Martin Hoffmann
Just an old fart who thinks Macs should be Macs. Simply the best computers in the world, with the best OS on them.
Apple forgot that. Spreading from phones to tunes like butter over too much bread. Messing up quality. Getting infected with the WIntel virus. Shipping beta software. Losing apple keys on their way...
Guess someone has to remind them: Macs First. OK?
Once upon a time...
- By Martin Hoffmann
- Published 08/13/2007
...I was a young editor at a small German travel magazine, the “Outdoor Magazine”.
We editors were sitting pretty on ugly and stone old PCs, rock solid, running DOS idontknow.something and WordStar.
No Windoze, no fuss. Command line interface.
OS, word processor and all text for a whole edition of our magazine - on one floppy.
Well, the graphics guys (we were one of the first magazines to throw away the scissors and go “digital”) had a few MACs. Holy cow. And a Mac Quadra. BIG holy cow. VERY holy indeed.
You could do all sort of things with it. Amazing things. Quark was on it. Photoshop. Illustrator. Jeeez.
Only thing you could not do: walk near it in your Birkenstocks. It would crash. Blackout, completely.
It had been standing on the floor, and the rubber of the Birkenstock sandals (and of course outdoor folks WERE wearing Birkenstocks in pre-TEVA-times all the time) on our carpet was too electrifying for the Quadra.
Well, the holy cow got some cork protectors to sit on it, and did a phantastic job for many editions of our magazine.
I have spent many nights at it and learned my layout and typographic skills.
But you can imagine there were a lot of jokes about Apple's quality management and engineering skills...
Time went by.
I quit the magazine, did other things. Computer things. The mag was sold and went the usual downward paths towards an advertising zine with some pictures and text between the ads.
I took a long stroll to the PeeZeee world, Windows, Linux, Internet business, product management, chief consultant, tie&suit crap.... All the time: strictly no Macs.
Then I dropped out. Turned to working on non-profit projects. Turned to writing.
Did not find a suitable writing program in the whole Windows and Linux world that worked the way I thought it should work.
Found Journler and Scrivener.
Went back to Mac.
But - wait? Tell me where the Macs are... gone?
All I see is “i”. A phone. And many tunes, most of which I dislike anyways. Web galleries. Web hosting. Blogs and Pages and Numbers and stuff... all very slick and shiny.
But no Macs.
Oh, found them. And found reviews of them.
Do I really want a Mac?
Nope.
I want Mac OS X.
And the great applications that great, creative programmers around the world have written on and for it.
But for heavens or walhalla's sake - build something again that would be worth dumping a well configured HackinTosh.
I don't mind if it has to sit on some cork protectors. But it has to be bloody fast and better than anything you can find in the PeeZee world.
Right now quality, speed, versatility and prize simply make you run away from Macs.
Change that, Apple.
Macs first - mind my words.
We editors were sitting pretty on ugly and stone old PCs, rock solid, running DOS idontknow.something and WordStar.
No Windoze, no fuss. Command line interface.
OS, word processor and all text for a whole edition of our magazine - on one floppy.
Well, the graphics guys (we were one of the first magazines to throw away the scissors and go “digital”) had a few MACs. Holy cow. And a Mac Quadra. BIG holy cow. VERY holy indeed.
You could do all sort of things with it. Amazing things. Quark was on it. Photoshop. Illustrator. Jeeez.
Only thing you could not do: walk near it in your Birkenstocks. It would crash. Blackout, completely.
It had been standing on the floor, and the rubber of the Birkenstock sandals (and of course outdoor folks WERE wearing Birkenstocks in pre-TEVA-times all the time) on our carpet was too electrifying for the Quadra.
Well, the holy cow got some cork protectors to sit on it, and did a phantastic job for many editions of our magazine.
I have spent many nights at it and learned my layout and typographic skills.
But you can imagine there were a lot of jokes about Apple's quality management and engineering skills...
Time went by.
I quit the magazine, did other things. Computer things. The mag was sold and went the usual downward paths towards an advertising zine with some pictures and text between the ads.
I took a long stroll to the PeeZeee world, Windows, Linux, Internet business, product management, chief consultant, tie&suit crap.... All the time: strictly no Macs.
Then I dropped out. Turned to working on non-profit projects. Turned to writing.
Did not find a suitable writing program in the whole Windows and Linux world that worked the way I thought it should work.
Found Journler and Scrivener.
Went back to Mac.
But - wait? Tell me where the Macs are... gone?
All I see is “i”. A phone. And many tunes, most of which I dislike anyways. Web galleries. Web hosting. Blogs and Pages and Numbers and stuff... all very slick and shiny.
But no Macs.
Oh, found them. And found reviews of them.
Do I really want a Mac?
Nope.
I want Mac OS X.
And the great applications that great, creative programmers around the world have written on and for it.
But for heavens or walhalla's sake - build something again that would be worth dumping a well configured HackinTosh.
I don't mind if it has to sit on some cork protectors. But it has to be bloody fast and better than anything you can find in the PeeZee world.
Right now quality, speed, versatility and prize simply make you run away from Macs.
Change that, Apple.
Macs first - mind my words.