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Hip To Be Square (6/15/98)
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As for just why your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff is itching to plunk down a few grand for a sparkling new G3 Pro this winter, it certainly isn't because of any technical shortcomings of our trusty PowerTower Pro. With nine drive bays, it's got plenty of room to grow, storage-wise. It's still got a slew of empty PCI slots in case we need to add USB, FireWire, or other capabilities. And even though its 200 MHz 604e is starting to feel a little long in the tooth, we can just buy a G3 upgrade instead of splurging for a whole new system.
No, the reason we've got the "new machine itch" is because we miss Apple's superior industrial design skills. Our PowerTower is a very capable machine, and it has a ton of room to grow, but it is one ugly box; it's got a cheap, boring, typical-grey rectangular "industry-standard" tower case, complete with flat, icky knockout panels covering the unused drive bays. Granted, the existing G3's aren't that much cooler to look at, but at least the minitower design has that cool translucent green button on top that lets you unfold the whole unit to get at the inner workings. And, of course, there's the iMac, which is the pinnacle of high-tech style. While an iMac totally wouldn't fit our computing needs, we're just drooling over the fact that Mac the Knife says the upcoming G3 Pro machines will borrow heavily from the iMac's style book. Yummy!
In the end, though, we expect cooler heads will prevail, and instead of buying a new Mac, we'll continue to upgrade this ugly old PowerTower. But never underestimate the power of fashion. On the other hand, our boxy PowerTower is a collector's item now that Power Computing has gone down with the Mac cloning ship; and we all know that retro is in, right? ;-)
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SceneLink (777)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 6/15/98 episode: June 15, 1998: Keep your viewing schedule open this November, because Steve's got some new tricks up his sleeve. Meanwhile, trying to capitalize on the iMac's glowing fashion press, the upcoming G3 Pro machines plan to dress similarly, and Apple's brand loyalty slips several points to land the company squarely in third place...
Other scenes from that episode: 776: Check the Prevue Channel (6/15/98) Who can tell the future? (Other than the Psychic Friends Network, of course.) Well, when it comes to forecasting the skinny on earthshattering events in the Mac world, we'd have to put our money on Mac OS Rumors... 778: Bronze Ain't All Bad (6/15/98) Horror of horrors-- Apple's brand loyalty fell from an 82% repurchase rate to a measly 71% last year, according to a ZD Market Intelligence study. This marks the first time in recent memory that Apple falls from the top of the heap; Gateway and Hewlett-Packard both scored higher than Apple, based on the percentage of computer buyers who repurchased new machines from the same manufacturer...
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