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Ghost In The Machine (5/27/99)
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As much as we love following the day-to-day drama of Apple Computer, we can't help but feel that recently things just haven't been nearly as surreal as we'd like. There haven't been as many bizarre occurrences to stop us in our tracks and make us go, "Huh." That's good for the stockholders and for the continued financial health of the company, sure, but still, we miss the weird stuff. Heck, we thrive on it.
That's why we're so indebted to a longtime faithful viewer mysteriously known only as "~" for contacting us with one of the strangest stories we've yet encountered involving Apple. Some of you will remember that a few weeks ago, we were bemoaning the rather limited choice of programming available via QuickTime 4's new live streaming architecture: HBO previews, BBC world news, WGBH public television, and Bloomberg financial news. That's why "~" notified us that, ever since his update to the latest beta version of QuickTime 4, his bookmarked Bloomberg webcast turned into something quite different. Specifically, when he fired it up in QiuckTime Player, he found he was watching an episode of Star Trek: Voyager on UPN.
So, yeah, that was weird-- but it got even more interesting. Not long after, "~" wrote back to tell us that now his supposed "Bloomberg" webcast was showing the season finale of The X-Files on a San Francisco Fox station. He even emailed us his Bloomberg QuickTime file, so we could see for ourselves-- and yes, it was true. Then things wandered into the realm of the truly surreal: after The X-Files ended, a short portion of the San Francisco news was shown, and then the screen went black-- and we heard an audio-only track of the "Swedish-made penis enlarger" scene from the original Austin Powers repeated over and over again for perhaps ten minutes. We swear we are not making this up. After that, Voyager started again. This lineup just keeps repeating. Yes, we know this sounds kinda nuts, but we've posted the QuickTime 4 file which points to this mysterious live video stream so you can check it out yourself-- hurry, because there's no telling how long it'll stay up. We've opened up the file and confirmed that the stream is in fact coming from Apple's servers-- you can even enter the URL rtsp://qt4s.apple.com/bloomberg/bloomberghi in QuickTime Player to load the same stream. (Loading a Bloomberg stream from Apple's site, however, gives you the actual Bloomberg broadcast.) All we can say is, it's good to see that someone at Apple still has a sense of humor.
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SceneLink (1567)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 5/27/99 episode: May 27, 1999: Apple caves to pressure from its "loyal and passionate" AppleShare IP customers, and cuts the price of the 6.2 upgrade from $499 to $0. Meanwhile, Sears seems bent on going in the other direction and selling the iMac for a hundred dollar more than list price, and something very strange has happened to one of Apple's QuickTime streams...
Other scenes from that episode: 1565: Leaning On The Man (5/27/99) Who says Apple never listens to its customers? Okay, sure, sometimes things have to get ugly before they start paying attention, but when they make a particularly boneheaded move, it seems like these days they're much more likely to admit the mistake and make amends... 1566: Right Mac, Wrong Price (5/27/99) Uh-oh-- you may want to prepare for a rocky kick-off to the whole iMac era at Sears. Following early reports that iMacs had already surfaced in a couple of Sears stores, your AtAT crew took a trip down to the local mall to see what was up...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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