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Patience is a Virtue (2/4/99)
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If you've been tuning in to AtAT for any length of time, you know that one of the capital expenditures this studio has budgeted for 1999 is a new laptop. And not just any old laptop. Of course it has to be a Mac, that goes without saying, but it also has to be portable. We don't mean "portable" in the sense of the old Mac Portable, which weighed about as much as a three-year-old child, and also not in the sense that the PowerBook G3 is "portable," since it's roughly the size of a sofa cushion and weighs more than twice as much as our current Duo 280c. No, we're waiting for the fabled "consumer portable," that fourth chunk of Apple's product strategy, code-named "P1" and due for an unveiling any week now. Or so we had been told.
The latest news from Apple Insider about Apple's forthcoming four-pound translucent wonder is that the widely-anticipated introduction onstage at Macworld Expo Tokyo isn't going to happen. For whatever reason, instead Steve Jobs is expected to introduce the P1 to the world near or during next May's World Wide Developers Conference (not exactly the most appropriate event), and the units won't actually be available until Macworld Expo Boston in August. That's roughly equivalent to Apple's introduction of the iMac, which happened early last May. The iMac first hit store shelves in mid-August.
If true, that's a darn shame-- Macworld Tokyo would be the perfect time to show off the teensy new laptop. The Japanese have been less than impressed with the PowerBook G3's sizeable bulk, since it's too big to use on the Tokyo subway. Heck, it's even too big to use during a domestic coach flight without employing creative controlling yoga breathing techniques to minimize the size of your abdomen. A smaller G3-based laptop with a killer industrial design is exactly what the Japanese market is begging for, but it looks like we might all have to wait a few months longer. Personally, though, we're keeping our fingers crossed for the Tokyo unveiling; we still think Jobs is too much of a showman to pass up such a terrific opportunity to grab some wild applause.
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SceneLink (1319)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 2/4/99 episode: February 4, 1999: MacWEEK's revival as the cross-platform eMediaweekly was short-lived. Meanwhile, rumor has it that the P1 won't see the light of day anytime soon, and Microsoft exacerbates the "faked tape" situation by barring government reps from the testing room and then not repeating the questionable test anyway...
Other scenes from that episode: 1318: Short-Lived Rebirth (2/4/99) Your friendly neighborhood AtAT crew used to subscribe to MacWEEK, back when it was an actual paper publication (imagine!) and when we'd commonly hear people refer to it as "MacLEAK." At first there was a kind of comfort in receiving a big ol' magazine filled with Mac info every single week; it sort of reinforced the notion that the Mac world was big and bustling, at a time when everyone in the industry said it was small and dying... 1320: A Sure Ratings Winner (2/4/99) Is there any doubt that it's still Sweeps Month? ER's got a month-long string of episodes dealing with Doug Ross' "possible" departure (yeah, like any of us are in suspense about the answer to that question), the X-Files is nearing its "Total Disclosure" two-parter, and "Redmond Justice" continues with the Great Faked Tape scandal of 1999...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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