Back, And To The Left (7/23/98)
Okay, this one's just plain weird... Faithful viewer Kellie made us aware of a strange URL: http://women.are.evil.and.icky.net. That alone is weird enough. But what freaks us out is that if you follow the link, you don't end up at one of the thousands of screwball misogynistic feminist-bashing "Hillary Clinton just needs a real man"-type sites on the 'net. Instead, you find yourself staring at something much more sinister and frightening.

That's right; for some bizarre reason, http://women.are.evil.and.icky.net jumps you over to the information page for the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack. We found that just a little bit too strange to ignore, so we decided to see who had registered the "icky.net" domain name. The InterNIC whois lookup reveals that the owner of "icky.net" is some unknown entity known as "The Winc Group" from Old Hickory, Tennessee. An Alta Vista search on the phrase "winc group" reveals a handful of pages on another server, http://www.the.oilers.nickname.is.icky.net. It's simply a source of information about "Tennessee's NFL team." Curiouser and curiouser.

The construction of an appropriate conspiracy theory is left as an exercise for the viewer. C'mon, this one's easy; we can't do everything for you people, ya know. Look at the basic elements: you've got your Microsoft, your unrelated and slightly offensive URL, and your standard mysterious third party consortium standing behind the grassy knoll and registering domain names with the InterNIC. How can you go wrong?

"This... is iMac" (7/29/98)

Well, we've just seen CNN NewsStand's little "Stock of the Week" segment on Apple, and for the most part, it was relatively positive and accurate. They pointed out that Apple's stock has gone from under $13 to over $38 since last December, and they credited Steve Jobs with infusing the company with the energy it's used to climb back "from the dead." And though there wasn't a whole lot of substance to the piece overall (and in fact there was almost zero information on Apple's product line or what differentiates it from those of other computer companies), we felt that it was particularly gracious of them to mention that "the videotape on 'NewsStand' is edited on digital machines that use Macintosh at their core."

There were a couple of what we consider to be serious inaccuracies, though. First of all, one of the analysts they talked to claimed that, at $1299, the iMac "is not breaking any new barriers or new ground in the way of price performance compared to traditional Wintel based systems." Er, excuse me? If anyone feels like pointing us towards a 400 MHz Pentium II system, complete with a 75 Hz-refresh rate 1024x768 15-inch monitor, for $1299 or less, please do -- we'd love to see it. That doesn't even take into account any additional usability edge the Mac OS gets over Windows; remember, the guy said "price performance," not just "price." (Someone hasn't done his homework.)

And secondly, CNN claims that the iMac "is still incompatible with those" Wintel PC's, failing to note that the G3 is so freaking fast it can run PC software at respectable speeds purely in software emulation, if it needs to. Granted, if someone plans to run Windows 100% of the time, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to buy a Mac instead of a PC, but for people who only need to run PC-only software on a casual basis, emulators like VirtualPC are a very pleasant option. Or, at least as pleasant as Windows allows any experience to be... On the other hand, the same show included a nice, healthy dose of Lara Croft -- both digital and analog versions -- from the Tomb Raider games, coming to the Mac this holiday season. Footage of Lara automatically redeems any show a certain amount, in our opinion. :)

...Of the Way We Were (8/2/98)

A humorous item in PC Magazine http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/issues/1714/333106.htm about an obsolete Apple //c computer being used as home plate at a Little League baseball diamond has sparked a wave of nostalgia, so bear with us. Waaaay back at the Dawn of Time (which archaeologists refer to by its technical name -- the "Mid-Eighties"), yours truly hoarded the spoils of various odd jobs and the contents of many a birthday card with only one goal in sight: the purchase of a home computer. And even at the tender age of thirteen, I had decided that nothing but an Apple computer would do. When I had finally scraped together enough cash, the family headed on down to the local computer store (where I could be found after school four days out of five, playing on the display models until they kicked me out at closing time) where I shocked the salespeople by transforming into a Paying Customer® and buying a brand new Apple //e.

That //e served me well, and was used for just about everything you could do on a home computer those days, including -- but by no means limited to -- tasks such as writing English papers, programming Newtonian physics demonstrations, generating fractal patterns (albeit very slowly), playing kick-ass games like Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, helping my mother run the restaurant she managed, and producing videos for French class. (When I started to get into animation for video, I found I had to lay out another hard-earned $120 to double the machine's RAM from 64Kb to a mind-bending 128, but other than that, it was a solid workhorse that needed very little upkeep.) When college came, I left the little beast behind, fearing that it would get damaged on the thousand-mile trip. I used the free computers at school instead, which weren't quite as inviting, but they served their purpose. A couple of years later, when money became tight, I sold my beloved //e and watched sadly as it was carted away.

