So often when deconstructing a work of silly punditry, the Macalope will log on later to see that there is a response, a comeback, a retort.
And he will sigh.
Because they're always really lame.
Can't the brown and furry one just let the air out of a piece without having to spend an entire week on it?
Well, such was his initial reaction upon finding that ZDNet's Jason Perlow had posted a response to his piece from Monday. But to his delight, he found this response was different. This was saucy, with a piquant flavor and none of the usual bitter aftertaste so many of the Macalope's other sparring partners have left him.
The Macalope's frown? Turned upside down.
In response to the pointy one's point that the legs of the Mac cloning biz might be short and stumpy, Perlow replies:
What, amputees aren't entitled to have fun? You got a problem with veterans who had half their limbs blown off in the OS wars?
See what he did there? He riffed on the Macalope's bit. It's almost unheard of. A tip o' the antlers to you, sir!
But I guess Macalope likes to get his point across using inflammatory and tasteless metaphors.
Inflammatory, yes, but as a gourmand such as yourself should know, taste is subjective.
I believe the good Macalope is again confusing harmless PC hobbyists doing things in the privacy of their own homes with the activities of a struggling upstart computer manufacturer, whose business practices are under very close examination. Not once have I advocated people actually go out and buy systems from companies like Psystar. Yet.
Fair enough. Whatever freaky hermaphroditic PC action people are into at home is their own business.
But I have said, continuously, that Apple could significantly expand its market share by allowing Mac OS X to run legally on other hardware platforms, particularly to leverage and entice the efforts of the Open Source community working on Linux and similar systems.
The horny one would argue with you about how significantly cloning would expand market share. But, more importantly, market share is not the most important metric. If it comes at the cost of profit, it's not much of a prize. As a matter of fact, it's the kind of "prize" that can put you out of business. Remember, we have precedent.
The Macalope was there, Jason, and maybe he remembers it a little differently than you. In his recollection, it went down like this:
- Technology pundits say Apple must license or die.
- Apple licenses and has its lunch eaten.
- Steve Jobs returns, kills licensing and returns the company to profitability.
OK, there are some details left out, but that's the Reader's Digest version and the Macalope's seen nothing other than your unsupported assertions to the contrary that would belie this historical truism.
But, who knows? Maybe you're right. Clearly Apple's doing something wrong, huh?
Not everyone thinks the Apple industrial design ethos fits their ideal of cool or sexy, mister smart antlers.
The Macalope doesn't argue that you and many others want more choice -- everyone loves choice -- but our fundamental disagreement is over whether it's in Apple's interests.
Oh, and "mister smart antlers"? Awesome.
Don't you know anything about Godwin's Law?
That was actually the Macalope's point -- that you were flirting with it.
Incidentally, the most hysterical example evah of Godwin's Law was executed by a former ZDNet blogger you might have heard of.
Well, Jason, the Macalope can't say it hasn't been fun because it has. He looks forward to our next bout.
Ah, spring! When a gentleman's fancy turns to Mac cloning! Like ZDNet's Jason Perlow.
... I have to think that this whole idea of commercially produced Mac Clones has legs...
Ah, so Perlow's a leg man. Well, Jason, the Macalope's not sure what you're into but, just so you know, these particular legs are likely to be of the short, stumpy variety.
But despite all the lusting, is this relationship meant to be? Sure, cloners were able to legally have their way with Windows, but OS X ain't that kind of girl. She's gonna put up a fight.
There is the obvious difference here that Apple owns Mac OS X and the rights to the hardware platform it runs on, whereas IBM had a non-exclusive license from Microsoft which prevented a loophole from being closed, but to use the hackneyed phrase -- when there is a will, there is a way.
There are certainly going to be more attempts to create unlicensed Mac clones. The problem is, who wants to buy a computer running an unsupported operating system from a company that has the life expectancy of a fruit fly?
I have always said that it made absolutely no sense that Apple backed off from the prospect of cloned systems.
And the Macalope has always said that the water fountains at ZDNet must be served with lead pipes.
