The signs of unhappiness are everywhere. Like in this piece by my good friend Leander Kahney who grumbles that Apple stores now are full of "teenage mall rats and iPod noobs" not to mention "peabrains." Leander frets because we're putting the iPhone ahead of OS X, and says this reflects a shift in focus away from hardcore computer geeks to the great unwashed hoi polloi. His title: "What's Happening to Our Lovely Cult?"
Leander, I feel your pain. We all do. Apple employees can't even bear to go into our retail stores anymore. We hear complaints about this all the time. The 80-by-20-foot multi-touch screen in our lobby is filled with nightmare stories.
One solution we're considering: A new chain of "Apple Elite" stores where you have to pass a test to get in. We'd put the test on a really cool multi-touch screen outside the door. If you pass, click, the door opens, just like on an ATM booth. If you fail, too bad, you can just stand outside trying to look through the smoked glass at all the super cool Apple cultists. Apple security guards will make sure you don't try to sneak in when one of the elite customers is leaving. An Apple "concierge" will direct you to the closest regular Apple store, where you can shop with the rest of the frigtards.
Here's one sample question:
CORRECTLY MATCH THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE TO THEIR PHOTOGRAPHS. YOU MUST GET ALL FIVE CORRECT TO ENTER.
1. Andy Hertzfeld. 2. Burrell Smith. 3. Steve Wozniak. 4. Kobun Chino. 5. Bill Atkinson.
Faithful, we need lots of questions. So send in your suggestions.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Apple faithful, I know you're upset by our new direction
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46 comments:
Dang... I don't know that. But in my experience I have found that I can find Geeks of all Kinds at the Apple store, or at least the Guy who gave me Uber geek point for knowing about Cider encodin.
1. What is the maximum distance of a single LocalTalk segment?
2. What is the bandwidth (in kilobits per second) of LocalTalk?
3. What version of AppleTalk shipped with the Workgroup Server 95?
4. What version of MacOS shipped with:
The Mac Plus?
The Mac IIci?
The Mac IIsi?
The Quadra 840av?
The PowerBook 5300?
The Apple Workgroup Server 95?
The Apple Network Server 700?
The 20th Anniversary Macintosh?
The original iMac?
The G4 Cube?
The MacMini?
5. What was the addressing scheme to send an email from AppleLink to the Internet?
6. What corporate media conglomerate began as AppleLink Personal Edition?
And yes, I actually do know all the answers off the top of my head, without resorting to Google. And yes, some of them are "trick questions". But I'm too cool to be seen even in an elite section of an Apple store. ;)
--chuck
I UNDERSTAND THAT I AM ENTERING...
1. The Shiny Place. 2. The iPod Store. 3. The Apple Store. 4. The Apple Elite Store.
(correct answer is, of course, not answering and taking your shoes off)
please, please, please let in the people who can correctly identify Steve's clothing worn at various presentations and keynotes with proper academic names and related historical periods. Give discounts to those who know proper care and handling of such.
1. Are you a virgin?
2. Have you ever done LSD?
^ I can't beleive no one has posted these two yet.
chuck's are pretty good, but tend more to those who had been third-party apple retail store employees in the 80s and went through the "apple networking training" at their nearest apple corporate regional sales office. better to lean more toward 'trivia' and not so technical, or the stores will have no one in them to buy anything bright or shiny (save his final question, which is a great one). try these —
1) bill atkinson invented which do-it-yourself software and scripting language for the mac (forerunner to applescript & automator)?
2) name four top mac 'journalists' (term used very loosely) who have been basically shills used at every macworld at both booth demonstrations and break-out, high-priced workshops sessions.
3) before the little apple in the top left corner of the menu bar was blue, what color was it (trick question)?
4) our current world-class operating system, Mac OS X, is based on UNIX or LINUX, and which specific flavor of either?
5) name the top seller of "mac compatibles" and their korean founder before his holy steveness came back and put the kybosh on all that bull-shizzle.
6) what was the 'other' hand-held consumer electronics device apple had before the iPod?
7) fill in the blanks: the worlds of both networking for macs and desktop publishing started in the year ______ when apple introduced the _____________ and the ___________ networking scheme in the Mac OS, and _______ corporation simultaneously released ___________ software.
8) the first computer made by Job & Wozniak launching the company was called _________, made in the year ______ and demo'd at their computer hobbyist club called ________________.
bonus questions 8a) where can this piece of computing history be viewed on display now?
9) come back to the '70s, and spin some pink floyd on vinyl: why did jobs & wozniak name the company 'apple' (big trick question)?
10) name the first big venture capitalist to wander into jobs & wozniak's garage business and offer them the big dream.
