I noticed the market is down

I noticed that market is down about 116 points after the first few hours of trading. Now what do you think about that? Apple's stock is back up to $371 per share, but it is still negative for the day. Now what do you think about that?

Do you think the market has some jitters about the Post-Jobs era?

The end of the Steve Jobs era

Shortly before the close of the stock market today, the powers that be ordered a halt to the trade of Apple Inc stock. A few moments later Apple made an announcement that the Apple world has been dreading for some time. Steve Jobs resigned his position as CEO.

Cancer was not mentioned. He didn't say he was close to death. Rather, the statement read "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first let you know. Unfortunately that Day has come."

Most do not believe Steve Jobs would take his hand of the wheel of the ship unless he were fairly close to death. We all know he had major surgery for Pancreatic cancer 7 years ago, and a liver transplant surgery 2 years ago. He took a medical leave earlier in the year. We understand the situation.

When trading resumed, the value of Apple stock dropped from around $375 a share to $356.

You aught to have a look at a documentary titled "Welcome to Macintosh" which is available for immediate streaming on Netflix. It was made in 2008 and released to DVD late in that year. It's a very good history of Apple and more specifically the Mac. The last 12-15 minutes are dedicated to prophecies of the future of Apple in the post-Steve Jobs era.

It was understood at that point that Steve had suffered a few mortality incidents, and Apple was going to have to begin planning for the future. Major voices from Apple's past and present were interviewed in that segment. There was no question about it. All of those voices were worried. Some rang an optimistic note. Some rang an uncertain note. Guy Kawasaki and Andy Hertzfeld rang uncertain notes.

It is widely believed on Wall Street that Apple is a one-genius firm. They believe that Steve Jobs is the visionary poet-prophet who inspires the technological revolutions. They are very concerned that there will be no more inspired revolutions from Apple Inc. in the Post-Jobs era. This was the reason for the big drop in Apple stock values immediately after the announcement.

The same announcement at NCR or IBM would trigger no such stock movement.

We will have to see what sort of a man CEO Tim Cook is. Let's hope he does not try to revive the old time religion of Scully. That was a serious turn-off.

I've known about Jobs through most of my life. I became a computer adept at the tender young age of 14. I read everything I could get my hands on. I was never an Apple II or Apple III guy. Nobody ever bought a Lisa.

Believe it or not, I was an enthusiastic devotee of the Mac philosophy in the early days. That would be circa 1984-1987. I began loosing interest after that.

It became clear to me that Macs were not priced to move, and they would never be the computer of the general population. Jobs was forever obsessed with Jaguar. He wanted to be the luxury and elite brand. He was never a populist.

It always made me laugh when Mac religionists would say that 198x was going to be the year that the Mac took-over. That year never came, and it never will, because this objective was not and is not a part of Apple's goals or model. They always wanted to be the brand for elitists with significant money. You can't let the plebes own the good stuff.

This brings us to the performance of Apple's stock on Wall Street. The Street loves any company that can command high margins on premium priced products, and build customer loyalty at the same time. This is the entire secret of Apple's stock performance. They innovated, but so did Commodore and Atari. Both of those firms raced to the bottom in terms of margins and prices. They both died. Apple stayed up based on higher margins.

You must understand, this means you pay higher prices... if you buy in.

These reservations aside, it is with a great sense of sadness that I heard this news. I knew immediately what it meant. Steve will not be with us for much longer. Most of us pioneers who remember well the days of 8 bit micro computers have had jobs around for all our lives. It is remarkable moment which means that all of us a lot closer to that final end that we realize.

Arguably, this will be the first passing of one of the tech titans who made the modern computerized world. This impact will be felt by us all. Some may say Gary Kildall was the first tech titan who passed away. I deny that. His window of influence was so short, I have difficulty calling him a tech titan. Sure, he strode tall in the early industry, but his window of influence was only about 10 years. Then it was over.

This announcement may be felt keenly tomorrow on Wall Street, folks. Apple Inc is one of a few healthy and robust firms in our nation. They are a bell weather of sorts for our economy. If tomorrow begins with a sizable dump of Apple stock, it could spook an already jittery and skiddish market. Apple stock is a part of the profitability plans of a lot of investors. They may be shaken by this news.

My own thoughts about Steve Jobs are complex. On personal level, I always liked the guy. Incidentally, he happens to be a Pisces. His pricing model always infuriated me. I regained some respect for the dude when he made moves to quash the fundamentalist religion Scully instituted after Jobs was thrown out. This began in 2006 with the introduction of Intel based Macs, and the adoption of Windows as an alternative through Bootcamp.

Jobs is not the innovator and inventor he portrayed himself as [he stole almost everything from Xeorox Parc], however, he was crucial in the mass popularization of these technologies. Fundamental technologies such as the ethernet, the mouse, the GUI, object oriented and event driven programming, and laser printing might never have made it to the mainstream without this guy. At the very least, there would have been a long delay.

He did change the industry for the better many times. Our world would not be what it is, and probably not as good as it is, if Steve Jobs had never lived.

