- 2003.04.22

Following the announcement of the penalties imposed on Microsoft in the long-running antitrust case, pigs suddenly lost the ability to fly and plummeted to earth all over the planet. The pigs had recently been given the power to fly based on the startling announcement that Microsoft had been positively identified as a monopolist.

Falling pigs injured dozens of farm workers and potbellied pig owners. Four people in Georgia were killed, and nearly a dozen farm workers in Boise arrived at area hospitals with lacerations, bruises, broken bones, and complaints of general malaise.

Also in Boise, Norton Delgado's potbellied pig suddenly fell from the ceiling fan, where it had been roosting, and struck him on the head as he walked underneath. "Frankly, I'm a little relieved," he said of the ruling. "It's been a long, hot summer, and I was tired of avoiding the ceiling fan switch."

REDMOND, WASHINGTON: After stating repeatedly over the years that "Macs Suck," Martin Vander Goose of Redmond, Washington decided to test his theory. He attached a Hoover Upright EZ-KLEEN handle and bag to an aging tray-loading iMac and pushed it across his living room floor.

Initial tests were encouraging, until Vander Goose realized the iMac was simply scraping the empty beer cans and cheese wrappers out of the way. "This bites," he told us. "Macs even suck at sucking."

Michael "Mickey" McMac of McAllister, Pennsylvania, eats nothing but Big Macs every day for lunch. "No cheese, dude," he told us. "You can taste the special sauce then. That's the best."

McMac is a computer programmer who does all of his work on, you guessed it, a Mac. "Macs rule," said McMac.

When asked what he ate for dinner, McAllister winked and pointed to the blue Kraft Macaroni and Cheese boxes on his dining room table. "Mac and Cheese, natch," he said.

We asked Mickey how his obsession with Mac started. "It was an old Mac SE that my mother used to use," he said. "She loved that thing so much she named me after it."

Sharing a conspiratorial wink, he added, "She was the first one to call me 'Mac' instead of 'Mickey'."

DeVon Haughtonshire of Braughton, England loves her Apple iPod MP3 player so much that she's glued it to her forehead. She carries around a wireless iBook laptop connected to the player and refuses to travel more than 150 feet from her suburban home.

As one of the growing number of "Pod People," as they like to be called, DeVon admits her hobby is a little odd and puts some people on edge. "I let them listen to the elevator music Apple posted on my iDisk, and they calm down," she said in a recent interview.

"And, oh, by the way," she added as her face lost all expression, "all your face are belong to us."

In a startling announcement, upscale computer maker Apple announced today that the low-end CRT iMacs would now be available as an impulse purchase at all 14 million 7-Eleven stores across the nation. "We felt we were not getting exposure to the working class with our current strategy," according to an Apple Hub Spokes Person.

We contacted roughly eleven thousand 7-Eleven stores to confirm this story, and not one had a CRT iMac in stock. "It's right behind the pork rinds, sir," said one clerk of South Asian (or maybe Middle Eastern) descent, whom we could not describe accurately for fear of being politically incorrect.

As hard as we looked, we couldn't find it. So we got a Big Gulp and a Big Bite and went home.

and finally....

Following the trend of his coworkers at a Petajillo, California wine bottle cork-imprinting plant, Royce Fling joined with his buddies' derisive comments about Apple Computer's Switch campaign every day at work. "That one chick, she was so obviously stoned," he told us. "We laughed about that for days, and everyone said, only a stoner would use a Mac," he continued.

His levity turned to horror when, at a poker gathering at his home last week, he discovered the family computer was a CRT iMac. "Hell, I didn't know," he said. "The wife bought the thing. I don't even use it."

Despite the fact that Fling doesn't smoke, he keeps finding little bags of stuff in his locker, placed there by his PC-using associates.

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: 'Yikes!' Power Mac G4, Aug. 1999 - The only Power Mac G4 with PCI graphics was built on a modified G3 motherboard.
• Group of the Day: SuperMacs is for those using Umax SuperMac clones.
  