11) as much good fortune as they had with the very expensive superbowl '1984' ad, they nearly lost everything and a good deal of marketshare with which ad the following year?
12) the girl with the hammer running in the original '1984' ad — is she hot or what?
What was the (code) name of the 3.5" drive that was intended to be included with the first Macintosh but wasn't?
What was the name and maximum resolution of Apple's digital camera?
What was the first PowerMac (specifically) to support Hard Drives over 128 GB?
What were the very last Macs to ship with Mac OS 8.6? 7.X?
What was the cheapest "Old world" mac? How Much was it?
Fuck those disgusting hippies still pining away for Hypercard to be ported to OS X! They can go waste their time at Tekserve and breathe in the System 6 nostalgia.
Get a life, cultists! I, for one, am glad to have beautiful shiny objects that restore a sense of wonder to my life, not crummy dongle-ridden Power Computing clones that crash all the time.
I could answer FSJ's, since I too have a copy of Revolution in the Valley on my shelves, but these other ones are nuts. What sort of a store would it be if retired Apple Service Technicians were the only people allowed? Too many Newton fondlers and Clarus cultists if you ask me…
Besides if Ellen Feiss can't get in, who would want to? The air of Apple needs to have at least a little stoner to it.
hmmh
Well, you could ask the something techincal like, what are the three processor architechures apple has used over the years (the answers being, of course, 68K, POWERPC, and Intel). You could ask something like, was there ever a Mac OS/System 4 (there wasnt on released, to my knowledge) or perhaps ask them to identify a picture of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozinak.
What was the text of the original Apple logo, and who was its author?
Leander Kahney is a peabrain.
Hey anonymous dude,
Don't be slammin' Tekserve.
My question: Which way does the dogcow face?
Simple and effective.
Are you, or are you in anyway related to:
1) John Dvorak
2) Nick dePlume
3) Yoko Ono
4) Michael Wang
5) The Free Software Foundation
6) GreenPeace
(Any positive answer will get your butt kicked).
If you work for Microsoft, please come right in. Don't forget your handkerchief as we don't like drool on our floors.
*******
Entering this store, you expect to
1) Meet up with some friends
2) Pick one of our Geniuses' brains
3) See how our top the line mac feels
4) Get an autographed picture of Steve Jobs
5) Spend a couple of grand and wait a couple of months for delivery.
******
Apple Trivia:
1) Who's the other Steve (Tip: there is only one Steve)
2) Can you compare Apples and oranges? (Tip: are Lemons oranges?)
3) When is Super worth more than Hyper (Tip: play your cards right)
4) Should Apple sell sugared water? (Tip: think about the new generation)
5) Do you really want to enter a place that accepts people like you? (Tip: read Marx - the other one)
******
1) Name, clockwise from the top, the buildings on the eWorld welcome screen.
2) What, before "Clarus," was the dogcow named?
3) How many birds did you have to click on the original How-to-use-a-mouse tutorial?
4) Act out three steps of the Mac Shuffle.
5) Name the Mac which would turn itself off if the keyboard got too near the cpu.
While I've made another buck a share shorting AAPL you continue to question what is wrong without actually doing anything. Borderline introspection is close enough to incompetence so long as you don't do anything but it'd be really great if you aimed lower for incompetence.
Inside the case of the1986 Mac Se II are embossed some graphics.
What they represent?
Screw heads/torx sizes of Macs 1984 to present day.
Name 20 Open Firmware 'Words'
1. How do you tell FSJ from RSJ?
2. Write the alphabet from A to Z on the touch screen in letters Newton can identify.
Walker Quine can't enter. There are four processor architectures Apple has used over the years, at least.
Remember people, we're sticking with things to separate the Mac Elite from the rest, not asking for history lessons.
For that you need only ask a single question:
Which is OS X built on - BSD or BSOD?
Dave
well, as lenny bruce might say, and thank you and f-u too for raining all over my little trivia parade, anonymous, with your needless vitriol and venom which simultaneously gave away to everyone questions #1 & #5 of my cool trivia list, you big poopy party pooper potty-mouthed poopy head! no one here, including myself, ever, repeat, ever said we wanted to port h.c. into mac os x, it was just a dumb trivia question. ass.
just for that i have to come up with two more mac trivia questions —
1) mike spindler, the german former head of apple europe, who was one of the long line of sad ceo's at the helm of apple that paled in comparison to his holy steveness, ironically got outsted as ceo of apple for not being able to do one main thing during his tenure there. what was the one main thing spindler failed at? (hint: it's one thing you'd think a german would be able to do, as they taught the rest of the world how to do it, which is why he was hired, and no anti-semitic comments or goose-stepping references.)
