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Turns... Apple Turns. (5/13/99)
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Geez, you people... We love you with every inch of our Apple-watching hearts (awwwww...), but never let it be said that you let us slack off for even a minute. Not that we don't appreciate the occasional prod, mind you, because our natural propensity towards letting things slide doesn't exactly mesh with the rigors of producing a daily soap opera. Let's put it this way: we keep meaning to put a picture of us in the dictionary next to the word "procrastination," but we just never seem to get around to it. So cranking out AtAT day after day is an uphill battle all the way and we appreciate all the help we can get. In that spirit, many thanks to faithful viewer Dan who nudged us about Sonata, the next big upgrade to the Mac OS. Quoth he: "Isn't it time to start the rumors about 8.7? I mean, OS 8.6 has been out almost a week, and you haven't put up any "news" on 8.7!"
Truth be told, Dan, we're just a little bit burned out on the whole "operating system rumors" thing. Basically, we'd been hearing about Mac OS 8.6 for months and months, and then when it finally came out, we downloaded the 36 MB disk image, installed it, and noticed virtually no difference in our day-to-day operations, except 1) the startup screen now says "Mac OS 8.6" (oooh), 2) the new Monaco font looks much more computer-y (but at least now we can tell the difference between O's and 0's), and 3) trying to use our ATI XClaim TV tuner now crashes the machine hard. Sure, it was a free update, so we weren't expecting lots of cool new features or a magical transformation of our Mac-using experience, but after so much build-up the eventual act of using Mac OS 8.6 is terrifically anticlimactic. So really, is it our place to contribute to the early overhyping of Mac OS 8.7 that is destined to leave millions of Mac users somewhat underwhelmed and slightly let down after its release?
Aw, heck, why not? After all, many of Mac OS 8.7's features do in fact look pretty darn cool, and it's definitely a solid incremental step towards Mac OS X. Accelerate Your Mac! already has screenshots from an early developmental build, where you can check out visuals of lots of the nifty new features described in Mac OS Rumors' in-depth report. From our standpoint, multiple user login support, built-in encryption for files, full support of the new Carbon APIs, a next-generation version of Sherlock that does automatic price comparison e-shopping, etc. are all just gravy-- the really cool feature was demonstrated at WWDC. Three words: Voice print identification. With Mac OS 8.7, apparently you'll be able to log in to your account by speaking a pass phrase. As far as we're concerned, anything that makes you feel like James Bond is a big plus. Bring it on!
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SceneLink (1530)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 5/13/99 episode: May 13, 1999: There's lots of speculation about new iMacs and the iBook, but what about the mysterious cMac? Meanwhile, Mac OS 8.6 has hardly cooled from the oven, yet people are already talking up Mac OS 8.7, and the "Redmond Justice" hiatus continues seemingly without end...
Other scenes from that episode: 1529: See Mac. See Mac Sell. (5/13/99) If you're anything at all like us, you realize that there are two reasons to follow Mac-related rumors. The first is to try to gather early and accurate information about upcoming hardware and software, in a serious attempt to plan your personal and/or professional Mac-using roadmap and to gauge Apple's position in the industry and the industry's reaction to Apple's progress... 1531: Ah, The Good Old Days... (5/13/99) Way back in the mists of time, there was a great courtroom drama called "Redmond Justice." Some of you old-timers may remember it; it involved a software giant named Microsoft who may or may not have abused monopoly it may or may not have held, and its struggle against the government who alleged these anti-trust violations...
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