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Who Really is the "Director" of Dashboard?
MacManX writes "Does the director of Apple's upcoming Mac OS X feature, Dashboard, have something to hide? Or does he wish to remain hidden? Or are we just reading into this way too much? Rick has an excellent observation over at MacMerc. The evidence will astound you."
An 'Alan Smithee' directed film also refers to a film that turned out so bad the director demanded the removal of his name (instead of having it taken away from him, as the IMDB quote in the article states).
Example: the theatrical "Dune" movie was originally a David Lynch film, but subsequent prints bear the Smithee label.
Fun fact: "Alan Smithee" is an anagram of 'i.e., the alias man.'
Implication in context: rather than implying that Dashboard is so bad Apple took the project from its director, perhaps it means the project director doesn't want his name associated with it. Go Woz!
-- Apparently, some people are calling me 'Maurice' merely because I said something about the pompitus of love.
In the original cut the lead widget and widgetess were supposed to spend their lives apart, in exile, each dying thinking the other betrayed them, not realizing they really disowned the other to save the other's life.
But the studio made them change it so they lived together in a cottage in exile after the King's wife told him she'd leave him childless if he sent them apart forever.
Stupid Hollywood.
(sheesh, the Alan Smithee conspiracy seems a bit far-fetched--if the guy in charge of the project didn't like what he was doing enough to go pseudonymous in a keynote, he has to be either really, really stupid, or hoping to be fired (or Steved, by some peoples' lexicon). My guess is that it's just Apple's new version of "John/Jane Doe").
What did the article prove? Nothing. This is in my opinion a waste of space on the Slashdot's first page. Mod me down if you want, but the fact that Apple employees put in a fake name in a demonstration movie is no 'conspiracy'. Have you considered that maybe they just don't want people to peek at real people's profiles/names?
A nice little thing to notice, but using it as proof for the one who designed Dashboard? That's stretching it...
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
Now that everyone knows, it doesn't really make sense for companies to allow Alan Smithee to be associated with their productions. So what's the new alias? I'm guessing that if there is one, it's David E. Kelly.
Alan Smithee is one of those little pieces of knowledge that people know because it helps make them feel elite, which is weird because everyone knows about it by now. It's like the way mullets were a big joke a while back.
But really, odds are, if you know about it, then it's not hip and you're cool, stop pretending and go listen to some more Weezer.
people just seem to want to always find hidden meanings that, most times, aren't there at all.
e to the pi i plus one equals zero
Sadly, this article: not so funny. However, since we're talking about Dashboard, I recommend going to Surfin' Safari, the weblog of Dave Hyatt, lead programmer of Safari. Since WWDC, he's been talking about Dashboard, what it really is, and the development path they're taking.
Dashboard is actually going to be a WebKit application, with some HTML Extensions to let you do things like put a transparent mask over the window and call local code. He's discussing putting the HTML extensions into their own default namespace right now, as well as submitting them for standards approval (well, some of them). It's a very interesting weblog, and certainly worth having on the RSS feed if you're at all interested in the development of Safari and webkit.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
So maybe there is something going on here.
Apple is innocent...
O.J. is innocent...
:Puts on his flame suit: it's only a joke. i swear!
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Didn't Apple along with a bunch of other software corporations stop putting credits in their software a few years ago, to help prevent large competitors in or around Redmond from paying whatever it took to make ridiculously generous offers for those employees to work for them? Wouldn't it be prudent (if that is their policy) to avoid trumpeting all those people's names as well? What if this person didn't turn in the NDA yet?
Alex.
Dashboard looks like a pretty sweet application. With each successive release, Mac OS X becomes an even more impressive desktop OS. They keep throwing stuff in it that boosts productivity (Expose, Dashboard, Automator, etc) while still maintaining its slick appearance. With all these productivity enhancements, sometimes I have to wonder why they don't put together a less-expensive G5 tower (i.e., less than $1500, let alone $2000 without a monitor) and target the business market. Even at $2000+/system, if Apple were to successfully convince just a few large companies to run small pilot programs to study productivity gains, they could make huge inroads into the business computing market. Between Tiger, the new 30" cinema displays, and a dual 2.5GHz G5, Apple really makes me wish I weren't a poor college student. :(
But one keen observation: I'm a movie geek, so I searched for Alan Smithee on IMDB and I get that name for directors of some of the greatest movies ever made, several are on the IMDB's top 250 list. 12 Angry Men, the Original Manchurian Candidate, Cool Hand Luke, the first Superman, etc. Interesting stuff.
No.
Sidney Lumet is credited as "Sidney Lumet" for 12 Angry Men (1957). He is credited as "Alan Smithee" for Q&A (1990).
