http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/longhorn_aero.asp

As you can see, Microsoft's new Aero GUI is chock full of blue digi goodness just as Mac OS X has been for about 3 years now.

Apple computer, still a software pioneer.

I have returned.

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...Mac OS X has been...

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NDP, you know how to turn a good phrase.

Well, there's no doubt that the "look" part of it contains plenty of blue. The next question is, how does it function? Part of the function of all that blueness is to make the OS look friendly and accessible. That’s a legitimate goal. The $20 million dollar question will be to see if that stuff is also the smartest solution or will the typical non-newbie user bypass it because it gets in the way? Then we’re back to the old division of the Command Line Power Users and the GUI Retards. The ol’ Mac OS didn’t make any such distinctions. A good GUI shouldn’t need to. If that’s not true, if Wizard-like things can be helpful for the newbie, then the question will be how these two environments can co-exist peacefully.

On OS X there are four categories of users.

Command Line Power Users
Command Line Newbies
GUI Power Users
GUI Newbies

Either GUI or CLI is fine. Those who choose not to needlessly resist the future do not see the need for conflict.

As for Longhorn, well judging on the ease of use of XP which is VERY easy to use, I don't see how Longhorn could possibly be worse so it must be better! (Great logic huh?). :-) Same as how each version of Mac OS got easier to use culiminating in the pinnacle of Apple software development, Macintosh Operating System Ten.

I have returned.

My favorite thing was that Longhorn was originally called "AERO" LOL! That's such a bitch slap to Aqua's designer water. The elemental GUI, good christ. Now all we need is fire and earth... oh and crap.

If you look at any of the vids about Longhorn, they are every bit as showoffy as Aqua, trying to sell the UI based on compositing speed and rendering and blueness, rather than function. It's utterly fascinating to me, this whole impetus. I sit there with this look of total disbelief on my face. In one presentation, the narrator basically comes out and says the whole thing is just an illustration of the compositing engine (presumably because nobody is going to NEED windows that rotate to the point where you have to type upside down).

What the frick is happening to us? Is everybody loopy? Jesus H. Christmas, people, get a grip. The bells and whistles are getting conceived before the operating systems. These GUIs are showcases for goofball rendering and bells-and-whistles tours de force, without anybody stopping to think what the hell they are good for.

Brother thalo said something or other:

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What the frick is happening to us? Is everybody loopy? Jesus H. Christmas, people, get a grip. The bells and whistles are getting conceived before the operating systems. These GUIs are showcases for goofball rendering and bells-and-whistles tours de force, without anybody stopping to think what the hell they are good for.

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I'm thinking it's about time to go deep into the prefs of Infopop and turn on the eye candy. Make the background of the posts alternative between pink and lime green. Make the text purple. There must be other stuff you can do, the more the better. I would consider this like doing field work, really immersing ourselves in this eye candy culture so that we can gain a better perspective.

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On OS X there are four categories of users.

Command Line Power Users
Command Line Newbies
GUI Power Users
GUI Newbiesp

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I'd break it out like this, NDP:

Unix Geeks
Microsoft haters
Apple lovers
Early Adopting Twiddlers (that's me)

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Those who choose not to needlessly resist the future do not see the need for conflict.

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Nope, there's not much conflict if we just roll over and take it.

<< Those who choose not to needlessly resist the future do not see the need for conflict. >>

Baseless assumption: "the future"

Patronizing opinion: "needlessly"

Unrecognized bias: "Go to Terminal...."

Underlying premise: "Resistance is futile."

Unseen reality: The Mac is dead, its ghost is drying up.


Markle

[This message was edited by Markle on Fri August 22 2003 at 04:57 AM.]

You know, that part about "unseen reality" has stuck with me, and I've been thinking about it.

