TIME MACHINE!

Unbeknownst to many MyMac readers, I actually have a working ‘Time Machine ™’ that I use on occasion to travel to past events like my parent’s wedding (though almost wiping out my own existence was slightly embarrassing) or the first time I saw Jimmy Buffet in concert.

I guess the most momentous occasion I journeyed to was to the far past to find out what actually caused the dinosaurs to disappear.

I discovered that it wasn’t a killer giant asteroid or a massive climate change that did the big guys in, but a lack of original programming on their network television stations.

Yes, all they had to watch was really bad Magilla Gorilla cartoons and equally insipid reality shows. When the last new season of ‘Must Watch TV’ came on and the biggest debut was a reality show based on what kind of cat food the eventual winner would buy, they decided as a species that it would be better just to end it all.

They very conveniently gathered in what are now Texas, the North Sea, Saudi Arabia, and Alaska and snuffed it. This insured that not only would they no longer have to suffer through truly awful Hanna-Barbera animation and desperate dinos who debase themselves in any way to get on TV, but also that we would have lots of oil to fuel H2 Hummers for men too insecure in their manhood to just accept the fact that they are too old to impress pretty girls anymore’¦.um’¦like I have. But this was not the most incredible thing I found out while using this machine!

Just for a lark, I decided to go into the future and find out what Apple has planned for us 10 years from now. What I discovered was frightening. I present here for the first time the future of the Mac (Please don’t sue me Apple).

January 2005: Steve Jobs, at his MacWorld San Francisco Keynote address presents much new Apple and Macintosh related technology. It begins with iWorks. This is an Apple branded office suite consisting of one program called iStuff. iStuff is a combination word processor, database manager, presentation maker, email organizer, and rotisserie chicken griller that not only outshines Microsoft Office, but also makes a killer Caesar Salad.

He then continues with the official unveiling of OS X 10.4 Tiger (making cute little growling noises and waving his hands around in adorable claw-like motions) with over 15,000 new features. These range from the incredibly over hyped Dashboard to the ability to find unknown and obscure 70s era Jackie Chan movies right from your desktop.

Sticking with software, he with the black mock turtleneck then announces iLife 05 consisting of 4 parts.

iDVD 05 now has the ability to not only record over 24 hours of video onto business card shaped CD-Rs, but it also puts in over 4 hours of ‘behind the scenes’ video whether the user intended to have it or not.

iMovie 05 now channels the long dead spirit of Alfred Hitchcock into every production the user creates. Many users questioned the need for ‘shower scenes’ in their daughter’s 8th birthday parties and a patch is quietly released later with a checkbox to disable this feature.

iTunes 05 not only catalogs your music, but actively seeks out any non-iPod player and destroys it. Since only four people are known to have a player other than an iPod, the death toll is minimum. GarageBand 05 comes with every single type of music and instrument known to mankind (including those only known by the semi-intelligent protoplasm beings of Arturian 6).

In a slight change from the past, Steve-o announces that iPhoto 05 will be a separate application with the ability to not only manage all your digital photography needs, but also to seek out and categorize every known photograph ever taken or seen by Hugh Hefner. The announced price of iPhoto 05 is $999 and it sells out immediately.

Moving on to hardware, the new G5 towers are announced with quad 3 GHz processors and the capability to install over 16 terabytes of RAM and 500 gooquexlbytes of hard drive storage. Unfortunately, the standard configuration is still 256 Megs of RAM and a 40-gig drive.

A new G5 iMac is announced with a 50-inch screen. It is later recalled after more than 40 users develop radiation burns and spontaneous drywall combustion happens in over 100 cheaply constructed townhouses.

Asteroid (the oft-rumored GarageBand interface device) turns out not to be music related, but an actual box that connects to your TV that has the old coin-operated ‘Asteroids’ game in it.

Just as Mr. Jobs was preparing to leave the stage, he turned to the crowd and said, ‘Oh, and just one more thing.’ He then turned to a small table and removes a cloth covering a small thin white box. ‘I would like to announce that Apple will now sell for $499 the rcssbmaiMac (Really cheap so stop bugging me about it Mac)’.

The crowd goes wild and storms the stage. Medical aid was called for several people found quivering on the floor until it was discovered that they weren’t in distress. They were just getting ‘jiggy with it’ with happiness.

February 2005: With over 10 billion in pre-orders for the rcssbmaiMac, Apple’s stock price hits the $500 dollar a share mark and the NASDAQ is renamed ‘AppleDAQ’ until someone not on prescription medication on Wall Street is located.

June 2005: Apple completes its buyout of Disney and Michael Eisner is unceremoniously dumped into on-coming traffic. Walt Disney returns from the dead long enough to applaud thunderously.

November 2005: The worldwide release of the ‘Oh Crap!’ virus causes the meltdown of every existing Windows based PC. Microsoft refers to it as an ‘isolated’ event that Service Pack 12 for Windows XP will address.

July 2007: Service Pack 4 for Windows XP is released.

December 2008: G5 PowerBooks are finally debuted.

July 2009: CompUSA officially changes their name to AppleUSA after merging with Apple’s consumer products division. The US Congress forces Apple to divest themselves of their 90% majority stake of General Motors.

January 2010: Apple’s OS XI is released. Apple’s IBM Chip Division creates an implantable PowerPC Chip that interfaces with glasses that display a virtual 20-foot display at 12,400 X 7680 dpi.

September 2011: Microsoft Windows Longhorn is released. 150 copies are sold during the first week. Bill Gates puts out a press release crowing ‘Windows is BACK!’

November 2013: Emperor Steven Jobs the 1st is touring downtown Dallas, Texas when an old Pentium 8 computer is thrown at him from the 6th floor of what used to be Dell Computer’s corporate office. He receives a concussion, but is released the same afternoon. A New Orleans Mac User Group President attempts to prove a conspiracy by saying that the Macgruder film (that is a film taken from a camera pointed in the wrong direction at a Macgruder grocery store) shows Steve Job’s head goes front to back’¦..front to back’¦.front to back. Allegedly, someone on a grassy knoll was seen flinging 5 ¼ floppies at the vehicle at the same time.

July 2015: Aliens invade the Earth destroying many major cities. Fortunately, Jeff Goldblum manages to sneak a virus from his PowerBook G6 into the aliens Windows based systems and Pilot Randy Quaid destroys the mothership by ramming their city-destroying ray thingamabob.

There you have it folks. I hope this little preview assures you that the future is indeed bright for the boys from Cupertino.

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