June 25, 2001

Hey, where'd everybodyt go?

The silence of the editors
All I can say is, somebody must have actually read one of these things. Despite last week's news that I was to be interviewed on the subject of my writings in GRACK! and what goes on here at Applelinks, the promised emailed interview questions never arrived. More for the sake of my hardworking publisher and webmaster than for my own notion of what constitutes success, I hope the questions do show up soon. You know I'll have plenty to say, no matter what kind of a mood I'm in, and if they catch me soon, I won't even expect a check.

Wow, I just had a fearsome thought. What if the fancy e-commerce site that wanted to interview me just went under? It's happening every day. In fact, I keep waiting for someone to tell the truth about all this, about the so-called "recovery." Oh, it's coming, I have no doubt whatsoever. Online ad revenues will pick up and dot-com billionaires will soon be pricing you out of your own neighborhoods once again. The fact is, though, that right now the national economy is dead in the water. I read a report recently that plainly showed virtually every sector of the economy to be flat or declining. EVERY sector, Jimbo! So what did the government do? Why, just what you would if you suddenly learned that hard times might lie ahead, promise to give away your savings to the richest guys in town. No, that isn't logical, but then neither is building a missle defense system to protect us from "rogue nation" ICBMs, when everyone knows that Bin Laden or the next McVeigh will vaporize D.C. with a black-market Russian A-bomb floated up the Potomac in a rowboat. (Dead in the water indeed!) But on to happier thoughts...

Macworld Expo! (tah-dah!)
I've always wanted to write a column with an identical second subheading as the week before, and by God I just did it. Here's why: Applelinks will have its own booth at Macworld! Applelinks folk will be hanging out at booth #1540 and I hope you make it over there for the chance to say hello and also win some great prizes, including a brand-new iMac! (It might not be the same as what everyone thinks will be intro'd at the show, but those probably won't ship until I'm on Social Security.)

So what about the "new iMacs, "anyway ? And please note that Applelinks doesn't print rumors! ("Awww...") As for me, I haven't heard a thing. No one has sent me emails about new hardware. No one has stopped me on the street (what street?) to whisper secrets in my ear. In other words, all I know is what I read on the Internet, ho-ho-ho, and that ain't much. Someone must know something, and I have met some savvy people since I started pushing this spaghetti strand, but all of them know better than to predict what Steve Jobs is going to do. And speaking of our favorite CEO and new iMacs, I wonder if he's going to visit our Applelinks booth? We'll be selling and giving away these cool new iClocks, you see (in fact, you can order one now from Applelinks). Reading last week about the clocks, a long-time fan was moved to comment thusly:

"I can just picture it...things are going swimmingly at the Applelinks booth, until His Lord High Jobs does one of his trademark strolls around the convention floor, spots the iClocks, and throws one of his equally trademark tantrums (remember the brouhaha at an SF Macworld a couple years back over the Apple watches booth?) and tears the booth apart with his bare hands! Of course, in a weird way, it could be considered a kind of sacred rite...'We were assaulted by Steve! He noticed us! We are truly blessed!'"

Just be sure to have a video camera at the ready, guys.

New hardware?
Well. OF COURSE there's going to be new hardware to introduce! What else could there be for Apple to do at a landmark trade show, run another OS X demo? They'll do that too, you know, and Puma might run fast enough to not require an artificial hotfoot. This isn't a rumor, by the way, since nobody ever tells me anything (see above) and I just made it up. (If you repeat it, it might become one, but that's none of my business.) Anyway, new iMacs, sure -- why not? Anyone who thinks those recent patterned color schemes were anything more than a holding action has probably been reading my old columns. Look, times are tough: consumer debt is at an all-time high, Dubya & the U.S. Congress just gave away your future Medicare benefits, and PC sales are flatter than Delaware. What better time for Apple to introduce a whole new lineup? Jobs is a risk-taker, so I say: "The Cube is dead, long live the new iMac!" (Probably featuring Cube guts and LCD screens, of course, but what a way to kill the Mac aquarium business once and for all...)

