As the Apple Turns: Scene 2516: To Freeze Or Not To Freeze (8/30/00)

To Freeze Or Not To Freeze (8/30/00)

"Pull a Gates": v. intr., to demonstrate new technology in front of a large audience only to see said demo fail; to crash and burn onstage. First usage circa April 1998, following a demonstration of Windows 98's support of the USB standard by Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates at Spring Comdex; upon connecting a USB scanner to the demo computer, the system crashed in front of thousands of viewers. [syn. botch, blunder, trip, stumble, screw up royally and embarrass yourself beyond the limits of endurance.]

So did Steve pull a Gates yesterday? That depends whom you believe. CNET, among others, reports that when our Fearless Leader tried to show off a nifty new feature of Mac OS X by waking a sleeping PowerBook in one second, "the computer froze." However, some eyewitnesses claim that the PowerBook did indeed wake up, but it took about ten seconds instead of the one second Steve was touting. We weren't there, and there's no webcast to examine frame-by-frame, so we're stuck poring over the transcript for hints as to just what happened. (Not to trivialize a national tragedy or anything, but the JFK conspiracy theorists get to study the Zapruder footage frame by frame, and all we have to go on is a stinkin' transcript. Figures...)

First, the setup. Steve explains things as they are today: "Another thing that's in the beta has to do with portable. Of course, the Public Beta works on PowerBooks. And as you know, when you put your PowerBook to sleep and wake it up, it takes some number of seconds to wake up. And this is what it takes under OS 9. If the networking is turned off, it takes 8 seconds to wake up. If the networking is turned on and connected, it takes 16 seconds to wake up. And if the networking is turned on but not connected, it takes 22 seconds to wake up." So Mac OS X supposedly improves upon that, and he tried to demonstrate that fact. But what happened?

"I have a camera pointed at a PowerBook that's been asleep the whole time. See the sleep light there blinking? Right? Let me go ahead and wake it up. I hit a key, boom, I am now awake. And, whoops, huh, well, didn't work for me here. Let's try this again. I have now shut it down into sleep. And I can go wake it up. Boom. And it should wake up... Well, something's going wrong here. But when it works, which it should, it actually wakes up in about one second. Mac OS X on a portable wakes up in about one second, except for that portable right there."

Things obviously didn't go as planned. However, judging by the fact that Steve was apparently able to put the afflicted PowerBook back to sleep in order to try waking it up again, we have to conclude that the system did not "freeze," as CNET claimed-- although the vaunted "one-second wake up" certainly wasn't happening, either. So it was an awkward failure, to be sure, but hardly anything on the order of an operating system crash. Maybe next time we'll see a more spectacular disaster to make the CNET folks happy; something along the lines of a Cube catching fire might be right up their alley.

SceneLink (2516)

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The above scene was taken from the 8/30/00 episode:

August 30, 2000: There wasn't much substance to Steve's Seybold keynote, but at least we'll get the Mac OS X public beta in two weeks. Meanwhile, eyewitnesses and a complete transcript of the proceedings cast doubt on CNET's report of an alleged onstage PowerBook crash, and duelling lawsuits may cast a further pall on the current state of Mac graphics...

Other scenes from that episode:

2515: Two Weeks? Hah! Too Easy (8/30/00) Well, let's skip right over the told-ya-sos and try to ignore the wailing cries, the tearing of hair, and the gnashing of teeth for a moment, shall we? It's tough, we know, what with all those former optimists railing in disbelief over the sheer injustice of a Stevenote with no new gear...
2517: Not The Fight We Hoped For (8/30/00) You know, there's something else kind of interesting about Steve's Seybold keynote yesterday; despite the fact that Seybold's focus is on graphics professionals, there was a noticeable lack of news about graphics hardware for the Mac...

Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast...


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