From The Sydney Morning Herald Blogs

“No one can argue that Jobs is a visionary. He’s also an enigmatic leader that has followers practically falling at his feet. While this might sound like an exaggeration, have a look at his Macworld keynote in San Francisco earlier this year (you can download it free from iTunes). It’s like a group of devoted fans following their Messiah, cheering at every second phrase he utters and almost fainting when they find salvation in the much-hyped iPhone.”

That in this predominately crappy world, some of us hang on to a pleasurable computing experience like life-preservers in a drowning sea of crap … A world where things are routinely misrepresented, shoddy, and the people that sell them baldly lie.

Isn’t it all really about lies and truth? About being marketed to and hoodwinked? Why a relationship of unusual integrity between maker and consumer should be so derided … can only stem from the bitter, undigested truth that the world of Windows is right where this guy knows himself to be stuck.

I’m quite serious. Here on the web, is not this psychological phenomenon constantly laid out before us? Like some ghastly tableaux la mort: How humans behave when they can neither digest nor expel what’s so.

Besides, the effort to do so, to cough up this little hairball by disparaging the envied, threatening Other, have you noticed, doesn’t work, never has worked, never will. Furthermore, this is perilously close to the structure of Abuse, how it happens, who is the perp and why.

No wonder creative people wouldn’t dream of working on anything but a Mac. It would be like inviting Uncle Fester into your sacred space.

My MacBook is the tool with which I daily navigate Winnicott’s transitional space. Where we work to join what we wish, in dreams, with the world as it really is.

Like that’s ever going to happen on a Dell.

“Remember on Monday when Steve Jobs, Lord of all our Earthly realm, proclaimed Safari as the best browser ever and that Apple wanted to steal market share from Internet Explorer? The COO of Mozilla noticed that too and didn’t like it one bit. So he called Apple out.”

According to crunchgear, anyway, and that’s good enough for me.

What I got to say to John Lilly, I doubt he cares to hear: What’s With That Funky Browser, White Boy. Yet I suspect he knows, deep down, knows his precious Mozilla-anything is the strangest piece of crap to come down the highway in a long time—only Captive Nation would clasp to its bosom a misbegotten mess like Firefox.

Why mess? Let’s start with all those extensions. Where is any intelligent advice for management of all these add-ons? Left for the poor fucking user to find out, and, as I say, only a captive nation etc etc.

Yes, if you’re on Windows, use them, use Firefox, Sea Creature, whatever their latest weirdness is called. Because they will keep you safe online. I know, I know, you’re sick unto barfing of hearing it, but were you on a Mac, any Mac, the whole frigging point would be moot.

Moot, not mute, nor any other of the misuses and misspellings that litter the web. Moot seems like a particularly hard one. God knows why. You bunch a stinkin’ illiterates.

The Illiterati. A much larger group than the Illuminati or whatever they call in on Edge. Does anybody read Edge anymore. Now that it is not the edge.

(This is me in a good mood.)

Mozilla “extensions” and themes. I believe I already ranted the theme rant … but to a Mac user of lo these many years, you gotta know, people, those … those things you call themes are a horror show of atrocious design, (I like the pink kitties) and the fact that people are happy with them, that people make more, reflects an aesthetic (aesthetic?) that makes my brain hurt.

New one: Tasteless Nation.

To bring today’s wander of a rant to a close, we know that Lilly’s remarks are drenched in envy by virtue of kindergarten psychoanalytics. Nothing could be more obvious.

Show me an actual critique, I may not like it, but I will also not be able to go to work on the author.

Let that be the lesson for today. And if you find out what it is, be sure and let me know.

Okay, this FakeSteve guy is not only in many ways better than the real thing could possibly be . . . as well as so like himself as to give the true Jobso fan chills up and down the spine (I leave it to you to decide who “himself” is) … he is now, also, a friggin genius.

For surely “Not that one, my Bidness Nose!” shall go down in the Book of Great Lines Read the rest of this entry »

Apple’s shares slipped less than 1 per cent in after-market trading on Wednesday, suggesting that investors did not believe that Mr Jobs’ admission would weaken his position at the company.

Clearly, there is some confusion out there, In what I call PC-Land, what you probably call, the world.

Steve is the company, the company is Steve.

