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It's Late & I Need a Bath How'd it get to be January, anyway? Macworld
afterthoughts More well-informed people have already written about what the introduction of Safari (Apple's new open-source browser) and Keynote (the presentation app component of a future "productivity suite") mean for the company. For me, what comes first to mind is simply, "FINALLY!" These two products are a way of saying that the emperor has no clothes, even if he can still do awful damage with his humonguous naked greedy butt. There has never been anything better about Microsoft, just the inherent threat. Crossing the biggest bully in the world is dangerous but ultimately necessary, pragmatically speaking. It's also morally imperative, a drum I've been beating for several years. (Computers, y'all. The subject is computers. Honest!) Microsoft cares about computer users like guess-who cares about the common man. This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around. As long as Bill Gates can make a few more hundred million dollars by fooling Mac users into thinking his company builds Apple products the same as Windows, he will. Meanwhile Microsoft does everything possible to squeeze us out. This is like being made to pay to walk the plank. People will jump at anything better that comes along, but Microsoft suffocates innovation it can't buy and everyone's afraid to change. 95 percent of the world uses Internet Explorer? I doubt that very much. Even if they do, they don't all like it. What, those hundreds of downloads of a Safari beta are all from geeks and tinkerers? There's a hunger out there. There's an inherent yearning to do the right thing. And the right thing is definitely not to give Bill Gates any more money, period. Enough already. Let there be light, for heaven's sake. Let there be openness. Let there be vision and shared enthusiasm. Thank God for Apple! Yes, it's a freaking godless corporation like all the rest, but there's a real person at the top. "Difficult," perhaps, but he's trying. I really think he is. Hard
drives and sex This is quite simply the snappiest, most lightning-quick Macintosh experience I have ever had, and you know what's going to happen when Jaguar tries jumping through the system bus on this totally flawless five-year-old computer. Oh, I'll do it, I will, but everything will suck, speedwise. So for right now, I'm just enjoying the ride on my new hard drive. The way I feel now is like I stripped my old car down to the frame to bolt in a blown Viper V-10. I mean, it goes like SKINK, lays rubber all over my desk! But I know I have to put the body, doors, and seats back on so I can hit the information highway with the rest of the hip crowd. (Aw, gee.) Actually, this is going to be fun. I've been drool-slobbered with curiosity ever since the beta came out, and I've been green with envy over all the cool apps developed for OS X that I couldn't use. I'm just gonna die if I don't get to make my own DVDs with that new "Ken Burns effect" photo-panning thingie, for example, and Safari impressed me so much, I had it downloaded before I finished writing up my Macworld keynote report. So this is for all you unconverted Mac users out there, and yes, I know we're in the majority: hard drives are relatively cheap. Why not get an extra one and give Jaguar a go? I now have an empty drive just sitting there waiting for the installation. If something screws up, I'll just reformat the Unix bastard to kingdom come. All the cool new stuff runs on X. If you're reading this, you must like playing with these kinds of toys. Jobs just gave us an Apple browser, fergodssakes! Run OS X, stick it to Bill Gates, and let's find something else to talk about, finally. No
more for you, you've had enough Something has to be done about all this, I swear. But nothing's going to change until I write down and sell all the crazy stories in my head so I can at least buy a new Mac and a bazooka. Make that a bazooka and a bouzouki. (Have you ever heard one of those things?) Throw in three acres and a yurt to get me started and I'll pick up the proverbial vine-covered cottage and a Steinway for my special one. Hey, I'm easy to please! Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr sends you greetings from the Land of Green Chile Cheeseburgers and wishes to report that people are actually buying second and third copies of the ebook described below to give to friends. Not enough of them yet, but still. "Onward, my people!"
The
illustrated BUFFALO LIGHTS eBook is
now
ready!
It's all about moving to New Mexico before the
lights go out. (If you don't know what that means,
then you've never seen them flicker.) (2002 columns just below)
"GRACK!" is © copyright 2003, John H. Farr, all rights reserved
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