Apple Cider: Random Squeezings from a Mac User
Ahhh, Thanksgiving!
For those of you who don’t celebrate with us here in the US, or a month earlier in Canada, here’s the lowdown on that most favorite of holidays (yes, believe it or not, a recent poll of Americans shows that Thanksgiving is now a more popular holiday than Christmas—they feel Thanksgiving is family-centered while Christmas has been overly commercialized).
First—well I guess this is only if you are the cook in the family as I am—you spend about three months worrying what you are going to prepare for the big Thanksgiving dinner. However, in recent years, I have discovered that you can help yourself a great deal by using the Internet. For instance, you can check out my favorite Thanksgiving food site here.
Then, only if you are the cook, you spend the days before the holiday slaving in the kitchen like one of those poor kids who makes Kathie Lee Gifford’s duds in Central America. Apple pies, cranberry sauce, Stuffing, fixins’ are prepared, and that rock-hard frozen turkey needs to begin thawing.
On the big day, you wake at the crack of dawn and continue the preparations, cursing the turkey for taking so long to defrost. Oh, and you also get to enjoy the tradition of pulling the “giblets” out of the turkey.
Let it hereby be decreed today: When I am King, no one shall be forced to put their hands inside a cold, dead bird carcass at 6:00 AM on a holiday morning.
That is all.
Meanwhile, during all this hectic running around, everyone else who does not need to be cooking wonders why the chef is pulling his/her hair out and weeping openly during Butterball commercials. That is, of course, when they are still sleeping until 10 AM, while you peel about three tons of potatoes.
Finally, all of this activity culminates with the traditional dinner. Ahh, the dinner, a time to be thankful for all of the blessings we have. And if you don’t particularly hate the relatives you are eating with, the day can be downright enjoyable.
And, I won’t even mention the joy of the food coma you will experience after being sated with the holiday goodies.
Well, as we come to this season of reflection and bounty, it’s time for me to make my list of things I am thankful for. So, bear with me.
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The iMac—Ya know, here we are in the second year of the iMac’s ascendancy, and the design shows no sign of slowing down. The reason for this, of course, is that Apple’s engineers have been hard at work making the iMac a leaner, meaner machine with every revision.
Gone are the metal baffles. Now, you can stare directly into the inner workings of your iMac. I haven’t had so much fun staring through plastic since I had that ant farm back when I was in fourth grade. And, unlike the ant farm, you don’t get bites when you open the plastic shell.
Actually, you can add megabytes of memory quickly and easily with the newly designed iMacs. Quite a change from the company which absolutely forbade owners from cracking open their computer cases to get a peek at the innards. -
The iMac’s Competitors—Oh, take a great idea and copy it, why don’t you? It is often said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
When the iMac hit the scene last year, many people (ooh, I did too!) said that the iMac was doomed to failure. The all-in-one information appliance approach to computers was weak at best, and no one would go for the bubbly look and USB based connections.
Oh, really? Well, when you are the lead sled dog, the view is better. It’s also a lot of fun to look back at the other dogs in line and see what they are up to as well. A quick look at Gateway’s Astro will show you that the Johnny-Come-Latelies are finally getting the message that computer users want friendly, easy-to-connect machines. In fact, the TV commercials say you can get online in less time than it takes to eat a donut.
Too bad the Astro doesn’t run the Mac OS... -
Air Port—Oh, the Buck Rogers technology of the year. Apple’s really going to have a winner here. The whole concept of being able to hook a computer to a network by merely turning it on is the fulfillment of a lot of dreams.
Drag your iBook anywhere. Wake it up from sleep. Surf your brains out. Make PC users jealous.
Show once again that Apple is leading the dog sled. -
The G4—The supercomputer for the rest of us. At my office, we have three graphics professionals who are just licking their chops at these bad boys.
For years, I have tried to convince people that using Photoshop is akin to using imaging software developed by NASA. I mean, come on, if imaging Olympus Mons on the surface of Mars eats up a lot of system resources, imagine what putting Hillary Clinton’s face on Cindy Crawford’s body can do?
Not that I do anything like that on my computer.
Apple’s inclusion of the velocity engine will, once again, steer the industry. Once software developers get a handle on this new technology, you can bet that it is going to make the PC crowd sit up and take notice.
Also, it’s not that the G3 was a bad machine, but—wow—they sure got the color scheme right with the G4s, didn’t they? That graphite is one sharp color. -
OS 9—No, it’s not Sherlock2, Multiple Users, or that nifty voiceprint password feature that wows me about this latest software update.
It’s the fact that after two years of promising to update the system software to take advantage of the latest advances in programming and hardware development, the days of languishing in OS 7.x, waiting for the brand new, built from scratch Copland to be unveiled, have long since faded into memory.
Many Kudos to the folks in Cupertino for keeping us up-to-date. - The end to all of this Y2K B.S. and the Millennium Hype is in sight. ’nuff said.
- Oh, yeah, and as I sit here in front of my computer after an evening of taking out the trash, chasing my son around the house, and discovering the true meaning of the phrase projectile vomiting, I also have to be thankful for my wife and my son. No matter how bad things get, I can be sure that they will always be there for me.
Except, of course, at 6:00 AM when I’m up to my elbow in a cold turkey carcass.
“Apple Cider: Random Squeezings from a Mac user” is copyright © 1999 Tom Iovino,
tiovino@atpm.com.
Also in This Series
- Look How Far We’ve Come · May 2012
- A Year Apart · March 2003
- And now, the end is near… · March 2002
- Spam I Am · February 2002
- The Year of Big Changes · December 2001
- Legends in Their Own Time · November 2001
- What’s in Store? · October 2001
- Hey, I Recognize You! · September 2001
- 50 is Pretty Nifty · August 2001
- Complete Archive
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