Will we see a negative story in the Sunday New York Times business section tomorrow morning? We would not be surprised. Pogue will try to stop it, of course, especially since he raved about Snowy and called it “Apple’s sleek upgrade” then turned around and admitted to VentureBeat that with sleek new Snowy, which he’d just recommended to all of the readers of the New York Times, Photoshop “crashes every 5-10 minutes–just exits and loses all changes,” and “Word also exits abruptly from time to time. Also I saw a couple of bizarre cosmetic glitches (empty white rectangle on the screen).” Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, um, er … yeah.
Anyway, the guys on the news side at the Times are ashamed of Pogue and embarrassed by him. So they’ll try to redeem themselves by doing a “Does Snowy = Vista?” piece. They’ll weasel out and put a question mark in the headline, and they’ll tell us that they’re not asserting that Snowy does in fact = Vista, they’re just covering what other people are saying, and they’ll get Guy Kawasaki or Tim Bajarin or Rob Enderle to ask, rhetorically, whether this could be the “black eye” that finally interrupts Apple’s incredible string of successful hit products. The Borg won’t comment on the record, but they’ll definitely put some folks on the phone who will chortle on background and point out all the “problems” with Snowy.
To all of which I say, Fair enough. This is life in the big leagues. Don’t hate the playa and all that. What George Lucas was saying last night was that this could all be good for us, just as, he argues, Vista was good for the Borg. Instead of being big and scary, suddenly the Borg seemed just stupid and hapless, something you could laugh at and make fun of. George was like, I’d almost believe they fucked up Vista on purpose, you know? And I was like, Please, dude, they’re not that clever, have you ever met Ballmer in person? Then he said, Yeah, you’re right, and we both had a good laugh.
Anyway, Lucas says we should play this to our advantage. We’ve got the FCC ganging up on us over Google Voice, and we’ve got a zillion shitty developers bitching about the way we run our App Store, and in a larger sense we’ve got all sorts of Borg-like fearmongering going on about how we’re too powerful in smart phones and music players and we’re a monopoly and no one can stop us. Everywhere you look people are calling us “the new Microsoft” — like Henry Blodget at Alley Insider who repeated that claim this week.
To sum up: Have faith. We know what we’re doing. Snow Leopard does not have any problems. That is all just anti-Apple propaganda being created by the Borg and spread by Suppressive Persons. However, if Snow Pussy does have problems, they will only help us. Even Katie admits that we could use a bit of a black eye right now to relieve some of the pressure that’s being put on us. There will be more of this crap before it’s over. So fasten your seatbelts, and cover your eyes and ears, don’t read any newspapers, and just hang in there. If you find yourself being exposed to anti-Apple propaganda, just go to your Zen place and start chanting. If the Suppressive Persons continue to harass you, just follow the example of George, our UK marketing director (in photo), and get right back in that asshole SP’s face and start shouting, “Vista sucks! Vista sucks! You’re stuck in an incident! You are insane! You need to destimulate!” and drown them out.
For now, it may be best not to travel alone. If you must go outside, try to bring a fellow fanboy with you. If you still start to feel weak, download some new apps for your GodPhone. That should help. Also, spend some time looking at your photos of me. Best of all, come to San Francisco this Wednesday, or at least tune in to our event. We’ll have shiny new objects which will restore your sense of childlike wonder. I promise you will be dazzled and re-hypnotized. Until then, peace out.
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