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Like Father, Like Son (1/25/99)
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So Steve Jobs didn't get named Time's Man of the Year, despite the campaign to push him up in the magazine's web site polls. Really, is anyone surprised? If the online poll were anything other than a cheap and effective ploy to pull more traffic to their site, then the Man of the Year would probably be a martyr, a wrestler, or Hank, the Angry Drunken Dwarf. The funny thing is, Mr. Jobs may have had a decent shot at the title if that whole White House scandal thing hadn't occurred. Talk about a soap opera! With all the free material overflowing from D.C., we were sorely tempted to rename the show "As the White House Turns" and change its whole direction. It's a testament to Steve that he kept things interesting enough that we never had to resort to cheap Presidential satire. Cheap Apple satire suits us just fine, thank you very much.
But even though Clinton and Starr edged Steve out for the whole Man of the Year thing, Steve's baby captured an analogous distinction from TIME Digital; the iMac is the official 1998 Machine of the Year. And really, what other machine had a chance at the title? The iMac was unveiled in early May, to everyone's complete surprise. Then followed three solid months of speculation, discussion, and debate about its startling differences. (We have a feeling that any computer released without a floppy drive would have been named Machine of the Year, even if it didn't look like a giant alien dinosaur egg.) August 15th finally arrived, and the buying frenzy commenced-- and when the smoke cleared at the end of the year, the iMac was the number one selling computer during the holiday quarter. Pretty good for a system manufactured by a beleaguered and dying company.
So congratulations to the Little Blue Wonder. Now that it's graduated to five fruit flavors, we're interested to see if the interest can last. One thing's for sure, though-- the iMac has made its mark on the landscape of computing history, and even if it were to fall off the sales charts tomorrow, it will be remembered and talked about decades from now. Steve must be proud of his digital progeny...
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SceneLink (1293)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 1/25/99 episode: January 25, 1999: Apple sends HAL 9000 into the Super Bowl fray. Meanwhile, Steve may not be Man of the Year, but his iMac offspring grabs a similar distinction, and QuickTime 4.0 is still nowhere to be found...
Other scenes from that episode: 1292: A Hail Mary Play (1/25/99) Fill the snack bowls and load up your beverage helmet-- Apple's back in the Super Bowl. Or, at least, they're once again advertising during the Super Bowl (though we bet if you put Steve Jobs on the field, Mr. Reality Distortion Field would be able to persuade the other team that it was in their best interests to throw the game)... 1294: Time Keeps On Slipping (1/25/99) Is it just us, or is anyone else out there tired of waiting for QuickTime 4.0? (And we personally don't even need it!) It seems like it's been "just around the corner" for half a year now-- or, at least, the most important feature of QuickTime 4.0 has, at any rate...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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