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Spreading Like Wildfire (4/9/00)
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We'll say one thing for Mike Dell: he certainly doesn't make our job very hard sometimes. We've been watching his every move ever since that catty public remark back in 1997 about how, if he were running Apple, he'd have shut it down and given the money back to the stockholders. Well, since then he's managed to ape Apple's every move in a painfully transparent attempt to sculpt his own successful-but-styleless company into something with a but more of the Cupertino panache. It's not exactly a public retraction of his earlier regrettable remarks, but it's pretty much the same thing. So now we've got Dell colored consumer desktops, Dell colored consumer notebooks, Dell wireless networking-- heck, the list goes on forever.
Make that "forever plus one." According to AppleLinks, Dell's just adopted another Apple innovation: FireWire. The high-speed connectivity architecture known in drier circles as "IEEE 1394" hasn't caught on in the industry as quickly as we'd all hoped, but now that the iMac DV has given the technology a bit more visibility, we can't say we're surprised to hear that Dell's finally jumped on board. The Dell Dimension XPS T600 is a $1699 system that comes with "a 1394 PCI card pre-installed," which touts "the possibilities of digital video." See? Somebody's paying attention to those iMovie commercials.
It's a little early to tell, of course, but this means that those pundits who are claiming that digital video editing at the consumer level will never catch on are probably wrong yet again. Hey, chalk up another miserably off-the-mark prediction for John Dvorak; how many more does he need before he qualifies as the patron saint of the ridiculously short-sighted?
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SceneLink (2217)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 4/9/00 episode: April 9, 2000: Apple ducks out of E3, proving once more that it's the king of conference withdrawals. Meanwhile, the organizers of the recurring nightmare known as Apple Expo U.K. are having another go at it, this time without the word "Apple" in the show's title, and Dell's a bit late to the party, but the addition of FireWire to the company's lineup only proves that desktop video is here to stay...
Other scenes from that episode: 2215: Playing Keep-Away (4/9/00) The naysayers can prattle on about Apple's relatively small market share, its continuing inability to get Mac software onto store shelves, and its trailing position in the clock speed races-- but there's one thing they can't deny, and that's this: when it comes to pulling out of trade shows, Apple is the king, baby... 2216: Try, Try Again (Again) (4/9/00) Speaking of pulling out of trade shows, wouldja believe that those hale and hearty U.K. Mac fans are trying again? It's a classic example of the fabled British "stiff upper lip"; after all, Apple bailed on Apple Expo '98, Apple Expo '99 was cancelled due to Apple's continued noninvolvement, and Apple Expo 2000 (planned as a "this time, for sure" rave-up starring Steve Jobs himself) collapsed after Apple pulled out yet again...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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