Mac Mini and iPod shuffle Outshine Lesser Announcements.


While the Mac Mini and the iPod shuffle took home the lion’s share of the press accolades for Macworld San Francisco announcements, Apple did announce several other items of note.

  • Pages, touted as a replacement for Apple Works, currently only replaces the presentation and word processing functionality of the venerable Works application. And the word processing functionality is really more like page layout. Also, it’s apparently only for people who are left handed. And are big fans of the late Frank Zappa. Oh, and you must also be a licensed zamboni driver.
  • Apple announced at Macworld that it has further expanded its iBook logic board repair program. Now anyone who ever even looked at an iBook is eligible for a new logic board. And a box of cookies.
  • Left in the shadow of the Mac Mini was the diminutive but appealing machine’s younger brother, Ricky. Sadly, where the Mac Mini is well-designed and priced to move, Ricky is spindly, wears glasses and is uncomfortable around members of the opposite sex. While the Mac Mini was a varsity letterman, Ricky was cut from swing choir. While the Mac Mini made the honor role, Ricky will spend the summer catching up on algebra. Poor Ricky.
  • The iPod shuffle was actually only one of three new iPods the company announced. Of the other two, however, one is really just some dried pasta glued together with Elmer’s and spray-painted white and the other is, according to members of the press who attended the invitation-only unveiling, an angry marmot. Which proceeded to bite its handlers and several members of the press. Um… no explanation on either, really. I hear the product development people have been under a lot of stress recently, so… uh… Well. I’m sure they’ll be quite popular.
  • Finally, the entire Power Mac G5 lineup was replaced by the exact same lineup of Power Mac G5s in a needless and expensive exercise including flyers, QuickTime VR demonstrations and several hundred “booth babes” suggestively caressing the same hardware Apple’s been selling for a year and a half.

Truthfully, I’ve been covering this company for several years now and I just don’t know how it stays in business.

53 thoughts on “Mac Mini and iPod shuffle Outshine Lesser Announcements.”

  5. Claiming first post but don’t have the guts to leave your name, eh?

    This displeases Evil Monkey.

  7. HEY!! What about right handed, forklift driving Zappa fans? We miss out again I suppose!!!

  16. RICKY! RICKY! RI….

    AH, WHAT”S THE USE?

    WE’RE A BILLION TIMES MORE TALENTED THAN THAT IDIOT, ASHLEE SIMPSON, AND WHILE SHE’S BOTCHING HER LIP-SYNC GIG ON SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, WE’RE STILL DOING BIT PARTS IN MOVIE SCORES.

  17. “pop” is short form for popular, so “pop culture” means books, movies, tv programs or even ads that have been read, seen, listened to by the majority. So a pop culture reference (pcr) is a playful reminiscence, a small piece invoking the memory of one of these themes everybody understands. It is vital for a pcr that it refers to a part of cultural (short-term) memory that is utterly wide-spread. Thus, it differs from the eliticist mumbo-jumbo reference that some people, mainly in the old europe, use to differentiate between the educati and the lesser beings, perferably in Latin, definitely to some thing that is hardly accessible (Nietzsche, Robespierre).

  18. In case you didn’t get it:

    The pop culture reference is…

    to…

    the Mac Mini!

    Ricky is just a name, short for Richard, Ricardo, or “Ribulose Bisphosphate Carboxylase/Oxygenase”.

    Hmm-kay?

  19. I think the humanisation of the machine or in the case of the marmot mammalisation, alludes to a belief in a critical convergence or cross pollination of the dominant species today; Man with the dominant species tomorrow; Machine.

    It’s clear from these startling revelations that somewhere deep in the bowels of Cupertino experimental creature machines are being produced. That there are plans to create an army of such creatures is undeniable.

    Just what vision Apple has for the future of Mankind can only be guessed at.

  25. Apparently there was a half-off sale when the booth babes picked up their bikinis, as most of them chose the bottom half only. Whoo-eeee. Seems the temperature in there was lower than it should have been… Even the marmot was impressed. When he got loose and ran into the G5 area he curled up into the fetal position and made faint sucking noises.

    **resists temptation to insert crude beaver joke here**

  30. Hey! What d’ya know; I’d sent it off in a letter to myself!

    Who’d have thought?

    Cheers, Bellidancer…

  31. Dudes,

    What’s with the references to RIcky? That stuff is © Steely Dan. Okay?