Let me propose this idea to you, at first glance it's a typical X-man argument, but there's a different slant: Let's imagine there's a rock and roll band, we'll call them the Wizards of OS. Say they've created a body of work, with absolutely pioneering brilliant earlier work, and then kind of a slow decline, dumbing down as they gain mass market popularity. They do the typical sell outs, car commercials, movie soundtracks. At concerts people scream for their favorite old songs. Seems like every time the band tries something new, tries to go in a new direction, it's met with resounding disapproval. Most real hardcore fans say they've jumped the shark long ago. But the band stays popular. But the fans yearn for the days when the band was at the top of their game. The band is frustrated, they whimper to Rolling Stone that whenever we take the stage, our fans yell out the titles of our one or two big hits, and boo when we try to play the new stuff.

It's a typical story. And it's true of a lot of things, like artists, filmmakers, what have you. It's tough to be a pioneer. Tough to be original. Tough to sustain a creative effort WHILE staying true to yourself, and WHILE trying to make a living.

But here's the rub. When you sell your soul, when the money becomes more important than the work, it's really over. Hey, maybe not for YOU, not all at once, but your legacy suffers. You can squeak out the last few dollars, ride your name, but your crappier efforts are going to get forgotten, while your brilliant work will manage to survive no matter how you try and wreck it.

These are truths of the creative professions, and I think truths of the world of the Macintosh. But there's an upside. Crappy new work, RARELY totally negates brilliant earlier work. Legacies DO in fact survive. And like a lot of music, they're preserved on Compact Disk. You can continue to use them.

Did you see the movie "Ghost World"? With Steve Buscemi's character as a kind of kooky collector of old 78rpms? They represented what was truly EXCELLENT in music, and he continued to enjoy them WELL past the abandonment of the technology. He's what we call a purist. That scene in the car where he hears some godawful song is brilliant. I related immediately. It was like me being forced to use Aqua. I couldn't BELIEVE how bad it was. My face scrunches itself up into a grimace of total disbelief. I take one look at it and yearn for my preferred crap-free quietude of Platinum. Where things work, and where my computer interface--and world, make some frikkin' SENSE to me.

What I'm trying to communicate here, is that when stuff is truly EXCELLENT. It's ghosts in fact DON'T dry up. Excellent ideas, in fact, may be supplanted by crappier ones, but it takes something like the Black Death, or a holocaust to really erase them from memory.

One of the things that gives me the greatest sense of optimism about the future of the Mac is this: Guys like us will have COPIES of older operating systems. We'll have an old Mac hanging around to run them on. We can PROVE how good the legacy was. The following generations don't just have to take our word for it, we have the actual working software which SHOWS how things used to be. With clearly superior conception, responsiveness, and so forth. We have time capsules of what Mac OSs were like, before the crap set in.

Before Apple considered its user base a pack of retards. Before eye candy took over. Before they sold their souls, and before they sold out. Will there be newbies and digikids who look at us exactly like Thora Birch looked at Steve Buscemi? Absolutely. But again, great scene, when she gets it. When she plays one of those old records and it hits her like thunder. So powerfully that she plays it over and over and over.

That's the thing about great ideas. They're REALLY REALLY tough to kill. Even when the person killing them came up with them. Part of them, usually an important part, survives. I think the AHIGs are that level of great ideas. Apple can try to squash them for marketing ends, but sooner or later, what they USED to BE, will show itself as superior. OS 9, right now, is showing itself superior to OS X. That's why X-Men are flipping out.

OK, yeah, maybe not hardware-wise. I have an old 512k that still works, and booting it up is like watching paint dry. But its interface/GUI ideas were ahead of their time. A little glimpse of the way it should be.

Keep in mind, I have nothing against GUIs being ahead of their time. I have nothing against stuff like atmospheric and lighting effects, a 3-D virtual world. Hell no, bring it on. Aqua is too much for the current hardware, and I understand that. But that's not why I hate it so deeply. I hate it because it looks down at us. Because none of the visual superabundance or transparency effects is THERE FOR A GOOD ENOUGH REASON. I can't stress that enough. I don't just hate transparency. I hate it when the reason it's there has nothing to do with anything but impressing suckers. It's not USED well, it's not there to say anything but gee whiz lookit me. It's like listening to mozart, and having the orchestra suddenly break into a few bars of "WE WILL WE WILL ROCK YOU"... Yeah, people will stop their feet and clap their hands, cheer... but it's not working with the whole symphony. It's a cheap, lame attempt to score jollies with some aristocratic presumption of lack of audience sophistication.

