Spreading the Gospel

Speaking of PowerBooks, we continue to mess with a PowerBook G3/233 and it continues to impress the heck out of us. More importantly, though, it continues to impress PC users--at least, in our experience. In the process of getting this thing set up with the required software, network configurations, etc., we're seeing the sleek new laptop act as a magnet that draw an incredible amount of attention among Mac users and PC users alike. The upshot is this: in addition to being a great laptop, the PowerBook G3 is a portable evangelism machine, especially when Virtual PC is installed.

We tried sticking this thing in front of a few PC users in the office and showing them some of the nicer features, like the extraordinarily crisp 13.3" 1024x768 screen, the full-sized and super-comfortable keyboard, the enormous palm rests, the surprisingly good stereo speakers, etc. Everyone agrees that the PowerBook G3 is a marvel of industrial design. When we fired up Virtual PC to show them that even the slowest Powerbook G3 is fast enough to do decent Windows emulation for productivity tasks, things got really interesting. One Wintel laptop user played with it for a bit, then stated that he's now definitely going to get a Mac at home, since the only reason he's still struggling with registry corruption and IRQ conflicts on his PC is because of a single Windows-only program he needs to run, and Virtual PC takes care of that. Another person who bought a Pentium-based system a couple of months ago took a look at Virtual PC on the PowerBook and plainly announced that, had he known that emulation was so fast, he would have bought a Mac instead. Still a third mentioned that the Windows performance in Virtual PC seemed faster than on his Pentium 133 at home, and he was now seriously considering a Mac to replace it--especially once I mentioned that even the $1299 iMac would likely run Virtual PC even faster, due to the backside cache on the processor, and then blew his socks off by showing what the G3 could do with native Mac software by firing up the Myth: The Fallen Lords demo.

If Apple really wants to make a bold move to increase market share, they should come up with some program by which Mac evangelists could have easier access to the new PowerBooks--some kind of price reduction, or a bonus system by which each Mac sale inspired by an evangelist demo would generate points towards free equipment, or something--because in a day of just setting up and testing one of these gorgeous machines, we've gotten three PC users to consider switching platforms. Alas, most Mac users are probably not going to have access to a PowerBook G3 for a while, but at the very least you may want to try one out when Apple's Summer User Group Tour comes to town. Go check out the new PowerBooks and get a sneak preview of the iMac. And remember to drag along a PC-using friend.

I Had Bill Gates' Baby

Stand back, folks, because Apple's not the only company starring in tawdry tell-all books these days. Barbarians Led By Bill Gates is a new book by former Microsoft developer Marlin Eller, who recounts the company's rise to power over the course of the thirteen years he worked there. It's shaping up to be a wonderful portrait of paranoia and slimeball business tactics. CNET has a few of the juicier details.

From the "fluke" of Windows 3.0's success to the "dumb luck" that led to Microsoft's divorce from IBM, this book appears to have something for everyone. For a sample of the slimy moves that led to Microsoft's success, consider the time that Microsoft had an employee covertly join a computer users' group the day before a competitor was scheduled to give a demo there; the Microsoft mole videotaped the whole presentation, then turned the tape over to Gates and company who "dissected" the footage for a competitive upper hand. And Gates-haters worldwide will appreciate the anecdote about Eller, in front of Bill Gates, criticizing a broken portion of code as being a "brain-dead piece of $#!+" written by a "jerk"--not realizing that Gates had written that code himself...

Hmm, does this mean that, following the precedent Microsoft set by copying Apple's GUI, people who write about Microsoft are copying people who write about Apple? After all, the big books in the Apple world lately, Gil Amelio's On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple and Jim Carlton's Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania and Business Blunders, were both tell-alls about Apple's behind-closed-doors behavior and business practices, and now this new Microsoft book follows suit. Coincidence? It all depends on how paranoid you are...

Exponential Bitterness

Bitter much? That's the question to ask the guys from Exponential Technology, Inc., whom you may remember as the company who was going to push the PowerPC into the stratosphere with its 533 MHz x704 processor. Well, as things turned out (or didn't), the x704 failed to live up to its promise, Apple (Exponential's biggest investor) pulled out of the deal, and Exponential closed its doors. It wasn't a pretty sight. But what really isn't pretty is this deliciously catty tell-all article, in which Exponential's CEO Rick Shriner is quoted as saying, "I feel badly that the Mac is dying and going away, but after experiencing this betrayal, I think, the sooner the better." Meow! http://www.eb-mag.com/registrd/issues/9806/0698expo.htm

The article is definitely worth reading, even though it seems to contain some factual errors (the Mach 5 604e's aren't G3's, are they?) and a decidedly "Apple is dead" slant. As far as AtAT's official take on the whole thing, we feel sorry for Exponential, but we don't think Apple did anything they shouldn't have; the x704 was late, when it finally became available, it wasn't as fast as it was supposed to be, and the latest Mach 5 604e's from Motorola were definitely faster, probably cheaper, and probably used a lot less power. In a critical juncture in which Apple's fighting for its life, they're expected to bet the farm on an unproven chip? (Not that Apple hasn't made such goofy decisions in the past, but still.) Even if cloning hadn't been squished, we don't see any reason that the cloners would use x704's when better alternatives were readily available. The whole thing is one big fiasco, but hey, what's a soap opera without a little tragedy now and again?

