Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

October 19

Surprise surprise. The justice department has issued another investigation/sopena/you're a noughty boy into Microsoft. This time for including a browser with the operating system. Apart from the fact that Apple has been doing this with Cyberdog for years is beside the point. No one gives a shit about Apple. Microsoft's competitors are willing to call in their lobbiests and push forward new allegations and briefs in the longest harassment case in recent US history. The truth is, Novel, Wordperfect and many others have been looking for lawyers to do what they themselves can't. Compete in an open market. Again this is the sort of thing that Atari was infamous for back in the early 80's when all of their programming staff left, and games like E.T. were on their way to the nearest landfill as a result. What did these people do? Sue, Sue, Sue! Of course when you're as large as Microsoft, you need to use the US Government as your pet thug. Janet Reno fits the bill to a T. The only thing she's not betting on was back in 1994 not only did Microsoft secure a clause about upgrading their OS and software any way they saw fit, but they staved off a lawsuit of their own against the Justice Department that many Republican's in Congress thought was way overdue. If not for harassment - how does abuse of power sound? Sounds like the way you describe a division of the governement that has been jerked around like a wet-nurse for 10 years by other companies that can't figure out how to outsmart Microsoft. Well, even Reno is lost, since the browser that she's refering to will be formally integrated into the OS by next April when Windows 98 comes out. The upshot is that a lot of tax dollars are going to be spent debating the esoterics of 45rpm vs 33 rpm records all on the eve of digital compact disks. The fact that Sun, Netscape, and even Apple might be subject to the same idiotic laws that might result from an unbundling of OS paradims all on the eve of Java, client-server OS's running Netscape, and Cyberdog, doesn't even phase the people who likely were behind pushing these loonies forward. If Microsoft looses, count on them reminding the department who else is doing the same thing. Personally I think that not only will Microsoft win in court again (they haven't lost any significant case since MITS), but it may just result in a bombshell of a counter-suit that could hang Reno out to dry more than any other screw-up on record. After all, what are the odds that Microsoft's army of lawyers would loose to someone who can't see the coffee from the teas?

October 20
Oddly enough, I expected the MacJihad to be jumping up and down in glee with the Reno thing - but perhaps they are best overshadowed by the sheer volume of BBS traffic that I've noticed on MSNBC's and CNN's public internet roundtables. Fact is the polls already say that more than 65% think Reno is out to lunch, and every post I've read is not only eloquent - but reminds us just how out of touch with digital America the Government really is. Not just with the Clipper chip, not with just the V-chip, not just with Internet Censoship, but with the rationalle behind deciding what can and can't be given away as a way to take advanatage of what the internet has to offer. Browsers aren't just commerce shells anymore. Like disk optomization utilities, to text-editors there's plenty that is given away with a basic desktop computer so that it resembles a tool at the outset - rather than a doorstop. In fact this was NeXTs big strategy at the outset - bundling e-mail, spellcheck, and even Shakespeare. The fact is, the government of the country that invented the internet has had not clue-one how it works, how to deal with it, or what the future of it will bring. The fact that the Department of Defense only now fessed up that a hacker can indeed cause serious havoc makes me scared. After all - THESE are the people with their fingers on the BUTTON? So when I hear that Janet Reno is going bonkers on standard-practice of bundling software, of an application that has been bundled for more than 3 years. I just roll my eyes. The reason these cases are so expensive and so long to begin with, is because not only do you have to defend what you might be doing, you have to teach everyone involved what the hell you're talking about, to a bunch of digital illiterates. The irony is that by the time the whole mess is sorted out, the industry is doing things differently anyway. The biggest nitpick that I have about the whole thing, apart from paying tax dollars to fund it, is the use of the word Monopoly time and time again. How 95% of America can choose to buy something and then get the maker of the tool branded with something akin to the electric company is beyond me. Then again, oil companies have been putting more money into lobbiests haven't they? I guess Bill is guilty of one thing. Not appearing on video tape with President Clinton having breakfast.

October 21

Recently I'd noted questions popping up in MacWeek and MacWorld about whether or not to buy Apple Macintoshes. Of course I was screaming silently NOOOOOOOoooooo. But the other sources told them only to hold off for the clearances from Motorola and Power Computing. This is ironic on two levels. Because they're telling people to not only hurt themselves, but to hurt Apple as well. In the former, telling people to buy betamax in the early 1980's would be irresponsible to everyone except the average Texan - who for whatever reason - could still rent betamax videos at BlockBuster. This would be as idiotic as telling people to buy Amigas as developers and users are leaving in droves, back in 1989, for a stable well-managed platform to get work done. Whether it's easier to learn, or maintain is beyond the point. The fact is, as I hammer away at my IBM Thinkpad, I know that I can either upgrade peace-meal or swap out the entire CPU and board for something better to chug away the next 10+ years - as long as I can stand the screen and the keyboard, and the weight (did I mention, I drooled over the Liberato?). When Rhapsody comes out in consumer form, a lot of 040 users are going to be pissed. It won't run on them - even though I still have NeXTstep running on my 040 slab. This is one of the many reasons that I ditched my Quadra 800. Not only did Apple orphan me while they were still in business, but I sold my Mac (with legit market value) for something that was the same sale-price, yet 4-8 times faster, and had a future to boot. Recommending otherwise is fiscal suicide in any measure of the word. The later argument of the equation, is that by waiting for cheaper Mac clones at clearence value, you further deny Apple of the money it needs so badly in CPU sales, for the very reason they dictated for getting rid of most of the clones in the first place. So even if you don't think that Apple is in serious trouble, you're helping to put them in it anyway. Granted - most, if not all, of the Mac clone companies were cheaper and more powerful in the first place. So perhaps it's not reckless to recommend not buying Macs from Apple. The true irony lies in the fact that the only company that couldn't make cheap - affordable - and powerful Apple Mac OS computers is, Apple.

