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Never Said It Was Cheap (12/11/02)
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Lately, we've been hearing a bit of grumbling from PowerBook owners experiencing a twinge of buyer's remorse. These are the folks who just happen to have purchased their titanium beauties shortly before Apple introduced the latest models last month. And sure, they're a little miffed that they might have gotten faster processors and better video at a lower price-- but the thing that's really chafing the kiesters of these poor saps is the fact that, had they waited, they could have had a SuperDrive. Indeed, plenty of them went ahead and bought their PowerBooks knowing full well that a revision was coming soon, but when the rumor mill at large started insisting that a SuperDrive was not in the cards, they foolishly believed it, and slapped down the plastic. (Tsk, tsk; they should have listened to the kid.)
"Oh, AtAT," they lament, "isn't there any way to upgrade my earlier TiBook with a SuperDrive?" Well, it's interesting you should bring that up. You may have noticed that last week, Think Secret published a report that the SuperDrive found in Apple's latest high-end PowerBook is actually the same form factor as the DVD-R/CD-RW combo drive found in the previous models, and even takes the exact same connector cable; reportedly somebody working in an Apple service center transplanted a SuperDrive from a new PowerBook into a previous model ("Mwaaahahahahaaa, they called me mad at the university!!") and "the drive worked fine after the switch." The only problem, of course, is that Apple doesn't provide any means by which you owners of older PowerBooks might actually purchase just the drive that you so desperately want installed in your otherwise spiffy Mactops-- and there's no upgrade program as there was for the combo drive last year.
But seriously, if you really want to squeeze a SuperDrive into your existing PowerBook, all it takes is a heapin' helpin' of good old fashioned ingenuity, care of Yours Truly. So without further ado, here's AtAT's super-secret, profoundly theoretical plan for retrofitting an 550 MHz-or-faster PowerBook G4 with a spankin' new SuperDrive:
- 1. Buy a new SuperDrive-equipped PowerBook.
- 2. Bribe, blackmail, or otherwise persuade an Apple service center tech to remove the SuperDrive from the new PowerBook and install it in your existing model.
- 3. Discard the remains of the new PowerBook. Or, better yet, send it to us.
That's all there is to it! What could possibly be simpler?
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SceneLink (3885)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 12/11/02 episode: December 11, 2002: Apple introduces limited edition celebrity signature iPods, just in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, Edinburgh considers issuing laptops to each of its schoolkids after seeing Maine's middle school iBook program, and AtAT has a cunning plan to retrofit your older TiBook with a slot-loading SuperDrive...
Other scenes from that episode: 3883: What, No Cher Edition? (12/11/02) Okay, folks, we're back-- and for those of you who thought we'd be here earlier than this, we should clarify: on Monday morning when we said we'd return "tomorrow," we were speaking in a historically Jobsian time frame, e.g. "available now" equals "shipping in two weeks," "shipping in two weeks" means "available next month," "available next month" means "pre-order right this instant and if you're almost divinely lucky you might get it before super-intelligent apes rule the planet's surface," etc... 3884: Inspired By Actual Events (12/11/02) By now our regular viewers have surely noticed that one of our favorite topics for anxiety and dread is Apple's continually shrinking share of the education market; indeed, whenever we feel that the show needs a little extra dose of sturm und drang, nothing gets the job done quite like a quick mention of the increasingly rare School-Dwelling Macintosh, a species that's unfortunately on the endangered list until Apple figures out how to turn things around...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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