Category: OS X

Snow Leopard, Mac Users, To Come On Friday

Apple announced today that Snow Leopard – its hotly anticipated operating system update – would be coming this Friday, August 28th.

In a related announcement just moments ago, the Mac user community announced that it too would be coming on Friday, shortly after receiving delivery of Snow Leopard.

Speaking on behalf of the community, Chicago MUG president Eric Northam said “Based on what we’ve seen of developer seeds, Snow Leopard looks to be an exciting release, full of the rich technologies that give hopeless squealing nerds like us immediate wood. The install process should take roughly an hour which is way more time than we’re used to holding out, so we expect climax to be achieved within moments of restart.

“In my case, for example, tracking currently says Snow Leopard should be delivered to my house around 10:20 AM, so I fully expect to have jizzed my pants by about 11:30.”

While Snow Leopard is not being touted as a feature-rich update, Mac users say their pent-up demand is because they “haven’t gotten any for almost two years“.

“Just because we’re used to it doesn’t mean we like it,” Northam said.

Rumors that Apple would be handing out Snow Leopard-themed boxes of Kleenex for purchasers who line up at retail stores could not be confirmed.

Apple To Update Cancelled Application.

In a rare capitulation, Apple announced today that it would be reviving an old standby, purely to silence to a small but noisy – and possibly insane – subgroup of customers.

The statement read in its entirety:

OK, god damn it, yes, we will create a version of HyperCard for OS X and update it in perpetuity!!! OK?! Now will you shut the hell up and leave us alone?!

In sure sign that no good deed ever goes unpunished, it was the release of Bento that was the final straw in the metaphorical camel’s back.

After yesterday’s announcement of Bento, FileMaker and Apple support were flooded with queries asking if it imported HyperCard stacks and if not, why not? And why not why not? And, well, just what was Apple’s continuity plan for HyperCard on Leopard anyway? And are you going to finish those fries? I know they fell on the floor, but they’re perfectly good and you wouldn’t want to waste them like you wasted the awesomest application ever and… hey, where are you going?!

“These people are relentless!” said an exasperated senior vice president of applications Sina Tamaddon. “They’re way worse than Newton users. They’re like zombies! These people show up at your house!

“I literally got down on my knees and begged [CEO] Steve [Jobs] to let someone spend a couple of hours to port it to OS X.”

HyperCard fans were typically self-righteous about the announcement.

“Apple has seen the error of its ways,” said Lester Poindexter, president of the HyperCard Users Group Of The World, As Represented By A Heavily Pixellated Image Of A Map Of The Globe In This Cool HyperCard Stack Where You Can Click On Each Country And It Will Show You Information About That Country And It Only Took Me Like Five Minutes To Make Because HyperCard Is That Easy And Cool.

Pushing his glasses up on his nose and hiking his pants to a height that usually requires submitting a flight plan to the FAA, Poindexter then insisted the rest of the interview be done through an interactive HyperCard stack it only took him “like five minutes to put together, tops.”

“Clearly, we were able to sway Apple with the logic of our argument that HyperCard is the bestest rapid development environment ever,” Poindexter’s stack said. “And all it took was hiding in Sina Tamaddon’s bathtub a few times to make it happen.”

This was followed by an animation of Poindexter’s head popping up from a bathtub.

Neither Poindexter or his stack were humble in the face of victory.

“This is just as my stack and I have been saying every five minutes for the last 15 years,” Poindexter said. “Isn’t that right, stack?”

The stack then emitted what sounded like a poorly recorded system sound of R2-D2 chirping.

HyperCard X is expected to be released really soon because Apple just can’t take this shit anymore.

Apple Faces Two New Lawsuits.

Bad news for Apple today as the company has been made the target of two new lawsuits – one over restraint of trade and one over a product defect.

In the first, Apple has been sued by the creators of the Word-A-Day calendar series over the Word of the Day screen saver in Leopard.

“Apple has basically just driven us out of business, Artemus Johnson, president of the Word-A-Day Company said. “I have kids to feed. A mortgage. I actually have a Mac on lease! It’s not fair.

“No one’s going to buy those little tear-off calendars this Christmas! My wife is going to leave me! Aaaah!”

In a separate suit, Apple is being sued over the iPhone’s screen’s inability to stay free of finger blemishes. The primary plaintiff is one Smudgy McSmudgman, a Trenton, New Jersey businessman.

“According to my client,” said lawyer Greg Delacorte, “his iPhone is practically unreadable, as it is covered in a layer of crusty fingerprints.”

Delacorte did allow that McSmudgman does have particularly porous fingers and a penchant for eating sticky sweets while reading the Sunday newspaper.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” Delacorte said, “but the court documents are also a mess.”

