20070317,00 — Moments of Fright

Get It Try It

Back on Renault's jalopy loaners there are still recurring moments of fright when clicking on anything with the mouse: this is what most often led our crapola Apple Intel hardware to freeze and crash. After a week of terror it's ingrained into us.

Clicking things normally implies a slight delay before things start happening and it is in this fraction of a second we feel our hearts jump.

But of course there's nothing going to happen to this hardware as it was both designed and manufactured before Steve Jobs could satisfactorily implement his new 'fuck 'em' policy.

Back when the best customer was still the repeat customer.

That's not good business anymore. Nobody's smart enough to remember how a company burned them a year ago. No one remembers - or cares - SonyBMG tried to put rootkits on computers. Nobody is seriously boycotting them.

In the US the current regime is committing crimes against humanity like they're going out of style and most people are only interested in Survivor or Lost - or discussing why they're not interested in Lost anymore.

No one cares. And because no one cares nothing will ever get done. And it's obviously better business sense to send out crappy 'made in China' electronics than continue outsourcing to 'expensive' countries like Korea where workers have rights and stuff like that.

And don't entertain the idea of telling Steve Jobs things like that: he doesn't want to hear and they go against his 'fuck 'em' policy. Steve Jobs is totally convinced Chinese quality control will get up to speed and he's probably not even aware things are still as bad as they are - and no one's going to dare tell him: Steve Jobs shoots messengers left and right. Dare cite statistics that Apple computers - especially laptops - are today no better than shite and you can expect a pink slip on your desk when you return to your office.

And a lot of companies - even Microsoft - have their own user forums. But you can call Bill Gates a cocksucker on Microsoft's forums and nothing will happen. But if you mention a hardware failure with Apple products the censors will watch you closely.

As soon as your thread grows to the point outside observers might think Apple have widespread quality concerns the thread gets deleted. Zap.

What's doubly interesting is that Apple made a big media stir out of supposedly sacking all their forum nannies: the Apple forums weren't going to be censored anymore.

Forums of this sort are supposed to be for customer feedback. That's how companies learn what people feel. That's how companies learn about quality issues. And so forth.

But not to Steve Jobs. To Steve Jobs forums are an evil necessity: one must keep up appearances of being a responsive company - but as anyone knows it's only Steve who really knows what customers want and feel. What customers themselves say they want and feel is irrelevant - and most often incorrect.

'Only Steve Knows.'™

The danger then is when serious issues do arise. Management at Apple are continually aware this is a dangerous situation for them too: no one wants to be 'The Messenger Steve Shoots'™.

There must therefore be forum nannies even if there are no forum nannies.

Deprogramming. Escapees from all cults deal with this and so must Apple survivors. IT'S ONLY A COMPUTER. IT'S WRONG TO ATTACK YOUR FRIENDS BECAUSE STEVE HURT THEM. Just because the Apple product they bought does not work doesn't mean Apple are trying to hurt them - to ostracise them.

Steve makes a lot of money off his fanboy constituency. And they're always ready to do his dirty work for him. Steve didn't invent this business model: it's already been used by L Ron Hubbard, Jim Jones, and David Koresh.

Jonestown - Woodside: what's the difference?