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Pulling Strings (8/8/98)
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A couple of days ago, we broadcast an episode of AtAT that dealt with the rumors surrounding a possible Windows defection by longtime Mac supporter Kinko's. In fact, though at the time of writing Kinko's had yet to address the issue, by the time the episode hit the airwaves, the home page of Kinko's web site became a vehement denial; Kinko's publicly denounced the rumors as false, and claimed that they would continue to support Macs at all of their full-service locations.
But what could prompt Kinko's to go to such lengths to squelch those rumors? The sudden and incessant barrage of angry email from Mac-using Kinko's-goers may have been enough to make them want to change their entire default home page into a public denial, but we doubt it. And Mac the Knife-- who was one of the first to break the rumor in the first place-- has an alternate explanation. Apparently, since a Kinko's abandonment of the Mac platform would be such a huge PR disaster for Apple, word of the rumor got all the way back to Steve Jobs, who wasted no time in calling several Kinko's vice presidents and entering what is technically known as "psychotic tantrum" mode. And the rest is (very recent) history.
See? Sometimes there are serious benefits to having your favorite multibillion-dollar computer company run by a "mercurial" eccentric. Way to go, Steve...
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SceneLink (919)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 8/8/98 episode: August 8, 1998: The Kinko's defection rumor was hogwash, at least according to their own website-- but was it hogwash before some Kinko's higher-ups received a telephonic tongue-lashing by Captain Steve? Meanwhile, one lucky iMac-tester reveals the secrets of that machine's monitor connections, and someone manages to pump an Apple rep about the same system's mysterious "proprietary expansion port..."
Other scenes from that episode: 920: Hacking the iMac (8/8/98) While the rest of us shmoes are still waiting around for another week before being able to get our hands on an iMac, certain lucky testing-type folks out there not only have iMacs in their possession, but are also already pulling the things apart to see just how far they can push the lovable little blue lumps... 921: Burn Baby Burn (8/8/98) As for what that much-discussed proprietary expansion slot in the iMac is supposed to be for, well, Apple's not talking. At least, not on the record. But off the record, things are little more fleshed out: just check out Lucas Carlson's report over on the iMac NewsPage for a firsthand account of his experience with the iMac-- and how to get an Apple employee to open up about "unannounced" projects. As it turns out, the Apple rep's "no comment" melted away when Lucas started chatting him up about FireWire, Apple's pet high-speed expansion bus architecture...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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