That's the shit I'm against. That's the crap I'll fight til my dying day. That whole "they'll never get it anyway, so let's give them only what we think they can handle, or what will speak to them." Nah-ah. When the ideas are great, people WILL get them. You just have to give them a chance. Mozart can make anyone's heart sing, from trailer trash to JP Morgan. People thought Mozart WAS trailer trash, when really he just knew how to speak to EVERYONE.

That was the Mac's strength... it spoke to freakin' EVERYBODY. From third graders to scientists. Artists, musicians, businesspeople. But who became the "purists"? Right. Guys like me. Design pros. Tool users, artists, and unfortunately people kind of people who are behind the scenes or on the fringes of popular culture, who create it, rather than subscribe to it. The Mac became an artist's tool. A good one. But I think it NEVER ONCE STOPPED speaking to everybody.

What happened, was that you had to pay a premium to use it, and that's called a paradox. Speak to everyone, but charge too much. Bad. That's egalitarian AND elitist. That's why the Mac became niche. Became a tool for well to do yuppie artists and designers pretty much exclusively.

Hey, but that's economics. The IDEAS of the AHIGs are what I really want to stress. I don't think you can really kill those. You'd have to go on a campaign to burn all the old Mac disks, and destroy the old hardware so nobody could ever see how things were. I don't think Apple can stomp its own legacy. They can TRY, and holy crap they are trying... but they won't succeed. What they were is clearly better than what they are. Their decline is clearly a result of selling out and having their hearts in the wrong places.

But I have every confidence, if I know my history, that they'll enter a phase of renaissance. I'd put money on it. Sometimes you've got to fall far as you can fall, to be redeemed. Your own legacy is a constant reminder to you of a time when you "had it"... and eventually that will dig and dig on somebody like Steve Jobs, and he'll try to top himself. If I can read him at all, that's what I see. He won't want to retire having been responsible for this lowest-common-denominator, dumbed-down crap.

Apple will, one day (hopefully soon) begin to reexamine and reinvent the AHIGs to go with their new hardware power. One brave marketeer is going to stand up in a meeting and say: "Hey guys, what if we CUT OUT ALL THE BULLSHIT and went minimal?" OK, at first he'll get laughed right out the boardroom, but sooner or later they'll get it.

And that's when the Mac will come back. Not before. When neo-minimalism strikes, when less is more finally gets through a couple of skulls, including Steve's, we're gonna rock again. This superabundant happy horseshit will, and I guaranteee it WILL, collapse under its own weight. You can't have an OS that is this cumbersome and have it survive. They will start trimming the fat. They have to.

I'm not in this crusade to lose, I'm not gonna be Steve Buscemi, using OS 9 on an old G5 and rail at the crap of these young whipper snappers. No. I'm going to help bring about the renaissance that I know Apple is capable of. And it's just this one idea, ONE, that is stopping them from their destiny. Once they get it, they're golden. Once they get: Less is More.

[This message was edited by thalo on Sun August 24 2003 at 01:22 PM.]

What you're talking about, brother thalo, to make a long story short, is a change of attitude. Steve's had several years now to recognize that OS X isn't exactly rolling in less is more, and yet the opposite continues. It looks like a conscious decision on his part to ignore the past, the best, the venerable – and not some short-term aberration. It's not like he's walking around himself these days in Hawaiian shirts, green hair and Bob Mackie-designed-for-Cher jeans. He's still good, ol', less-is-more Steve when it comes to his own attire.

So what gives? When can we expect this Renaissance? The man who used to absolutely obsess over the look of the original Mac and over the insides of his own NeXT machine no longer seems to care. Either he's put someone else in charge or he has some deep-seated hatred for those who came before him and who were responsible for the original less-is-more aspects of the legacy. He's rebelling against Macintosh itself. I think that's why we see some of the schlep that we are. That's why we see this ridiculous implementation of labels. They just can't do anything like it was in the past. It's beneath them. How does one overcome that kind of attitude?

