Have a question?
| Home / Editorial / The Lite Side
|
Each year we attempt to identify certain trends in computing that will force themselves into the public's consciousness. I bet you already know what they are; this is, after all, the second month of the year, and prognostications have been as thick on the Web as CD-ROMs without serial numbers in the shoebox in your closet. (Even groundhogs are making predictions today!)
The only reason left to read the article that follows is to point out my errors, and without further blah blah blah, here is the Lite Side's
Predictions of What Retrospective Articles in the Field
of Personal Computing will Be about at the End of 2004
Looking Ahead at Our Behind
January: Steve Jobs announces the iPodMini at Macworld. Kinko's opens an online music store, offering single tracks for 80¢ each, with a 5¢ discount if your order a thousand and are willing to wait until Thursday to pick them up. Apple introduces the KiloMac, and Steve demonstrates how the interior can be used a parking garage for the Volkswagen iMouse (USB cable not included).
February: Dell comes out with its Dellicious, a tiny MP3 player slightly larger than the iPodMini and with sixteen times as many ports. In fact, every square inch of the device has a port of some kind, making it difficult to find the buttons that operate it. Dell defends its design as providing "choice" for consumers. Kmart opens an online store that provides temporary 50¢ downloads at unannounced times when its home page is flashing blue. Pepsi launches its iTunes bottle cap free download promotion during the Super Bowl.
March: Sales figures for the Apple iTunes Music Store fall below 50% of total online music sales, with every other vendor combined taking the lead. Rob Enderle uses this as evidence that the iTMS is "doomed" and earns another Death Knell. Radio Shack opens an online music store and charges $3 per download. c|net reports on the new phenomenon of teen dumpster diving for iTunes caps.
April: The nation of Swaziland declares it will no longer purchase Microsoft products and will convert completely to obsolete DOS systems it finds in neighboring countries' dumpsters. The king of Swaziland kidnaps three brides in one day and makes international headlines. Holland starts an online Music Store, but makes no sales because no one can understand how their spelling works. Fifteen people in Michigan are arrested for removing all the bottle caps from a gross of Pepsi bottles in a Meijer store, leaving the Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and Sierra Mist behind.
May: On Friends, Ross is shown using a Dellicious MP3 player while Rachel uses an iPodMini. Sales of the Dellicious plummet. On ER, Dr. Carter gives everyone iPodMinis for putting up with his self-righteous Africa stories. Halliburton starts an online music store, dubbed the HMS Titanic, that provides music to our boys in Iraq (yes, they're still there). Halliburton charges the Pentagon $459.34 per download. Supplies of Pepsi run out in major metropolitan markets.
June: The entire state of California's fiscal crisis is temporarily solved by a major earthquake that traps Michael Jackson in an underground parking garage. The influx of paparazzi provide a much-needed boost to the local economy. Jackson is rescued but accuses the firefighters of squeezing his arm too tight when they hauled him out of his tiny spider-hole. Deprived of his regular medicine, Jackson's skin darkens. Newsweek is accused of darkening his skin too much in its cover picture. When asked what he wants first after being rescued, Jackson says, "I want a Pepsi so I can get a free iTunes download," for which he is compensated enough to pay off a day's worth of legal fees. The Nation of Islam starts a music download service, which fails utterly due to various conspiracies managed by the Bush administration.
July: The Pepsi iTunes promotion ends, primarily due a shortage of bottle plastic. Apple identifies several customers who purchased iPods to take advantage of the free downloads, but the ads are dismissed as too Switch-like. Rob Enderle predicts the Pepsi promotion will cause Pepsi to go bankrupt just out of association with Apple, and earns a Death Knell Echo. Paris Hilton starts a music download service that tanks when everyone finds out there is no video to download. iTunes for Linux is announced, but no one who uses Linux will download it due to a really vicious flame war on Slashdot.
August: Over seventeen thousand music download services have started. Slate predicts that by the end of 2005, everyone will have a download service of their own, which ironically brings us back to the situation we had when Napster (first edition) existed, except that now everyone is getting paid one cent per download. Apple drops its download price to 50¢. City dumps are reporting wholesale looting of old Pepsi bottles until someone tells the looters more are to be found at the recycling center. On The Simpsons, Homer starts a music download service but cannot make it operate without Lisa's help. Lisa argues there are too many digital rights restrictions on downloaded music and refuses to participate, dooming Homer's venture to failure. Fortunately, he makes just enough money to pay off his expenses, and the family is left in the same condition as when the episode started.
