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Contents May Have Shifted (7/31/01)
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And today in the "This Really Should Be Funny, But We're Not Sure Why" category, we take a quick look at the baffling issue of random junk you might find rattling around inside your brand new Macintosh. Faithful viewer Edward Liu was perusing the reader reports on the new "Quicksilver" Power Macs over at MacInTouch when he noticed one particularly noteworthy submission. Scroll all the way to the bottom, and you'll find a report from one Apple Store customer whose Power Mac was ordered without the optional internal Zip drive, but came with "an empty Zip bezel installed." Weirder still, when he opened up the Power Mac's enclosure, he discovered "a Zip disk inside it, just floating around."
Now, by "floating," we assume he means that the Zip disk in question was rattling around loose, smacking into various internal components during shipment, etc. and not that it was literally hovering there in mid-air when he opened the Power Mac's side door-- although the latter situation wouldn't be too much more bizarre than the former. Apple mistakenly shipping a non-Zip-enabled system with a Zip front bezel? We can write that off as a simple (and ultimately dull) configuration error. But Apple dropping a Zip disk inside the Power Mac itself strikes us as a little more entertaining and a lot more surreal. Was it a mistake? A special promotion? Am exercise in alternative packaging?
Our money's on "special promotion." Taking a cue from Cracker Jacks and the fine old tradition of sticking small plastic toys in cereal boxes, Apple figured that it should finally put the Power Mac's easy-open side to good use-- by shipping a select number of Quicksilvers with special prizes inside. We figure that bonus Zip disks are just one of a vast selection of prizes that Apple is test-marketing on a wide demographic of Power Mac customers. Once enough data has been collected, Apple will finalize the prize selection and announce that all Quicksilvers from then on will ship with surprise goodies inside. (Hey, c'mon-- it'll work better than another freakin' rebate, right?)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 7/31/01 episode: July 31, 2001: Motorola announces that Cisco will now be purchasing G4 processors to use in its new routers. Meanwhile, the fallout continues following TechTV's G4-vs.-P4 shootout, but don't believe everything you read, and one "Quicksilver" Power Mac customer finds a toy surprise clunking around inside his new machine...
Other scenes from that episode: 3209: G4 Customers Just Doubled (7/31/01) The PowerPC G4 processor: it's not just for breakfast anymore. Remember that oh-so-fun year and a half during which the G4 remained stuck at the 500 MHz level, as offerings from Intel and AMD punched clear through the gigahertz barrier?... 3210: Antihistamine Overdose (7/31/01) Well, the AtAT staff is still fighting a wicked head cold that's plagued us since the Expo. (Evidently New York cold germs are a tough breed.) This particular illness has passed from one staff member to the next, leaving a thousand sneezes and a thousand used tissues in its wake, but we like to look on the bright side: we may be stuffy, we may be fatigued, and we may feel like we rode the Tilt-A-Whirl one or two times too many, but at least we're not seeing purple llamas crawling on the walls...
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