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Illuminating Reading (10/23/98)
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We're constantly amazed at just how resourceful the Macintosh community can be. After all, here we have the iMac, which is certainly one of the least expandable Macs ever produced, and yet Mac geeks all over the world have been figuring out goofy ways to push the thing to its absolute limits. For instance, the iMac lacks a floppy drive-- so someone out in Germany figured out a way to yank an internal floppy from any prior Mac model and solder it to the iMac's motherboard. Voilà! Instant floppy drive-- and all it costs is the drive itself, a little solder, and the warranty on your iMac. A small price to pay to add slow, low-capacity, but ultimately compatible removable storage to your little blue pet, right?
In fact, a great many of the iMac's "shortcomings," which are probably more accurately referred to as "design considerations," have been addressed by fearless Macfolk screwing with the iMac's innards. No external monitor port? Griffin's got a warranty-voiding Mezzanine card coming out to fix that. USB Sparq drive not yet shipping? Some company apparently has non-USB Sparq drives currently available that attach to the iMac's motherboard without requiring the use of a soldering iron. And so on. Unfortunately, no one's come up with a way to address the single biggest missing iMac feature. Until now, that is.
Before the August ship date, it was long rumored that the iMac's mouse lit up when you used it. Apple originally claimed that this feature never existed, but after someone confronted them with their own QuickTime footage of the phenomenon, they admitted it was something they introduced in early prototypes, but removed soon after. But never fear! Now, through the magic of the web, you can view step-by-step instructions (with color photos, no less) for how to dissect your translucent iMac mouse, solder an LED to its main board, and reassemble it. When you're done, if you did things right, you've got a light-up mouse. If you screwed up, well, MacAlly's selling replacements. Pretty cool, though what we'd really love to see is a third-party USB mouse in iMac colors and textures that lights up all around, not just from a single LED. And it would be even better if the mouse glowed stronger the faster the mouse was moved. With an estimated 800,000 iMacs out there by next year, we bet there'd be a pretty good market for such a cool device...
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SceneLink (1099)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 10/23/98 episode: October 23, 1998: It's never pleasant when a beloved pet goes on to meet its maker. Meanwhile, things look to heat up again on "Redmond Justice" when Bill Gates makes his virtual appearance next week, and if you've got an iMac, a soldering iron, and a contempt for warranties, you, too, can have a light-up mouse...
Other scenes from that episode: 1097: They Just Fade Away... (10/23/98) The repercussions of Apple's "lean years" continue to ripple forth from the past to bum us out in the present. When we think back to May of last year, or whenever it was that Apple announced that huge round of cuts, probably the project we mourned for most of all was OpenDoc... 1098: Sweeps Week Move (10/23/98) Hey, if you're at all like us, you were bummed (but not at all surprised) to learn that Bill Gates was not on the "Redmond Justice" witness list this season. Seeing the world's richest man on the stand in a federal antitrust trial would have been a fantastic ratings grabber, but presumably Gates' asking price was too high, and the producers had to pass...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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