This week's "Dubious Distinction Award" goes to Apple Computer, for being "honored" as the "symbol of 1980s technology" in this year's Mobile Mystics Parade. If you trundle 'round to the Incredible Hulk-themed web site of the Mobile Mystics Mardi Gras Association, you'll note that their annual parade is slated to begin at 2PM on Saturday, February 26th-- and at that time, according to The Mac Observer, an "Eighties Tech float" featuring a giant Apple computer will make its way down the parade route. But if you're flashing back to those cool giant inflatable iMacs that made their appearance back in 1998, you may be sorely disappointed. Remember, we're talking eighties tech here, so the Apple float is a bit... old-fashioned.

In fact, if it were only old-fashioned, we might not be so weirded out. We lived with beige boxes and a multicolored Apple logo for years and years-- certainly through the '80s. But the representation on the float in question is also disturbingly off-kilter, as you can see for yourself from the picture accompanying the article. First of all, the screen has an aspect ratio approaching that of the new Cinema Display-- super-wide format. Even our //e's Extended 80-Column Card didn't do that to our monitor. The Apple logo on the screen is decidedly odd; it's got lots more than six colors and its stem is rectangular and pointing in the wrong direction. Granted, that's probably to avoid potential dust-ups with Apple's lawyers, but it still gives us the willies. The computer itself appears to be a narrow box (less than half the width of the monitor) with a floppy disk sticking out of its single central slot. Or is that just an Apple ][ external 5.25" floppy drive? The keyboard has a power key on the wrong side. And the mouse has two buttons.

But let's try to ignore this bizarre and inaccurate representation of Apple's earlier computers just for a moment. The real reason that this is such a dubious distinction is that Apple's always been far ahead of the rest of the industry in so many ways, and now the company's being honored as a representative of eighties technology. Backhanded compliment, or just an unintentional slight? We're guessing the latter, since the organization's web site proudly proclaims that it was "made on an Apple Macintosh." Still, to avoid drawing unfavorable attention to the decidedly '80s roots of certain chunks of the current Mac OS, we're doubting that the Mobile Mystics Parade will be showing up on Apple's Hot News page anytime soon.