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e$: Watching the MacRubble Bounce
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e$: Watching the MacRubble Bounce
Stiffing, Stealth Conferences,
Pieces of the True Cross, Stiffies,
Grenades and Magic Feathers
Robert Hettinga
8/5/96
The principal waste of my time and attention, for the last six weeks or so,
has been my negotiations (or lack thereof) with an (as yet ;-)) unnamed
cypherpunk (and company) about whether they're going to stiff (or not) Peter
Cassidy, me, and two (as yet) unnamed other people, on the final payment
(a moderately signigicant chunk of change) for some consulting work we
did for them earlier this year. We accuse them of shooting the messenger,
because their idea won't work. More to the point, they couldn't make it work
even if a market was there. Which it isn't. For them, anyway. They accuse us
of gross incompetence. Interesting, because we punchlisted the entire
contract (and voluminous addenda) before we shipped the report, have logs of
them downloading *all* the source material and appendices, which we put on
the server for them *long* before we started dunning them for a past due
invoice. Not to mention Peter's written more *published* articles on
topics like this (in places, like, say, the Economist) in the last *year*
than most people *write* about *anything* in their entire lifetimes. And, of
course, they *aren't* going with the business idea they hired us to check
out in the first place. Go figure.
May you live in interesting times, the chinese curse goes, and things have
gotten interesting enough for me lately, thank you very much. I finally
decided to unwrap myself emotionally this week from this particular
"interesting time", "modulo" (to quote the aforementioned unnamed
cypherpunk) real (or imagined :-)) "other" measures our legal help says we
can take, should the inevitable stiffing (or not) occur, and concentrate on
other stuff, "modulo" my time spent in further negotiations about being
stiffed (or not).
Clearly, I've been talking with legal types too much lately. Speaking of
which, someday, I want to write another non-repudiation rant. Code and
Reputation instead of Law and Force, and all that. But not now. We still
might work this out. I hope.
So, in the background of the aforementioned stiffing (or not), Vinnie
Moscaritolo and I have been working on a project, something we've been
talking about since January or so. We wanted to throw a small Macintosh
crypto conference. Tim Dierks, of Consensus (and ex- Apple DTS, where Vinnie
now works), buttonholed Vinnie in a coffee shop a while back, and proposed
that we "stealth" the crypto conference idea into one about digital
commerce. Seeing as how both Vinnie and I gibber about "Digital Commerce is
Financial Cryptography" and all, it was fine by us. Along about June (July?)
or so, Vinnie, ever the mil-spec, surreptitiously obtained the necessary
sack of grenades and started paddling in towards the beach in a rubber raft,
inviting us to mop-up festivities the next morning at dawn. Next thing we
all knew, he had scheduled an Apple conference facility in Cupertino for 2
days, the 5th and 6th of September, a Thursday and Friday, and he may have
even gotten Apple to spring for groceries, though Those with Proper
Budgetary Authority might have gotten hit by a grenade or two, and they (the
groceries) could be MIA. Fortunately, this activity has been entirely a
ground-up exercise on the developers' part, so going dutch for lunch
probably won't scare anyone off, one way or the other. We could probably
hold it in a Chuck-E-Cheese and fill the room, people are that interested in
internet commerce, and crypto, on the Mac. And those little gophers, of
course...
Meanwhile, also in my, heh, copious, free time, (did I tell you I'm also
pitching sponsors for FC97? :-)), I've been working on a Mac-e$ rant with
Vinnie. Collaberation is Hard. But, it looks like we're just about through.
Real Soon Now. Kind of reminds me of the late-1960's button which said
"Freedom Soon". In the process, said rant has turned into some kind of
Magnum Opus, which makes me nervous, with contributions from a couple of
other people besides Vinnie and myself. And, no, the one you're reading
isn't it. :-). But it's coming. Soon. We hope.
All of which brings up the *real* point of this rant. I mean, who *cares* if
you can do crypto on the Mac or not? Why not stand back and watch the
MacRubble bounce?
My thinking about all of this started because I've been reading Vinnie's
mail over his shoulder. (Yes. I'm shameless. When we're working on stuff
together, we trade our mail about it. As they say in the Mac biz, "Sosumi".)
