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Poisson D'Avril (4/1/98)
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Well, as usual, April 1st brought a slew of fake stories and announcements meant to bring a smile to our faces. The first one we noticed was the press release over at MacCentral, which announced Bare Bones Software's first hardware product-- a PCI card "text accelerator." Definitely a good start. And Mac OS Rumors followed up in solid form, with stories about Netscape developing Star Trek products, SGI and Apple merging to form "Crayon Graphics," and Apple reanimating the corpse of Elvis for the "Think Different" ad campaign by using an "unannounced feature in the G3 chip." (Ha ha ha... very funny, guys-- like we'd ever believe that the King is actually dead. Try something within the realm of believability next year.)
And as if to prove that a sense of humor runs throughout the entire Mac community, MacInTouch-- which, as a serious news site, usually displays all the humor and fun of a sedated Al Gore-- ran a truly inspired (and occasionally sharply satirical) piece claiming that Apple is buying MacInTouch for $1 million in Apple stock. It manages to sound realistic while still being genuinely funny and taking catty swipes at everything from Quicktime licensing keys, to the ill-fated Apple Club, to Apple's sole focus on returning the company to profitability-- at the expense of listening to and fulfilling its customers' needs. Kudos to MacInTouch for our favorite April Fool's joke on the web. (A "new pricing structure" email message circulated to Kepler Internet Solutions customers takes the overall prize, however, although the "Nirvana Reunion Tour" ad we heard on WFNX this morning was pretty good, too.)
That's why we love April Fool's Day: it reminds everyone that we've all got to keep a sense of humor about these things. For instance, we heard another hoax that claims that a group of people are actually boycotting Quicktime 3.0 due to the new licensing fees. (What's that? That one's true? Hmmm. Never mind...)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 4/1/98 episode: April 1, 1998: Predictably, the airwaves were awash with a bevy of April Fool jokes today, revealing that a sense of humor is alive and well and running throughout the entire Mac community (luckily for us). Meanwhile, consternation and uproar ensue over Quicktime 3.0's licensing fees, and Super Steve spends a public day in his guise as mild-mannered computer animation mogul...
Other scenes from that episode: 588: Ponying Up For Quicktime (4/1/98) Okay, yes, it's true-- Apple's finally started charging certain licensing fees for Quicktime, its cross-platform digital video architecture. This move has proved, shall we say, "unpopular" with folks who are used to getting previous incarnations of Quicktime for free... 589: Mild-Mannered Animator (4/1/98) Look, up in the sky-- is it a bird? A plane? Nope, it's Super Steve, the interim Apple CEO who works miracles of media manipulation by focusing his Reality Distortion Field on his unsuspecting foes...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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