    Now, how about a kiss for your cousin Dupree, you booth babes you!

  32. What about the almost-made-reference to ‘beavers’? Anyone know where it came from? According to Kurt Vonnegut’s novel ‘Breakfast of Champions’, it was a code word firefighters used for alerting eachother to a nice view as women climbed down the ladder during a fire….sounds logical…although it would have been better to use ‘marmot’.

  35. You were Ricky in high school weren’t you?

    It’s okay. Really. Express yourself. Let out the pain. It sure beats cavorting around as an angry marmot.

    Unless you are into that sort of thing.

  37. I think the Evil Boys Choir is out behind the building having a snit and a smoke. I think they are re-evaluating their career choices. Seeing no talent teen idols pull down multimillion dollar contracts while they sing their hearts out (literally, some of the evil concerts are quite horrific) for pennies has got to be disheartening. What do they really have to look forward but “the Operation”?

  40. Moltz forgot to mention the Mac micro, which is as small as a pack of Lucky Strikes (red circle), and has only a zip drive, and one FW port. It is hailed as NFDKM (no f*cking keyboard, display or mouse), and aps are chosen completely at random. It will, however, run iLife blazingly fast.

  43. What? What are you even saying? You’re all just a bunch of dumb-ass PC fans who cant admit that PC’s suck ass. Say, what announcements has bill gates made? What new products is he coming out with? where is his OS? I hope Jesus is helping Bill write Longhorn, because when it finally comes out in 13 years, it’ll need to be a MIRACLE to be anything close to what OS X is. Why don’t you try to spit out a sentence without going off on some random senseless tangent and get back to your PC, oh, if it doesnt crash, freeze, or cake over with viruses. Good luck!

  45. Foul Accusations!!!! Vile Aspersions!! Mike Zielinski thy knowst not what thy speakst. PC users!!! Nay! Nay! A thousands tines NAY!!!

    If John had reopened the Dueling Room your insane ravings would earn you dozens of challenges.

    You misunderstand CARS. Gates is usually ignored what we find him dull, and largely irrelevant to our lives, (Ballmer on the other hand is hilarious and his silliness makes us feel good.) Yes there are those poor individuals who must use or support the dread and sinister PCs, (greenarces, Del, et al, you have our sympathies). But we leave that at work.

    Yes, I at times despair over the evil empire and the millions of shackled drones who use windows, but I rejoice I am not one.

    Would you have us sink into blackest depression, to cry and moan, and obsess over Windows minutiae?

    Or laugh and sing, recite poetry and dance, enjoy the glory that is Apple Geekhood?

    I dance the iDance of MacJoy… I am Bellidancer!!!

  46. Here, Here.

    *voiceover*

    This post was brought to you by an IBM Netvista P4 running Windows XP Service Pack 1 with the following hotfixes; KB821557, KB23182, KB823559, KB23980, KB24105, KB24141, KB24146, KB24151, KB825119, KB828035, KB28741, KB833987, KB34707, KB835732, KB837001, KB839643, KB839645, KB840315, KB840374…oh crap that’s it I’m not typing anymore. And I’m not even half way through!!

  47. Streetrabbit, Sorry I left your name off the poor tormented individuals who must use PC filth at work. I myself have a 20″ Dell monitor on my desk at work (it is however attached to two PowerMac G4s under my desk.)

  48. I have a *PC* under my desk. At home. It’s plugged into Steve Balmer.

    You wouldn’t *believe* the things I can make him do with it…

  49. OK. After weeks of tortured angst, I finally coughed $20.50 (that’s right $20.50) for February’s US Macworld. I’ve scanned the magazine half a dozen times and nowhere can I find the letters M-O-L-T-Z in any kind of proximity to each other.

    $20.50!!! – that’s shouted, pity there’s no capital numbers.

    I can only assume what was written was too hot for Australia and cut by the censor.

  50. SERVICE! PACK! SERVICE! PACK! SERVICE! PACK!

    SERVICE! PACK! SERVICE! PACK! SERVICE! PACK!

    SERVICE! PACK! SERVICE! PACK! SERVICE! PACK!

    SERVICE! PACK! SERVICE! PACK! SERVICE! PACK!

    SERVICE! PACK! SERVICE! PACK! SERVICE! PACK!

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