That is, Vinnie's been out there scaring up speakers for this shindig that
he "borrowed" the grenades for, and, well, in his tree-shaking (God help you
if Vinnie shakes a tree you're in), he invites (if you could call what
Vinnie sent an invitation :-)) Yet *Another* Nameless Cypherpunk (YANC) to
come and give us what we hope would be a Patented Colorful Cypherpunk
crypto-Peptalk, with Vinnie saying to him (YANC), in effect, we need him
(YANC) for a proper Laying-On of Hands, him being a Piece of the True Crypto
Cross, and all.
Of course, Vinnie didn't stand a chance. If we *could* consider Vinnie for
it, (which we can't, because he's on the selection committee) he might have
earned the coveted 1996 Black Rhino "Mr. Kevlar" award (for courage in the
face of imaginary gunfire) for his efforts. Actually, considering the, heh,
caliber, of last year's winner, it's just as well. A, uh, bang-up job Mr.
Weinstein of Netscape did last year. A hard one to top. And so, the search
continues. Both for this year's "Mr. Kevlar", and, of course, for some other
Piece of the True Cross. Or so we think. I'll get to that in a moment.
What Vinnie got from Yet Another Nameless Cypherpunk, instead of "Yes, I'll
come talk about crypto, the universe, and everything.", was Yet Another
Rendition of the Apple Macintosh Massacree. In six-part ;-) harmony, of
course. And, no, I won't sing it here in its 21-minute (not even 17 for
radio) entirety. However, I should really note here that no matter how
reasoned and cogent YANC's arguments were (and cogent they were, too: upon
reading them, I was halfway to the dumpster with my trusty old PB180,
tears in my eyes, before I came to my senses), in general, one of the *big*
reasons that Vinnie got the $0$AD ($ame Old $ong And Dance) Re the Future of
the Mac as a Viable Platform was probably more because the aforementioned
YANC has eschewed speaking opportunities like this for years anyway, and
Vinnie probably didn't ask him with the Proper Deference Necessary for a
Cypherpunk of That Stature. In fact, I *know* Vinnie didn't, because I read
his mail ;-). However, that, of course, wasn't why YANC gave Vinnie the
aforementioned Massacree in particular.
YANC Massacreed Vinnie because there's a lot of *very* disappointed Mac
users out there, YANC being a prominent example thereof. Love the computer.
Hate the company. Hell hath no fury like a Mac user (not to mention
shareholder) scorned. Heck. I understand *that*. I did the *same* thing just
over a year ago this week. "Platforms are Meat", and all that. For what it's
worth, YANC, I *feel* your pain... :-).
So, I repeat, why *not* stand back and let the MacRubble bounce? No, this is
not a segue for me to stand up in my chair and start singing the Apple
Company Song at the top of my lungs, complete with a QuickDraw-VR DOOM
environment file of One Infinite Loop right up there on the screen for y'all
to marvel at and play with using your very own Newtons, all while I sing 100
Company Song verses with a six-part MIDI chorus of my own voice (Yechhh!).
Nope. Not me. Indeed, I really *do* say, "Why not?". That is, let's look at
what happens if people *don't* develop crypto for the Mac.
The truth is folks, not much.
First of all, we all think it'll be Real Bad News for Apple Real Soon
if real-live strong cryptography isn't shoved as far down as it's possible
to make it go into the Mac's operating system, and right now, dammit. But,
so *what*? The Mac's only, say, 5-7% of the computer market anyway, and the
only possibly new, cool, stuff Apple's involved in, say, OpenDoc/Cyberdog,
has 5%, maybe 10%, of *that*, so, who *cares*? Potential Mac crypto
developers aren't effecting that many people at *all*. They would better
spend their time doing CryptoJava++ or something, because there's *much*
more market penetration *there*. Or, even better, developers should go do
CAPI for Windows. I mean, that's where the *real* money is, right? So
fergadaboudit, go write CAPI-code, I mean, Microsoft Gets The Internet Now,
right? At least there'll be *active* developer support from the MotherShip,
which is better than whatcha get from Apple ferchrissakes <He said, ducking
a mysteriously appearing grenade fusilade from Vinnie's general direction.
Can someone tell me *how* he pulls the pins and throws them all at once
like that?>.
But, as bad as all this is, lack of strong crypto is not nearly that much of
a Mac-Killer, or more to the point, an Apple-Killer. (Love the Machine, Hate
the Company, remember?) What's killing Apple is Apple's sclerotic management
style, and, frankly, too much living high off the hog when margins were fat.
