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Is Summer Here Already? (4/27/01)
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If you're still working on your Colossal Compendium of All May 1st Possibilities, don't forget to throw a little Mac OS X speculation into the mix. It's a pretty safe bet that an update to 10.0.2 might make an appearance, since Steve did promise us CD-RW compatibility by the end of April. But if you want to go veering off into weirder territory, a good first stop on your journey would be Apple's freshly-revamped home page; as faithful viewer Danaus Plexippus notes, contrary to expectations, it's all about Mac OS X. And we mean all about Mac OS X. Go there now and keep hitting "reload" until you're convinced; we saw three home pages total, all of them brand new, and each and every one touting features of Apple's new operating system.
If you don't find that a tad askew, you obviously haven't been paying much attention to Apple for the past couple of months. The Mac OS X release was a stealth launch if ever we saw one; no TV commercials, no billboards, and a press introduction heavily dosed with "this one's just for the reckless geeks-- the real Mac OS X is coming this summer." Indeed, the more realistic among the "early adopters" harbor few illusions that "Mac OS X 10.0" was just Newspeak for "Mac OS X Public Beta 2" with a $129 price tag stuck on for good measure. Nevertheless, suddenly Apple.com is no longer hawking Flower Power iMacs on its home page; instead we're treated to stuff on Mac OS X's "new desktop," its "killer graphics," and how it combines with a PowerBook G4 to create "a new age for mobile computing."
So what's the deal? A big, flashy exclusive role on Apple's home page seems a little high-profile for a product that Apple has actually shielded from the public eye to a certain extent in the past. Meanwhile, Macworld Expo is still over two months away, and few people expected to see Apple pre-load Mac OS X on Macs before then. Could this indicate that pre-loading (at least on some machines, like the pro systems) might happen earlier, like, say, on May 1st? We doubt it-- in fact, we'd further trust our ability to grate cheese using only our elbows and a wire brush. But it's not completely nuts to think that maybe Apple would bump all of its product configurations to a minimum of 128 MB of RAM and ship a free (uninstalled) copy of Mac OS X in every box just in case customers want to run it. Weirder things have happened, after all-- and while we don't necessarily believe this, we felt it deserved mentioning for completeness's sake.
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SceneLink (3019)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 4/27/01 episode: April 27, 2001: Heads up-- that "Sony-Apple buyout" rumor is back from the dead, though no one seems to be paying attention. Meanwhile, the sudden appearance of nothing but Mac OS X propaganda on Apple's home page raises questions about what might be in the cards this Tuesday, and with the new iTunes Visual Plug-ins SDK, you too can be an evil madman bent on world domination...
Other scenes from that episode: 3018: Everyone Loves A Buyout (4/27/01) See, the problem with all the speculation that flies through the ether just before any big Apple announcement is that people tend to focus too much on the plausible. They spin cautious scenarios involving new iBooks (which are practically a given, since even Apple's stopped selling the current models) and Apple retail stores (which we've all known for ages isn't a matter of "if," but "when"), all for the sake of accuracy... 3020: Total Power Can Be Yours (4/27/01) We know most of you are antsy about Tuesday's press event, especially since we're all mired in the news lull that typically precedes these Apple announcements of biblical import. Many of you are trying to fill the gap with yet more frenzied speculation, but be warned: too much Apple prognostication can be hazardous to your health...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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