How easy is it? Well, along with legal copies of Mac OS X and a special EFI firmware emulator for PC BIOS-based equipment and instructions how to put it all together it doesn't really require any more effort than what it would have typically taken a PC homebrewer to assemble their own DOS or Windows-based white box 10 or 15 years ago.
Hmm. The Macalope likes your American ingenuity, Jason, but he's not hearing the words that brings this sleazy scenario to its tacky nadir: steampunk casemod. Think about it.
If you want a clone Mac or a "Hackintosh" that badly, you can have one, for just a small amount of effort and a very modest cash investment in a relatively generic PC motherboard, processor, RAM, video card and case with power supply assembled from an ever-growing list of compatible parts.
Rob Griffiths might disagree with the "small amount of effort" part. Here's what he went through:
After all of the parts arrived at my home, it took a few hours to build the machine. ... But building the hardware is actually the easy part of the process.
...
Next, I installed Vista on the PC, just to be sure everything worked. From there, it then took many more hours to get OS X working right--while the process is relatively straightforward, there are a lot of steps involved, and BIOS settings to tweak. If you want to run Windows and OS X on the same drive, there are more hoops to jump through to get it all working. But after many hours of reading, assembling, disassembling, screaming, installing, uninstalling, reinstalling, saying bad words, pestering friends, and generally not having very much fun, I was done: my machine was up and running, and capable of booting into either Windows Vista or Mac OS X 10.5.2.
Jason, the Macalope decrees your pimp name to be "Sugar-Coatin' Perlow". But over at ZDNet, hope springs eternal:
In all likelihood, you probably can run it on the PC you have now...
That's true! But, in the Macalope's case, that's because the PC he has now is a Mac. You see, time being money, this colossal exercise is only economically worthwhile if your only opportunity cost is the hours you'll lose from your job as a fry chef down at the DQ.
Oh, you'll need to be your own support person, and it will probably be more than a little bit messy, but if you are determined to "screw the man" so to speak, than a private citizen can effectively do whatever the heck they want without any interference at all from the Evil Fruit.
Who burned the Reichstag? Why, Steve Jobs burned the Reichstag, of course. Jason's just having a little fun, but when did the computer company with the 7% market share become the Great Satan?
Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu Hardy Heron is nice and all, but a Mac OS X I could easily and legally install on any random $500-$700 Dell or Taiwanese special from Costco or Wal-Mart?
OK, the Macalope may be an ungulate, but he still doesn't like it when other people make him throw up in his own mouth.
It's baffling how someone could get through an entire article and neglect to address one simple question: what's in it for Apple?
Attracting homebrew Linux users? No offense, Jason, but that's not exactly the gold ring of desktop computer market share.
This is not business analysis. This is technology fantasy porn. And Apple's just not that into you.
All things being equal, the brown and furry one would much rather steal market share from Windows than Linux. The Macalope has a lot of respect for the neck-bearded Linux gnomes who solder and compile long into the night. Sure, they're cheap, but they live by a noble, if smelly and hirsute, code. And the Macalope loves the idea of three viable desktop alternatives really competing against each other.
In any event, licensed Mac cloning is simply not going to happen. The experience from the mid '90s is that licensees don't increase sales, they rob sales from Apple. And the amount of money to be made on licensing is never going to be greater than the sales of Apple hardware lost. That leaves unlicensed cloning which will never be really mainstreamed because of the obvious legal, technical and, well, moral implications.
Sadly, this won't stop some fevered imaginations from going on and on about how very, very hot it gets them.
Ew, indeed.
Yesterday, Computerworld brought us 5 reasons to ditch the Mac and return to PCs (tip o' the antlers to John Gruber via e-mail). And, sadly, they weren't April foolin' us.
Listen, then, Mac user to the tale of one "Mac fan" who switched... back! (Please shoot the Macalope now.)
So while Apple's sales continue to grow, Keanini decided to buck the trend, and gave up on his most recent Apple machine, an Intel dual-core based MacBook Pro.
That seems like kind of a waste since he could have just used Boot Camp to run Windows on it, but whatever.
