Good night Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

Hey. No. Really. I have to go. My wife thought I was going to be home two hours ago.

The move isn't complete, but from this point forward, all the new posts will be over ----> HERE.

It's a very nice place. They fixed it all up. The walls are soft. The nice young ladies bring me soft food. They sharpen my crayons for me and let me watch all my soaps.

Oh, boy. It's time for my candy.

Do Mac Lovers Hate Tech Analysts?

I saw an article over on MacDailyNews that posed the above question. Actually, MDN didn't ask the question, but they linked to an article that did. I didn't read so far as to find out the name of the twit who actually wondered that out loud. Clown.

The answer is: No. I love TidBits. They're tech analysts. They make sense without being totally slobbering fanboys, and I appreciate them respecting my turf that way. They write stuff I sometimes disagree with, but usually only until after I spit hot coffee on my shirt. Then I settle down.

Really, the answer is, "No, dumbass." But I'm trying to be kind. We LOVE tech analysts. It's just that there are so few of them among the poseurs and hacks.

Mac lovers hate FUD mongers and clods with obvious agendas who publish absolute idiotic drivel. InformationWeak and BusinessWeak come immediately to mind. Seriously, if reading absolute Enderleic, snotty-sleeved, basement-dwelling, pseudoanalytical, anti-Apple garbage appeals to you, those two sites are probably a bit beneath your standards.

Tonight's award for the most ill-informed poorly researched pile of mythological metaphors, flowery platitudes, and bad analogies goes to Roger L. Kay (whose name can be rearranged to spell "York Lager") of BusinessWeak. I linked it. I'm kind of changing my attitude about that. If nobody reads these FUDbots, they'll quit writing. Then I won't have anyone to make fun of except the kid across the street.

York Lager starts out with this twisted gem:

"Just as those living in shiny houses of self-righteous glass often end up surrounded by shards of their former sanctimony, so Apple Inc. now finds itself the increasingly appealing target of software hackers."

First, where the hell do you buy self-righteous glass? If I'm building a house of glass, I think I'll use 3/8" tempered. But that's just me. And then, just exactly what connection does that have to hackers? Apple? Apple isn't in a glass house throwing stones. There are roughly umpteen-skillion fewer pieces of malware written for OS X than Windows. There's a business school technical term for not marketing based on major, obvious advantages over your competition. The term is: stupid.

Then he goes on:

"For years, Apple's marketing has consisted of accentuating the positive and ignoring everything else."

Really? Holy Business one-oh-one, Batman! Apple has only been advertising and marketing the positive aspects of their products? Those bastards! Who the hell do they think they are? Comparing their product favorably to those of the competition, too?! IN AMERICA? I'm shocked. Outraged. [I could show you the rest of the paragraph, but you'd get more value from getting a moist towel and wiping that coffee cup ring off the desk]

Then York Lager explains that "Apple is becoming a victim of its own success, and the irony is just too great to miss. Anyone with a mild sense of history is keeping track." York Lager apparently doesn't quite have a mild sense of history. He drags out the "security by obscurity" dead horse and beats it. A mild sense of history would know how utterly stupid that noise is. He might have misspelled "mild case of histrionics."

The next subheading is a hoot,

TARGET: IPHONE

Below this subhead he notes that Apple is selling piles of Macs and says, "It's little surprise then that reports of Mac viruses have been rising steadily." On this one note, as a student of mathematics, I want to point out that York Lager is correct. The reports of Mac viruses have risen steadily at a constant rate of zero.

See this line? ______________________________________

That line represents the slope of the increase in Mac viruses. It's been rising steadily at that rate for eight frigging years. If you lean your head slightly to the right, it might look like an upslope, but that's just a trick of the eye (or neck).

Anyway, York Lager dithers on for a few more minutes before delivering the final bon mot:

"Everyone makes mistakes. But society loves to repay hubris with derisive laughter."

Oddly, we provide the same response to ill-conceived gibberish delivered with an air of pomp and pretension.

