So here we are, in 1999, looking at an Apple that's the healthiest its been in a decade: we've got these killer consumer-level iMacs that have captured the hearts and minds of the press and the wallets of the public; we've got new translucent professional systems that truly raise the bar for both performance and ease of use; Mac OS X Server is due to ship any day now, as a viable enterprise-quality server platform; QuickTime 4 is nearing completion and is poised to revolutionize the way media is served via the Internet with its new streaming capabilities and open-source approach to server development; and FireWire is heating up and positioning Apple as quite possibly one of the industry leaders as the whole computer landscape morphs and blurs the line between computers and more "pedestrian" consumer electronics. These are exciting times indeed-- so does anyone else think that it's a little strange that the biggest controversy in the Mac community appears to be whether or not the forthcoming consumer portable will include a wind-up power source?

Not that we're complaining, mind you; we at AtAT are always happiest when things border on the mildly surrealistic. That's why we're just a little sad to see that this particular controversy may in fact soon be put to rest, though not with the resolution we would have expected. See, after some rumors sites started talking about the possible release of a crankable P1, and others declared such a rumor utterly laughable, and just about everyone got into the act with an opinion, it appears that a Wired article now brings a solid fact to the table. They quote Rory Freer, a joint chairman of Freeplay Power Group, which is the South African company who is currently making those crankable radios; according to Rory, yes, Apple has been talking to them about "using the technology in future Macintosh products," though he's careful to note that no official deal has yet been hammered out.

So how weird is that? The possibility of a future Apple laptop with a crankable external power supply certainly seems just a little more likely now. Of course, Stear points out that his company doesn't expect to have a product that will work with laptops until next year, so that pretty much rules out any such technology for the first P1, given that it's currently expected to ship sometime between late April and early August. Overall, we have to say, it's kind of nice to receive confirmation that Apple is still willing to think about features that other computer companies might immediately dismiss as simply too goofy to consider; take Sony, for instance, who, when questioned about the possibility of incorporating the wind-up generator into their Vaio laptop product line, flatly stated that they didn't want to turn their computer into "a wind-up toy." Heck, we'd be thrilled to see Apple release a wind-up toy-- we like toys. More toys, we say-- bring 'em on.