By Gary Kirchherr
Another new version of America Online's software is out, and true to form, AOL's cheerleaders are praising any software "upgrade" as The Greatest Thing That's Happened To The Internet. And lucky us, we've seen the return to the bad old days of AOL marketing.
My first warning this was coming came from ZDNet News, which said in a Sept. 27 article that the new release marked "a return to the company's carpet-bombing marketing program, which will even include delivering AOL 4.0 disks to airline passengers, magazine readers and fans at sporting events." What, no McDonald's distribution this time? I haven't seen any AOL CDs yet, although the TV-ad blitz is apparent. Once again, the ads feature young doofuses practically beside themselves while they gush "Instant messages!" or some such thing. Shades of ads of yore, when a dork was impressed that he "can send e-mail - even across the Internet!" In one new ad, they even have one young lady exclaim, "Everyone I know is on it!" Geez, guys, can you make your appeal to the herd mentality any more transparent?
I guess I can't blame AOL for trying to sell its product, no matter how bad it is, but I have to take issue with computer "experts" who jump on the bandwagon as if they were on Steve Case's PR payroll. One columnist noted that one can use programs like RealAudio, TelNet "and even Netscape Navigator" with AOL now. Ooh, an Internet provider that can run "even Netscape Navigator"! Of course, every Internet provider I've had the past three years has been able to run these programs all along. So what's the big deal? This kind of hype smacks of the hoopla surrounding the release of Windows 95, when Micro$oft's media lackeys at CNBC and USA Today were falling over themselves praising Windows 95's "new features" that already long were part of the Mac OS.
Free clue for the cheerleaders: Being able to use RealAudio "and even Netscape Navigator" isn't special. It's expected in any service that claims to offer Internet access. These "extras" certainly don't justify AOL's extravagant $21.95-a-month charge. Further, the pretty new interface only disguises the rot that has plagued AOL for years and continues to plague it - the e-mail spam, AOL-sanctioned telemarketers, abysmal customer support, "phishers" who try to trick you into revealing your password and/or credit-card number, still-cruddy software, and all the other problems that led PC World magazine less than a year ago to rate AOL the worst national Internet service provider. (For a refresher course in these and other problems with AOL, check out my "America Online sucks" page.)
Still not convinced? How about AOL's notorious susceptibility to hacker attacks? Most of the many anecdotes about this problem relate to AOL sites that get, shall we say, changed unexpectedly. But a more far-reaching problem developed earlier this month, when hackers were able to route e-mail intended for AOL'ers elsewhere. And they were able to do so because of AOL's lax security. For a summary of this situation, check out ZDNet Anchordesk Managing Editor Liz Enbysk's Oct. 19 column.
But so what if AOL's a hacker's delight? That interface sure looks great!
Meanwhile, over in Apple Land, OS 8.5 opened to fanatical reviews. While I haven't seen it yet, the improvements sound at first blush as if they're worth the $90 or so the upgrade costs. It's too bad its release has been marred by reports that the installation sometimes results in users losing data on their hard drives.
David Pogue's review in Macworld covers the upgrade's new features for those who are interested; I'll mention just two improvements I think are especially significant.
For one thing, Mac OS 8.5 is much faster, thanks to a fresh infusion of PowerPC-native coding. About time, too; 68K code in the system software was becoming an increasingly heavy albatross around Apple's neck. Now PowerPC-native, among other things, is QuickDraw, the software that draws images on the screen. That speed improvement in itself will be noticeable.
The big news, though, is Sherlock, the new search tool. Now you can search files on your hard drive by their content, as long as Sherlock indexes them first. And Sherlock also can search the Internet, using several different Net search engines (AltaVista, HotBot, etc.) at once.
Unfortunately, reports have surfaced of major problems with lost data and hard disks that won't mount with some Macs that load the new OS. Ric Ford's excellent MacinTouch Home Page has been documenting the problem thoroughly; Ford estimates the "hundreds of reports of data loss" he's received constitute between 0.1 percent and 1 percent of Mac users. Well, I don't like those odds, especially with a problem this severe whose cause is still a mystery. I'm afraid I'll have to stick with Mac OS 8.1 awhile longer - and you, dear reader, probably should too, until Apple figures out what's going on.
At long last, the much-anticipated antitrust suit against Micro$oft got under way this month. The Department of Justice came out swinging, and some pretty serious allegations against the company are getting some major exposure in the mass media. It's about time, too. While Micro$oft's way of doing business isn't news to regular readers of this space, I expect some knee-jerk Micro$oft apologists are going to be embarrassed into silence, or forced to make creative spin faster than a White House strategist.
An Oct. 19 Seattle Times story said government lawyers in their opening remarks said Bill Gates was involved in an alleged plan to divide the Web-browser market with Netscape, its main competitor. Gates said in his government deposition that he "wasn't involved in setting up a meeting" in 1995 with Netscape officials to discuss the idea; in fact, he hadn't heard about it until reading about it in the Wall Street Journal. But the government produced a memo Gates got that suggested arranging "a very powerful deal of some kind" with Netscape, and Gates replied he'd like to see that happen.
Also, the article said, the government said Micro$oft, unable to make a deal, set out to destroy its competitor by cutting off its business. For example, an America Online official said Micro$oft offered to pay a premium to AOL to shut out Netscape. The official quoted Gates as saying: "How much do we need to pay you to screw Netscape? This is your lucky day." Further, a March 15, 1996 memo from a Micro$oft suit named Brad Silverberg told AT&T officials that if they wanted a spot on Windows, it had to cut off Netscape.
This all came out before the lunch break on the trial's first day.
The last couple of days have had more interesting examples of the Micro$oft business model. For example, the testimony from Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale on his correspondence with Apple officials 14 months ago after Apple announced it was making Micro$oft Internet Explorer its operating system's default browser. An Oct. 27 Reuters article quoted Apple CFO Fred Anderson as saying in a note to Barksdale: "Apple needed to ensure that Microsoft would continue to provide MS Office for MAC or we were dead." Wow. A misunderstanding? You decide: A Wall Street Journal article reported a few days earlier that the government had an e-mail from a Micro$oft suit talking about how Micro$oft Office could influence Apple's plans on Netscape's browser and Sun Microsystems' Java programming language. According to the article, the Feb. 18 memo said convincing Apple to do anything that "significantly/materially disadvantages Netscape will be tough," but that "Microsoft Office is the perfect club to use on them."
How curious that a company with such allegedly "superior products" needs to use its monopoly power to force other companies beholden to Micro$oft to "screw Netscape," and considered Micro$oft software a "perfect club" to use on them. If the truth hurts, Micro$oft's defenders are going to need a lot of aspirin in the weeks ahead.