"I am all PC at home and at work now, because frankly, if I'm not working, I'm gaming. And the Mac doesn't have games," Keanini said, though his household still has three Apple machines in use by other family members.
One really wonders why Keanini switched to the Mac in the first place. It's not as if it was a great gaming platform back in 2001, when he says he first started using Macs.
It's easy to fall in love with the aluminum cases used in Mac hardware and the slick interface design of the Mac OS X, Keanini said. Those are two reasons why more people are moving to Apple products...
This article is really confusing. Are we talking about home users or business users? Because home users can certainly be excused for making decisions based on the "It's shiny!" index, but businesses cannot.
A cynical person would say that it sounds like the business decisions at Keanini's company were based first on his inclination to be distracted by shiny objects and are now being based on his desire to play games.
Fortunately, the Macalope is not so cynical.
"My rule is to find the technology that makes your company most productive and be honest with yourself about it," he said. "Don't bring religion into it."
And here we all thought that if we just prayed to Steve Jobs harder, Macs could magically run vertical applications in the insurance industry or legacy accounting packages or MS Project.
But according to Tim, that doesn't work. Thanks for clearing that up, Tim!
- Work-arounds waste time
Dur-hey.
"Everything is going to be a little bit different, and that little difference in everything eventually adds up," Keanini said.
No, Tim, not everything is going to be a little bit different. If you rely on the most proprietary of Microsoft technologies, obviously you're going to have problems, but Macs connect to Active Directory networks, run Citrix, connect to printers, hell, they even run Windows for crying out loud! Arrgh.
One company engineer woke up Keanini the night before presentation slides were due for a conference, his voice cracking with stress, because his slides -- exported from Apple's Keynote presentation application to Microsoft PowerPoint -- looked nothing like they had on the Mac.
Yeah! They probably looked like crap! Which would cause any sane person to ask why the hell he was exporting them to PowerPoint in the first place instead of just plugging a Mac into the projector, but not Keanini. He reminds the Macalope of Ned Flanders' beatnik parents when they said "We've tried nothing and we're all of out ideas!"
You may become quite attached to a Windows application or two and decide that Apple doesn't have a comparable equivalent. Apple is well known for creating user-friendly applications, but for Keanini, Microsoft has a lead with at least one program: OneNote,, which he uses for personal information management.
Well, if Keanini loves OneNote so much why doesn't he marry it?
Seriously, so Keanini's got this One Application He Just Can't Live Without™ that doesn't exist on the Mac. So, yes, maybe the Mac is no longer for him, if it ever was in the first place. The Mac doesn't need to be for everyone, you know. But Keanini seems to have attached a awful lot of emotional value to this one application that takes notes. One might even say he seems religious about it.
Hmm!
Frankly, the Macalope had never even heard of OneNote before (and despite the Classic Mac head, he does have experience with the typical Microsoft enterprise) so he took a look at it on Wikipedia.
Agh! Oh. Uh, looks great, Tim. That's a... handsome application you have there. The Macalope is sure the two of you will be very happy together.
"The designers of Mac -- again, this is their priesthood...
WE GET IT ALREADY.
... are not thinking about letting their users go," Keanini said. "It's like Hotel California: They are not expecting you to leave."
I'm sure the members of the Mac-using community would be more than happy to help pack your bags, Tim.
Companies that move over to the Mac OS X should expect to spend a lot of time converting data if they decide to move back to Windows, Keanini said.
???
And you didn't have to convert anything to go from Windows to the Mac? Do you even hear yourself talking?
"Today, companies need to be thinking about interoperability," he said. "It's the users' data, not the vendor's data."
Well said! Say, Tim, let's take a look at some of the items on the list of Key Shortcomings on the Microsoft OneNote Wikipedia page:
- Limited generic export capability or API functionality.
- OneNote 2007 notebooks, sections, and pages cannot be opened within OneNote 2003 and cannot be converted to OneNote 2003 format, thereby limiting the ability of different users with different versions to interact.
Cough.
People in glass houses, Tim.
