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Author Topic:   iWhiners
Colonel Panic
Geek

Posts: 95
From: Des Moines, Iowa
Registered: Mar 2002

posted July 22, 2002 07:46     Click Here to See the Profile for Colonel Panic   Click Here to Email Colonel Panic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

iWhiners: A subset of the minority group of people who use, wish to use or are fans of Apple MacIntosh computers. iWhiners are distinguished by their incessant whining which is present any time Apple computer introduces a price hike, new software, new hardware and any iMac which does not include a 65" flat-panel screen -- priced at under $1,000.00.

"The sound of fingers scratching on the blackboard was nowhere near as annoying as the chorus of iWhiners screeching after the latest MacWorld expo."

Colonel Panic

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ilovemydualg4
Highlie

Posts: 635
From: *GASP* THE 3RD DIMMENSION
Registered: Mar 2002

posted July 22, 2002 08:56     Click Here to See the Profile for ilovemydualg4   Click Here to Email ilovemydualg4     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
so you mean my imac ISN'T 65 INCHES! oh, that's right, it's 64, 17 viewable

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my geek code
Hazards: "There is an island of opportunity in the middle of every difficulty, miss that, though, and you're pretty much doomed."

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Hikaru
Super Geek

Posts: 189
From: AppleDale, USA
Registered: Feb 2002

posted July 22, 2002 22:15     Click Here to See the Profile for Hikaru     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
*spoiler, Not a Flame*

you know, just because you didnt use it is no reason to attack those of us who felt decieved, I mean its a legitamate gripe, and there have been many things which were even more trivial which got people angry, I bet you even felt upset to the point of griping about something everyone else around you felt was pretty trivial.
heck lets just degrade everything to triviality.

"MAN ROASTS KITTEN ON GRILL WHILE FRIENDS WATCH"
whiners, the cat probably had it coming

"XTASY USER LETS A POOR HOBO BLEED TO DEATH WHILE STUCK IN THE WINDSHIELD OF HER CAR"
Whiners, thats just 1 less Hobo to have to roll the window up at at the intersection.

"NEW WINDOWS VIRUS DESTROYS PEOPLES pr0n FILES"
Whiners, maby now they will swutch to Lunix, its soooo much more 133t

or my fav
"THERES NO SOFTWARE FOR Lunix THATS WRONG,"
Whiners,

rember just because you arn't personally affected, somewhere there is someone who is

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END OF LINE _

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Colonel Panic
Geek

Posts: 95
From: Des Moines, Iowa
Registered: Mar 2002

posted July 23, 2002 07:59     Click Here to See the Profile for Colonel Panic   Click Here to Email Colonel Panic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Actually Hikaru,

I was using iTools. Just check out my link on "Colonel Panic goes to town!"

You know, the really spiffy thing about it is that was the first time I used the iDisk, and registered for the service. So now I can re-up for the low, low price of $49.00!

The silly thing is that I really haven't used the e-mail because it was free and I'd already gone through two free services that turned pay. I think free e-mail is like a summer romance. A person may say "I love you forever" but forever only lasts until September.

And while the service was free, Apple's agreement stated clearly that they could cancel at any time. It's not like Steve Jobs was barbecueing kittens or murdered a bum or something really evil like buying up all the Foo Fighters concert tickets in the universe and reselling them for a thousand dollars apiece.

It's not even like keeping a bird feeder until mid-winter then starving the poor dumb beasts. You know why? First Hikaru you are not a dumb beast; you are a smart person. Second because there are places you can go to get free e-mail. So what's happened to you is a minor inconvenience, that's all. And all you need to do is group all your e-mail contacts together and write a message that says, "Hi there friends and neighbors, I'm moving! Yes, indeedy I'm moving my e-mail from Apple which is no longer free to Excite which is free! And the good news about the move is I'm not asking you to pack or move heavy boxes. I just want you to record the change in my address!"

Maybe if you're not so angry with Apple, you can see that what Apple is doing with Jaguar, iCal, iSync and .Mac and maybe (or maybe not) see that it is a real big deal for people who previously had no solution to some problems this package of products now solves.

So relax a bit and understand that turning iTools into .Mac and leaving you to search for another free service (and there are plenty of them) is simply not as bad as toasting Tabby on the barbie.