I just don't see how you ever get this Renaissance without new leadership, without cleaning house.

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So what gives? When can we expect this Renaissance?

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I wish I knew, my brother. I wish they'd just cut the crap and play hurry up, no-huddle get the frick ON with it.

Part of it, like I may have expressed at some time or another, is that I think Steve blames the user base for his fuckups. I see this era as a kind of "screw you, American public, you didn't get it, you didn't see what the Mac was about, so now I'll give you what I think you, and all your Gates-loving-retards are worth."

And that's the mistake. The minute you consider your customer unworthy of your best efforts, you go on roads like this. Where it's more about wringing out that last nickel at all costs, and not about your original VISION. Meanwhile, you alienate the legion of people who DID get it, DID appreciate you. You fuck them over too.

Unfortunately, this attitude change is, to marketeers, very scary. A marketing suit will never tell you to follow your vision. It's just not in there. They'll say follow trends, follow focus group data, follow everything BUT the stuff that's really about making a better product. Where Apple is right now, is very curious, very interesting: They've got quality in hardware. Fantastic design. Artful, visionary, as less-is-more as can be. Everything I'd ever hope for in industrial design. No corner-cutting that I can see. Those laptops are just amazing. Changing the face of computing.

They've got iPods. They tapped into something great there. They have KIND OF the right idea with the digital hub thing, it sure would be great if our PCs were our digital hubs and were a simple, plug-and-play nexus for all our digi devices. If, when you plug in those cameras, POW, your stuff is there, no muss no fuss.

They've got these great flat-screens. Taken TFT technology into a great new direction. Flatter, bigger, higher resolution. The potential there for design pros has me SALIVATING.

Where's the fuckup? The OPERATING SYSTEM. That's it. No dancing around the issue, that IS the issue. It's not strong enough to carry this platform. They're so close, they've got all these great directions, all this style and vision in all these other areas. HOW DID OS X END UP SUCH A DOG?

Because they lost their way. They caved to Windows. They caved to Marketeers. They became cowardly. Their "New" isn't really new at all. It's safe and Windowsy and Unixy and is loaded with too many bells and whistles because they weren't confident enough in the TRUE strength of the Mac GUI.

I think it went like this: The legacy, in the eyes of marketeers, became associated with low market share. Niche markets and company failure. They look at Gates, rolling in dough, and putting out a demonstrably inferior mac ripoff OS. They make a fatal conclusion-jump: People are idiots.

Well, they're not. Or even if they are, if you make sure you're about NOT treating them like they are, no matter what, you'll be great. Fatal conclusion jump #2: if you want users to switch platforms from Windows or Unix, you have to become Windows and Unix.

Nah-ah. To get users to switch, you have to be BETTER than Windows and/or Unix. I don't think the current Mac is either (maybe on the Unix end it is, honestly not sure there because I warn't raised a geek). All I know, all I can say with absolute certainty, is that it's not a better MACINTOSH.

It's a diluted Macintosh. It's a dumbed down Macintosh. It's a desperate friggin' Macintosh. Too desperate. Desperate for Windows people, desperate for geeks. Who's it NOT desperate for? Right. Pros. Old school Mac people. People who believed. Who got it. Who they had at "hello." They see us as having been wrong.

Well, hate to break the news, we weren't. We weren't wrong, and the AHIGs weren't wrong. What's wrong? The state of the Mac right now. Right now, it's as wrong as can be, and the Mac Faithful have to correct the insanity.

.
When the Wizards of OS first hit the scene, they were just about the only music in town. They played huge stadiums and the finest concert halls. Their concert ticket prices were $200, even for the upper nosebleed sections. Their records and CD's cost twice as much as any other group, but their sound was golden, and everyone wished they could buy them.

Then the Buzzards of OS came out. They copied a lot of the Wizards style, maybe not quite as good, but it was still music you could dance to, and the tickets cost $50, and the CD's were the normal price.