Aluminum cases make MacBook Pro laptops, like the one Keanini chose, very sleek. But, Keanini said, the focus on design overlooked the fact that the computers throw off a lot of heat; so much so that he found he could not use the computer on his lap.
Well, now, that's just sissy talk.
OK, fine, a thin laptop is more likely to put the heat of the processor closer to your skin. So Keanini would rather lug around "a monster" than wear pants (the Macalope hears casual days at Tim's company are wild). To each his own.
"The religion made me blind," he said.
Twas not religion made you blind, Tim. Twas that world-class wankery you're practicing there.
Ultimately, it's Keanini's and his company's business which platform they use, but this list simply isn't a practical set of advice. There are reasons to switch to the Mac other than "it's shiny". For all the claims of lost productivity, there's a counter-argument to be made for gained productivity. And Keanini's "tale" doesn't even make any sense. Sure, it's got a beginning, middle and end (Computerworld's Robert Lemos is a reporter, but what he really wants to do is direct!), but it stretches our suspension of disbelief.
Also, the audience should have some empathy for the protagonist. Keanini generated zero empathy with this viewer. Again, if the Macalope were cynical, he'd be inclined to say that his farcical tale and repeated use of Artie MacStrawmanisms were designed simply to get his company mentioned in the press.
Actually, you know what? He is that cynical. That's probably exactly what this is about.
The horny one--the guy with a Mac for a head!--has repeatedly said the Mac is not for every person or for every business. But please spare him your jacktastic reverse switcher tales with the clownish religious references. They sicken him.
Of course silly Mac users are going to flog a study that shows that they, themselves, are five times more likely to say they're "very satisfied" with their operating system than Vista users.
Now, any idiot can see the problem with surveying people who've already admitted to using the Mac.
They're Mac users! They've already drank the Kool Aid! They drank it all up! And possibly drank yours!
Their responses simply can't be trusted because they've already fallen victim to Steve Jobs' voodoo powers.
Hel-loooo?!
Ha-ha! Silly Mac users!
ZDNet's Larry Dignan provides a great counterpoint to the recent "angst" over Apple.
Despite the year to date stock chart (right) Apple's business isn't exactly limping along. Sure you can worry about the iPhone not selling 10 million units, or iPod profit margins and even whether the MacBook Air is that big of a deal. But what's the point? Until proven otherwise most of us would love to have Apple's business.
The Macalope has given Dignan a hard time in the past, but this piece is eminently reasonable, raising the issues and providing a retort to each. As they say, read the whole thing.
Shorter Gartner (tip o' the antlers to Daring Fireball):
Oh, man, we were so high when we wrote that!
The Macalope knows the MacBook Air isn't perfect, but the amount of silly punditry it's attracting is seriously out of control.
First, did you know that the MacBook Air Lacks Features, Analysts Say (tip o' the antlers to the Rat Boy)?
It's true! And, according to squirrels, it lacks delicious nuts!
Well, pardon the Macalope for saying so, but dur-hey. He'd have to scroll through keynote again, but he's pretty sure that you don't need analysts to tell you that it "lacks features" because Steve Jobs actually said so. That "lack of features" is actually a feature.
The point is that because music, video and software are mostly being received wirelessly from the Internet in the digital wonderland in which we live, you really don't need them. The last time the Macalope used his optical drive was to install Leopard. Yes, you either need a USB optical drive or another Mac, but let's face it, at the MacBook Air's price, another $99 isn't going to bother you.
But PC World isn't the only place where you can chew the FUD.
Direct from the Canadian Ministry of Silly Punditry we learn that the MacBook Air may increase risk of laptop loss (tip o' the antlers to Colin Morton).
Indeed. The only way to ensure your laptop won't get stolen is to buy big fat honkin' ugly ones.
But, clearly, neither of those beats this gem from PC World's Mike Barton:
MacBook Air Amiss: Time to License Mac OS X?
Good question! Like "I Have Stubbed My Toe And Find It Painful: Time to Commit Suicide?"
With its focus on form over function...
Mike, if you knew the slightest thing about Apple or Steve Jobs, you'd know that form and function are inseparable.