Once you're relaxed, take some time to realize that if somebody gives you something for free it's a gift, and in the landmark case, Gifthorse Mouth v. Ungrateful Moochers (Third District Federal Court of Opinion, 1933) comes down pretty favorably for the gift horse. So no, it's not much of a legitimate gripe you have-- more of a "My parents expect me to go to school or get a job by the time I graduate high school" kind of whine.

And quite a fine red whine it is. I hear it goes nicely with toasted Tabby.

Colonel Panic

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Akira
Super Geek

Posts: 211
From: LA LA land
Registered: Oct 2001

posted July 23, 2002 10:16     Click Here to See the Profile for Akira   Click Here to Email Akira     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Anyone who's been on the Internet for any appreciable length of time has been subscribed to at least one free service that converted to a pay-for subscription. That's not the issue. What is at issue is how it's handled.

Consider the case of listbot.com. Listbot was, for those who don't know, a web-based service that allowed anyone to easily set up, maintain, and administer a free majordomo-type listserv. Like all early web ventures, they were advertiser supported; like most advertiser-supported websites, they ran out of money very quickly. When the money first started getting tight, they sent everyone who had a list with them a note to that effect, and kept people posted as finances changed and discussions were had. When it became apparent that subscription based was the only viable option, they gave people a good 5-6 months' warning, and made sure to provide easy instructions on how to migrate your data. They even pointed users in the direction of other free services in case the pay-for they were offering wasn't appealing, and they offered reduced long term subscriptions (as opposed to one-time offers) as a thank you to those who had supported them.

Contrast this to Apple, who as recently as the day before the keynote was pitching the free iTools as one of the cool things that came with being a Mac owner. Then suddenly: boom. There it is. End of the line. Pay up now or lose out. Oh yeah — and did we mention that hooks to (read: ads for) most of the components of this service are hardwired into the OS in several places?

Sure, a lot of people are taking this a lot more seriously than is necessarily warranted. A lot of other people also feel betrayed by Apple, and I feel there's some legitimacy to that. Steve's obsession with being the first and only person to break ALL news sometimes bites him in the ass, and I think this is a perfect example. There is a right way and a wrong way to do these things. Steve chose the latter, and it cost him incalculable amounts of goodwill.

On the balance sheet, Apple's .mac deal looks good � if you:

  • Own a Mac
  • Have a broadband connection
  • Have a personal website with lots of content
  • Don't already have your own investment in antivirus software
  • Want remote back-up and trust that Apple's servers are secure enough for that purpose

Seems like sort of a narrow demographic, if you ask me.

Meanwhile, there a number of people who are being left out in the cold, namely:

  • Anyone who enjoys running a personal website that isn't profitable, but doesn't want visitors inundated with popups and banners
  • Anyone who would like to be able to check one, convenient email account from multiple locations or across multiple ISP accounts
  • Anyone who needs a convenient way to transfer 5-10 megs of files from work to home and back again without resorting to burning a CD
  • Anyone who enjoys their Macs enough to want to advertise the fact, but doesn't feel the need to pay $100 for the privilege

Do I think it's the end of the world? No.
Do I think all of the complainers should just shut up because none of them have anything valid to say? No.

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I am Dyslexic of Borg.
Prepare to have your ass laminated.

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Colonel Panic
Geek

Posts: 95
From: Des Moines, Iowa
Registered: Mar 2002

posted July 23, 2002 14:26     Click Here to See the Profile for Colonel Panic   Click Here to Email Colonel Panic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Akira,

There's a thing at the end of your post about people left out in the cold, it goes on to say something about spending $100. Well, everyone who has the service gets the service for $49.95, not $100. Please this kind of thing invalidates your argument.

quote:
Anyone who's been on the Internet for any appreciable length of time has been subscribed to at least one free service that converted to a pay-for subscription. That's not the issue. What is at issue is how it's handled.