People started going to see the Buzzards instead of the Wizards, and buying the Buzzard records. The Wizards were still as good as they ever were, even better with new instruments and recording techniques. But the sales of their super-premium records and concert tickets were down. They started having to play smaller theaters and clubs. They were dropping in the charts, while the Buzzards were all over the place.

Then the Wizards had an idea. They would change their style to get attention and draw their audience back and away from the Buzzards. They'd stop playing their golden music. From now on, it would be strictly 16-Century Flemish madrigals set to music. Set to the music of 19th Century English sea shanties, but with liberal use of the modern fuzz pedal.

A few of their most loyal fans hailed this as the most brilliant artistice achievement of the 21st Century. Most of their other fans, who had stuck with them through thick and thin on the way down, finally shook their heads and walked away. The Wizards tried, finally, lowering their ticket and CD prices, but by then it was too late.

The Wizards were reduced to playing County Fairs and city-sponsored Concerts in the Park. But even the '50's be-bop revival groups outdrew them. Few songwriters wrote songs for them anymore because there wasn't enough potential for the music publishing royalties. University professors of 16-Century Flemish madrigals and 19th Century English sea shanties proclaimed them to be geniuses on a par with da Vinci and Michelangelo, and sneered at the great unwashed too benighted to perceive how wonderful, how RIGHT, this all was.

The Wizards themselves shared this view of their public. They refused to lower themselves by going back to the music that first gained them their great reputation. And besides, the fuzz pedal was expensive and they didn't want to give it up.

Meanwhile they started a side business selling portable music players that would play the Buzzards' music as well as their own. They also peddled bongs and rolling papers, and whatever else they could just to keep the group going. They earned a decent amount from that, although their manager took over $200 MILLION from them each year, so the actual musicians just barely got by.

When they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, based on the music of their early Golden Age, some of the younger members of the audience blinked and asked, "Who did you say they were again?"

Duh end.


Markle

[This message was edited by Markle on Sun August 24 2003 at 07:02 PM.]

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Part of it, like I may have expressed at some time or another, is that I think Steve blames the user base for his fuckups. I see this era as a kind of "screw you, American public, you didn't get it, you didn't see what the Mac was about, so now I'll give you what I think you, and all your Gates-loving-retards are worth."

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Hey, we're not so far apart on our assessment of the problem – only the solution.

B.E.: Thalo, you moron. Well, I can't quite think why, but rest assured that you are one.

It sort of serves us right. We dared not to go into hock to buy a couple extra Macs, just for the cause, every time we needed a new one. We should have done so and then donated them to a school

But if I were Steve Jobs II, and I was coming back to Apple to rule again, I would ask myself some questions and make some key observations:

Fact: Microsoft's Windows rules the desktop.
Fact: This isn't likely to change anytime soon.
Fact: Macs, due to economies of scale and fierce competition among PC makers, are going to be more expensive than PCs.
Fact: If you're going to sell computers given the above facts then these computers are going to have to be demonstrably better at doing something. Marketing hype and other bullshit is not to be considered part of the "better" equation.

Then I ask myself some questions before fleshing out OS X:

What can I do, if anything, to stop the defection to Windows? (That is, what features can I add to Macs that might stem the bleeding?)
What is it about the Mac that keeps current customers so loyal and buying?
B.E.: How can I really screw…I mean REALLY screw those uppity graphic designers?

You might come up with answers such as spatial Finder, non-invasive OS, elegant simplicity, ease of self-maintenance, cool hardware, (B.E.: leftist orientation of Apple), preferred windowing system, etc.

On the other side of the equation you might find answers such as less expensive PC hardware, faster processors, more software choices, more hardware choices, advantages of ubiquity, modern OS buzzword stuff, "it's what I use at work", etc.

Having thus taken stock, if you then make the assumption that Windows can be overthrown then you are sunk from the beginning. Not that making something good enough that it could, in theory, cause this to happen is wrong. It ain't. But if you start with that assumption – to go right after Windows or some other market and thereby ignore the wants and needs of your current customers – then you are Hubris Extreme. Add markets? Fine, but not at the expense of the existing ones.