In a sense, my thoughts about Jobs reflect the sort of love-hate-love ambivalence I often feel towards Pisces figures. There is no doubt that this guy got under my skin many times.

He will be sorely missed by the technology world.

Why Apple Inc is cult for idiots

Folks, I have heard words lately I never wanted to hear in my life. It turns out my little sister is going away to college and I have been asked to finance a Mac for her. This is just the wrong request to make of a guy like me.

I was shown a CSUSF bookstore offering for an outdated and outmoded laptop that was current circa 2007. It was a Core 2 model running at 2.26Ghz, loaded with 2GB of RAM, and equipped with a 250GB disk. The price tag was over $900. Allegedly, she was catching a break on the price. This price was the result of a good sized student discount.

Anyone who knows something about laptop pricing these days will be laughing his ass off right about now. That is a clearance model. The exact equivalent from HP, Dell, Lenovo or Sony will fetch no more than $599 right about now.

To make matters worse, the current Core i5 model laptops from Apple run right around $1,800. I can show you a better Core i7 from HP for a meager $800. This is less than half the price; More like 45% of the price.

Now that Apple makes 100% pure Intel machines, they have no place to run to and no place to hide. Perfect head-to-head comparisons are now possible. Other firms are using the exact same Mobos, CPUs, GPUs, and Samsung LED LCD screens Apple... er... Foxconn is using to make Apple notebooks.

For all practical purposes, Apple laptops and Windows laptops are identical now. The visual styling maybe a tad different, but this is of no importance. The operating system is the main and only key difference. It boils down to OSX versus Windows7. That's the end of the story.

OH BUT THE TOUCH PAD MOUSE WITH GESTURES IS SO MUCH BETTER!

That is now an option with most PC laptops. The options adds about $100 to price tag. This cannot explain a more than two-fold increase in price.

Pray tell why OSX should more than double the cost of the machine? There is no answer. OSX development costs a lot, and Apple cannot spread this cost over the large market Windows has. However, this cost does not even come close to explaining the doubling of the Apple price-tag.

There is but one solution: Apple demands a very handsome profit for each and everyone of their items. They have never wanted to sell in volume. They have never tried to corner the market. They have always fostered an elitist mentality. They have always wanted to be a Rolls Royce vendor.

They could afford to sell their products at a much cheaper price. They simply don't want to.

I could afford to spend the money. I simply don't want to. In fact, I would be a complete idiot if I did so. A computer is not like a Le Creuset enameled cast iron pan. I will never be able to pass it down to my grandkids. The laptop I buy today is guaranteed to be undesirable rubbish in just 3 years or less. A man would have to be a fool to buy an heirloom quality computer.

The farce goes even deeper than this. There is almost no reason to prefer Mac OSX over Windows7 except for bad prejudices, usually based in creative cultures such as sound mixing. Anything OSX can do, Windows can do better. Windows can do anything better than Mac. I don't care whether it is simple job-apps like word processing, spreadsheets, project plans, or more complicated tasks such as 3d visual effects. Windows 7 does it all.

Unless I was totally dedicated and committed to developing software for the UNIX environment (something I am not) I can see no early reason why I would want OSX. OSX is the Rolls Royce of UNIX. This I will gladly admit. If I were a LAMP stack developer, I would want Mac OSX. Otherwise, I simply have no use for the critter.

So why do fools buy into the idea of Macintosh? Let me reply with a question. Why do fools buy into the idea of expensive enameled cast iron from France when cheap stainless steel gets it done, and is preferred by the expert chefs? You can have an entire set of stainless steel cookware for about the price of a 7.25 quart Le Creuset French Oven. Don't believe me? Check it out:

http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-Multiclad-Stainless-Steel-12-Piece-Cookware/dp/B0007KQZWU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1275433080&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Creuset-4-Quart-Round-French-Oven/dp/B0033I2Q2G/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1275433080&sr=1-5

I am afraid it goes deeper than this. Cookware doesn't quite have the dimension of religion that the Mac carries with it.

You see, Apple has always been cultic in its orientation. They have always attempted to breed a false sense of morality into their users. It is immoral and unethical to buy anything but. Your Mac is like your wife. Having a PC is like cheating on your wife. Also, you are violating the ethics of your religion. You are committing heresy, like an apostate, if you do. This will make you an antichrist in our community.

Creative types enforce the laws of Macintosh. They insist you be a bad-ass rebel against Windows7, and they insist you rebel in exact conformity with their demands. If you go any other way, the community will more or less lock you out.

I myself have witnessed sound engineers feigning difficulties with FAT32 format hard drives, unwilling to accept digital soundwaves recorded on a Windows PC. I have seen these greazie basterds waste my brother's precious studio time and money, attempting to get over technical difficulties that did not exist.

I have personally humiliated such drippy-hippies by showing them how to use their Macs to open these files without any difficulty. I have witnessed these humiliated drippy-hippies lecturing my brother about how he really should own a Mac, or he can't really share and participate in the sound engineering community... This after I have shown said hippy that there are no real problems in using Windows sound files.

Mac is a fascistic intellectual orthodoxy enforced among certain creative types. As is often the case with orthodoxy, the law has no real merit, it's just the law.

