[comp.sys.apple2] The Never Ending Cycle

fadden@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Andy McFadden) (05/23/91)

Remember this?  Check out the entry for Apr-May.

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From: fadden@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Andy McFadden)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Look what we're doing ...
Summary: there is a season, turn, turn, turn (Deathmaze 5000)
Date: 4 Oct 90 21:32:47 GMT

In article <20756@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> curfmanm@prism.CS.ORST.EDU (Matthew Curfman) writes:
>Yet we the users, with our piles of hate mail, have all but destroyed a
>once great group.

Easy on the rhetoric.  I just ate.  :-)

You have to understand that this group goes in cycles...

Aug-Nov   This is the time when Apple introduces major new products, like a
	  new Macintosh or major GS/OS upgrade.  There is initially a great
	  deal of wild and hopeful speculation, inevitibly ending in
	  frustration (amidst a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, etc).

Dec-Jan   The Christmas buying season.  Lots of people wondering why Apple
	  doesn't advertise anything but the Mac IIfx, while Amiga gets
	  Tip O'Neil to advertise overblown pocket calculators.

Feb-Mar   The calm season.  It's cold outside in most places, so everybody
	  just sorta hangs out and programs.  Lots of techical questions get
	  asked.

Apr-May   Every BBS in North America goes wild with rumors of a new //gs.
          It outperforms a Cray 2 but costs less than three pounds of gummi
	  bears.  This is also the time when Apple ships such machines to
	  non-disclosure sites, which soon busy themselves with disclosing
	  (judging by the number of rumors).

Jun-Jul   Summer.  Everybody's at the beach, thinking about things other than
	  Apple IIs.  People from Nebraska aren't at the beach, but they
	  think about other things anyway.  Since a large quantity of
	  traffic here is from college students, the traffic goes down
	  when we leave campus.

As you can see, we're dead in the middle of the Apple Product cycle.  Since
most of our pessimistic visions have come true, the traffic should drop
until people start seeing all the Macintosh ads on TV.

The "piles of hate mail" haven't destroyed this group; without them,
comp.sys.apple2 would be just another boring newsgroup.  Besides, KILL
files were invented for a reason.

Please save this chart for future reference.  It could save a mind.

>Matt Curfman                                                  Technovelty. Inc.

-- 
fadden@cory.berkeley.edu (Andy McFadden)
..!ucbvax!cory!fadden
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NOW do you guys believe me?!?

:-)

-- 
fadden@cory.berkeley.edu (Andy McFadden)
..!ucbvax!cory!fadden
fadden@hermes.berkeley.edu (when cory throws up)