With this understood, let's look at what you don't do:

First off, what you don't do is fuck with the GUI (no B.E. needed for this). You might enhance it in certain ways, but you don't put a torch to it. If you do make improvements you'd better make damn sure they really are improvements. Next, (B.E.: fuck NeXT) you don't annoy people. If you start to lie, Cajole Extreme, deceive, exaggerate, bullshit – either in your marketing or in your OS – you will lose your base. Oh, for a time they'll suck it up and hope you know what they hell you're doing. They'll Crap Settle. They'll do what they can "for the sake of the company", but there are limits. What you don't do is lie about processor speeds. You don't bully and harass theme makes (particularly after having put out such a piece-of-shit GUI yourselves). You don't make promises that your OS will work on certain hardware when it won't. You see, when you do all this stuff you become no better in your customers' eyes than Microsoft. Even the most die-hard Mac-addict reaches a certain point where, if they're going to be kicked around anyway, they'd rather pay less for the privilege.

B.E.: What you stupid morons should have done from day one is think about adding the buzzword stuff underneath the current GUI. That's what was needed most. (Hey, here's a thought: Come up with a visually super-abundant GUI that comes on by default so that it looks REAL COOL running on demo Macs in stores. You can then do with the GUI what you did with the iMac. Some people just love that sort of stuff. But you'll, of course, have a Platinum-like GUI there for the non-schmaltzy people. This little joke will just be between us.) After this is done you then set to work, like never before, to get rid of as many of those little annoyances as you can, the kind that all computers and OSs are so well known for. Boost your users' productivity. Make the extra cost of Macs tangibly worth it. But for god's sake, don't make the mistake of trying to make Macs "worth it" with some fancy schmancy marketing image hype. That's not going to work. You need substance first.

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To get users to switch, you have to be BETTER than Windows and/or Unix.

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Yup. (B.E.: Fuck yeah.)


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Now with new B R A D E X T R E M E
with Aqua-Activated Foaming Action

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Then the Wizards had an idea. They would change their style to get attention and draw their audience back and away from the Buzzards. They'd stop playing their golden music. From now on, it would be strictly 16-Century Flemish madrigals set to music. Set to the music of 19th Century English sea shanties, but with liberal use of the modern fuzz pedal.

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LOL!!!! Now THAT is funny.

And holy crap, is Brad Extreme scaring you like it is me? Hahaha.

I can't argue with anything brother Brad is saying. I guess one of my problems is that I'm cheap. And another of my problems is that I'm lazy. Very very lazy. To me, it's way easier to gripe and complain and lobby for OS X to be better, than to switch to Windows. When I think of having to do that, actual tears of frustration come to my eyes. I've spent a good part of my professional career establishing a MAC infrastructure. New computers is only a part of it. It would mean relicensing all the frikkin' software. I'm struggling enough as it is just to see the top of the hole, if I had to switch gears like that, I'd have to sell a kidney.

Peripherals might be the only thing I could switch over. Printer and scanner. Big whoop. I'm telling you, my best option right now is to stick largely with OS 9. That's really the path of least resistance. Do my work and suck it up and crap-settle for a few major honkin' crashes from time to time. Compared to working with OS X, that seems like NOTHING to me.

How long can I dig in and hold out? Time will tell. All I know is when I began thinking like a digger-inner, and tested the waters, asking myself, self: check out dual-boot Macs, maybe get a couple to replace your dual 500 G4 in case it gives up the ghost... well, I wouldn't call the savings extreme. Not by a long shot. I wonder why? Why are those street prices through the roof? I'll tell ya. I must not be the only pro who's panicking. I ain't the only Mac Faithful starting to think like a digger-inner.