So, yeah. That kind of FUD-spewing self-proclaimed expert might upset a few Mac lovers. If you want to read about Mac security from a tech analyst, I recommend this post. Over on TidBits, you can get real analysis. Some of it might piss off a rabid fanboy from time to time, but I'll get over it.
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Flash for the iPhone. Meh. There sure is a lot of noise about it. I'll bet most of the fuss is funded by Adobe. Those parts of the internet that require Flash to be interesting aren't the ones I go to, so I – selfishly, as usual – could not care less about Flash.
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Vista Sucks SP1 is available. I am not making up this quote from Ars Technica. This is straight out of the article. You can go read it here if you doubt me....

"Significant changes include: File copying should no longer have an ETA of hundreds of years..."

The rest of the post is even funnier. All you have to do is read what those poor, downtrodden Windows slaves have to live with to remember why we Mac lovers tend to be just a little on the smug side.

Time for coffee.

Late note: Roughly Drafted does a better job of discussing York Lager if you'd like a little better balance of cynicism and analysis. I try to stay more with the former.

Poker Trainer: Four queens beat a straight

Mondays suck.

Apple Domination. Shut up. Okay?

Um. People. What in the hell is all this snuffling about "Apple domination of the computer market?" It'll be good. It'll be bad. It won't matter. It'll suck. It'll never happen.

Folks, Apple is taking over. Just relax. This won't hurt a bit. The check is in the mail. The keys are in the car. You can't judge a book by its cover. A stitch in time saves nine. Over the hills and far away. Her Majesty is a pretty nice girl. Don't give me that do-goody-good bullshit.

Right now, people who don't know squat about computers and have the money to buy a real one, can afford a Mac. A good percentage of them will buy one. Some of them will also get a dozen eggs and a wicker trivet.

People who know something about computers and can afford to buy a real one, can afford a Mac. A large percentage of them will buy one. Maybe two. They may also take up macramé and have a small salad with their dinner.

Bureaucrats and corporate IT types will be reluctant, but will come around in time. Right now, they're buying Dell/HP/Windows and Linux servers. They think they have to.

A lot of the market share numbers come from Bob Shippingclerk and Mary Benefitsadministrator. They don't care this much about XP vs. X. If they need a new computer, they'll ask their friends what they bought. As more and more of their friends say "iMac," more and more ordinary Mikes and Lindas will say, "You have a booger showing. Other side." But only if they're talking to really good friends. Everybody else can just run around looking like that.

Here's proof that Apple is already capturing mindshare in the market. These are things you never hear:

Mom's Zune pie
A Microsoft a day keeps the doctor away
The XBox of her eye
Comparing Dells and oranges
An HP for the teacher
The Vista never falls far from the tree
Bobbing for Acers
Adam's Vaio
Polishing up the Linux

You see what I'm saying here? Master Jobst Fimil had this all planned out from the very outset. And I don't know about you, but if he ever has boogers showing, I've never noticed. So if you ever want to talk to me about Apple dominating the computer market, you obviously have too much time on your hands.

I'm pretty sure we have some more olive oil.

Hello?

Hey! Where is everybody? I feel like Eliot Spitzer at a family reunion.

I was kidding in the last post, you know. I meant skinny, expensive, fun to look at, AND useless.

Is that better?
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Hey, does anyone know how to hack a Sony TV? Is there something I can download? It has a USB port, so there must be a way. My stupid television won't let me use the whole screen for computer output. I didn't go to all the good time and trouble to hook the nasty thing up to my MacBook so I could watch The Outlaw Josey Wales on a little rectangle in the middle of the screen.
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Adrian Kingsley-Hughes wrote something ignorant, fact-free, and easily debunked.

Don't bother. I'm not going to.
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Slashdot is reporting that iPhone 2.0, which hasn't even been released, may have been hacked.

It's nice of them to finally catch up with the rest of us.
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ZDNet headline:
Apple to iPhone devs: Keep on developing for Jailbroken iPhones guys!

Would everyone just wait a minute? We haven't even got the makings for a good molehill yet. Appparently some guy named Philip Elmer-Dewitt (I'm not making that up) from Fortune put on his size-28 orange shoes and red nose and claimed that Apple delivered a mighty slap in the face to potential developers.

This from a letter that said, "Can you hold please?"
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John McCain just has to sit back and take notes until June. It really doesn't matter who the candidate turns out to be. McCain should have everything he needs.

The whole media focus on the Dems is a black man versus a white woman. I thought the liberal media was above all that crap by now. Oddly, they can't seem to move the discussion to any other metric. Weird.
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Oops. School night.