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Mix and Match (8/24/98)
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If Mac OS Rumors is correct about Apple's next peripheral expansion strategy, the lack of floppy drives in future Macs won't be an issue to anybody. If you've ever marvelled at the hot-swappable "media bays" in the current PowerBook G3 Series laptops, you'll be interested to hear that Apple reportedly plans on standardizing on that architecture across its product line. The PowerBook G3's media bays currently accept modular floppy drives, CD-ROM units, and DVD-ROM devices (as well as the laptop's batteries), and could also accept special Zip drives, hard disks, etc.
Apparently Apple is considering adding these media bays to just about every Mac coming down the pike, beginning with the next model in the iMac line. If that's true, then the term "hot-swappable" takes on a whole new meaning; you could, for example, pop your PowerBook's floppy module into your "iMac+," or put together a multimedia presentation for a client on a media-bay hard drive docked in your desktop system, then pop it into your PowerBook for the on-site pitch. Swapping peripherals across systems would become effortless, and economical. After all, why pay for more than one floppy drive if you've got three computers?
Of course, as faithful viewer Todd Wheeler points out, the only potential problem would be some seriously clashing color schemes, but we've got to say, we like the idea of temporarily popping a Bondi-blue DVD-ROM drive into, say, a translucent grey PowerBook. And as long as Apple sticks to variations on the "everything translucent" theme, mismatched components will probably look pretty darn cool. Heck, we'd mix things up on purpose.
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SceneLink (965)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 8/24/98 episode: August 24, 1998: The leaders of MacMall, citing record sales and skyrocketing interest among PC users, have decided to advertise the iMac in their PC Mall catalog as well. Meanwhile, some people who just can't kick the floppy habit are resorting to some pretty wild iMac surgical techniques, but Apple may soon make adding such peripherals a simple matter...
Other scenes from that episode: 963: iSmell Success (8/24/98) The news wires are humming with still further evidence of the iMac's mass appeal. Most likely you've seen by now that Creative Computers, the company that runs the MacZone MacWarehouse MacMall mail-order house, has announced that it's received $4 million in iMac orders, and the product's only been available for a week and a half... 964: That Darn Floppy (8/24/98) For crying out Pete's sake, we continue to be stunned and amazed by the death grip that most people seem to have on their floppy disks. Based purely on the reactions we've witnessed from potential buyers getting iMac demos in the stores, we'd have to guess that if Apple had included a floppy drive in the system and kept the price at the $1299 mark, all of the additional sales would have made back the extra expense...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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