Of course, you never know. Apple could just keep cranking out more and more
machines, at smaller and smaller market shares, ad infinitum. Look at
Porsche (remember Ferry Porsche and what a "disaster" the Volkswagen was?),
or Rolls-Royce. Personally, I would bet that, *if* the Sclerotic Apple
scenario's the case, then jumping with both feet into crypto, and by
extension, financial cryptography and digital commerce, could add a few more
years to Apple's lifetime, but all that money might just go straight to
Apple's waistline *anyway* (at 360lbs soaking wet, *I* should talk...), and
make the end, if it occurs, even that much more grotesque. ( Yeah, but what
a way to go... Fat Power! ;-))
And, yet, Vinnie's probably going to fill the room on September 5th and 6th.
Hell, he might even fill Chuck-E-Cheese to boot. How come? Because, even
though the market share is small, there's just enough there to support the
small developers who made the Mac a great machine in the first place.
There's a guy in Germany named Ruf. I still think he's around. Don't ask me
how to say his name. What he does is buy brand-new Porsche 911s, fresh from
the factory, and "blueprints" them. That is, he takes them all apart, down
to the nuts and bolts, and rebuilds them *exactly* to the original design
specifications, remachining metal where necessary. You can imagine that,
with Porsches, there isn't much tolerence for production errors to begin
with, but blueprint them Mr. Ruf does. After he does that, he tweaks them
with all the aftermarket go-fast stuff it's possible to cram onto the little
30-year-old 911 design, some of which he's invented himself. After he's
done, they really do. Go fast, I mean. Usually, his tweaky stuff gets onto
his cars, now sold under the "Ruf" brand name, *waay* before it gets
adopted for production 911s. Mr. Ruf has been doing this for a long time.
His cars go for twice or three times what a production 911 goes for, if you
can imagine paying that much for a *very* fast Porsche 911. He has a very
long waiting list. He sells, say, 10 cars a year. He makes out like a
bandit. And he *loves* his job. There're a whole bunch of guys around
Stuttgart who do this kind of stuff. And *they* love their jobs, too.
That's why Vinnie's going to fill that room in Cupertino. (On the 5th and
6th of September, remember?) First of all, the developers who are left in
the Mac market are there because they love it. The old guys, who, like me,
can't get it up anymore, still hack Macs because they love them. The *new*
developers hack Macs because they can't get leave it *alone* and don't know
from market share anyway. They just love what they're doing.
<heh, heh. He said "get it up", Bevis>
<heh, heh. Yeah. And up there, Butthead, he said "Stiffy">
<No, Bevis. He said "Stiffing">
<Oh, yeah. heh, heh. *I* knew that...>
Mssrs. B & B aside, who *knows* what the women Mac developers feel, young or
old, because I'm not one. Or a woman, for that matter. :-). But I *bet*
they're there because *they* love the Mac, too. And, of course, *all* of the
Mac crypto developers also understand the importance of strong cryptography
to digital commerce, so they want to make sure the Mac has it, if they have
to do it themselves, just like Mr. Ruf and his friends blueprint those
brand-new Porsche 911s.
So, finally, I'm going to pull out a dusty old story from the Disney Canon:
Dumbo. <Oh, No! Not the Dumbo story!!! Not Again!!!> Yes. The Dumbo story.
Again.
Remember that Dumbo had a magic feather, given to him by the crows, so that
he could fly, which of course, he didn't really need, because he could fly
already, he just didn't know it. Yes, boys and girls, Vinnie and the Mac
crypto developers wanted, in fear of that 900-foot drop into a teeeny bucket
of water, to have Yet Another Nameless Cypherpunk, A Piece of the True
Crypto Cross, be a magic feather. So they could fly.
Well, it looks like Vinnie, and all those room-filling Chuck-E-Cheese-
Gopher-Banging Mac crypto developers will have to use their ears (or what's
between them, anyway) to fly instead.
Only this time, Dumbo's got a sack of grenades.
A "munition" indeed...
Cheers,
Bob Hettinga
<Heh, heh. Uh, anyone out there got a magic feather, uh, just in case?>
<Shut *up*, Bevis!>
<Owwwwww! My *'Nads*!>
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Robert Hettinga ([email protected])
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"'Bart Bucks' are not legal tender."
-- Punishment, 100 times on a chalkboard,
for Bart Simpson
The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/