Of course, looking back, it was certainly the right decision; the $1000 (!) I got for that unused system went a long way towards feeding me for the rest of my college career. But a few months ago I downloaded the shareware emulator //e to emulate my old workhorse on my current workhorse, just to remember what it was like to program using six-color graphics and AppleSoft BASIC. And if I can ever dig my old 5 1/4" floppies out of wherever it is they're stored and figure out some way of getting them into my Mac, you can bet that I'll register //e just to dig through all the stuff I produced on my first Apple computer. Or perhaps I'll go whole hog and buy an actual //e, if I find one being used as an oversized base in some sandlot baseball game.

Contagious Appleitis (8/4/98)

Yeek, just as Apple seems to be getting its own act together by correcting lots of long-standing corporate problems, an article in the San Jose Mercury News reveals that those problems may simply have migrated to Netscape, instead. You know the problems we're talking about: the "not invented here" syndrome, the utter lack of advertising, the unyielding belief that the better product will prevail. Those classic problems are being repaired at Apple, but now it sounds like they may be contributing to Netscape's continuing decline.

While fewer than 5% of Netscape's employees used to be on Apple's payroll, the ones who were seem to be populating some important positions within the company. Unfortunately, several of those positions involve shaping the direction of Netscape's marketing, and observers note a distinct attitude that Netscape's products will succeed entirely on the basis of their technological superiority. And, of course, we all know how well that strategy worked at Apple... And with Apple, it was pretty darn clear that they had (and still have) a palpable technological lead over their competition. With Netscape, it's definitely not as clear; for instance, several AtAT viewers rave about Internet Explorer 4.01, citing impressive features lacking in Netscape's browser. (We're still too paranoid to install it on a mission-critical machine, but we'll probably give it a whirl when it comes pre-loaded on our iMac.)

There are rumors that Netscape is looking to hire an "executive who knows the media business," who could perhaps kick some marketing into high gear before Netscape gets so marginalized it can't claw its way back into the game. Just look at how hard Apple has to struggle, after years of neglecting its marketing strategy. Hopefully "Appleitis" isn't a highly contagious marketing syndrome, or there are going to be a lot of high-tech companies in for a world of hurt...

Happy iMac Day (8/15/98)

Well, here's a quick rundown of our personal iMac day experience... after dragging our butts out of bed at 9:15 AM (an inhuman hour to rise on a Saturday morning), we called our dealer, fully expecting to be told that the iMacs still hadn't shown up, since as of 9PM the night before, they were still missing in action. To our surprise and delight, our very tired-sounding friend there informed us that the missing machines had shown up at 3AM, following a night of him screaming into the phone at various representatives of Eagle Freight, the shippers who had lost the fifteen orange boxes between Chicago and New Hampshire. Suddenly we were very, very awake. We wolfed down blueberry muffins and coffee, all the while giving thanks that we knew such a dedicated Mac dealer with solid vocal stamina and the ability to go without sleep. We piled into the AtATmobile and pointed her towards the sunny climes of beautiful tax-free New Hampshire.

About two hours later, we pulled into the parking lot of Monadnock Micro and headed inside. The three iMacs we had reserved just the day before (one for us, one for our carless friend Amy, and one for my father in Illinois) were ready to go. On a whim, we decided to spring $85 more to have another 32 Mb of RAM added into the AtAT iMac, which they installed for free while we waited. After we did the credit card thing (and left some cookies for our sleep-deprived friends), we wheeled two of the big orange boxes out to the car; the third system will be shipped to my very excited father on Monday. Riddle me this, Batman: How many iMac boxes will fit in the back set of a '92 Geo Prizm sedan? The answer, unfortunately, is zero -- they don't fit through the door. But the iMac is packaged very simply. The styrofoam inside is just two blocks, a top half and a bottom half, inside one of which is set the flat cardboard box containing the keyboard, mouse, and other goodies. So in each of the car's two back seats, we placed an iMac and buckled it in tight. Then we piled the two styrofoam halves on top of each iMac, flattened out the boxes, and stowed them in the trunk. Bingo! Ready to roll.

Two more hours later, we were back in Boston. We stopped over at Amy's house to set up her new baby, which took literally about five minutes. The iMac's setup assistant walked us through entering her existing ISP settings, and before we knew it, we had connected to the Internet via MacConnect at 44 kbps. Later on, we dragged all of her old files over to the iMac from her 7300 by using a simple ethernet crossover cable, and we were done. Setup of the AtAT iMac went about as easily, and it now graces a corner of our kitchen where it replaces our old LC575. And after a day of solid play on the unit, we're happy to report that not only does everything work wonderfully well, but we haven't had a single crash yet. And the shipping iMacs are just as gorgeous as we remember them to be when we had the honor to use the preproduction units on display at last month's MacWorld Expo. There's not a doubt in our minds that Apple has a real winner on its hands. We're hoping that the rest of the world agrees with us; we're anxious to see the initial sales figures tomorrow, as well as what happens to Apple's stock price.

Jack Miller
jackm@infoXczar.com