Peeve Farm

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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.

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Monday, July 8, 2002

13:50 - ... But that doesn't mean they're incapable of being morons
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/itoolsdotmac.html

(top)

If these screenshots from recent Jaguar builds are anything but a very tasteless joke, iTools (the online services that Apple provides for users to host websites, e-mail, send postcards, and store files on their iDisk) is set to be renamed shortly to ".Mac".

"I was shocked, to say the least," said one Mac developer who spoke with Think Secret on the condition of anonymity. "Can we possibly get used to this new, very confusing name?"

That's putting it mildly. We've been horrified by the name .NET ever since we first heard it-- it's one of those marketing-clever punnish plays on Internet terminology; you can just see and hear some drunk Microsoft marketdroid waving his hands in the air, visualizing to his friends over margaritas: "Yeah, see, it's like Microsoft dot net... you know, like the Internet thing? Only it's like Microsoft... DOT NET! Hah ha ha hahh-- y'get it? <hic>" And so we're plunged into an era where people who are already confused about the difference between the Internet and the Web, or who think their e-mail addresses are www.username@aol.com ...are being set up with even more confusing terminology, seemingly positioned so as to trap them into a maze of dialog boxes where they won't know which way to turn to avoid being charged money. To elect not to be given further options to 'opt-out' of special offers and premiums in the future, please uncheck this checkbox!

And now, if this is what it looks like, Apple's jumped onto the Bandwagon O' Stupidity.

As it's unlikely that this month's Macworld Expo would bring a new brand and little else to Apple's set of free tools -- iCards, iDisk, Mac.com email and homepages -- the addition of new ".Mac" services is a very real possibility.

And if that means iTools is about to morph into a Mac-native version of .NET, or the same thing as .NET but for Mac users, I am going to be sorely disappointed.

Maybe they can "do it right". I don't know. I will hold out hope that they can, that whatever-it-is will turn out to be something in the tradition of Apple-- free, genuinely valuable services presented in a non-intrusive and entirely optional manner.

But...

There's so much that can go wrong... so many potential traps to lure Apple into doing what Microsoft's already doing.

My fingers are indeed crossed.