2) name a current apple partner on whose board of directors sits former apple ceo gil amelio, the man who his holy steveness supplanted and gave the boot when he came back to home to infinity loop.
bonus questions —
3) name the software company apple spun-off, for a time, that handled most of their productivity software, before they further spun-off one product and re-swallowed up the rest. bonus bonus: name all the software products they handled.
4) where does john scully work now (no fair saying selling oranges by de Anza Blvd. & the 280)?
* * * * *
take that, anonymous. big poopy head.
john muir - who says apple service technicians can't be stoners too??? in fact, i believe it's a requirement on the application.
Oh yes, I forgot the apple I and II, which were based on the 6502 design.
Wow, I forgot that and I OWN an apple II.
These are genuinely interesting questions but I suspect only 1% of current Apple users would be able to get a passing grade, which seems a little tough. As Fake Steve would remind us, Apple is a business and our new elite stores have to make money.
More modern questions might be appropriate. After all, most of these questions apply to pre-OS X Macs, and it hardly seems fair to quiz current day people on the historic times.
So how about ...
What were the code names for the various versions of MacOS X?
How has the use of transparency effects changed over the years of MacOS X?
What year did Steve Jobs return to Apple? What was the first computer he introduced?
Who is Jonathan Ive?
What were some typical reactions to the iPod upon its introduction?
What operating system does the iPhone run?
Bonus question: What was the original name of Final Cut Pro, and what company originally created it?
There. I don't have all the answers to that memorized, but I think I could at least muster a passing grade.
D
Walker, there was a System 4. Released in '87 and lasted less than a year.
What version of Resedit ships with the current OS X?
What flags do you need to use with screencapture at the Terminal command line to get around the prohibition of capturing DVD stills?
Ok, when a person says "to my knowledge" or something similar, that does not equate to "please correct me if im wrong"
And the use of italics is rather rude, imho, but im not going to start a flame war on Steve's weblog.
dave - trick question. it's not built on bsd or bsod. it's built on the power of the freakin' RDF, the way god & steve intended it.
albertomichieli, the names of the original Macintosh design team. I had an SE and had it apart several times.
Jesus, it seems you should ask:
Did you last buy a Mac in:
A. 1987 or earlier?
B. 1988 to 1992
C. 1993 to 1997
D. 1998 to 2002
E. 2003 to present
...to allow commenting here!
There are some hardcore, oldschool nerds lurking at the door!
Does humour belong to FSJ's Blog comments? (To paraphraze FZ.)
Looking at most posts, obviously not :-(
amd fanboi, your second post made me laugh-out loud. Why didn't I think of that?
Moof?
Have you ever participated in a geeky forum stoush ?
One question... Do you have a myspace account? if the answer is yes then you can't enter.
My local Apple Store is over-run with middle school girls talking on cell phones while looking at myspace accounts. Why do they not block the myspace domain at the Apple Stores? I had to have an employee physically block two Macs when I was testing speakers before making a purchase.
Stillanonymous, the question is not when you LAST bought a Mac, but when you FIRST bought Apple. I bought an Apple II in 1983, Fat Mac (used) in '86, and a bunch more including (but not limited to) a Cube, Powerbook G4 Alum, 8100/100, Classic Mac, and a Performa 5215CD. Still have a Umax J710 in the basement that I boot up twice a year to reprogram the automated home lighting system.
No, anonymous, the point was being funny, not anal. I could care less how much of a geek you are.
I go way back too, but this is supposed to be funny. Also, FSJ wants Apple desireables, not Apple debilitateds.
Rather than asking my question, maybe a simple yes/no -- "Do you have a sense of humor?" should be the gatekeeper for posting here.
I'm an apple employee and I don't know who most of those people are. Are the only people allowed in Apple elite stores over the age of 35?
-Too embarassed to post under real name
you mean something like this?
The only people that should be allowed to enter are hardcore mac fans who are devoted to apple inc.
The only requirement for entry into an Apple Elite Store should be proof of ownership of at least one share of Apple stock.
That'll keep the plebs out.
Hey Mom !
that PuertoRican is stealin my tricycle !
Are you going have to work late tonight to pay for that I-phone
Rather than ask questions that even a lifelong mac user like myself couldn't answer, while simultaneously verifying everyone in the world's opinion of us as stuck up jerks, why don't you just do something simple like ask someone which delightful Mac products they've owned, and make them match up a picture of it to the names they provided. Then if they get it right, they have more than two listed (besides the easily recognizable iMac), and they are definitely not in middle school let them in. Unless the first one they list is from after OSX came out, then don't let them in.
Who the fuck are those 5 people?
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