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DIGITAL
DEATHSTYLE
I
like my Mac so much more now that it's a "digital
hub," don't you?
But
wait a minute: maybe it's not! -- I think we're all
supposed to buy new ones, then those will be
hubs. Hubba-hubba, Apple's in trubba! (Sorry :-)
For those of you who don't know or couldn't care
less, "Digital Hub" is the Macworld Expo Theme o'
the Season, replacing "Two Brains Are Better Than
One," which replaced "Oh Look, It's A New Mouse!,"
or something like that.
Who
can remember?
The
"Two Brains" theme of course refers to the
multiprocessor strategy-on-the-fly concocted to
cover Motorola's ass when promised faster chips
failed to materialize. This actually made a kind of
sense, since Apple's CEO seemed to believe that the
only things people used their Macs for were a)
Photoshop, b) watching DVD movies in their laps
while jetting to beach resorts, and c) editing
videos of overprivileged kids. Unfortunately, since
Motorola's high-speed processor manufacturing is
akin to opening wild oysters until one finds a
pearl, the latest crop of slightly-faster chips is
so tiny as to preclude giving every PowerMac buyer
an extra one for free, so we're back to just
one brain apiece.
[begin
commercial. . .]
Scene
1: A Motorola microprocessor factory. Thousands
and thousands of steaming hot G4 chips roll off
multiple assembly lines, are carried on long
black conveyor belts, and dumped into a chute
which leads to a large hole in the floor.
Scene
2: A huge, dimly-lit basement repository. Dozens
of despondent, white-coated inspectors sort
through waist-high mounds of gleaming chips.
Some are standing and digging through piles,
others sit half-buried and doze. There is no
talking. The only sounds are those of rejected
chips clinking against others as they're tossed
aside and the constant background noise of fresh
chips pouring in from the chute. Interns can be
seen filling wheelbarrows with still-warm
processors from the central pile and hauling
them to the far reaches of the chamber, which
stretches to infinity.
Scene
3: A dingy corner of the same space. The camera
zooms in to focus tightly on a tattered sign
stuck to the brick basement wall with yellowing
cellophane tape. The dusty placard promises a
reward of $250 (each) for functioning 733MHz
chips.
Scene
4: Camera zooms out to reveal young technician
in soiled labcoat sitting crosslegged on the
floor below the sign, in a small clearing
between the heaps of chips. His lap is full of
shiny processors. He is wearing thick round
glasses, heavily smudged, askew, and about to
fall off his nose. Suddenly he gasps, holds a
single chip up to the dust mote-filled beam of
light coming in through a grimy basement window,
and peers at it intensely. A swift, maximum
backward zoom takes in the entire space as his
shouted "I'VE GOT ONE!" echoes loudly
throughout the chamber.
Scenes
5, 6, 7, 8, & 9: Fast-motion montage of the
same technician running excitedly up the stairs,
out into the parking lot and into his car (a
12-year-old Ford Escort), driving at ridiculous
speeds across familiar California landscapes,
screeching to a halt in front of Apple
headquarters, and running down a long corridor
to burst into Steve Jobs' office.
Scene
10: Interior of Jobs' office. The excited
technician vaults over the desk and lands in the
surprised CEO's lap. Jobs grabs the chip
triumphantly in his fist as the camera zooms in
tight for a big grin & wink!
Scene
11: A Cupertino loading dock. A single, gleaming
PowerMac G4 is quickly loaded into a souped-up
customized armored van, which roars to life and
drives off into the sunset in a cloud of tire
smoke. The sun flares brightly to fill the
screen, then fades and turns into an Apple logo
as the announcer's voiceover solemnly intones:
"733MHz PowerMac G4: one at a time, but worth
the wait. . . will this one be
YOURS?"
[end
commercial]
And
now we have "The Hub"!
I'm
not sure what this means, really, and neither is
anybody else, but that hasn't stopped the boomlet
of blather from the usual sources. And just why we
need a "digital hub" has yet to be explained to my
satisfaction. I suppose this has something to do
with iMovie, iTunes, iDVD, iBlender, iYiyi, and all
the rest. There are people in this world who can't
figure out how much to tip a waitress or remember
to see the dentist without their PDAs, after all,
so I should probably show more sympathy. But among
my friends and family, almost no one owns a PDA,
digital camcorder, MP3 player, HDTV, or lusts after
the ability to crank out their own DVDs (I'll also
wager that most can't identify the acronyms I just
used, either). Cell phones are an exception, and
there are a few CD burners in the mix, but so far
-- to my knowledge -- no one has bemoaned the lack
of a "hub" to tie them all together.
