So, anyone "Think Doom" yet?

April 14, 2007 10:06 AM

Remember this? While randomly reading some assorted Digg posts, I saw someone mention the old Toshiba Liberato laptop. On doing a GIS search, up came a link to the "Apple Doomsday Clock". It just floors me that this anonymous anti-Apple blog (which even predates the word "blog"), is still online. It dates from the period when Jobs retook the CEO chair, and started turning the failing company around--the last posting was in June, 1999. Perhaps it should be treated as a historical site, and preserved for the future amusement of Mac users?
posted by metasonix (28 comments total)

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999.[5][6][7] This was quickly adopted as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog").[1]
posted by delmoi at 10:12 AM on April 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah, the archives go back to july of 1997, before even "weblog" came about. That said I remember reading a lot of blog-like websites in high school, such as slashdot.
posted by delmoi at 10:15 AM on April 14, 2007

Unless the site is a hoax (unlikely because of sheer volume of postings), I'm amazed that somebody could feel so bitter and upset about... about what? About a product they use. I'm a Mac fan, but, wow.

To quote Good Morning Vietnam, the creator of that site is in "more dire need of a blow job than any white man in history" (and let's be honest—it has to be a guy behind it).

Maybe that's why the site ended in 1999—maybe he got himself a woman (of a man, if he's of that persuasion, or both, if he's of that persuasion).
posted by humblepigeon at 10:43 AM on April 14, 2007

Unless the site is a hoax (unlikely because of sheer volume of postings), I'm amazed that somebody could feel so bitter and upset about... about what? About a product they use. I'm a Mac fan, but, wow.

Yeah, I was struck by that, too. I guess that's what the Internet is all about: giving us a peek into the private obsessions that drive the average geek. Sometimes it's a shoe fetish, sometimes it's a manga collection, sometimes it's building trebuchets. And sometimes, it's really, really hating Steve Jobs.
posted by verb at 10:47 AM on April 14, 2007

Or a sheep.
posted by davidmsc at 10:49 AM on April 14, 2007

It's not a hoax, he made attempts to update weekly, if I remember correctly. I remember reading this site and getting a kick out of some of the stuff there when I was in high school. Mostly I think it was because of the over the top-ness of the site. That, and apple-bashing was the good & proper thing to do then (at least where I was), because they sucked a whole lot more than they do now. I grew out of that a long time ago.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 10:57 AM on April 14, 2007

A pre-fuckedcompany fuckedcompany. Speaking of which, is it still around? (Checks) Huh. Still is. And I see httpads became adbrite. Shakes head. It all seemed so relevant in 2001.
posted by maxwelton at 11:10 AM on April 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

I remember reading a lot of blog-like websites in high school, such as slashdot.

but were they fish or a chinese toddler solving a rubik's cube..?
posted by quonsar at 11:23 AM on April 14, 2007

I've always hated apple, especially at the time. Let me try to explain why.

It's not their products, but rather their manner of marketing and their obsessive and frankly rude user base.

There marketing was all about how much better their devices were then PCs. That's a pretty reasonable point to try to make in marketing, but they went about it in a very dishonest way. Very similar the way politics is done in this country, especially on the right. Reading Apple marketing material was like reading republican propaganda. Full of things you knew were false, but seemed like they could be true to someone who wasn't as familiar with technology.

_{I could come up with examples I remember, but it would be very boring, I'm sure. Apple/PC flame wars are bad enough when dealing with current products, but if you try to take a historic view, it gets very boring very fast}

A lot of Mac users the internalized this stuff and spewed it back, in a way that sort of insulted PC users. It might seem ridiculous, but I was a high school student at the time, when people tend to blow things out of proportion. Mac users thought the machines were technically superior in every respect, a very dubious position at the time.

The Mac hate isn't caused by the products themselves, but rather a reaction to the obsessive and insulting apple fanaticism. The divisiveness of apple's marketing is why things like the Linux Advocacy Howto. Here is an Mac Zealot calling PC users "Lazy" and "Ignorant". You get the idea, it can be very annoying. Apple never tried to prevent this, and seemingly encourages it. (For example, their current television ads)
posted by delmoi at 11:40 AM on April 14, 2007

'97 was a tough time for Mac users. The OS was crap, the computers were worse. I had a Powerbook 5300cs that had to be sent back because the casing cracked; the screen was always strangely yellowed. I think those of us who had been long-time Mac users, who had really invested in the platform and relied on it for a lot (my mother's newspaper ran entirely on Macintoshes) felt like the company was a sinking ship and we desperately did not want to use PCs. So, I can understand the bitterness.
posted by bukharin at 11:53 AM on April 14, 2007

The divisiveness of apple's marketing is why things like the Linux Advocacy Howto.

chinese toddlers solving is why things like rubik's cube.
posted by quonsar at 12:05 PM on April 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

heh, not only do I remember it, I used to link that guy.

aaaah 97, so far away.
posted by dabitch at 12:37 PM on April 14, 2007

Perhaps it should be treated as a historical site, and preserved for the future amusement of Mac users?