Agreed. And when we handle it like grown ups, we don't lie to make our case, do we?

quote:
Consider the case of listbot.com. Listbot was, for those who don't know, a web-based service that allowed anyone to easily set up, maintain, and administer a free majordomo-type listserv. Like all early web ventures, they were advertiser supported; like most advertiser-supported websites, they ran out of money very quickly. When the money first started getting tight, they sent everyone who had a list with them a note to that effect, and kept people posted as finances changed and discussions were had. When it became apparent that subscription based was the only viable option, they gave people a good 5-6 months' warning, and made sure to provide easy instructions on how to migrate your data. They even pointed users in the direction of other free services in case the pay-for they were offering wasn't appealing, and they offered reduced long term subscriptions (as opposed to one-time offers) as a thank you to those who had supported them.

Contrast this to Apple, who as recently as the day before the keynote was pitching the free iTools as one of the cool things that came with being a Mac owner. Then suddenly: boom. There it is. End of the line. Pay up now or lose out. Oh yeah � and did we mention that hooks to (read: ads for) most of the components of this service are hardwired into the OS in several places?


You were given plenty of notice. Read the agreement you made with Apple. They reserved the right to cancel or change the nature of the service at any time. The agreement was explicit. You agreed to the rules and now you say you don't like them. Shame on you.

Did you think the agreement you entered into with Apple was written the way it was because Apple had a few extra tens of thousands of dollars laying around and they wanted throw them at lawyers?

Didn't you ever consider that agreement was written in a manner that it would eventually be broken? Weren't you smart enough to see there was no quid pro quo evident? Couldn't you see there were no ads, too, and realize that Apple didn't have income at all to justify this luxury of extended notice?At least listbot had ads.

It didn't take much brain power for me to realize this was some sort of beta for something else.

quote:
Sure, a lot of people are taking this a lot more seriously than is necessarily warranted. A lot of other people also feel betrayed by Apple, and I feel there's some legitimacy to that.

You are only trying to make it legitimate. You had ample warning in the agreement, plus Apple gave you plenty of notice about the change. It doesn't take six months to solve the problem. Plus you got a great deal if you wanted to sign up for the new program. I think you're ungrateful.

quote:
Steve's obsession with being the first and only person to break ALL news sometimes bites him in the ass, and I think this is a perfect example. There is a right way and a wrong way to do these things. Steve chose the latter, and it cost him incalculable amounts of goodwill.

News has to be controlled in the computer industry. Depreciation is incredible. And theivery is rampant. Don't blame Jobs if Bill Gates would scoop him in a second, or that thre would be warehouses full of old software and last quarters' CPUs the moment an announcement is leaked.

Now, do you say incalculable because you lack the professional skills it takes to measure the value of goodwill and calculate it's loss? Or because you lack the basic understanding of goodwill and the fact that it's value can be calculated?

I work with people who calculate that stuff all the time. And I believe Apple measured the goodwill, market share, potential market, break even and threw in a few chi-squared and standard deviations here and there, plus a few other proprietary calculations and they figured the value of any goodwill they would lose was nowhere near what they would gain in profit, product development benefits and future market share.

And no, "incalculable goodwill" is not just a figure of speech, it is another exaggeration upon which you are attempting to justify your whining. Goodwill is measurable, and so is the value.

quote:
On the balance sheet, Apple's .mac deal looks good � if you:

* Own a Mac
* Have a broadband connection
* Have a personal website with lots of content
* Don't already have your own investment in antivirus software
* Want remote back-up and trust that Apple's servers are secure enough for that purpose
Seems like sort of a narrow demographic, if you ask me.


I think you've narrowly defined your list there, I also think you have not applied enough imagination as to what a software/server package can be.

Also in terms of market share the people in the above list are people who are willing to PAY for the product, right? THAT Akira is a market.

quote:
Meanwhile, there a number of people who are being left out in the cold, namely:

* Anyone who enjoys running a personal website that isn't profitable, but doesn't want visitors inundated with popups and banners
* Anyone who would like to be able to check one, convenient email account from multiple locations or across multiple ISP accounts
* Anyone who needs a convenient way to transfer 5-10 megs of files from work to home and back again without resorting to burning a CD
* Anyone who enjoys their Macs enough to want to advertise the fact, but doesn't feel the need to pay $100 for the privilege


Once again $49.95, not $100. Not much more than $4.00 a month. You could spend more on CDs to burn back and forth to work.

And these people aren't willing to pay, so they comprise ZERO market.