But, please, continue.
... it is destined for the niche of early Apple adopters, sure to get burned on price and features when Apple upgrades to at least include a bigger hard drive than 80GB, ethernet, Firewire and a user-replaceable battery.
Predicting a laptop will one day have a bigger hard drive is like predicting death and taxes. But, with the possible exception of Firewire, Barton is wrong about the other three because they affect the size and weight and violate Steve Jobs' vision for shiny gadgets of the future.
Let's face it: Apple's done letting you get a new battery when the stock one won't hold a charge anymore and having you milk your device. Their philosophy is that you should be turning these suckers over every two years or so, partially because that's the rate of significant advancement for components. In two years, it's going to be out of date. You may not like that philosophy, but the Macalope's found it fits his personal buying pattern anyway so no big whoop.
The MacBook Air is not going to burn early adopters on features, but it might burn them on price. The Air is akin to the iPhone, in that it's "crippled" by lacking certain features you might have come to expect, but comes in a form factor not available in any competing product and it's priced at a premium.
The problem is, it's different from the iPhone because while Apple doesn't sell another phone, it does sell other laptops. If you go into an Apple Store to look at the Air, you're going to wonder if it's worth the premium over the MacBook, when the MacBook is faster.
That's why it also reminds the Macalope of another Apple product. What was that? If only he could put his hoof on it.
All that said, if you'd had the chance to lay your hooves on one of these as the Macalope has, you'd know that the MacBook Air is sexier than the cover of Herb Alpert's "Whipped Cream and Other Delights".
Oh, who is the Macalope kidding? There's nothing sexier than the cover of Herb Alpert's "Whipped Cream and Other Delights". But still, the MacBook Air is pretty damned sexy.
If you're a Mac user who travels a lot and/or is driven by style, do not need a lot of power and aren't terribly price sensitive, the Air is probably already singing its siren's song.
Clearly, as Macworld's Dan Frakes said, Apple has set its phasers to "niche".
But there's nothing wrong with that and it certainly doesn't excuse Barton's world-class jackassery.
I say let early adopters get burned. This product begs a bigger question of Apple: When will you stop holding back the Mac OS and start licensing the OS?
Uh, well, let's see. Wednesday's no good because Apple has meetings all day. Thursday it has to take its car in and nothing ever gets done on Friday, so...
How's never?
I like the Mac OS (which is more advanced than Windows)...
What's that even supposed to mean? That's like saying "I like butter (which is more advanced than motor oil)".
Well, no, it's not. While both can provide lubrication, one tastes better and the other works better in engines.
... and I love the idea of being able to have a dual boot Windows machine. I am not in the market for an ultraportable, but Apple doesn't offer one laptop I would buy.
Really? Not one of them? Why?
While the price parity issue has waned, the fact remains: Apple doesn't make a laptop under $1000.
Ohhh. You're cheap! Now the Macalope gets it!
I just bought a new ThinkPad R61i that cost me $600 delivered (just to show you the model I bought).
Aaaaiiii! It's horrible! Put it away! Put it away!
Ha-ha!
Seriously, though, that is one butt-ugly computer you got there. The Macalope is sure you two will be happy together.
But what about the future of personal computing -- will we always be subject to Apple's product whims?
Surely the company's entire product lineup was based on a series of whims.
Apple is missing so much opportunity to grow market share with the Mac OS.
Maybe it's not all that concerned with market share. Maybe it's concerned with profitability.
Nah, that would just be wacky.
Without it, Macs will struggle to warrant developers' time unfairly and remain a niche platform.
Mike Barton, providing the latest analysis from 1995.
Really, is there anyone out there using a Mac who's pining away for some Windows-only app, crying themselves to sleep at night because some vertical market sales force integration module for the dental field isn't on OS X? Doubtful.
And if Apple does not act soon to license the OS, the hacking community will gain critical mass...
Right. Because everyone wants a completely unsupported OS running on their laptops. That's certainly going to be a big hit in the home and in the enterprise.
