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The Last Floppy Word (5/8/98)
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It's amazing how much dust you can kick up by announcing a home computer without a floppy drive, isn't it? On the one side you've got the folks who say "good riddance" to a slow, low-capacity, often unreliable peripheral that is thoroughly unsuited to computing tasks today; on the other are the ones who make the solid point that emailing attachments and relying on a network connection for transfer simply isn't a viable replacement yet, especially within the consumer market at which the iMac is aimed. So what's the answer?
To a certain extent, the right answer is now, "Who cares?" According to MacCentral, Imation has officially announced their iMac-compatible SuperDisk drive, which will attach via the iMac's USB port. The SuperDisk is a nifty device that reads and writes not only the proprietary 120 MB SuperDisk media, but also the venerable 1.44 MB and 720 KB floppy diskettes. We don't see any mention of pricing, but hopefully this SuperDisk drive will be a relatively low-cost backup device that will also allow the use of floppies for transfer to and from computers at work and at school.
Then, of course, there's Apple itself, who has publicly stated that no iMac will ship with a floppy drive, nor will an Apple-branded external USB floppy be made available. Yet Mac OS Rumors claims otherwise-- according to them, they've "confirmed" that Apple is going to sell a USB floppy drive, and that, most likely, it'll be made available as a build-to-order option. Build-to-order iMacs, eh? If it becomes a reality, that's another point in Apple's favor when competing in the low-cost consumer space. It's going to be a very interesting autumn.
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 5/8/98 episode: May 8, 1998: The iMac floppy issue has become largely moot, thanks to a SuperDisk coming to save the day. Meanwhile, Apple's new Powerbooks rake in $2 million in sales in a single day via the Apple Store, and Microsoft plays the "we didn't understand" game with the DoJ once again...
Other scenes from that episode: 686: Red-Headed Stepchild (5/8/98) Meanwhile, the introduction of the new Powerbook G3's, affectionately known by their code names of Wall Street and Main Street, appears to have been upstaged by the surprise unveiling of the iMac. We can only imagine how the Powerbook team at Apple must feel, to see the sleek black product of years of toil finally come to completion, only to have it overshadowed by a consumer Mac that Mac the Knife refers to as looking like "an oversized Fisher-Price bath toy--" especially since the Powerbooks are available now, and the iMac is still 90 days away... 687: You Want It When? (5/8/98) If the Department of Justice is planning on moving against Windows 98, they've only got a few more days before the software is released to manufacturers. Of course, there's still the matter of that preliminary injunction handed down last December, which requires that Microsoft make available a version of Windows 95 without Internet Explorer...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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