Sometimes, in marketing we have to give the dog a flea bath. Free offers do bring in a certain level of non-profitable clientele, and market-share building, free-offer enticements often have a back-end cleansing mechanism to them.

quote:
Do I think it's the end of the world? No.
Do I think all of the complainers should just shut up because none of them have anything valid to say? No.

I think if whiners lie and exaggerate they should either apologize or shut up. I beleive Apple is a fine, ethically run company which is very important to me in this age of theiving CEOs. They provide excellent value for the dollar, and I don't like to see them slandered or libeled.

Be responsible with your words, Akira. If you cannot be responsible with this great gift of free speech, how can you dare judge Apple's conduct with a free offer?

Colonel Panic

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Bregalad
Assimilated

Posts: 379
From: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Registered: Jan 2002

posted July 23, 2002 15:09     Click Here to See the Profile for Bregalad   Click Here to Email Bregalad     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Akira:
On the balance sheet, Apple's .mac deal looks good � if you:
  • Own a Mac
  • Have a broadband connection
  • Have a personal website with lots of content
  • Don't already have your own investment in antivirus software
  • Want remote back-up and trust that Apple's servers are secure enough for that purpose

Seems like sort of a narrow demographic, if you ask me.

And most of us with broadband already have webmail access to all seven of our ISP email accounts, none of Apple's nasty invisible spam filters that seem to discard as much legitimate email as spam, and at least 10MB of personal webspace. So .Mac gives me the opportunity to use an email address that advertises for Apple, an iDisk that might be useful if I didn't already have an iBook and pocket size FireWire hard drive, regular anti-virus updates (aren't those already free?) and a backup application with roughly the same features as the free one built into Windows. Oh yeah I can backup my data to a "trusted" Apple server too.

If I want more than what my ISP gives me in the way of hosting I can pay $100/year and get my own domain name with unlimited free email accounts (not $10/year for each one) and a 100MB site with much higher bandwidth limits than those at .Mac.

Sorry Steve I still don't see how this adds up for the customers. Oh what a fool I've been, this has nothing to do with customers it's all about you. Then I see your point. You lose 2.2 million leeches and gain revenue from maybe 100,000 paying customers. Looks good on paper. Unfortunately you're alienating the people who buy and recommend your overpriced hardware. Where do you record that on paper?

On a somewhat related matter I have a serious problem with the corporate recording of "good will" on the balance sheet. Something that can be destroyed with one poorly constructed sentence from the CEO's mouth, or the exposure of an unrelated accounting irregularity shouldn't be listed as an asset. After this year's Macworld Expo Apple has significantly less good will than they had on July 16. Are we going to see a one time write off of good will in the 4th quarter financials?

Colonel Panic: $49.99 is only for the first year and it's a good deal if you put much value on Virex. After that it's $100/year so my arguments are based on the full, recurring cost. It also makes it possible to compare the service to annual web/domain hosting from other sources.

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ilovemydualg4
Highlie

Posts: 635
From: *GASP* THE 3RD DIMMENSION
Registered: Mar 2002

posted July 23, 2002 15:52     Click Here to See the Profile for ilovemydualg4   Click Here to Email ilovemydualg4     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
my problem is that i don't want to buy virex and a backups solution every year!

------------------
my geek code
Hazards: "There is an island of opportunity in the middle of every difficulty, miss that, though, and you're pretty much doomed."

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Jas
Geek

Posts: 73
From: Land of Blues Guitar
Registered: Jul 2002

posted July 24, 2002 03:14     Click Here to See the Profile for Jas   Click Here to Email Jas     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
oy govolt you guys write so much on these forums!

hikaru's post cracked me up...

quite frankly i hate whiners myself but if you flame them... then they whine about being flammed...which is just as bad

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I. Love. MUSIC!

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TORDONOFFON
Geek Larva

Posts: 29
From: Annapolis Wa. USA
Registered: Jul 2002

posted August 11, 2002 10:21     Click Here to See the Profile for TORDONOFFON   Click Here to Email TORDONOFFON     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
How did this turn into a Steve Jobs Apple whine fest ? I like .Mac 50 bucks worth. Next year I will let you know if I like it 100 bucks worth. I like that bit about if you flame whiners they will whine at you for being flamed.

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