Remember, I don't know dink, but if I did, I'd say also look for 1) PowerMacs sporting white polycarbonate cases with visible metal frames or titanium inserts, 2) TiBooks that can actually burn CDs, what a concept, and 3) iBooks that, um, iBooks that -- well, they're perfect now anyway, so what can you do? Finally, I fearlessly predict that Apple will not introduce a new mouse made from a mold of a dog's pawprint! Are you getting this down, 'Insider? :-)

Redmond romps
Oh, those "Softies. Microsoft execs must be as happy as oilmen, loggers, and nuclear power plant builders these days. Redmond probably assumes that the conservative (and presumably pro-Microsoft) federal appeals court is going to ignore all the evidence and appoint them President -- no wait, that was that other court -- make that: ignore all the evidence and let them off the hook, heh! Beyond that, Gates & Co. must believe that the current Department of Justice doesn't have any left to spare and won't be in hot pursuit. Accordingly, they're proceeding at high speed to more or less take over the whole bloody Internet and make vassals of us all. Amazingly, despite this obvious intent, the politics of appeasement are in full swing in venues all over the Web.

I happen to subscribe to an online writing newslist. Usually devoted to lengthy, arcane discussions of 15 different ways to shade the meaning of "copyright" and whether or not it's proper to use phrases like "check out" (as in "Hey, check this out!"), recent digests have consisted of laborious examination of Microsoft's Smart Tags scheme, set to go into effect with the advent of Internet Explorer 6.0 and Windows XP. [News Flash: see below!] Smart Tags, for those of you who don't know your whole world is about to change, are a clever "innovation" that will allow Microsoft to add links to your own Web pages without your permission. Microsoft is selling words, you dig. . . Let's say you use the word "disaster" in something you write and post on your Web site. Microsoft may in fact have sold that word to, say, ABCNews.com. If Smart Tags are enabled in a viewer's IE 6.0 browser and your Web page doesn't have the canceling meta-tags properly coded, "disaster" shows up as a link whenever that person reads your page on the Internet and presents a popup menu of ABCNews.com links on mouse-over! This may not matter to you personally, but for those who care about the integrity of their creations or hope to keep the viewer on-site, it's a different story.

Maybe Hitler only wants the Sudetenland
Reading the back-and-forth on this issue in the above-mentioned online wrtiting newslist is decidedly less than reassuring. Maybe a third of the posts are from people like me, trying to raise a ruckus, while the other two-thirds are from people either laughing at the first group for being paranoid or saying things like, "Well now, let's be sure this is a real threat before we go Microsoft-bashing." Urk. . .

Dear friends, IT...IS....A...THREAT!!! Everything Microsoft dreams up is a threat to somebody.The megalomaniacal passion and greed of this company knows no bounds. If Microsoft isn't evil, it's the next best thing. Looky here: Windows XP will not support working with MP3 files, the object being to force users to use Microsoft's proprietary equivalent. What's more, the Windows XP-compatible version of MS Office will allow users to crank out Microsoft's own version of PDF files, no separate authoring program needed. See what I mean? When your operating system runs on 90+ percent of the world's personal computers, adding features like these amounts to nothing less than BLOWING UP any number of other companies, just like that. To say they're merely offering their customers more "innovations" is a crock, and if we let them get away with making the Internet over in their own image, we're no better than Chamberlain (look it up)!

The question is: when our digital Pearl Harbor is bombed, will we even notice?

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr welcomes your comments. FARR SITE fans of yore can sign up for the Farr Site News by clicking HERE and sending a blank email (it still lives at ZOOZONE.COM). The ZOOZONE, incidentally, is immeasurably distinguished by FotoFeed, a daily New Mexico image. Is that cool or what?!

This may or may not work, but try it: this code comes from Microsoft, as reported by today's (6-25-01) Register. Put this into the <head> section of all your Web pages and you might slow down the juggernaut. And as of this writing, GRACK! is now innoculated, if the darn thing works!

The new GRACK! Update mailing list is now operational. Unfortunately, the registration process manages to insult Australians and other faraway strangers (try to be big about it, even if Topica isn't). Anyway, to receive your own weekly notice of new column postings, just CLICK HERE and send a blank email.

AUDIO CREDIT: embedded 44k file, European Birds -- Sounds and Sonograms.

DESIGN CREDIT: GRACK! byline graphic by Bob Farr. Yep, that's my brother.