dollars for January 10, 1999. Two more crappy fourth quarters is all Apple and their stock price can take in my opinion, and they'll either auger into the ground or get scooped up by someone with more brains and stock equity for a takeover. Don't miss out-place your bets!

October 10

More Apple talk made the normal news outside of the trades; Steve Jobs may drop the interm bit from his job title at Apple. Once you get over the fact that no one wants to take the CEO title for a sinking ship and get put through the wringer like Gill Amelio, you realize that all the claptrap about "standing up to Steve" is just smoke to go with the usual brand of Apple mirrors. Fact is no one wants a crappy job. Apple's search for the right qualifications would have to include someone who enjoys being jerked around by a random board, screwed over by Steve's ego, lambasted in the press, and wouldn't be around to do much but help file the papers in bankrucy court. Sorry but I don't think they'll be able to hoist anyone outside of the MacJihad circles for this dream job. The fact that the first order of business they would have to contend with is the latest quarterly drop in value. No speech from Jobs' is going to help the stock now. The investors will clue in to the fact that the reality-distortion field, in this case the ability to project delusions on a willing audience, doesn't extend outside the wall of whatever trade show he's babbling at. This has happened so often, that other writers are talking about whether it really changes the problems Apple has. So far only Adobe has gone public speculating that this pep-talking might actually be helping their sales - but somehow I wonder if it's really a surge of PC users getting more copies of photoshop than the mice following the pied piper on the heels of the latest Steve Jobs love-fest. You know the scene, Steve on stage bringing out his screened supporters, much like Rush Libaugh has been doing for years, telling everyone to hang in there, that Apple is just going through a minor phase and that everyone will live happily ever after. Great stuff for stirring a group of people desperate for some form of optomism in the face of reality, but not much to add for the bottem line. This would explain why that line keeps slipping into the red so often.

October 11

More explosions in the war of words. Wired lets loose an opinion that is sarcastic of the previously mentioned slow networking present in Apple's end of the ring. As a mention prior to ripping into their advertising in a more succinct manner than I've been doing, he dropped a nice vicious bone to the rabbid MacJihad members that were present in the court of the EvangeList. Off they went barking at least 650 e-mail messages to the writer of the offending line comparing mac speeds on a T1 unfavorably to a 486 with a 28.8 modem. Besides ticking the author off royal, the response to his tersly worded reply on the EvangleList was bizzare to say the least. The fact that his every-day world observations were dismissed as "biased" and couldn't be taken seriously, were childish to say the least. I mean dig-this. The basic premise is if I were to find something wrong with the Mac, something everyone else can replicate, I'd still be regarded as wrong just because I dared to say something bad about Apple in the first place. Now there's a winning logic stream. The fact is I've mentioned before that Macs are increadibly slow in networking. The fact that this is correlated in MacWorld itself is beside the point. Because every MacWorld lab that tests them has two things going against them. One, they are assuming that the real world has a pristine-perfect set of laws behind them, and that everything is running in tip-top order. Two, using Guy's logic, they are biased because they're pro-mac. Perhaps if SunWorld conducted some tests everyone might shut up on the mater. But as the list demonstrated, it's pointless because once you show a negative result - you join the ranks of the great unwashed. It's that kind of objectivity that will keep them on the far end of the reality spectrum, and the inventory of unsold Macs sitting firmly on the shelves. Good going Guy.