Happy Father's Day

This Father's Day was certainly a quiet one in the Mac Universe, so we thought you might not mind some self-indulgent reflection on just what the Mac means to my own father. See, if the world is divided into the technically-savvy and the technophobes, Dear Old Dad falls squarely into the latter category. He's the kind of guy who owns a VCR to play movies, but almost resents the fact that such an obscenely complex piece of electronic equipment resides in his house. You know the type: the clock on the VCR flashes "12:00 AM" forever, because the owner doesn't know how to set the time-- and doesn't want to learn.

So that's the type of person my father is, and he's been that way for just about as long as I can remember. While his son was joyfully pulling apart the guts of his trusty Apple //e, Dad was nervous around anything more advanced than an electric typewriter (though that became a necessary tool in his role as political science professor, so he made the adjustment). Unsurprisingly, then, Dad was adamant on his "I don't need a computer" stance. To a certain extent, he was right; everything he needed to do, he was able to accomplish with a typewriter, the U.S. Postal Service, the telephone, and good old-fashioned elbow grease. I always knew that his life could be made easier if he could bring himself to use a computer, but he was definitely getting along alright without one. After all, people have struggled along for thousands of years without spellcheckers, right?

The time I was pretty sure that my father would never use a computer came when I went away to college. For four years, I had unlimited access to email and IRC on the school's Unix-based systems, which would have allowed us to communicate for free, if he could just bring himself to get a free faculty account at his own university and learn the basics. I told him this many times, and even demonstrated how I was able to real-time chat with people at his own school a thousand miles away when he came to visit me. He was suitably impressed and amazed, but rather than learn to use a computer, he chose to pay the obscenely high phone bills incurred by my three to five weekly collect calls back home.

Then came the turning point--my father's university switched to an entirely online registration system. Since my dad was the faculty advisor for the entire political science department, he had no choice but to accept the computer they gave him and learn how to use it. Thank heavens they gave him a Mac. He gritted his teeth and dug in his heels, and learned how to access and edit his students' schedules. And that's when he found out that using a computer isn't that bad. Point to things you want to use, and click. Drag stuff you don't need to the trash. Write articles just like on a typewriter, but use the delete key instead of liquid paper. All pretty easy.

Then he discovered email. The university hooked him up with an account to receive faculty announcements and the like, but it didn't take him long to start realizing he could contact people all over the world without paying for stamps or having to wait days for delivery. Soon he started emailing me with all kinds of questions: Could students email term papers to him? Could he maintain discussion lists for the veterans group he volunteers for? The possibilities kept growing. Exposure to the web came soon after, and UseNet after that-- and with a limitless, fast, free, and boundless source of information at his disposal, well, that's pretty much any academic's dream. Even the technophobic ones.

More questions arose-- there are a bunch of Chinese news sites and newsgroups; how could he make them show up in Chinese, instead of as gibberish? (Merry Christmas, Dad-- install this Chinese Language Kit.) Old friends in Hong Kong are emailing him photos of themselves; how could he view them? (I emailed him JPEGView, and that was that.) Now he's receiving articles for editing from people all over the world, for inclusion in the newspaper for his veteran's group. It's really quite astounding just how far he's taken all this-- especially since he still doesn't really know what he's doing. That's okay-- it's a Mac, so he's doing it anyway.

Then came the eye operations, to relieve a glaucoma-like condition he picked up in Vietnam. While healing, he could hardly see his hand in front of his face. He called me and told me he felt cut off from his Mac, where hundreds of email messages surely awaited him. Not a problem--I talked his secretary through installing Apple's CloseView control panel, and suddenly the letters on his screen were white on black and three inches high. Suddenly he was productive again, though legally blind, with no third-party software needed to get him back on track. It is a Mac, after all.

He's still learning. Last Christmas, when we were back at my grandmother's house, he hauled out the old typewriter to write a proposal that he needed to drop off at an office in town the next day. "Here, Dad, I've finished AtAT for the day--use my Duo." But where could he print it out when he was finished writing it? "We could always hit Kinko's on the way. Or, did they give you a fax number?" They had. And he was both amazed and gratified that we could fax his proposal in to the office directly from my Duo, just by plugging in a phone line. Not only that, but we were able to email the file to his account at school, so it would be sitting in his inbox when he returned, ready for him to file away in whatever virtual folder he deemed fit.

Anyway, that's pretty much the whole story. My dad is still emailing me questions today, as he continues to learn more and more about the potential uses of his Mac. I can honestly say, if the university had given him a Windows 3.1 system instead of a Mac, I don't think my father would have kept that job. He definitely wouldn't be using his computer to read Chinese news sites on the web, maintain email lists of veterans groups, or keep in touch with old friends in Japan. To this day, his only exposure to non-Mac systems is watching his secretary get agitated over Windows exploding. The Mac gave him high technology with a friendly face, and he embraced it. It's funny; you can hardly pull him off that Power Mac these days, and even though he still hasn't a clue about how computers work, he's using that system every day to work and play.

And you can tell that some of that old technophobe attitude is wearing off. Heck, I think his VCR's even showing the right time these days.

Jack Miller
jackm@infoXczar.com