Look at it this way: Once, in partnership (ha) with my then-(ha) husband (ha) (where am I?) I owned a lovely Mercedes that also went like a son of a bitch. Which is to say, beautifully, smoothly, extremely fast. What a tool for getting from here to there. And we had our little joke, because we had more money than seemed possible, then. It went, Why isn’t everybody smart enough to drive a Mercedes. Some joke. Read the rest of this entry »

Mac Backup Software that is Harmful?

How can zis be?

Becozz eet eats opp all ze metadata?

Let me give you my own personal take on that: I HATE metadata.

I hate whoever thought it up, I hate whoever foisted it upon the lives of OS X users, most of whom have their hands full just wading through their data. (80GB? 100GB?) Fuck meta. Just the thought of data-about-data gives me one of those Through The Looking Glass headaches.

Take a Memo: 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino CA. (And no there ain’t no stinkin’ comma there, god damn it) The day I want to find something on my computer by “Model of the device used to acquire this document” or “Whether red eye correction was on or off” or “Method used to deliver the media (Fast Start or RSTP)” … mark it on your calendar, boys, because that’s the day they throw an ice-skating party in hell.

Just tell me where my file is. And that’s all! I don’t want to know another god damn thing about it! Just find it and show me a list! I will click on my choice, Spotlight will go away, and that will be the end of it!

But no. That would be so un-Apple-like. Where’s the mystery in drab old Find.

I suppose in the rarefied air of #1 Endless, they’re also oblivious to the fact that Spotlight has spawned a whole new category of shareware: Spotlight workarounds and potentially human-usable interfaces. I use a Finder hack so that Command-F—get this—finds the file I’m looking for.

And when I want to know more than that, here’s what I’ll do: GET A LIFE.

Steve must have a zillion photos and also give a rat’s ass about classifying them according EXIF data, whatever that is. No, I know what that is, it’s one of the things people imagine is important when they don’t know how to stop.

You’re lookin’ much better, Steveness. (May I call you Steveness? For short?) Which is why I feel free to tear into your ass. But try not to scare us like that again. Almost dropped my iPod. (Sung to the tune of Almost Cut My Hair.) (Well, in my head it is.)

“What happened”

Infinite Loop wondered the other day,

“to the Steve we know and love?

Oh, they were in a flap all over the Mac world-of-the-clueless. The WWDC failed to meet expectations—which were running abnormally high, granted, because of WWDC Bingo—but in the land of reality, we do suffer disappointments, and the heart usually finds a way out, via empathy. Via knowing ourselves to be fallible, mortal—human, in other words. We do not think entirely with our left brain. Well, some of us do. On the internet, make that many. Many many.

So far—though I’ve by no means covered all your bases, god no—I’ve read all kinds of speculation on Steve’s subdued Keynote, and I am here to tell you, all of three, that’s right, three people—some wuss on O’Reilly, Bambi-and-Tera, and me—have reported being upset by his actual appearance. And we weren’t even the hell there.

It was immediately and painfully apparent to us, even on that ratty little QuickTime screen, the man is skin and bones. And when you have had pancreatic cancer, I imagine there are only two reasons to be skin and bones: you are in treatment, or—not to put too fine a point upon it—dying.

It wasn’t long ago that Steve appeared before the Cupertino City Council, looking fine. I don’t want to lose him. That was my first thought; I am very clear about that.

But the threads, the threads. Guys falling all over themselves to exchange the usual fatheaded-guy-reasoning. “I know a guy who was there, and he said Steve didn’t look too thin.” This on Slashdot. Oh, like that completely settles it.

Honestly, men will agree with each other about anything. The blind leading the halt and the lame.

Also “It’s a new business strategy” and—how stupid can you get? we ain’t there yet—Steve was merely “giving others a chance to shine.” Or my idiot fave, “He didn’t get enough sleep the night before.”

I don’t know. Men are really weird about sickness and death. Nurture or nature? Even as the evidence mounts for the latter, meaning that supposedly they can’t help it, my reaction remains the same: Guys! Shape the fuck up.

See if you can’t connect a feeling—you know, one of those uncomfortable things rolling around inside your chest—to, hey, a thought. Try not to be total assholes. It was an upsetting sight, we are scared for Mr. Jobs, and we send him heartfelt wishes for good health for many, many years to come.

