Red Hat Diaries/007d

Apple Nazis Strike

I still can't get past this one. Apple were supposed to be the good guys. They were supposed to be the ones who fought - and defeated - those bad guys in the 1984 Ridley Scott TV ad movie. It was Apple that were going to make 'a dent in the universe'. Well I think they made that dent all right, but I think by now it's equally obvious that Steve Jobs is just an orphan boy always trying to make up, a wayward soul that took too much LSD, a consummate hype artist, probably a regular guest at San Francisco gay bars, and a total asshole. And if you suspect all of that was just to piss him off, you are right. Assholes like Steve Jobs need to be pissed off - and regularly. They need to be stomped in the shit. They need to have their faces slapped, and they need to be put in their place - if there be such a place for them.

It's very obvious what Apple are doing: They're positioning themselves as the avant-garde of the open-source movement, but there's a catch here: To run their futuristic stuff, you have to buy one of their computers. They're going to continue to develop software for their OS X platform, which is a true Unix platform, they're going to have X11 in there, which means they're going to have a whole slew of software running and running well, but they're not going to port to anything. You will not be able to run this if you don't pay Steve Jobs $4,000,000 for an iPod and $27,000,000,000 for an AnalBook.

Oh sure, there's Open OSX and GNUstep, but Steve Jobs isn't worried about them. They're fringe, on the edge, flaky. Steve will always be able to wow over the crowds, and those boring nerds at the open source sites will never have PR capital or Apple stores. Most people won't hear about them. Most will be like Ellen Feiss.

So it's a slick game he's playing, and it's all based on image. One program is as good as another - Steve missed the boat on business, so it's a war for the home user - but they don't always look the same. PDF graphics and slick NextStep stuff, programs like iTunes and iDVD - and of course it all 'just works'. And it will continue to 'just work', for the most part that is, because Apple, unlike Microsoft who have to test their sorry wares on literally thousands of computers with tens of thousands of configurations, have but one computer to test on, and they use this computer daily. Talk about reduced costs - which Apple will never carry over to the consumer of course. Heaven forbid.

And if, in this precious Mormon Children of God Hotel California Scientology constellation Mr Jobs has built up, there should ever emerge a critical voice, then it's all over. No one but no one can be allowed to criticise the LEADER, the MOVEMENT, or the ONE TRUE MAC WAY. And if that way be a common pestilence for all Mac customers, then so be it - for they will not complain. They have been browbeaten and whipped too many times through the years to be so foolish as to speak up.

It's easy to forget that one is a customer first and foremost, and that the relationship calls upon Apple to be something in return. If I was told by my Apple rep that I would get a cool Mac email address precisely because this, the most exclusive of all clubs, checks your computer when you hook up - anyone with a Mac can have an address at mac.com, but you have to have a Mac - then Apple, the vendor whom the Apple rep represented, has to give me that address. For the price agreed upon. But I already paid my price - I already paid more than enough. The Mac address, or so it was touted back them, was for free. And I was glad to have it. I took it.

And when Apple decided they would literally screw all their loyal customers and make them pay $99 per year just so they didn't lose those addresses to somebody else, a lot of people got royally pissed. A protest site quickly garnered nearly 40,000 signatures against Apple's malpractice. Would Apple give in? They sure timed it wrong - they were hitting students just when expenses were highest - and they delayed their incendiary operation for six weeks.

But then they closed the door. And thereby lost, according to Andrew Orlowski of the Register, the biggest and best mailing list in the history of the Internet. They lost a lot of fans too.

Most of this is common knowledge - just don't mention it at the Apple website. They'll take it down and breathe fire at you.

Another visitor to the Apple discussion forums told the tale of how he met Steve Jobs the day after MWSF opened. At the Pasadena store. This guy went in to buy one of the new 12' PowerBooks. Only thing was, he thought they were damn ugly - they looked like a cheap coat of silver paint over the iBooks. And to judge from the technical specs, this guy is probably right.

So he didn't buy a 12' 'AnalBook' - he bought the old 15', the one I have, instead. And as he's putting what's left of his credit card back in his pocket and picking up his overpriced hype item and heading for the door, in walks STEVE JOBS HIMSELF - naturally with an ENTOURAGE, just like L Ron Hubbard or some other scumbag demagogue guru.

'Hi Mr Jobs,' says the schmuck, 'You make nice computers!'

'Hi,' says the eloquent Steven P Jobs.

'But your new AnalBooks are horrible - so cheap!'

Quick look from His Holiness, sizing up the schmuck. 'Cheap? No they're not! They're GRRRRRRRRREAT!'

And Tony the Tiger walks away with his disciples.

But the schmuck had more to say, and he followed after Steve Jobs and said it, but you can't read that part at the Apple discussion forums.

It's been removed.

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