John Moltz

And On The 92nd Day He Rested…

As you may know, yesterday was April Fools Day which is my people’s holy day.

I fasted for much of it – sustaining myself by spraying seltzer into my face periodically – and then, as the sun set, took in a light repast consisting of unleveaned insoles from the discarded shoes of Jennifer fricking Connelly and cheese from an evil goat.

Have you tried the evil goat cheese? It really is delicious.

As the stars came out, we regaled each other with the writings of Rob Enderle and then drank fortified malt liquor long into the night.

Which pretty much knocked me on my ass as all I had to eat all day was insoles and cheese.

But, for those of you who don’t understand my faith, yesterday just kicked off the Festival of the Shaving Cream Pies which will run all week culminating in the Night Of Awkward Nudity in which…

Well, that’s actually kind of just like it sounds.

So, anyway, we’ll be off all week for this Holiest of Holies. Perhaps you ‘ll find a way to make it through without us. But before we go, we won’t leave you in the lurch. Here’s our analysis of the Apple/EMI deal to deliver DRM-free music:

Uh… it’s good.

See you next week.

Apple TV – The Ultimate Review!

You may have read other reviews of the Apple TV, but thou shalt take no others before the Crazy Apple Rumors Ultimate Apple TV Review!

CARS editor-in-chief John Moltz recently spent some time with the Apple TV and here’s his report!

ATV -475 days: A lot of people complained about how long it took them to get their Apple TV, but I actually ordered mine in 2005. Sure, sure, they said “Sir, we can’t take your money for something we don’t make” but I was very insistent and they finally relented. As a matter of fact, I did the same thing the other day and ordered my Apple Sexbot. I highly suggest using this tactic with Apple as they will take your money for all kinds of weird stuff they don’t make. Yet!

ATV -45 minutes: It’s 3:20 PM on Saturday and I’m lying in my underwear on a pile of lime tortilla chips smeared with salsa and guacamole playing a little game I like to call “Johnny, King of Nachos” and I decide to take a break and check the delivery status on my Apple TV. I see it’s out for delivery and decide it’s time to shower and clean up all the chips.

ATV zero hour: The delivery truck is here! The delivery person looks at me funny as I sign for it and I only realize later it’s because I forgot to take the crown off. I unbox the Apple TV.

ATV +60 minutes: Now, many rookies will make the mistake of immediately plugging it in. DO NOT DO THIS. As with any Apple product or fine wine, you should let it breathe for at least an hour. It’s like that thing you’re supposed to do with MacBook batteries. Drain, charge, drain, charge… charge, charge, charge… drain… uh… charge, charge, drain, drain. Or something.

Anyway, letting your Apple TV breathe for an hour will extend its life by at least a year. Totally. This and repairing permissions are guaranteed take-to-the-bank product maintenance tips.

ATV +61 minutes: Now I’m ready to plug it into my 42-inch Samsung HDTV. I go to the box to find the cables.

What the…?

There are no cables.

Well, this is just bullshit. What, am I just supposed to put the component ports up to my eyes and use it like a View-Master?

Oh, wow! What do you know, that works! Awesome!

ATV +2 hours and 5 minutes: I return from the Apple Store will some cables and hook up the unit to my HDTV. I download an episode of Heroes (you know, it’s a really good show) and fire it up!

Uh…

Holy shit this looks like crap. I mean, I knew it didn’t do HD-quality but this…

Oh, wait, I never peeled the plastic protector film off my HDTV. Huh. I’ve had it for two years and I never noticed that. OK, here we go.

Mmm, nope. Still looks like crap.

ATV +6 hours and 15 minutes: On a hunch, I lick the Apple TV. It tastes of white chocolate and pure Mexican vanilla. Nice touch Apple!

ATV +10 hours and 4 minutes: Can’t sleep. Can’t eat.

The Apple TV has invaded my brain. My soul.