Or, perhaps more properly: The Steve looketh gaunt and sayeth not Just One More Thing, and the people worried amongst themselves. A blessing was offered up unto Cupertino, and in this way, The Steve came to know, he is widely and greatly loved.

Dealmac Forums: “Re: How do i access netgear router? What is the IP address?” Posted by: zo219 The default page—meaning, the page where you configure your router, and, it is to be hoped, put some constraints on incoming traffic—is accessed, for Linksys and Netgear, at 192.168.1.1; DLink by typing in the address 192.168.0.1; Belkin 192.168.21 … and if you’ve some other brand, go GTFW. [corrected] Read the rest of this entry »

And the Steve spake unto Ari and Hyatt … saying unto them,

Speak unto the children of Apple, saying, These are the browsers which ye shall use among all the software that are on the earth.

Whatsoever implementeth the tabs, and render the text, and render the CSS, among the browsers, that shall ye use.

Nevertheless these shall ye not use of them that render the text, or of them that implement the tab: as the Lynx, because he render the text, but implementeth not the tabs, nor render the CSS; he is unclean unto you.

And the Internet Explorer, because he render the text, but implementeth not the tab, and render not the CSS; he is unclean unto you.

And the iCab, because he render the text, but implementeth not the tab, and render not the CSS; he is unclean unto you.

And the Opera, though he implement the tab, and render the text, yet he render not the CSS and he creepeth on the page loading; he is unclean to you.

Of their code shall ye not use, and their executable shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.

These also shall be unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the page loading; the Netscape, and the OmniWeb, and the WebDesktop after his kind.

And upon whatsoever any of them, when they crash, doth fall, it shall be unclean; whether it be any disk, or CD, or server, or tape, whatsoever storage it be, wherein any work is done, it must be erased, and it shall be unclean until the even; so it shall be cleansed.

And if any browser, of which ye may use: blink; he that toucheth the executable thereof shall be unclean until the even.

For I am the STEVE your CEO: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping browser that creepeth upon the page loading.

For I am the STEVE that bringeth you up out of the land of Windows, to be your CEO: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

This is the law of the browsers, and of the software, and of every application that runneth on the client, and of every application that loadeth upon the server:

To make a difference between the unclean and the clean, and between the browser that may be used and the browser that may not be used.

Comments:
Would you please address the issue of shellfish? I know they have not scales and neither have they fins, and they liveth in the seas and in the rivers, but it seems to me that calling them ‘abominations’ is a wee bit harsh.

Also, why am I allowed to eat beetles but not ferrets?

Well, apparently my fond babies have gone, slipped away in the night, at some point in the last, oh, three or four years, so that I feel called upon to post and thereby mount for all eternity this page, from perversiontracker.com, and if ever there were a dot and a com … my god, what raw talent. And the commenter! Who shall gather up these treasures. Oh, all fucking right, the Wayback Machine … but since my authorial stance demands that this persona called Zo shall stand at the center of the universe, hey.

You really have to know and love Apple to appreciate the way in which put on and reality weave their way through this Morris Dance of a post, a spirit that Cringely, among others, has caught and does so well … the worse Microsoft does, the better Cringely gets … I was once married to someone like that, but in the least positive sense; the lower I got, the zestier his outlook (zestier? I don’t know if I even want to make up that one.) Whereas Cringely has taste, and manners. Okay, class. Okay, more class than me, are you happy now? I still now and then recite to myself, for the sheer pleasure of it, “And Microsoft? Microsoft doesn’t have a dog in this fight.”

Which captured the spirit of the moment with such perfection, it was as if I could see Gates standing on the sidelines, with the same entertained-yet-clueless expression with which some of us are so familiar, whilst Apple and Google get to do all the interesting things. Like live in and deal with the present. You Microsoft shareholders are fuckin’ lucky that the software infiltrated business, but I do wonder what you’re going to do when they come for you, I mean, when the operating system crumbles like ancient, ill-made papier mache. I care.

So there will be shit flung at this post, on account of this post, because, have you noticed, any sort of reverence, even a play upon reverence, a gentle making fun of … is unbearable to those embedded in lives of nastiness of their own making. Ooooh, they hate anyone having a good time. Oooooh, they hate any fun that smacks of love.