So another couple of iMac commercials have debuted, bringing the grand total up to six. The first four, which we assume you've seen by now, focused heavily on just showing the iMac's revolutionary design to the viewer, while underscoring its simplicity. While three of the first four commercials featured voiceovers by veteran actor Jeff Goldblum (who, as many may recall, once saved the earth by using a PowerBook), he never actually appeared on camera. The two new ones, however, let Mr. Goldblum step in front of the lens as he talks about people who "don't have an email" and wonders why everyone made computers that were beige.

Both new commercials are at least as minimalist as the first four; they feature Mr. Goldblum standing against a stark white background, he makes his point, and then we're shown a rotating view of the iMac. Not only does this approach project the necessary image of simplicity, but we assume it also keeps production costs down. What this means, though, is that Apple is counting on Jeff Goldblum's ability to get his point across in under thirty seconds; personally, we think he succeeds admirably. If you missed the commercials on ABC last night, Mac OS Rumors has a 3 MB QuickTime version of at least the "Email" one posted, or you can download our much smaller 300 KB version here. Due to some bizarre coincidence, both AtAT and Rumors botched the video capture on the "Beige" commercial, so all we have to offer is this truncated version, which is missing the first five seconds, but can certainly give you the idea. We also assume that Apple will post its own versions sometime Wednesday or Thursday.

Kudos to Apple, Mr. Goldblum, and Chiat-Day for a couple of what we expect to be fairly successful commercials. The only thing that struck us as odd about the whole thing was Steve Jobs' quote in the Apple press release: "We asked ourselves who best captures the imagination and intelligence of iMac, yet can understand the fears and concerns that many consumers have about computers and the Internet. Jeff Goldblum was our number one choice, and we are proud and thrilled to be working with him." We are baffled and perplexed by the notion that when Apple thinks about the iMac's imagination and intelligence and couples that with technophobia, they immediately think of Jeff Goldblum. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

It's a wonder that we saw either new iMac commercial at all, given that it debuted during ABC's Home Improvement, a show of which we've never been fond down here at AtAT headquarters. And no, it's not just because they get much higher ratings than we do. Anyway, this is a Buffy office, so the new episode on the WB took first priority, while the VCR was dutifully taping night #71 of the X-Files on FX. To grab the commercials (at least, as much as we managed to get) we kept one eye on an XClaim TV video window on our primary Mac, and captured uncompressed video to disk whenever a commercial break interrupted the hilarity on ABC. (See, we knew that buying the TV tuner module wasn't entirely frivolous!)

However, just because we didn't watch "Home Improvement" doesn't mean that most of you didn't. That's why we're glad that faithful viewer Rich Lindsay confirmed something we thought we noticed when we were shooting occasional glances at the Mac screen waiting for a commercial break:

After watching this evening's "Home Improvement" episode, I was disgusted with the product placement. They discussed Windows 98 in a few joke lines, but when the brand new PowerBook was center-screen for a scene there was a sticker of a strawberry placed over the Apple logo.

We assume there must be some kind of policy or something on "Home Improvement" about prominently-displayed company logos; after all, Apple's a paying advertiser, so why else would they cover up the crystal Apple on the PowerBook G3's cover? Although, many years ago, we distinctly recall one of the kids on the show wearing a Plan B skateboard company hat. So maybe it isn't policy, but rather a massive "Home Improvement" conspiracy to keep Apple's logo off the show. After all, "Dharma and Greg" (another ABC show) featured a similar PowerBook last week, and we're pretty sure the logo was visible. Hmmm...

QuickTime's all fine and dandy for distributing pre-produced video clips on the web in full-size chunks. But what about true streaming capability? If your memory's at least as good as ours (and that's not too difficult to achieve), you'll most likely recall that QuickTime's biggest limitation when compared to other video delivery services is that it can't stream live data. That makes it unusable for live webcasts, and perhaps even slightly unsuitable for delivery of pre-captured video if server loads and demand is very high. Of course, you probably also remember that Steve Jobs demonstrated a development version of QuickTime last May at WWDC which allowed the streaming of his live face into a web browser window. "Streaming QuickTime is coming" was the message, but so far we've seen no further evidence of that fact.

Nor are we likely to see more evidence for a while, yet. Robert Morgan in his RFI Report claims that Apple's pretty much dropped everything else to work on and build iMacs. Sure, other computers are being designed and built, but apparently QuickTime's been in suspended animation for a while. Mac OS Rumors has a slightly different perpective; their sources claim that QuickTime's streaming ability is coming along "slowly but surely" and may show up in a new QuickTime release to be included in the Mac OS 8.6 update expected in February. Fair enough; we'll wait until then. Whether or not the rest of the industry will is a different matter...

Remember, when streaming capability is incorporated into QuickTime itself, any application that supports QuickTime can support streaming video. At WWDC they didn't just have Steve's live face in a web browser-- they also dropped it into a Microsoft Word document, if memory serves. So prepare for all kinds of wacky uses once a streaming version of QuickTime hits the streets.