My
lovely and talented niece in Austin, Texas has a
major collection of MP3s, thanks to her curiosity
and my brother's RoadRunner account. As far as I
know, she's getting along fine with the household
Mac clone and a new CD burner. It's not clear to me
just what a "digital lifestyle" is supposed to
consist of, but if anyone is leading one, she is.
Heck, if she had the money she'd probably buy every
widget on the market. But would she need a "hub"?
And does playing with all this stuff lend real
meaning to ones life?? In short, no, and of course
not. This is a marketing stab in the dark and a
humongous crock.
I'm
glad Apple is going to get with the program and
provide us Mac users with the necessary software to
organize and use the digital information we're
accumulating, and I'm delighted that Apple is
putting its brand on all the maverick digi-dogies
out there in free-range LifestyleLand. Go for it,
why not?
But
this is Niche City, folks. Apple execs,
advertisers, Web designers, and any number of
glossy mag consumer honchos think the whole
freaking world's rich and on broadband, but it
ain't so. You and your friends may be, but most of
the country and the world just isn't. This
is just more crapola, designed to make people
envious and feel like they're missing out on
something so they'll go out and buy more junk.
If you need the connection and the devices to do
your life's work or feed your family, more
power to you, and I hope you network everything
around your Macs. For that matter, if this
simply brings you joy, well, wonderful, and
don't feel put-upon by my characteristic
overbearing heaviness. It's the marketing emphasis
and wasted effort that bugs me, after all: "digital
lifestyle" is hooey, pure and simple, and means no
more than naming stadiums after dot-coms. The next
thing you know, they'll be trying to sell us
machines that have sex for us. Take control of your
lives, folks, and get your heads out of the
geeksand! I like all this cool stuff as much as the
next man, but I can take it or leave it. (Yeah,
right! Um, well, there is my Nikon CoolPix. Mess
with that and you'll see a grown man cry.)
The
whole so-called civilized world is in dire need of
some perspective here. For centuries Polynesian
sailors have been navigating across thousands of
miles of open ocean, sailing for weeks out of sight
of land to reach a particular island or atoll, just
by reading the waves! Yogis and medicine men from
many different cultures violate commonly-held
"rules" of time and space routinely. And on and on
and on. . . you don't have to believe it and
probably don't, but betting against the
inherent capabilities of human beings reportedly
made in the image of God does not seem to be an
awfully smart or ultimately rewarding thing to do.
The world is not what we think it is, and each of
us is more than we could ever imagine. Forget that,
and you're in peril of being manipulated by
preachers, politicians, CEOs, advertisers, and the
girl or boy next door.
The
bottom line for Apple at the moment is that the
company sold fewer than half as many units this
last quarter, across all product lines and in
darned near all markets, as it did a year ago. If I
had the money, I'd buy a closetful of Macs right
now, both to help the company and to lay in a
lifetime supply (!). No, they're not going to go
bust tomorrow, but I hope they're scared. Whatever
happened to VISION? Most of the world's
people haven't even made a phone call yet, as I
never tire of pointing out, and anyone who can
figure a way to help them will die happy and
rich to boot.
[climbing
reluctantly down from pulpit. . .]
The
Hub and Shrub in the same month is a little much, I
know, but we shall overcome, dammit. (Hang in
there.)
John
H. Farr also edits the news for Applelinks.com and
invites your comments.
The Farr Site Archives
will take you to the past three years of
columns, though he still hasn't posted an archive
for 2001. John also writes a monthly column (not
this month!) called "El
Emigrante"
for Horse
Fly
in Taos, NM and has just redone THE
ZOOZONE
.
To be
notified whenever the column is updated, just send
a message titled "Subscribe FSN" to
this
address.
The
FARR SITE is © copyright 2001, John H. Farr,
all rights reserved.
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January 29, 2001 "Moving Right Along"
January 22, 2001
"Digital Deathstyle"
January 15, 2001 "Gibble Gobble, One of Us"
January 8, 2001 "High Desert Satori"
January 1, 2001 "Psychic Cats Predict Wild Year Ahead"
December 25, 2000 "Christmas in Dubuque..."
December 18, 2000 "Merry Christmas, I Think!"
December 11, 2000 "Easy Does It, Someday"
Farr Site Archives
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