Do I want a G5? Hell yes. Do I want one if all that runs on it is OS X? Bwahahahahaahaha. Yeah right. You'd have to be a grade A psycho to actually WANT to sit through 12 hours of 3000 megawatts of crappy eye candy every day, day after day. Maybe I am a moron for thinking that the GUI is --THE-- most important thing about the Mac. The --ONE-- thing that can't be crap. But that's me. I depend heavily on the GUI. I have to trust it. I have to BELIEVE it's there working FOR me.

I'm sure there are piano players out there who are physically able to play on pianos that are way out of tune or with keys missing, but I guarantee you it's not their first choice. It's not that I CAN'T work in OS X. It's that I can't work WELL. If I really try, I can crap settle and do some things. But when I try to work at a level anywheres CLOSE to what I could do in the legacy, OS X fails me.

And so I can't adopt. It's not that I don't want to. It's that it is not functioning properly. Plus it's poorly, poorly conceived and designed. I could maybe roll my eyes and get through having to look at stupid Aqua, but there's a lot more wrong with this than how fugly it is. It's slow and doesn't work. Good for a penny, not good for a pound.

What I need, is a high end, pro CPU, with a high end pro OS. The Mac used to be this. Now it's not. I was willing to pay more for a Mac. Now I'm not. High end eye candy (though really it's lowbrow shit) is not the same as a high-performance pro system. Face it, what we're getting with OS X is a unix box (may or may not be high end compared to others) with a lowbrow bloated eye candy choked GUI that is aimed squarely at the LOW END MARKET. Don't want low end. Want high. G5 = high end. OS X = low end. High end good. Low end bad. Maybe not bad for the digikid market, but bad for me. And I state without hesitation: bad for other pros in the industry.

OK, back to lazy. Switching to Windows? Not gonna happen unless somebody sends me a chillion dollars tax free to shut my ass up. Adopting OS X? Not unless it becomes pro capable. Stay with OS 9? My only choice. BUT, knowing that the clock is ticking, the ONLY thing I can do, is try to lobby Apple on behalf of the pro market.

They HAVE to get "Less is More" or I'm dead. I'm not in this crusade for my health. Thalo.net is fun, but I'd rather not have to have a site like this. I'd rather be working away and making a living and loving Macs like I did three years ago when I was a rabid fan and happy and kept my big yap shut because I had a smile on it.

I believe that people like us make a difference. Yeah, it's easy to say fuck it, we'll never have any kind of impact on a big American Corporation. Who do we think we are. The trouble is, we're right. Apple has LOST something valuable. And there is a way to get it back. And that way is gonna be good for everyone from pros to newbies.

I feel strongly that the personal computer will be whatever we want it to be, if we get friggin' INVOLVED. But we have to say what we want. We have to blow the whistle on crap and deception. We definitely have to put a stop to this "age of the work in progress" bullshit. Users, especially pros, have to speak up. The course Apple is setting for itself, writes us right out of the picture, and so we have to show some of our muscle.

Remember, WE are the guys who are going to buy those high end systems. I don't think it's unrealistic for us to make reasonable demands. One of those demands is: surpass the legacy. Another of those demands is: cut. the. friggin' crap. If something doesn't work, don't HIDE that fact with bullshit. Instead, fix it and make it go. Don't factor crap-settling or user base moronity into your corporate strategy. Make a better product. Make it now. Stop cutting corners. Stop snake oil eye candy garbage and bring form and function back to the Mac. Kill Aqua. Kill it dead. Do something better.

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LOL!!!! Now THAT is funny.

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I agree, brother thalo. Well done, brother Barry, err, Markle.

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I guess one of my problems is that I'm cheap. And another of my problems is that I'm lazy. Very very lazy.

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It's amazing, though, how throughout history those attributes have often lead to great inventions.

B.E.: You're also pompous, garrulous and obnoxious.

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Why are those street prices through the roof? I'll tell ya. I must not be the only pro who's panicking. I ain't the only Mac Faithful starting to think like a digger-inner.

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That a fact? You've mentioned this before but I haven't checked it out. Someone (not me…I'm too lazy) should list some of the winning bids from eBay on a few of the OS 9 capable Macs.