“We’re confident that we will prevail in court,” said Apple general counsel Daniel Cooperman. “Our sources indicate that McSmudgman is incapable of refraining from noisily eating fudge with his bare hands in the courtroom. That won’t look good in front of a jury.”

Apple stock went down, then up, then down and then up again on the news.

Leopard Review.

Rejoice Comrades! Chairman Steve has won yet another stunning victory over the forces of the unwashed, styleless masses of the bourgeois technology industry!

Leopard, a work of technological art and might wrought by Chairman Steve with his very own hands from ones and zeros, revolutionizes the desktop much in the way Chairman Steve has revolutionized the hearts and minds of both the technological intelligentsia and proletariate. It throws off the shackles of the capitalist Redmond robber barons and frankly just makes Linux look like ass.

It also has a really cool startup video and does something with FSEvents I don’t really understand.

All errors encountered during upgrading to Leopard have been revealed to be the work of running-dog third party developers! Their system extensions are clearly immoral and have been implemented in a counterrevolutionary manner.

Several imperialist patsies have attempted to besmirch this great work in a vain attempt to boost their pathetic careers while selling out those who actually contribute to society.

But never fear! Chairman Steve’s glorious revolution continues unabated! They shall burn in the fires of change! Their shorts shall ride up in a wedgie of enormous magnitude! All shall be enlightened by Chairman Steve’s clarity of vision and the virility of his execution!

Long live Chairman Steve and his glorious work, Leopard!

Four stars out of five.

Apple Releases Vintage OS Collection.

In the run-up to Leopard’s release, Apple announced today that it is releasing a 9-DVD collection of the company’s greatest operating system hits.

CEO Steve Jobs said “Yes, they’re all there! Tiger, Puma, OS 7.5, System Software 6.0.2, all those wonderful operating systems of yesteryear!”

Appearing from behind a curtain, senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller said “That’s right, Steve! You get Jaguar, OS 8.6, System 7.1.1 and even System Software 6.0.6, which was only previously only released as an embedded part of the ROM of the Macintosh Classic!

“And, of course, who can forget System 7.1 Pro?”

The Apple Vintage Operating System Collection contains these hauntingly familiar OSes:

A/UX
Apple DOS
Apple GS/OS
Apple Lisa
Apple ProDOS
System 1.0, Finder 1.0
System 1.1, Finder 1.1g
System 2.0, Finder 4.1
System 2.1, Finder 5.0
System 3.0, Finder 5.1
System 3.2, Finder 5.3
System 3.3, Finder 5.4
System 3.4, Finder 6.1
System 4.0, Finder 5.4
System 4.1, Finder 5.5
System Software 5.0
System Software 5.1
System Software 6.0
System Software 6.0.1 (includes drum solo by Neil Peart)
System Software 6.0.2
System Software 6.0.3
System Software 6.0.4
System Software 6.0.5
System Software 6.0.6
System Software 6.0.7
System Software 6.0.8
System Software 6.0.8L
System 7.0
System 7.0.1
System 7 Tuner
System 7.1
System 7.1 Pro
System 7.1.2
System 7.1.2
System 7.5
System 7.5.1
System 7.5.2
System 7.5.3
System 7.5.3L (not included because of licensing conflicts)
System 7.5.3 Revision 2
System 7.5.3 Revision 2.1
System 7.5.4 (not previously released on floppy disk, CD or DVD!)
System 7.5.5
Mac OS 7.6
Mac OS 7.6.1
System 7.0.1P
System 7.1P1
System 7.1P2
System 7.1P3
System 7.1P4
System 7.1P5
System 7.1P6
Mac OS 8.0
Mac OS 8.1
Mac OS 8.5 (guaranteed to rawk your sawks and crash your system!)
Mac OS 8.5.1
Mac OS 8.6
Mac OS 9.0
Mac OS 9.0.2
Mac OS 9.0.3
Mac OS 9.0.4
Mac OS 9.1
Mac OS 9.2
Mac OS 9.2.1
Mac OS 9.2.2
Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah)
Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma)
Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar)
Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)
Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

“But don’t answer yet!” Jobs shouted. “If you act now, I’ll throw in a special bonus DVD with all the NeXT operating system releases! Whatever those were! Frankly, I can’t for the life of me remember!”

“Well, hoooold on a minute, Steve!” Schiller said. “Because I’ve got a box of 5 and 1/4 inch floppies with, uh, I dunno… maybe some Apple II crap on it. Hard to tell. But I’ll throw these in absolutely free!”

“Phil,” Jobs said, “You’re craaaaaaazy!”

Apple then asked how much you’d expect to pay for a fabulous collection of operating systems such as this. $300? $400? $500?

“Well, how about $79.99!” Jobs hollered, now standing about three inches from reporters’ faces.

Reporters nodded mutely to indicate their agreement that this indeed would be a good deal.

The offer will be made exclusively on late-night TV through the fine people at Sessions.