Go Ahead and Gloat

- 2002.05.10

All right, folks, enough already!

Back in December I told everyone to Forget the Flat Panel iMac. I guess that was all the convincing Steve Jobs needed to roll one out at the Macworld Expo. And I've been getting emails about it ever since.

It's sorta like the opposite of the time I predicted a PowerBook Cinema with a 1600x1024 display. I nicknamed it the "Dan Knight" PowerBook, because Dan had always said he'd buy the first PowerBook with a big enough screen. Sure enough, he bought a TiBook when they first came out in January 2001. (Okay, it was a lot smaller than the PB Cinema, but Apple does have to market to the real world.)

Anyhow, back to the flat panel iMac. Ever since January I get a couple emails a month gloating about my error - along with at least one or two others wondering about the "truth" behind my other rumors.

My role as Rumor Monger (my official title, which appears on my Macworld pass and my business card) is to go beyond the boundaries of real rumor sites. I sometimes play the contrarian, like when I said there would never be a flat panel iMac. Everyone knows that sooner or later LCDs will almost completely replace CRTs.

And sometimes I do a wishful thinking article, like when I predicted that Apple would dump Motorola in favor of fast IBM processors or that Apple would be releasing a 10 GHz Power Mac G5 at some Macworld Expo in an unspecified year. As Mac users, we're all frustrated at the way people pay so much attention to MHz and so little to ease of use.

And sometimes I just write something ridiculous, like when the Borg decided to sue Apple over the Cube, Apple's iWatch PDA, or bemoaning the end of the Mac Web on the day before April Fool's Day.

So please stop writing to gloat about my errors - they're usually intentional - or to ask if anything I write has any basis in reality. As the artwork up top says, these are groundless Mac rumors and speculation. We do this to help you think about technology issues and the future of the Macintosh.

If you want to congratulate me on my rumor parodies, I'll be happy to receive your email.

- Anne Onymus

Recent Rumor Mills

• New Apple drive supports Blu-ray and HD DVD, 09.11. Tired of being second-guessed and sometimes outmaneuvered by Microsoft, Apple has embraced both next gen DVD formats with its new SuperDrive Extreme.
• California: Beyond 'no light bulbs for you', 02.01. A Calfiornia assemblyman wants to make incandescent light bulbs illegal - but that's just the beginning. His next target: CRT monitors and TVs.
• IRS to tax Second Life, WoW, Monopoly: How to fight back, 12.18. Nothing in life is certain but death and taxes, and now the IRS wants to tax your virtual life as well as your real one.
• Sudden impact: Apple's great Asteroid hoax, 06.09. Truth of the matter is, the Asteroid Project didn't exist to produce a viable product, but as a way to shut down rumor sites.
• More in the Rumor Mill index.

Links for the Day

• Mac of the Day: Macintosh LC, Oct. 1990 - only 3" tall, the LC was the least expensive color Mac in 1990.
• List of the Day: Mac OS 9 List covers Mac OS 9 as both a freestanding OS and as Classic mode in OS X.
  
• October 15 in LEM history: 90: Mac IIsi, LC, and Classic - 97: Yale threatens to drop Mac support - 99: Decelerate your Mac - Time magazine on Jobs and Apple - 01: Is Microsoft the enemy? - 02: Confessions of a Mac to PC convert - The IT job market - 03: Microsoft's holding pattern - 04: October 1990: The first low-end Macs - Dual core 'Books - 07: When to pick Tux - SteelSeries 4D the best mousepad ever? - Irrational rantings of an Intel hater

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