Think Emmy (8/30/98)

It's only the second year in which the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has awarded an Emmy in the category of "Best Commercial," but Apple walked away with the prize. The minute-long "Think Different" ad, created by the same TBWA Chiat/Day who gave us the legendary "1984" Macintosh commercial, can add another notch to its belt--and this one's a pretty big notch. Read more about it in a CNN article.

"Think Different" may not have directly sold many Macs, but it certainly put Apple back into the public eye, if for no other reason than to question the commercial use of history's great figures and to debate points of grammar. And over time, there's no doubt that it struck a chord with Mac users everywhere, who grew to associate the commercial with the real spirit of the Macintosh--it embodied the concepts of creativity, lateral thinking, results over popularity, and elegance over uniformity--and distilled it all down into sixty seconds of grainy black and white footage, a simple voiceover, and, ultimately, two words. And it worked. It gave Apple a foothold back into regaining mindshare, which they are now working hard at turning back into market share. We at AtAT are proud to hear that that the "Think Different" commercial continues to be recognized as one of the best of the bunch.

By the way, the CNN article does include a "complete list of winners in the creative arts categories," so if you're the type who likes to be surprised on Emmy night, you might want to keep away. However, none of the "big" award winners (best actor, best drama, that kind of stuff) are revealed, and we think that most of the categories covered aren't going to be televised on September 13th anyway. Use your best judgment.

Searching for Sherlock (9/3/98)

Mac OS 8.5 ("the system software formerly known as Allegro") is nearing the Golden Master phase of its development, and should hit store shelves in a about a month. All the feedback we've gotten from (cough) beta-testers indicates that it'll be a must-have upgrade, with several people saying the jump from 7.6.1 to 8.0 was actually less significant than the upcoming bump from 8.1 to 8.5. While the main reasons are speed and stability, there are a few new features included that sweeten the deal considerably. Unfortunately, one of them may be in jeopardy. Sherlock ("the search utility formerly known as Find File") is under fire from the major Internet search engine companies. A TechWeb article has the details.

Infoseek, Alta Vista, and the like are in a snit because Sherlock doesn't just find files--it finds web pages, too. And the way it finds them is by querying the big search engines and displaying the search results right in the Sherlock window. That means that, in Mac OS 8.5, you can search Alta Vista without ever actually going to their site, and that's bad news for Alta Vista.

It all comes down to money. The websites earn their cash by selling ad space on their sites; if people start using their services without ever actually visiting their sites and seeing their ads, it's bye-bye revenue--even though Sherlock does show a banner ad from the engine's site if you actually click a link to a found page, we're told. So Apple, hearing the grumbling, has been backpedaling, calling the Sherlock demo performed at Seybold a "technology demonstration" (errr, yeah) and saying that negotiations with the various search engines are ongoing. That means it's possible that the shipping version of Sherlock will search, say, Lycos but not Infoseek. But we bet that a few minutes with ResEdit could add "unauthorized" search engines without a whole lot of trouble. Heck, we at AtAT already use OneClick to search Alta Vista without first going to their search page (though we do see the results page). Still, we're confident that happy agreements can be reached.

Psst, Wanna Buy an iMac? (9/4/98)

For some reason, Macs and theft go together like peanut butter and banana. Two examples spring immediately to mind: the first is the way in which thieves will often walk right through a room full of PCs and spend extra time and effort to break into the room where the Macs are kept. There are a number of stories to this effect in the EvangeList archives, if you're willing to dig. In fact, we've personally experienced this phenomenon; our PowerBook was once stolen from an office in Los Angeles, and the Wintel laptop (not to mention the $20,000 Unix workstation) sitting right next to it was left untouched. Go figure.

The second example is being reported on MacFixit. It seems that iMacs are vanishing en route from resellers' warehouses to customers' homes. Take, for example, the strange story of Michael Ward, who contacted MacConnection to find out why his iMac still hadn't shown up several days after it should have arrived. MacConnection tracked the shipment, and discovered that the iMac had apparently been stolen en route. So they shipped a replacement. The replacement was also stolen en route. And according to MacConnection, this wasn't an isolated incident--they're seeing several iMacs vanish during transit.

So there you have it--one of those petty hidden drawbacks of being a Mac user; increased probability of theft. Macintosh: The Choice of Discriminating Thieves. Think Insurance Policy.

Not What It Themes (9/8/98)

Gather 'round, kiddies, and stretch your minds wa-a-a-ay back to the Dawn of Time. Back in those dark days, Apple's next-generation operating system strategy relied heavily on an OS called Copland, which was to be a stepping stone on the path to a fully modern Mac OS. Copland died an ignominious death a couple of years ago, when the Amelio Dynasty finally killed it after realizing that it would never be stable enough to work--and even if it did, it would provide severely limited backwards compatibility and still wouldn't yield all the goodies like full pre-emptive multitasking and all those other great buzzwords we've come to love so much. Enter the second Jobs Era, when Amelio bought NeXT to replace Copland and brought Steve on board in the role of consultant, and the rest is history.

