July 16, 2001

Don't worry, be happy...

I read the news today, oh boy
Sunday's New York Times (that would July 15th, for those of you wondering what day it is now) is not the easiest thing in the world to read. The problem is that the Times committed the Truth, right there on the front page, and my stomach's in a knot after just the first few paragraphs (don't look if you thought you'd "moved on" from a certain topic).The implicit bottom line, for better or worse: in politics, at least, if you play fair, you lose.

I'm still reeling from the implications of it all, but that's the message in the Times report. What I want to know is, is this any way to run a railroad? An Internet? A computer company? I really can't stand living in a world where honesty and fair dealing isn't rewarded at least part of the time. Could this why Apple doesn't have greater market share, because it (mostly) plays fair? I'm serious. Microsoft, on the other hand, has always done everything it could to gain advantage, and I mean everything. As far as I know they haven't murdered anyone, although untold thousands may have taken their own lives over the years out of frustration with things like trying to change defaults in Word (we'll never know).

Playing fair is supposed to be the glue that holds our way of doing things together. Absent that, we might as well pull out the muskets and man the barricades. In computer industry terms, what if we applied medieval standards -- still in vogue in some circles -- and simply roamed our towns and cities smashing machines that bore the wrong brand? Then market share would depend on who had the most thugs! Sheesh...

Cool new products?
As far as we know, our favorite computer company doesn't usually write code that sabotages other people's products, and you can't accuse Apple of stealing good ideas from other companies, at least not too often. I mean everybody "steals," in the sense that nifty strategies, technologies, and styles have a way of spreading ("Hey, lookit those cool shoes! Me want!"). But Apple mostly plays fair. The other side never plays fair, yet somehow, Apple is still in business -- praise heaven, a SIGN! Virtue may not be rewarded, but apparently it isn't always fatal, either (your Sunday school lessons were not a total waste of time).

Since Steve Jobs re-entered the picture and made some very significant hiring decisions, Apple has been cranking out one great product after another, all this at a time when the market for personal computers is supposed to be saturated or even shrinking. Design rules! And if PC saboteurs hadn't infiltrated Apple's production lines and marked up the inside of Cube cases with those fake cracks, I wouldn't have to explain away this embarrasing exception to my neat, tidy theory.

What's that? Oh, all right: "Flower Power" iMacs. Yes, I know. Well guess what? By the time many of you read this, all indications are that they'll be history. Thought by some to be an inspired attempt to grab the 14-year-old girl market, protestations of "they don't look as bad in person as in the photos" were never enough to sway many grownups of either sex, and it looks like we won't have them or Blue Dalmations to kick around any more. If only Apple had kept the color schemes alive long enough for cheapo copycat PC makers to steal them!

Nervous nellies
"Well," you ask, "if flat-screen iMacs aren't part of the mix, what is Apple going to do to boost sales?" First of all, I'd like to say that I have no idea what to believe, including the so-called intelligence about dropping blue dogs and blossoms. After all, a week ago everyone was ga-ga over brand new LCD-screen iMacs. A week ago, mind you! Then last week the scuttlebutt was all about how we were going to have to make do with new colors and faster processors. IF THIS IS TRUE, there must be an awful lot of technicians swapping cases and chips on thousands of iMacs we were told no longer even existed (are you taking this down?). So I have nothing at all to tell you in this pre-Macworld throw-away GRACK! about what hardware will have already been introduced by the time most of you read this. Besides, just now I'm more concerned with bigger issues of life and death and who gets beaten up along the way. But I do have a suggestion!

The Rumor of the Week just passed was for iMacs to have faster chips and nothing more. Well, following the political model alluded to earlier, perhaps all Apple needs to do is certify that the things are faster than they are. Send in a few hundred helpful techies to influence the testing labs, for instance: "You know they deserve to run at 1.5GHz, right?" This wouldn't even require any production line changes, just a little fudging of the postmarks -- er, pardon me, system profiler code (bad Mac columnist, bad, bad!).

MacCommunist to the rescue
A smart man once responded to an unflattering remark I made about the excesses of greedy capitalist swine by noting that our system of government -- oops, did it again -- our system of commerce, was better than the alternative of unglamorous, inefficient central planning by state agencies. Yes indeed. And if I have a dead skunk and a dead poodle on the cutting board in front of me, guess which one goes into the stew?

My point here is that imagination is rarely rewarded at the outset, i.e. sure, one thing is better than the other, but is that any reason not to try something new? With that in mind, those of you going to Macworld New York or already there could do worse than follow Comrade Lukas Hauser's revolutionary advice to go "outside of Javits Center" and improve your lives. He isn't kidding, and after perusing his choices of places to go in NYC, neither am I. The MacCommunist Guide to New York City (mysteriously titled as of this writing the "2002" guide) tells you about at least four great places to eat, hear music, and get drunk. There's also a clue to the city's "best record store with the strangest musical genres," something I'd really like to check out if I were there. It might help to be drunk first, so visit the site and find out where the "gigantic Doppel Bock beers" are.

I wouldn't dare suggest you wander away from Javits before the keynote, of course. And don't worry a bit about what is or isn't ready for prime time. Just do like the big boys do and be sure to tell everyone you meet about the new 3GHz iMacs --

There's nothing in the PC world that can even touch 'em!

Senior Applelinks editor and columnist John H. Farr would be much less cynical if events warranted, and maybe someday soon they will. Meanwhile, he hopes that all you FARR SITE fans who've read everything in the Applelinks FS archives know that the column is alive and well elsewhere (you can even sign up for the Farr Site News by clicking HERE and sending a blank email).

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

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