March 19, 2001

TELLING IT LIKE IT IS
And the winner is? Tim Robertson of MyMac.com, who wrote a column last week ("Great Mac Sites") that I should have posted myself. I've been a little rough on Tim lately in our personal correspondence, but he's a tough guy and it shows. First of all he writes an essay that absolutely shreds a number of Mac Web site worthies or wish-they-weres. Secondly, in the process of venting his frustration in public, he's man enough to shrug off everything I flung at him in private and pay me (and Applelinks) some major compliments. That's class, folks.

Tim's analysis (or demolition) of icons like MacCentral and MacAddict.com led me to wonder about the public perception of Mac sites in general. Ooops! Can't say "public," can I? A man- or woman-on-the-street survey would be too depressing. But for you, the faithful, when you visit a Mac site, what do you think the scene at the other end is like, hmmm?

UNSHAVEN KINGS OF COMMUNICATION
Judging from some of the email messages I get, a lot of you have an impression of Life on the Mac Web derived in part from the images of television newsrooms you've seen: behind the talking heads, a roomful of hardworking people sit flogging their laptops, calling up sources on the phone, relaying the latest updates to the anchor desk, and so on. The air crackles with excitement as banks of monitors display news feeds from all over the world. These people are WITH IT, all right, except that much of what we see is surely intended to deceive. How do we know the anchorman is even wearing pants, for instance? And how do we know that lady on the phone isn't talking to her mom or ordering pizza? We don't, you know -- but image is everything.

Some of you appear to have a similar picture of Mac Web "newsrooms," only besides the comforting presence of probing journalists, earnest consultants, scurrying fact-checkers and the rest, why, we're all using Macs -- and you would be at least partly right. We are all using Macs, or at least I think we are. As for the rest (steel yourselves), what's really behind the scene at the other end is more than likely just one guy in his bathrobe slumped in front of a monitor, picking gnats out of his coffee.* That's if he's married, of course. Otherwise, he's in his underwear, and this isn't taking place anywhere except a home or dorm room, believe me. There are exceptions: as far as I know, at least a few of the MacAddict.com crew had their own cubicles in the same room. (Who knows where they are now?)

THE TRIAL OF TECHNO-TAG
The reason I think some of you have a bizarrely overdeveloped notion of how this works is because I get so many emails demanding instant attention to this or that perceived technical heresy. Regrettably (?), though, I don't sit around all day with a modem cord plugged into my navel studying to be an IT manager. If I were half as smart as I'm assumed to be, the mistakes I make would be highly embarrassing instead of merely aggravating.

Everyone should understand that 5 percent market share, or whatever it is, doesn't make for heady compensation.** This is another way of saying that a lot of people working for Mac sites know less than a significant portion of their readers! If they had the technical ability and certification, they'd be employed where they could feed themselves and their families, duh. Exceptions to this characterization include head honchos and those few stalwart Mac freaks who come home from a long day at the IT wars and update their Web sites (in their bathrobes, of course) instead of reading a book or having fun with their mates. (Pray you never marry one, but be grateful for their work. :-) These few technically astute individuals have major day jobs and are NOT JOURNALISTS!*** They do provide occasional nuggets of "hard stuff" but are in no position to chase the daily dribbles.

Such conditions give rise to a phenomenon I call "dueling geeks" or "techno-tag." It works like this:Suppose I find and post a sprightly little tidbit from another Mac site along the lines of:

"Say, did you know that you can do such-and-such to your Macodoodle and have sex with hippos?"

Invariably someone will email within minutes and declare this to be impossible. Heaving a sigh, I then update the original article or post a new one:

"Sorry folks, you can't, not without a bigger hard drive!"

By the time I count to ten, a third party will email back:

"Oh yes you can, we learned how in the F.F.A.! Just don't expect to be thanked."

And so it goes: after the third or fourth corrected corection, I usually deep-six the original story and move on. (Life's too short, etc. etc.)

L.L. BEAN (POLARTEC™ LARGE)
One thing I could do would be to never post anything I don't completely understand, but then you might hit Applelinks one day and find it empty. Another thing I've thought of is to lay all questionable items in front of a technoguru for vetting. One wrote to me the other day from a certain computer company and suggested this himself, in fact -- the idea has merit too, though so do laziness and saving time. And as worldly souls all know anyway, this being the Internet in general and the Mac Web in particular, nothing is certain or adequately funded. No matter which course I choose, you can count on little except the bathrobe (it's blue and I'm wearing it now).

Cheer up, things would be worse if I were single!

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr vehemently denies ever using his Mac to mate outside of his own species. His Zoozone site, however, is beyond cultist jurisdictional control, so watch out! The Zoozone features a different New Mexico image every day at FotoFeed, by the way, and happens to be where you can read brand-new FARR SITE columns, in case you didn't know. Why don't you go take a look and tell your favorite publishing syndicate all about it?

*Applelinks is special, though, and don't you forget it! We have LOTS of guys sitting all over North America in their bathrobes. Some of us may even be dressed, in fact. This is something I feel I should know, but who ever thinks to ask?

**While dark-side writers doubtless pull down more bucks, I have it on good authority that a certain well-known PC magazine is currently losing a million dollars per month! Market share alone, then, would appear to have nothing to do with the success of any platform-specific publishing enterprise.

***For that matter, neither are, um, er. . . say, aren't the new titanium PowerBooks really cool?

AUDIO CREDIT: embedded 44k file, European Birds -- Sounds and Sonograms. (Just be glad I didn't loop the sucker.)

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