Wah, Wah, Wah Goes the Pundit.

September 2nd, 2009, by The Angry Drunk

I debated doing a proper tear – down of this piece of self – indul­gent tripe from the usu­ally a bit more astute than this Merlin Mann. It cer­tainly has all of the tropes that send me into parox­ysms of rage: Apple as cult, the impli­ca­tion that Snow Leopard is just a “ser­vice pack,” the inabil­ity to under­stand Apple’s mar­ket­ing of Snow Leopard, douchebaggy faux – con­ver­sa­tions between the author and an anthro­po­mor­phized Apple. Really, it’s a New Media Douchefestival of delights. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. Instead I’ll offer just a few thoughts.

I get it Merlin, you’re an idiot who rushed into an OS upgrade because, like every other dip – shit in the tech pun­di­toc­racy, you are obsessed with the new shiny and, like a fuck­ing rac­coon, you can’t resist grab­bing for it. I get that, again like the rest of the pun­di­toc­racy you aren’t capa­ble of lis­ten­ing when Apple said clearly that Snow Leopard was not going to be about new fea­tures (except for Exchange). I get that it’s eas­ier to blame Apple instead of  your beloved devel­op­ers who couldn’t be arsed to upgrade their soft­ware in time for Snow Leopard, even though Apple gave devel­op­ers an unprece­dented amount of time and sup­port to get their shit together. I get that you’re pissy because peo­ple are call­ing bull­shit on you this time.

Tough titty.

Here’s the fuck­ing real­ity. You chose to upgrade your shit while in the midst of a project, with­out ver­i­fy­ing the com­pat­i­bil­ity of the tools you rely on. That was stu­pid. You can throw all the tantrums you want. You can com­pare Apple and the peo­ple telling you that you did a stu­pid thing to a cult all you want. You can make up con­ver­sa­tions in your head where some myth­i­cal “Apple” enjoins you to per­form trou­bleshoot­ing steps that went out of vogue in the 1990’s all you want. None of that changes the fact that you did some­thing dumb. It just makes you look like a jackass.

We all know that you’re smarter than this Merlin, so cut with the hissy – fit, and comb your hair you fuck­ing hippy.

13 comments - (Comments closed)
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  • Matt

    I gotta call bull­shit on Merlin. If all he was look­ing for was a com­puter that worked, and 10.5.8 worked for him, why would he upgrade 5 machines at once to the new shiny that’s less than a week old, and com­plain that his 2-year-old copy of CS3 isn’t work­ing. Or that QuickSilver, an app that is barely alive at this point, isn’t work­ing prop­erly.

    The rants about hav­ing to install updated soft­ware on all five (5) V ? of those com­put­ers also makes me won­der if maybe those devel­op­ers did have SL com­pat­i­ble ver­sions out in time that he had cho­sen not to upgrade to.

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    Matt,
    I’m will­ing to give Merlin the ben­e­fit of the doubt and assume that he’s not being dis­hon­est here. I imag­ine that he did what many of us do and just rushed into the upgrade with­out think­ing. I see that as a tes­ti­mo­nial to the skill of Apple’s mar­ket­ing depart­ment that peo­ple jumped at the chance to install and OS that they billed as hav­ing “no new fea­tures.“

    What annoys me is the reac­tion once the pain set in. Merlin is hardly a New Media Douchebag and act­ing like one is beneath him.

  • Matt

    Maybe “bull­shit” wasn’t the best term. I don’t doubt his story, I just think his reac­tion is bull­shit. I think he’s mostly just doing the same thing most of us do after we real­ize we made a mis­take, try­ing to ratio­nal­ize his actions. In my not at all hum­ble opin­ion, it was stu­pid to upgrade all of his machines while work­ing on a book with a dead­line. You don’t fuck around with your tools in the mid­dle of a project.

  • Gatesbasher

    This “ser­vice pack” crap from the Wintards always frosts my ass. Just because the first digit has been “10” for 8 years now, “All these are only point releases. Nobody should have to pay for them!“

    You’d be closer to cor­rect (but still crazy as a PC user) to call Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, and Leopard “ser­vice packs.” To call Snow Leopard, the biggest rewrite since Cheetah a “ser­vice pack” shows igno­rance of a cal­iber not seen out­side Young Earth Creationist cir­cles. Was Windows NT a “ser­vice pack?”

  • indiana61

    The ONLY time you “fuck around with your tools in the mid­dle of a project” is if you are mak­ing a porno!

  • http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK GreyAreaUK

    What’s really ironic here is that Merlin Mann –him­self– once said this: “The more wrong a guy gets, the louder he yells at the per­son try­ing to help him. Which, inevitably, makes him even wronger. But less helped.”

  • http://twitter.com/GreyAreaUK GreyAreaUK

    [read­ing the arti­cle] oh, this is pre­cious. He updates five machines — five! — and com­plains when the same (pre­sum­ably) soft­ware on all of them doesn’t work?! Gosh, who could have pre­dicted that? And I love the expres­sion “…a fully up-to-date copy of CS3…” Well, I’ve got a fully up-to-date TRS80 Model 1 sit­ting behind me. I’ll let you work out the anal­ogy.

    And don’t even start me on Quicksilver, a pro­gram that’s prob­a­bly doing a whole shit­load of non-approved API shenani­gans. It no longer works, you say? Well spank me pur­ple and call me Sharon.

    He needs to get some new meds, because seri­ously, the cur­rent ones? hav­ing some side effects, dude.

  • Jack

    Now this is why I visit your site, Darby. Well said.

    I can’t believe Merlin claims to be a power user. More like a Power Princess. He should stick to his 43 fold­ers and kiss­ing David Allen’s ass.

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    Jack, Shaw Cable must give out IP addresses like a hooker gives out the clap. At any rate, between the fact that I’m chock full of the booze of human kind­ness, and the fact that I am morally inca­pable of hold­ing a grudge against some­one who is using an email address of “tomwait­sis­god”, con­sider all for­given. Doesn’t hurt that your right on this one either.

  • Jack

    I promise to stay away from the polit­i­cal top­ics. I shouldn’t have pushed the issue the way that I did and apol­o­gize for the child­ish bacardi-driven bull­shit. It doesn’t accom­plish any­thing and only hurts my own stand­point.

    I have just started lis­ten­ing to the Angry Mac Bastards pod­cast and really enjoy the hilar­i­ous thrash­ing of the mis­in­for­mants, free­tards and other deserv­ing douches. Great stuff.

  • http://www.golgotha.com.au/ mattg

    Hey, this is kindof off topic, but I’ve noticed your RSS feed isn’t show­ing any arti­cles when I hit the RSS icon in Safari. It tries to load:

    feed://​www​.thean​gry​drunk​.com/​f​e​e​d​/​a​t​om/

    And gives an error that Safari can’t load any data for the loca­tion. My book­mark for your feed hasn’t shown any updates either.

    Just me, or is any­one else expe­ri­enc­ing it?

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    It looks like some­thing is fucked up with the RSS to Feedburner redi­rect, again. I’ve turned that off and I can between RSS view and HTML view in Safari and see con­tent in both places. I’ll trou­bleshoot fur­ther when I get the chance.

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    It looks like some­thing is fucked up with the RSS to Feedburner redi­rect, again. I’ve turned that off and I can between RSS view and HTML view in Safari and see con­tent in both places. I’ll trou­bleshoot fur­ther when I get the chance.