All is lost. I am its plaything. A lump of unformed clay in its electronic touch. I willingly give myself to it, now downloading anything – Boat Trip with Cuba Gooding Jr. – just to bathe in it’s warm glow.

I am cold. So very cold.

…

Um…

Four out of five stars.

Nothing tonight!

At the invitation of the lovely and talented Brent Simmons, the entire CARS staff is headed up I-5 to attend tonight’s meeting of Seattle Xcoders.

In the comments, please answer the following question: if humans were classes, which human would you inherit from (not your parents – who would you want to inherit from)?

Maybe some geeks can explain that.

New iMacs Coming.

Sources indicate that at a special event on March 20th Apple will announce new iMacs that will rock the hardware business as only an Apple product can.

Crazy Apple Rumors Site has confirmed that the new iMacs will come in an exciting new form factor. In 2003 Apple introduced iMacs with a circular base. In 2004 it introduced iMacs with an all-in-one rectangular form factor.

“Based on the latest trends in design, a highly-placed source said, “The 2007 iMac will be in the shape of a rhombus.”

Marketed under the catch-phrase “ParalleloWHAM!”, the new iMacs will feature Samsung’s brand new 17, 20 and 24-inch non-perpendicular LCDs

“We haven’t the slightest idea why Samsung decided to make monitors with non-perpendicular corners,” a source who was totally not Greg Joswiak said. “But when [Apple CEO] Steve [Jobs] saw them, he flipped. He said ‘We’ll take as many as you can make!’

“And I’m looking at Jony [Ive] like, hey, Elton, help me out here! But Jony’s such a butt-kisser he’s like, ‘Oh, Steve, I couldn’t agree more! Non-perpendicular trapezoids are where design is going to be in two years. You’re way ahead of the curve again! Rectangular screens are so 2006.'”

The new iMacs have already been delayed as Apple has had difficulty in finding vendors of rhombus-shaped corrugated boxes to ship the units in.

Apple declined to comment officially for this story and the source who was not Joswiak declined to pick up the tab for lunch at the sushi place.

New Beta Coming From Parallels.

Parallels announced yesterday that Parallels Desktop is out of beta and now provides compatibility with Leopard and Vista.

But Crazy Apple Rumors Site has learned that the company has plans to expanded its product line-up beyond merely allowing Mac OS X and other platforms to run other operating systems in separate environments.

Parallels Desktop for Reality, expected to go into beta shortly, goes one step further, allowing separate bubble universes to form on any computer running Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Mac OS X, and releases of Linux that do not contain the word “foobar” in source-code comments.

Desktop for Reality uses the hypervisor feature of modern processors to tear small rents in the fabric of time and space, and then encapsulate those in a graphical user interface. Because processors can calculate at rates that allow relativistic effects to appear in each window’s frame (or window) of reference, time can be slowed or sped up within each bubble universe.

For instance, a Photoshop rendering operation that might take 100 years in regular time can be launched in a virtual window in which time is sped up to a factor of 100,000 relative to our own. While this would require a display that could handle 1024 by 1920 parsecs to display, Desktop for Reality can scale to fit. Also, sources warns that Photoshop images will be red-shifted or blue-shifted, depending on time dilation and the observer position in our universe, and require additional color correction.

Sources believe that its Incoherence mode will be used the most, however. In Incoherence, fundamental events in the computer history timeline can be modified before a bubble reality is launched. The beta comes preloaded with “Woz decides to keep building calculators for HP,” “Jeff Bezos was killed in that helicopter crash and replaced with a robot named Amazon Prime,” and “IBM buys MS-DOS outright from Ballmer, Gates, instead of licensing it.”

Preliminary release notes for the beta of Desktop for Reality say that side effects may include vertigo, nausea, and hallucinations due to the computer’s localized control over the creation of bubble universes and time flow, but only because they need to tweak the USB 2.0 drivers a bit further. They also warn that you should make sure and leave Ironic Outcome unchecked in the Edit menu, as it might result in you being trapped within a universe of your own making in which Mac OS X never existed.