October 22

Today was a slow day, outside of the stock market that is. While indicators freaked on the 10.4% decline in the Hong Kong exchange all was quiet outside of local news finally making commentary about the Microsoft fiasco. They actually got it right for a change. They identified that not only was the lawsuit a mystery for a free-market enterprise, but isn't relevent outside of the next couple of months worth of technoligical progress. And that's the whole point really. If you're going to legislate developments rather than allow the marketplace to evolve the necessary features they demand for a competitive technological economy, then you can assure that we'll allow other countries to snatch marketshare victory from the jaws of our own defeat. But if doing so placates failed competitors who can't innovate on their own merits and allow us to vote with our dollars, then perhaps it's time we avoid those who have sparked and supported the lawsuit. At the moment, Apple is immune from this logic. But Sun and Netscape, and Novel most certainly are not. If you want your tools legislated and decided for you, then go about your business. If you think you have a choice in the mater, then put your money down elsewhere.

October 23

The Apple faitful are starting to loose it much in the same way the NeXTJihad started to rally behind esoteric yuppie-market driven economic models as their only salvation and indications of their salvation. There were a few employees at NeXT who had a word for these forays into bottem line anylasis that don't really go anywhere. It's called voo-doo economics. Much in the same way NeXT kept itself from being strung up by it's investors, Apple is now sending out briefs on how they are taking a new approach to the market - rather than just selling anything in paticular. While this may give other writers like Don Crabb a warm fuzzy in his weekly column, it's not going to make the general public give a blinkers-cuss about their computers when the sales continue to slide into the Wintel camp. How about Macs that are truly able to run what everyone else is using? How about providing the same power and cost curve that I'm enjoying right now? Nope, we'll babble on about customer traingles and other piles of carefully crafted crap rather than actually doing anything to save the company. This Holloween be afraid. Be very afraid.

October 24

Well just when I thought I'd seen the most improbable verbage in print regarding developers who still give a rats-ass about the Mac, I'm surprised once again. This time another PR nugget was thrown twords the makers of MESA a long near-dead piece of software floatsam from the days of good-old NeXT. The days that were so good that they provided the single largest event-mass of beta-ware to flood the market disguised in the clothes of real-world applications. None of them saw the light of day in the real-world market, but instead allowed the several government IT purchasing people from getting hung out to dry. The fact that the slop on the whole never even worked right the first 3 generations is something the Apple camp is still unaware of. The fact that MESA in particular couldn't sell it's way out of a wet paper bag is another thing. Because while "Mac the Knife" might be giggling to himself that this might be the title to outstrip Excel of it's dominence - I can assure you, not only a user of the damn thing, but as a once-seller of the hunk-o-dung, that this obsolete steaming pile of code isn't going to outstrip anything but the paint off the side of a house with it's stench. Image, MESA, Virtuoso, Tiffany, Tailor, and just about every application being ported for Rhapsody from NeXTstep are all so unrobust and unstable that they're not only unmarketable - they're failed examples of the most obscene software ever to touch their user-bases. It's small wonder that the number of suckers who actaully paid money for these apps did so for so long in the first place. Because aside from custom database builds with the OS's built-in toolkits, they didn't do a damn thing. To think they'll do anything against a legitamate and now stable software market for Rhapsody is as far-fetched as thinking Communisim will come back to Russia. Just say Nyet.

October 25

MacWeek just keeps getting thinner. Now it's so thin that both they and MacWorld are accepting ads for Wintel laptops. Now there's irony. Never did I ever see Mac ads in AmigaWorld - but there they were. Of course the copy was geared twords being non-threatening to the Mac user base, but that didn't show just how dire the situation is for the Mac publishing community. It's odd. Back in the 80s and early 90s Amiga and Atari ST publications continued their presses long after the computers they represented fell into obscurity. Probably because the user-base was so tenacious that they continued to purchase many magazines for years, floating their collective interrests, while their OS's vanished into the Bermuda Triangle. Now with the cost of distributing a high-volume nationwide magazine being so expensive, we're seeing those quaint days fall by the wayside. The fact that MacUser and MacWorld merged was already commented on earlier by yours truly, but as I find more writers to send e-mail to replying that they've been laid off - I'm not certain how much longer I can send any bashing their way. It seems the only ones staying on are the writers who can fashion obvious numerical disaster figures into good copy. The rest I guess had little things get in their way, like ethics and a frim grasp of reality. On the other hand, it makes me wonder if I should get this journal into print.