• November 21 in LEM history: 00: OS upgrades, downgrades - AltiVec vs. Pentium III - 01: Saved by the clones - Computer of the future - 02: Apple Education: Let's get to it - 03: Panther lets Macs and PCs work together, - Lombard SCSI bug - 05: 3 survivors from the 1970s - Real world battery life inadequate - Windows to Mac file transfer with Zip disks - $99 alternative to Microsoft Office - 06: Parallels 1.0 far more polished than beta

Recent Content on Low End Mac

• iPhone #1 Worldwide, Google Voice Search for iPhone, iPhone 3G Battery Pack, and More, iNews Review, 11.21. Also British accents throw off Google voice search, lots of new iPhone apps, universal USB car charger, new protective cases, and more.
• DisplayPort Copy Protection, Trackpad Update, Netbooks Not to Be Taken Lightly, and More, The 'Book Review, 11.21. Also Apple set for record sales, 4-finger gestures on original MacBook Air, MacBook Apple's best consumer notebook to date, Cricket laptop stand, bargain 'Books from $490 to $2,299, and more.
• 15 Reasons Macs Are Better, Quad-core iMac in January?, USB 3.0 Spec Finalized, and More, Mac News Review, 11.21. Also 25 years of Macs, 'Snow Leopard' in Q1?, SimpleTech's faster and greener hard drive, Hyperspaces, StarOffice for OS X, and more.
• Virtualization Shootout: VMWare Fusion 2 vs. Parallels Desktop 4, Kev Kitchens, Kitchens Sync, 11.20. Both programs do the same thing, but one runs Windows XP smoothly alongside Mac apps, while the other bogs down everything but Windows.
• Just Right: Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear MacBooks, Charles W. Moore, 'Book Value, 11.20. Some people like small and light notebooks, others prefer huge desktop replacements, but the best value tends to be in the middle.
• Apple Caves to Hollywood with DRM on iTunes Videos, Frank Fox, Stop the Noiz, 11.20. HDCP on the new MacBooks means that you may never really own those videos you buy from the iTunes Store.
• Leopard Runs Very Nicely on PowerPC Macs, Simon Royal, Mac Spectrum, 11.19. Some claim that Mac OS X 10.5 is so optimized for Intel Macs that it runs poorly on PowerPC hardware. That's simply not the case.
• No High Definition iTunes Video for You, Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 11.19. The October 2008 MacBooks are preventing users from viewing some high-def iTunes content from being viewed on their external displays. Poor form!
• Every Working Computer Is Useful to Someone, Allison Payne, The Budget Mac, 11.19. Whether it's a PowerBook 1400, G3 iMac, or Power Mac G4, it could be all the computer someone needs.
• 3 WeatherBug Options for Apple Users, Charles W. Moore, Miscellaneous Ramblings, 11.19. Have instant access to current local weather conditions with a Dashboard widget, iPhone app, or Firefox plugin.
• More links in our archive.

Recent Deals

• Best Power Mac G4 and AGP Video Card Deals, 11.20. Used 400 MHz, $50; 733, $100; 800, $199; 1.25 GHz, $300; 800 MHz dual, $200, 867, $300; 1 GHz, $350; 1.42, $400.
• Best iBook G3 Deals, 11.20. Used 300 MHz clamshell, $150; 366, $199; 800 CD, $180; 600 CD-RW, $240; 700 Combo, $290; 900, $369; 14" 600, $360; 900, $449.
• Best Power Mac G3 and PCI Video Card Deals, 11.20. Used beige 300 MHz, $25; blue & white 350, $80; 400, $90; 450, $105; PCI video cards from $15; shipping additional.
• Best iMac G4 Deals, 11.18. Used 15" 700 MHz Combo, $243; 800 MHz, $280; 1 GHz, $380; 17" 1.25 GHz SuperDrive, $400; 20", $549.
• Best MacBook Air Deals, 11.18. New 1.6 80, $1,150 after rebate; 120, $1,744 a/r; 1.8 80, $1,794 a/r; 1.6 128 SSD, $2,150; used 1.8 64 SSD, $1,500; new, $2,200 a/r; 1.86, $2,398 a/r.
• Best Mac OS X 10.0-10.3 Deals, 11.18. Mac OS X 10.0.3, $30; 10.1, $20; 10.2, $60; 10.3 CD, DVD, $100; CD, $119; 10.1 Server, unlimited users, $58; 10.3 Server, unlimited, $150.
• Best iPod nano Deals, 11.17. Refurb 3G/4 GB, $79; new, $114; refurb 8 GB, $99; new, $125; 3G/8 GB, from $134; 16 GB, from $189. Prices include ground shipping.
• Best Titanium PowerBook G4 Deals, 11.17. Used 1 GHz with SuperDrive, $478 plus shipping.
• Best Xserve deals, 11.17. Used G4/1 GHz, $999; G5/2 GHz, $1,288; new 2.0 4-core Xeon, $1,900; refurb 3.0 4-core, $2,599; 2.8 GHz, $2,499; 3.0 8-core, $3,499.
• More deals in our archive.

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