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You'd have to be a grade A psycho to actually WANT to sit through 12 hours of 3000 megawatts of crappy eye candy every day, day after day.

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The "extreme" is assumed with the title "thalo", I guess. It's 2200 megawatts, max.

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They HAVE to get "Less is More" or I'm dead. I'm not in this crusade for my health. Thalo.net is fun, but I'd rather not have to have a site like this.

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If they ever do square OS X with you and me then I suggest turning this site into something like Annoynances.org. Maybe "OS X Annoyances.com". I like aspects of that site because it's an honest admission of some of the crap in Windows and how to get around it. There's none of this "don't get me wrong" stuff.

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To me, it's way easier to gripe and complain and lobby for OS X to be better, than to switch to Windows.

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Thalo, I think we if are persistent enough then our complaints will get noticed. It might take some time and is going to require patience on our part but, in the end, they will get the message.

I agree. Switching to Windows is a pain in the ass. I can’t quite understand why 95% of the people out there are using it. Oh well. I think we’re better off just adopting OS X at some point, tricking it up with shareware, and then to keep stumping on the campaign trail for improvements. Some day all those Windows users will see the light and then we’ll be on top right where we should have been all along. Yes, we can stay in OS 9 for a while, as you said, but if they ever do at least get the underpinnings worked out so that the applications are stable then it might be to our advantage to adopt just for that reason alone.

Jobs might get persnickety at times – and downright belligerent – but in the end he wants the kudos and accolades for a job well done, just like we all do. There’ no way he’s going to let the Mac crash and burn over a pique of arrogance. They’ll get it all worked out in time, and that’s just what it takes – time.

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BradX said:

Jobs might get persnickety at times – and downright belligerent – but in the end he wants the kudos and accolades for a job well done, just like we all do. There’ no way he’s going to let the Mac crash and burn over a pique of arrogance. They’ll get it all worked out in time, and that’s just what it takes – time.

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Man, IHOP doesn't make better waffles. Where is the anti-Jobsian hate rhetoric we have all grown to love? Old Brad would have said that Jobs will let the Mac crash and burn just to satisfy his arrogance. I'm not sure I like this new BradX packaging at all.

<< Windows is a pain in the ass. I can’t quite understand why 95% of the people out there are using it. >>

That's what we used to say. Now we know they (and some former us's) are using it because there isn't much of an alternative anymore.

<< Now with new B R A D E X T R E M E
with Aqua-Activated Foaming Action >>

For that all-day fresh feeling in your tingly sensitive spots!


Markle

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Man, IHOP doesn't make better waffles. Where is the anti-Jobsian hate rhetoric we have all grown to love?

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Darr, when it comes right down to it Apple would be dead right now if it wasn’t for Jobs II. Sometimes you have to cut off a limb to save the whole body. Sometimes you have to drown a few helpless kittens to…to…well, I’m not sure where I was going with that, but you get what I mean.

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<< BradX said:

<< 'Jobs might get persnickety at times &ndash and downright belligerent &ndash but in the end he wants the kudos and accolades for a job well done, just like we all do. There&rsquo no way he&rsquos going to let the Mac crash and burn over a pique of arrogance. They&rsquoll get it all worked out in time, and that&rsquos just what it takes &ndash time."
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<<. Where is the anti-Jobsian hate rhetoric we have all grown to love? Old Brad would have said that Jobs will let the Mac crash and burn just to satisfy his arrogance. >>

OK, I'll bite. The Mac has already crashed and burned. No amount of tinkering with OS X is going to make any difference. It was all Jobsian arrogance. The kudos he's getting are from a few Mac users, but mostly from techies and Nixheads who the Mac was originally supposed to save us from. He can only enjoy that by a) tuning out the rest of the world, and b) cashing those humongous checks that his puppet Board of Directors gives him.

Markle

<< when it comes right down to it Apple would be dead right now if it wasn’t for Jobs II. >>

But the patient is on life support, is in a state of decline, and the prospects for survival don't look good. Dr. Jobs may keep the body going, but brain death is approaching.

Markle