With Apple on Intel and the genie out of the bottle with "hackintoshes" sprouting up, why doesn't Apple at least offer the Mac OS to business-focused companies...
"Business-focused companies"? As opposed to all those companies focused on what? Badminton?
... especially if it is going to continue to develop niche products like the MacBook Air when there are big holes in its lineup?
Yes, Apple will never have all the various kinds of products that Dell, HP, Lenovo, Sony, etc. can offer. Want to know why? Because they get great margins on hardware. Who wants to give that up? And the Macalope hates to tell his good friends Leo Laporte and Merlin Mann this when they were just pining anew on Thursday afternoon, but the wait for a 12-inch MacBook is going to be awfully long. Like cosmically long. Like forever.
The good news is you're going to love the tablet.
The Macalope's encouraged to see that Apple has enough to announce at the keynote that they can announce new Mac Pros a week before.
Well, either that or someone screwed up.
The Macalope doesn't really have a lot to add to the discussion going on over Tom Krazit's piece entitled Why do Apple customers care so much? -- Tom hits an even tone on an incendiary subject that's reached a crossroads of sorts -- other than to make two points.
First, it's fair to say that if one liked anything quite a bit -- chocolate, sex, liquor, sex with multiple partners, sex with multiple partners that included chocolate and liquor -- one might be inclined to promote that thing to others and not understand why others insist that that thing sucks, particularly when most of them have not even tried it and/or know little about it.
Second, it's an interesting statistical anecdote that while the Mac inspired a 13-year-old to shave an Apple logo into his hair, it was the Zune that inspired this dude.
So...
You know...
Let's not make too big a deal out of it.
PAGING ARTIE MACSTRAWMAN. ARTIE MACSTRAWMAN, PLEASE COME TO THE WHITE COURTESY PHONE. YOU HAVE A CALL FROM A MR. KINGSLEY-HUGHES.
What could/should Apple do to take sales and profits to the next level? Simple. Release an Apple branded Windows-based PC. I know, I know, this kind of talk is bound to upset the hardened Apple fanatic...
MR. MACSTRAWMAN, PLEASE MEET YOUR PARTY BY THE BAGGAGE CLAIM CAROUSEL ON LEVEL 4.
Sure, a few lunatics at the fringes who'd be upset, but that's only to be expected.
PAGING ARTIE MACSTRAWMAN. YOUR PARTY IS NOW AT THE SECURITY DESK ON THE PROMENADE.
Apple's a lot easier to understand when you stop looking at it as a religion and instead see it for what it is - a multi-billion dollar consumer electronics company.
LAST CALL FOR ARTIE MACSTRAWMAN. ARTIE MACSTRAWMAN, PLEASE COME TO THE NEAREST CUSTOMER SERVICE COUNTER.
Frankly, the Macalope could really give a rat's ass if Apple started selling Windows pre-installed. It's more that he doesn't think it would help that much and he that the last thing that fits into Apple's product mix is a me-too PC clone (albeit the most stylish me-too PC clone around). The horny one doubts Apple wants to get into OEM contract negotiations with Microsoft, but if they decided to do it his reaction would be "Meh."
And he's got a Mac for a head.
Kingsley-Hughes links to a piece by Tom Krazit who believes there's more to booming Mac sales than just an "iPod halo effect".
I will throw this out there: I think more people are buying Macs because there is no longer a penalty for switching to a Mac. After all, you can run Windows on a Mac, open and edit Word documents in Mac OS, and you probably spend most of your time on one Web page or another that doesn't care what operating system is in control.
This is undoubtedly true and lowers the barrier to entry into the Mac world. The Macalope's been mulling another reason which he calls "the Wii effect".
Take a look at the anecdotal evidence for a substantial increase (tip o' the antlers to Daring Fireball) in Mac market share on college campuses. Increasingly, consoles are the platform of choice for gaming which has traditionally been a killer feature for PC ownership among youngsters. But if you already do your gaming on a Wii or an Xbox, why not make your laptop a Mac?
And, yes, "Artie MacStrawman and the Wii Effect" would make a great name for a band.