September: Osama bin Laden is captured in Miami masquerading as Dave Barry, who is off playing semiprofessional football with a group of writers called the Untouchables. bin Laden reveals where millions of unclaimed Pepsi bottle caps are stashed in a mountain cave in Afghanistan, and also where he hid Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction. It turns out they were in an old Maxwell House coffee can in his closet. It is well known on the Net that bin Laden uses a Dellicious, but the Massive Right Wing Conspiracy successfully keeps this information from becoming widely known. Al Qaeda starts a free music download service. After downloading music, however, there is a significant chance your hard drive will explode, but only if you listen to four Dixie Chicks tracks in a row.
October: The presidential race heats up. Howard Dean publicly declares his support for Apple and declares that Windows has caused everything from SARS to the not-guilty verdict for Michael Jackson. Ron Enderle predicts that Dean will lose the election because of Apple, and earns an Apple Death Knell by Association. Apple responds by not posting anything about Dean on their Hot News site. President Bush accepts Dick Cheney's resignation for health reasons and selects John Ashcroft as his running mate for November. Condoleeza Rice is seriously ticked. President Bush is given an iPod in a public setting and is seen dropping it and accidentally stepping on it - and pronounces the name of the device as "i - pooed." The Mac Observer notes in its spin that the iPod still works after Bush stomps on it. Low End Mac starts a music download service offering 44k 8-bit mono MP0* tracks digitized on a Mac IIfx using SoundRecorder, Dan's personal LP collection, and a 20-year-old turntable at the low-end price of 10¢, just as the bottom falls completely out of the start-a-download-service frenzy. Dan is seriously ticked.
- * The Low End Musicplayer software only works on pre-PowerPC hardware and supports hardware as old as the Mac Plus. With nobody else adopting MP-zero, there is no upgrade path, but true low-end users don't really care about that.
November: During the election, Florida's election system works fine, but California's melts down due to a flaw in the Windows web server managing the distribution of ballots. Bush determines this is due to a terrorist attack on the server using the new NOSEBLEED virus that causes a denial of service attack on the election server. Microsoft issues its three hundredth patch of the year and says the fault lies with the IT technicians in the election office who didn't apply the patch. Microsoft's download service is discovered to automatically download music for you every time you turn on the computer, charging your account 99¢ each time without your knowledge. Despite outrage over this development on the Net, the mainstream press ignores the problem and in no one else notices. Microsoft promises to refund the money to anyone who claims it for a small handling fee of $1.98. Unclaimed funds will be donated to an obscure school of Music in Thailand. Oh, and Bush is reelected. A protester is arrested for throwing some of the few remaining unclaimed Pepsi iTunes download promotion caps at him.
December: Overvalued downloading music store stocks collapse, leaving behind a wasteland of canceled services, expiring music registrations that cannot be activated, and a general economic slowdown. AOL starts a Netscape-branded music download service (along with a Netscape-branded shoe and a Netscape-branded beer), forgetting it has an exclusive deal with Apple. Apple recaptures a greater than 50% market share but is widely blamed for causing the overall reduction in the volume of downloads by Ron Enderle, earning him a Manslaughter Knell. Executives at Tyco reveal they have established a deal where everyone who buys a toy gets a used, but washed, Pepsi bottle cap. Unfortunately these turn out to be ordinary bottle caps, not free-download-bottle-caps, as Tyco has completely misinterpreted the whole bottle-cap phenomenon. Prisoners ini California prisons begin wearing soda-bottle-cap necklaces, and necklaces made of used iTunes promotional caps go for hundreds of dollars. A new fashion trend emerges in the nation's high schools but doesn't really take off until Rush Limbaugh makes fun on it - clothes with bottle-cap buttons. Apple is widely recognized at the source for this fashion shift, though as usual it cannot derive any profit from it. Bill O'Reilly starts a music download service "for real Americans" during an interview of Steve Jobs, whom he tells to "shut up."
<This article is available in a printer-friendly version.>
Recent Lite Sides
- What if Apple thought like a PC company?, 11.01. Apple has innovated and blazed its own trail. But what if it had followed the path taken by the PC copycats?
- How Microsoft can turn Vista lemons into lemonade, 10.22. How Microsoft could profit by no longer allowing manufacturers to sell new PCs with Windows XP installed.
- iPods that never passed beta or focus groups, 09.13. "What most Apple fans don't realize is that there were a few iPod variants that never made it out of beta testing and the focus group stage."
- Pigs fly, snow in Death Valley, and Dvorak uses a Mac, 08.03. What has the world come to when John Dvorak, founding member of the Axis of Macevil, walks into the temple of All Things Macintosh?
- More in the The Lite Side index.
Links for the Day
- Mac of the Day: Centris 610, Feb. 1993 - This was the Mac we used when we started Low End Mac in 1997.