It's funny odd, not funny-ha-ha, because The Register didn't stop posting smear stories of Apple until about a year ago. There really are deluded Windows users out there who think Apple is bankrupt, or soon will go out of business — worse is when it is people in the IT business who repeat these stories as gospel.

Maybe if they really, really, really believe it enough, their prophecy will come true? Good luck to them in their bubble.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:53 PM on April 14, 2007

Remember when Sun was rumored to buy out Apple? Or when Sony was gonna buy out Apple? Or when SGI was gonna buy out Apple? Good times.
posted by ardgedee at 1:03 PM on April 14, 2007

"because The Register didn't stop posting smear stories of Apple until about a year ago."

C'mon, they do smear stories about everyone.

Everyone I know gave up on The Register about a year ago, as it happens. When they started out, they actually did a lot of interesting (if snarky) tech-industry exposes. But recently they've become more like a dull tech-news site, with some occasional unrelated tabloid trash (man-bites-dog type) thrown on top. Wonder what happened--like SPY magazine, the hostile lawsuits piled up...?
posted by metasonix at 1:41 PM on April 14, 2007

Or at least, they USED to do smear stories.....
posted by metasonix at 1:42 PM on April 14, 2007

Uh, delmoi, the frequently-updated-website concept predates the word blog, and nobody's ever said differently. e.g. Justin's Links, Netscape What's New, and so on. And sites like Slashdot didn't start getting called blogs until 2001 or so.

But trust me, in 1997 nobody knew the word "blog".

Anyway, that little section there you quoted is my doing. Props to Jorn and peterme, that's all.
posted by dhartung at 2:24 PM on April 14, 2007

do not taunt happy toddler cube!
posted by quonsar at 2:31 PM on April 14, 2007

And sites like Slashdot didn't start getting called blogs until 2001 or so.

I started my "blog" in early 2000, after reading an article about "weblogs" that listed Robot Wisdom and Slashdot as examples of the genre.
posted by Jimbob at 3:16 PM on April 14, 2007

That said I remember reading a lot of blog-like websites in high school, such as slashdot.

I suddenly feel very old. You probably don't remember Fidonet and the concept of waiting more than 24 hours for an email to thread its way through an impermanent network. Now get the hell off my lawn or I'll thrash you with a Digiboard multiport spider and some thicknet coax!
posted by loquacious at 3:44 PM on April 14, 2007

But he does have the point: Mactivism has turned more people off Apple products than any supposed benefits of their products ever attracted.

Mactivists are no more tolerable than any other screaming extremists.
posted by watsondog at 3:46 PM on April 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Mactivism has turned more people off Apple products than any supposed benefits of their products ever attracted.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Seriously, this can't possibly be true, Apple sells tons of hardware. Haven't they been selling considerably more hardware, year to year? Don't a lot of people have iPods?

Not considering Apple products because some people like them too much would be ridiculous.

If we all stay on the internet all day, we forget that there's a whole real world which is mostly people who aren't shrill, self-selected jackasses. I'm not calling anyone here one, just this proto-blogger and the guy with the anti-Bill-Gates site.
posted by thethirdman at 4:08 PM on April 14, 2007

I'd say Suck was the first real blog. And by "real," I mean the first blog that was truly bloggy.

Happy to clear that up. :)
posted by mediareport at 5:26 PM on April 14, 2007

Macs have always been my computer of choice, but I never liked the rabid fanboy vibe of a lot of Mac users. HOWEVER... especially back in those days, when so many people were buying their first computers, I ended up in more Mac vs. Windows agruments than I wanted. In my case, the catalyst was almost always someone saying something about the Mac that was blatently false, usually to convince someone else to not buy one. I had a lot of conversations that went something like, "If you don't want to buy a Mac, fine, but do it based on reality." It was a frustrating time for Mac users, because of Apple's problems, but also the amount of misinformation out there. The misinformation has subsided a great deal. Although I do still hear people say "I can't use a Mac because it won't run Microsoft Office." So maybe we are still in 1999.
posted by The Deej at 6:08 PM on April 14, 2007

I worked with a guy who loved, loved, loved Macs, even in the just-before-Jobs-return days when things were looking bleak. He had purchased TONS of stock when it was painfully weak and looking like the company would die.

Then Jobs came back. Then the iMac came out. And he started gloating, but he didn't sell much of it.

I can *only* imagine how much money he's got laying around now.

I'm sharing this story so that I will not cry
posted by davejay at 7:49 PM on April 14, 2007

Jimbob: Thus, "or so".
posted by dhartung at 10:10 PM on April 14, 2007

davejay: It was hovering around the $2 mark (ajusting for splits) in '97 when jobs took back over as CEO '97 was by far the worst year. It's up to about $90 now (Although it dropped from $30 to $10 during the crash)

If he put in $10k, he would have about a half million dollars now.
posted by delmoi at 10:10 PM on April 14, 2007

I could see my sister running a blog like this... she's a mac user, but she has this oddly violent dislike of Steve Jobs (and iTunes, though she also loves her iPod). I mean, the topic manages to come up several times a day. Hrm, maybe I should suggest it to her...
posted by jaymzjulian at 5:23 AM on April 15, 2007