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Now That's An EASTER Egg (4/12/01)
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Hey, man, have you ever looked at your Visuals? I mean, really looked at your Visuals? Sure, iTunes's hippy-trippy light show looks like it sprang directly from one of Uncle Steve's more intense acid flashbacks, but now the truth can be told: the Visuals component isn't Apple's creation at all. That shouldn't come as any great surprise to people who already know that iTunes gets its MP3 action from SoundJam and its CD-burning tricks from the now-defunct Radialogic's former stable of products. It will come as even less of a surprise to the scads of you who took one look at iTunes in Visuals mode and said to yourselves, "that looks just like G-Force."
Well, guess what? It is G-Force-- as many of you already determined by digging through various program files. Now we've got official confirmation from the author himself, in the form of an article about Andy O'Meara over at Wired. Most of the story is about how "profoundly depressed" O'Meara is at being stuck in the Navy when he should be touring with Seal working his visuals magic and living it up as a hot young multimedia celebrity-- but if you can ride out the bummer vibe, you'll be rewarded with this little gem: "He signed a lucrative licensing deal with Apple that convinced him he can make a living writing code."
So now you know for sure: iTunes isn't feeding you Reality Distortion Field energy, as previously suspected, unless Apple managed to retrofit G-Force with an RDF generator module. However, what you are being fed is a subliminal Christian vibe; Andy just happens to be a born-again Christian. "Although he experimented with drugs in college, O'Meara said God had more influence on G-Force's hallucinogenic graphics than mind-bending substances did. 'I was at the height of my Christian zeal and it just popped into my head,' he said. 'It was definitely divine inspiration.'"
Finally, an explanation for the crucifix that faithful viewer Sergio Aguilera spotted in his Visuals a couple of weeks ago! At first we thought Serge was just pulling our collective leg, but now it all makes sense. If, after an extended Visuals session, you've ever felt a nagging urge to go to church and tithe, now you know why.
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SceneLink (2987)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 4/12/01 episode: April 12, 2001: Happy trails, Power Mac G4/667; we hardly knew ye. Meanwhile, with just six days to go before Apple posts its Q2 results, analysts are debating whether the company will manage to pull off its previously predicted "small profit," and the source of the Visuals in iTunes is confirmed-- and the mysterious subliminal image is finally explained...
Other scenes from that episode: 2985: And Then There Were Five (4/12/01) Is it just us, or is it getting a little cramped in here? For the first time in recent memory, Apple's Power Mac line boasts a startlingly high number of standard configurations; a quick check at the Apple Store reveals no fewer than six pre-built configs... 2986: Q2: Straddling That Zero (4/12/01) Red (or black) alert! There's less than a week left before Apple announces its end-of-quarter earnings, and this one's a real cliffhanger. Provided that you're a reasonably sentient being, you probably recall that Apple's Q1 results were brutally unpleasant: take a few missteps like the overpriced Cube, a botched education initiative, and a lack of CD-RW drives; mix 'em together in this tattered thing we still laughingly refer to as an economy; and out comes a quarter-billion-dollar operating loss...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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