John Frankenheimer is credited as "John Frankenheimer" for The Manchurian Candidate (1957). He is credited as "Alan Smithee" for Riviera (1987)
Stuart Rosenberg is credited as "Stuart Rosenberg" for Cool Hand Luke (1967). He is credited as "Alan Smithee" for Let's Get Harry (1986).
Jackie Cooper is credited as "Jackie Cooper" for playing the role of "Perry White" in Superman (1978). He is also credited as "Jackie Cooper" for playing the role of "Alan Smithee" in Moonlight (1982).
If you look in the last couple of frames as the things fly toward the screen. You can see Alan Smithee's phone #, how about somebody calls him and asks him what's up. It is also the number in this article about opendoc, but that was in 1996 so maybe it got reassigned.
ALAN SMITHEE
408-796-1010
-> Fritz
Spooooon!!!!!
so I searched for Alan Smithee on IMDB and I get that name for directors of some of the greatest movies ever made, several are on the IMDB's top 250 list.
No, the IMDB page is saying those directors, with their most famous movies in parenthesis so you'll know who they are, are sometimes AKA "Alan Smithee". So for instance John Frankenheimer directed "12 Angry Men" and was credited as such. He ALSO directed a 1987 TV movie "Riviera" under the name Alan Smithee - meaning that "Riviera" sucked, he hated it and didn't want his name associated with it.
Oops, I meant "The Manchurian Candidate" not "12 Angry Men" - I clicked the wrong link on the IMDB.
This Smithee guy must be a genius ... IMDB states he directed his first movie the year he was born and has been writing, directing, producing, composing, designing and editing many dozens if not hundreds of shows since. Now he's a keynote-quality software designer.
Good show old chap!
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
i work in the entertainment industry so it stuck out as odd to me. but don't we all think steve jobs, who also happens to be the ceo of a major movie production studio, would know the significance of that phrase BEFORE he demo'd dashboard? most people in the entertainment field know what that means. i seriously doubt he would be caught unawares.
Should you be telling us? (brain hemorrhages.)
Alan Smithee is no news. Everyone knows about it. Having that name in something previewed by Apple means nothing - and you should all have better things to do. Egads, I mean come on and get a life!
Speculation is certainly not equal to hard facts, which are typically what evidence is made of.
What morons. It's just an inside joke for Apple's film industry customers (and potential customers).
I believe one of the screenshots had a Dashboard calculator with '1337' or a variant on the screen. Same idea. That was a shoutout to the geeks.
"You go to learn how to THINK. Once you know how to think, you apply that to any field."
Companies want people who know X 5.0, Y Enterprise Edition, and Z 3.0 Server.
Thinking? Feh.
Generalists. Who needs em.
Use that ridiculous dropshadow on my calculator widget, you no-talent bean counters, and I'm taking my name off the project.
...in the Ridgefield Press.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
That this posted by someone masquerading under the pseudonym 'Pudge'. Clearly he is deeply deeply embarrassed by this post. ... or somehing.
"Cupertino, start your photocopiers!"
Funny that Apple would put out "Redmond, start your photocopiers" tag when everybody knows what happened to Watson, and now Konfabulator.
What goes around comes around.
Enuff said.
There is a long-standing Apple rule that says that none of the people in a project may put their names into the project anywhere, including in Easter eggs. (And, in fact, if you do manage to get an Easter egg into an Apple project, you'll be in a lot more trouble if your name is in it than if it isn't.) The alias here may just have been someone complaining that Apple wasn't letting him sign his real name. Or he could have put his real name in it and someone at Apple with a sense of humor enforced the prohibition in an amusing (to those in the know) way.
I think those are more likely explanations than any of the others I've seen. But hey, what do I know? I'm just an ex-Apple-employee.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
...and so's my wife!
Sounds almost like Microsoft. Or Red Hat. Where, oh where, can I find a conspiracy big enough for all of these degenerates?
Finest word processor ever.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned this already, but if you *really* wanted to read something into this..
could it be related to the fact that Steve Jobs (with Wozniak) started apple and then got kicked out.. having his 'vision' for apple screwed up.. now he's fixing it...
xox,
Dead Nancy
---
For all of the armchair critics who claim to know that Apple "should have" bought Konfabulator to serve as the basis for Dashboard, I ask:
Have you used Konfabulator? If so, have you measured its memory consumption?
Do you think Apple's OS engineers should be concerned about performance and resource consumption?
Do you think you know more about performance and resource allocation than Apple's engineers?
Do you believe reasonable engineering opinions can be drawn by looking at screenshots?
Do you realize how insulting it is to have someone who knows nothing about the details of your work tell you that they know better than you do?