Yesterday, Apple threw the gauntlet into the face of every Apple rumors site on the web. Apple’s homepage, hyping Monday’s MacWorld keynote, carried the bold statement “Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond.”
Well! I guess someone thinks we’re not trying hard enough. I guess someone thinks we don’t think “out of the box”. I guess someone doesn’t care about all we go through every day to bring these rumors to the Mac community. Really, sometimes I’m not even sure why we try.
After this challenge was issued, the CARS staff spent all of Wednesday in a marathon brainstorming session (Masako was actually even playing Marathon through most of it). Our goal was to come up with an appropriate response to Apple’s challenge. Sure, maybe Monday will be beyond MacOSRumors, beyond AppleInsider, beyond ThinkSecret. But beyond Crazy Apple Rumors Site? We think not.
In the ultra-secret CARS meeting room (just down the hall from the cafeteria, turn right at the water fountain), no idea was too wacky. No feature too outlandish. No product too impossible or too expensive to build. No staff member too stupid.
Naturally, we started off discussing handhelds, iMacs of all shapes and sizes and G5s of various speeds, but those all seemed fairly obvious possibilities. Then we talked about Star Trek V-style hover boots, but rejected that idea because that movie completely sucked. We gave some serious thought to “iPorn”, porn available right from your iDisk, but we realized you could pretty much do that yourself anyway. Someone threw out “iWear”, a collection of Apple-inspired fashion wear. That would explain why the keynote was extended to two hours, to accommodate multiple costume changes by Steve Jobs, but it seemed rather low-tech.
This went on for a while and by about 11:30pm, we were all so full of caffeine we were getting kind of paranoid. Chet said “What if Steve pulled his face off and there was this hideous gorgon underneath, with fire and brimstone spewing from its nostrils? Its foot-long tongue split at the end, it throws its head back and bellows ‘All look upon me and despair!’ Then it starts eating the souls of everyone in the Moscone Center.”
Oooooookay. We thought it would be a good idea to take a 15 minute break after that.
When we came back we voted on all the ideas on the white board and unanimously decided on the one completely impossible thing we hoped Apple would top on Monday: sexbots. Robots in pleasing human forms you can have sex with. Okay, maybe it’s not original and maybe it really doesn’t require that much imagination. But, the simple fact is, if Steve gets up there on Monday and announces something “beyond” sexbots, well, then Apple will have exceeded the hype it’s generating and, hell, we’d get the chance to buy something better than sexbots! We’re not seeing a down side here.
So, there it is. Crazy Apple Rumors Site says “Apple to introduce sexbots at MacWorld San Francisco Keynote on January 7th.” The ball’s in your court, Apple.