However, when Steve looked at what had previously been known as Copland, he didn't toss it out completely; sure, it was a piece of crap, but it was a piece of crap that had cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, and its parts were more than the sum of its whole. Individual chunks were salvaged for use in the Mac OS: the Platinum look surfaced in Mac OS 8, Navigation Services are destined for next month's 8.5 release, etc., the one "gee whiz" feature that would generate the most popular interest and the attention of the press has apparently been thrown on the back burner once again.

Themes, the architecture that allows the configuration of the user interface based on predefined styles, have been yanked from the latest Mac OS 8.5 betas, apparently due to continued instability. Reality has more. Yes, friends, we'll have to wait still longer for those High-Tech and Gizmo themes we've been seeing since all those "Sneak Preview of Copland" articles several years ago. The latest prediction for this long-awaited Copland holdover is that it will finally ship with Mac OS 8.6 next year; in the meanwhile, it's Kaleidoscope or nothing.

Incidentally, while it has been previously assumed that Copland was named after famed composer Aaron Copland (and a few free thinkers out there maintain that it was actually named for drummer Stuart Copeland of the Police), in recent months we've uncovered the truth: Copland is actually named after Cop Land, that Sylvester Stallone movie from last year that also vanished without much of a trace. See how it all falls into place, now?

Greatly Exaggerated (9/9/98)

Despite the fact that Claris is dead (at least from a non-FileMaker perspective), Claris Em@iler lives on--or so Apple would have us believe. Recently, the airwaves have been abuzz with news of the application's untimely demise, confirmed by the remarks of an Apple executive who stated that Apple had "officially" killed off the product. But the real official party line comes from spokesman Russell Brady, who denies that Em@iler's been "Steved." MacWEEK has the whole story.

Of course, this could just be Apple's typical spin control that surfaces whenever rumors start circulating. Brady wouldn't clarify just what Apple's plans are for the versatile email application; he would only state that the remarks made by the Apple exec who said that Em@iler was dead "did not reflect the company's official position." What that really means is anyone's guess--for instance, there were rumors circulating a couple of months ago that Apple was working to integrate Em@iler's functionality into future versions of the Mac OS as a core service available from within any application. Now that would be cool.

As fervent Em@iler enthusiasts ourselves, we at AtAT hope that Apple's being sincere about its denial. Otherwise, once Em@iler stops working with the current version of the Mac OS, the only way we'll be able to retrieve email from our legacy AOL accounts is by (shudder) using AOL. And we're not the only ones who would mourn the passing of one of the world's best email programs; MacSoldiers is sponsoring a petition for those of you who are interested in seeing Em@iler continue, either as an official Apple product or branded by an outside vendor. Fight the power.

Dog Eat Dog World (9/17/98)

The iMac is making such a huge impact on Apple's whole situation, we at AtAT are considering campaigning for an official change to the calendar. The start of the new calendar would be, of course, May 6th, 1998, the day the iMac was revealed to the world and made its indelible Bondi Blue mark on Apple's checkered history. Since the iMac's unveiling, Apple's been transformed back into the company who makes computers for the rest of us.

So let's open the history books for a minute... The first weeks A.i. (Anno iMac?) were marked by intense excitement, coupled with more than a little bit of skepticism among the nonbelievers. We were constantly hearing that the iMac was doomed to failure because it lacked a floppy drive, had a relatively slow modem, and wouldn't allow the use of any existing Mac peripherals. While these arguments were all fair to make, whichever "drawbacks" Apple didn't change before introduction didn't prevent the iMac from breaking all kinds of sales records when it touched down on Day 101. But there was another prediction we heard from the naysayers early on that we felt had some merit: the iMac, when released, would cannibalize Apple's more profitable Power Mac G3 sales. After all, at the time, a Power Mac G3/233 sans monitor cost hundreds of dollars more than an iMac would, and the iMac included an integrated display and a modem.

As it transpires, though, apparently that fear was unjustified. According to a MacWEEK article, ComputerWare isn't the only company doing studies on the iMac's sales effects: ZD Market Intelligence reports that the iMac's arrival seems to have increased Power Mac and PowerBook sales, instead of cannibalizing them; sales of Apple's pro-level computers shot up 20% in August. It would appear that mind share is as powerful a market force as we all expected. All hail iMac, the messiah of Apple's new age!

Jack Miller
jackm@infoXczar.com