Did we get any technological progress today?

For those burried under rubble in Hatti, or busy tracking Tim Tebow, there was another event that took place on Wednesday. Apple introduced their new tablet computer called the iPad.

What is it? Essentially, it is just a larger and flatter iPod Touch on steroids. It runs the iPhone OS. It will run most iPhone apps unaltered. It is powered by that unfortunate 1Ghz A4 processor. It has no telephone or video phone capabilities. It has a resolution of 1024 x 768. It does not support multi-tasking at all. This is intended to be used as an eBook reader, and they say it kills Kindle in this regard.

What do I think? I think Apple aimed too low. I would have greatly preferred 1280x720 resolution (at a minimum), and better still 1920x1080. I would have greatly preferred a Core 2, or Core i3. Multi-tasking is imperative. I would have greatly preferred full video teleconferencing in a tablet form. In short, it is too much of a pad, and not enough of a tablet.

I would have been willing to pay $1,299 for the device I wanted. Nope, they were set on an intro price level of $499. Hence we have a device weakened by consumerist pricing.

I am going to call it right now folks: Unless Apple greatly extends this bitch's capabilities quickly, it is going to be an epic failure.

So what is being predicted for the iTablet

What follows is a hard and fast summary of pundit words regarding the upcoming release of the Apple iTable on Wednesday. No attempt at attribution will be made.

The Apple iTable is a new portable platform for media consumption and communication. It is framed within the body of a 10 inch touch sensitive LCD screen. You will need to learn a lot of gestures to make it go. The iTablet will do everything the iPod Touch does, but it will add the following:

1. The ability to enjoy high resolution media.
2. The ability to take high resolution snapshots
3. A webcam that will enable video teleconferencing
4. Automatic support for a local wireless-N hub.
5. The ability to plug into an Ethernet gigabit hub.
6. The ability to truly read PDFs and eBooks of various formats.
7. The price will be $999.95 USD
   

This ends the summary of the punditry.

Such a machine would be impressive, but I don't know that it would be world changing. As Leo LaPorte has said, if Apple doesn't surprise everybody, this announcement will be a failure. They are going to have to more than anybody expects if they want to change the technological landscape again.

Technological progress... this Wednesday?

So some people believe the world is going to change on Wednesday. Apple has whupped them up into a frenzy. It's a downright 2nd Coming of the Lord revival meeting among certain members of the Cult.

For the record, we should remember that Apple was not technology company during the middle epoch of it's history. It was a religious cult like Scientology, or the People's Temple, or the Jehovah's Witnesses. It was that kind of thing. There are many who believe that they have not stopped being a cult yet. Some say they have. Actual books have been published with the title "The Cult of the Mac" and they feature photos of people carving the Apple Logo into their skin, cutting the Apple logo out of their hair (showing the scalp), and tattooing various corporate slogans all over their bodies (like 'I'm a Mac'). These are some sick puppies. Absolute slaves to a corporation. They chose this path of self-mutilating slavery as well.

I will be kind, and say that Apple is trying not to be a Cult these days. Like the Mormons, they want reform.

There is no doubt that Apple changed the world of technology at least three times. The Apple II was the world first widely adopted personal computer. The Macintosh popularized interface technology stolen... er... copied... from Xerox's Parc and Smalltalk. The iPod one-upped the Diamond Rio by providing a full-scale hard disk, and software even a moron could use. There is little doubt that the world changed on these three occasions. Ideas others had been fumbling about with were finally encarnated in usable forms everybody could grasp. That's when the concept took off.

It should be noted that Apple's reputation for innovation is vastly overstated. Let's just say Steven Jobs was never introduced to an idea he didn't invent.

So what the fuck is happening on Wednesday anyhow? Why the hell is there a Come to Steve... er... Jesus Revival being held by all the Apple cultlings right now? Why are they staying vigilant for the coming of the Lord?

Apple is going to introduce a Tablet computer on Wednesday. A lot of people have been fumbling around with the concept of a portable computer with a touch sensitive LCD screen. Dell & Compaq have been doing it since 2003. Still haven't made much of spash yet. There have been things like iPod touches, and iPhones, but they aren't physically large enough to be considered anything like a tablet. Sony and Amazon have been fooling around with eReaders like the Kindel. That's interesting stuff, but it ain't just quite right yet.

Supposedly, Apple is about to innovate big again. This tablet will be tablet 1.0. The first tablet that can actually be called a tablet. This will be the first tablet done right. This will be the tablet that makes owning a tablet imperative. This will be the first tablet everybody has to have. To the slaves, Apple is declaring that this is year 0 and no tablet has ever existed before. To those in the know, they are pretty frank that they have conducted a lot of user studies of these forerunners and figured out why they don't work so well for everybody who isn't interested yet.

Well, I am all in favor of technological progress. If you show me a computer which is portable, has balls, a good battery life, a rich high-res color screen, works like a good reader, allows me to do mobile video phone, I will certainly buy it. However, I refuse to join the cult on principle. I will never be a Cultling like the slaves who tattoo Apple logos on their skin.