- List of the Day: 1st PowerMacs is for pre-PCI Power Macs.
- September 5 in LEM history: 99: Why the G4 uproar? - 00: It wasn't even a Mac - 01: Stop the upgrade insanity - 02: Sharing your Internet connection - The evolving low end - 03: Apple #5 in laptops - 06: Installing Linux on a PCI Power Mac - PDQ PowerBook G3 at 8 - The good old days - 07: Comparing Apples and Dells - 12" PowerBook G4 reliability
Recent Content on Low End Mac
- Apple Will Not Abandon Optical Drives, the Mac Drought, Purposeful Mac Acquisition, and More, Dan Knight, Low End Mac Mailbag, 09.04. Also Mac OS X 10.5 on a G4-upgraded Blue & White G3 and problems using a flat panel display with a Quadra 700.
- Only Leopard Runs Routine Maintenance Tasks after Startup or Waking from Sleep, Charles W. Moore, Miscellaneous Ramblings, 09.04. Mac OS X 10.5 runs routine system maintenance scripts as soon as possible after starting up or waking up your Mac. Earlier versions of OS X do not do this.
- Overclocking a Mac mini Got Me Hooked on Souping Up Macs, Adam Geller, My First Mac, 09.04. Stories of hot rodding iBooks, G3 iMacs, and PCI Power Macs on the cheap.
- Tomorrow's Solid State Drives and Notebooks, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 09.04. Flash drives are great but have some shortcomings. Some thoughts on building better SSDs and notebooks to use them.
- Best 12" PowerBook G4 Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.04. Used 867 MHz Combo, no APX, $490; 1 GHz, $550; SuperDrive, $625; 1.5 GHz w/o APX, $660; w/APX, $675.
- Best Mac mini Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.04. Used 1.25 GHz G4 SD, $549; 1.42 Combo, $409; new 1.83 Core2 Combo, $569 after rebate; 2.0 SD, $769 after rebate.
- Best 17" PowerBook G4 Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.04. Used 1 GHz, $779; 1.33 GHz, $799; 1.5 GHz, $859; 1.67 GHz, $910.
- 11 Mac Browsers Compared, Simon Royal, Mac Spectrum, 09.03. The latest versions of Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Shiira, iCab, Radon, Firefox, Netscape Navigator, SeaMonkey, Flock, and Camino tested in Leopard.
- Save Internet Radio, USB and Hard Drives, Hardware Manufacturers vs. Linux, and More, Dan Knight, Low End Mac Mailbag, 09.03. Also Mac won't book after cleaning, newer versions of OS X improve wake from sleep, downgrading to OS 8.6, unreadable pages on Low End Mac, and more.
- Another Free POP3 Provider, Recharging a Dead PRAM Battery, Current Kanga Value, and More, Charles W. Moore, Miscellaneous Ramblings, 09.03. GMX email now available in US, Panasonic UJ-841S drive won't burn discs, restoring a dead PRAM battery in a Pismo, and thoughts on Kanga value today.
- Best eMac Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.03. Used 700 MHz Combo, $120; 1.25 GHz SuperDrive, $150; 1.42 GHz, $349.
- Best Mac OS X 10.5 'Leopard' Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.03. Mac OS X 10.5, single user, $99; 5 users, $140; 10.5 Server, 10 users, $395; unlimited, $850.
- Best MacBook Air Deals, Low End Mac Deals, 09.03. Refurb 1.6 HD, $1,499; new, $1,690 after rebate; refurb 1.8, $1,699; new, $1,919 a/r; refurb 1.6 SSD, $2,099; new, $2,294 a/r; refurb 1.8, $2,299; new, $2,400 a/r.
- Psystar Strikes Back, Countersues Apple, Frank Fox, Stop the Noiz, 09.03. Psystar is trying to paint Apple as a monopoly and force it to license the Mac OS.
- Upgrade Options for 15" and 17" Aluminum PowerBooks, Charles W. Moore, 'Book Value, 09.02. Memory, hard drive, optical drive, and flash card readers for 15-inch and 17-inch aluminum G4 PowerBooks.
- More links in our archive.
Consumer
advice, reviews
guides, deals
Apple History
Best Used Mac Buys
Used Mac Dealers
Video Cards
Macspeak
About Low End Mac
Contacts
Entire Low End Mac website copyright
©1997-2008 by Cobweb
Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.
Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work
for all. Please report errors to
.
LINKS: We allow and encourage
links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear
within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses
will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them
in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your
message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters
may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect
personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more
details, see our Terms of Use.
Low End Mac is an independent
publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise
approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh,
iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, PowerBook, MacBook, Mac Pro, Apple TV,
and AirPort are registered trademarks of
Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may
be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.