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The Phantom Mac OS (5/21/99)
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So let's say you just took the plunge and bought yourself a brand-spankin'-new Power Macintosh G3. You giddily rip the box open and begin the loving process of setting up the new addition to your Mac family. You feel that nothing on earth could possibly tear your eyes away from the system's gorgeous translucent Ice-and-Blueberry curves-- except, what's that on the CD-ROM that shipped in the accessory kit? Why, it's, it's... it's Mac OS 8.6.1! Suddenly you're no longer gawking at the luscious curves of your new Mac, because instead you're staring at the CD-ROM in your hand which claims to include a version of the Mac operating system that, as far as the rest of the world is aware, doesn't even exist yet. How cool is that?
Well, unfortunately, as it turns out it's not that cool after all. There is, in fact, no Mac OS 8.6.1 yet, and according to a Tech Info Library article, some of the CD-ROMs just got misprinted. At least, Apple claims there's no Mac OS 8.6.1 yet... though how accidentally labeling a CD-ROM with an extra ".1" in the version number is beyond us. Our best bet is that they just got a little ahead of themselves; they probably expected 8.6.1 to be out by now, or something, since 8.6 has really been done for several weeks now.
So, bummer though it may be, you've been robbed of the excitement of having discovered a new version of the Mac OS before anyone else. On the plus side, you have a CD-ROM with a perfectly serviceable copy of Mac OS 8.6 on it, and the fact that it's silk-screened incorrectly might make it a collector's item someday-- especially since Apple has fixed the error and is now shipping correctly-labeled CDs with all new machines. Just think; someday, it may fetch a pretty penny at Apple memorabilia conventions, along with those shrink-wrapped eWorld retail boxes and the OpenDoc tour CDs...
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SceneLink (1552)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 5/21/99 episode: May 21, 1999: Hold the phone-- when taken together as a single machine type, all iMacs combined were the number one seller in April. Meanwhile, an enterprising woman with a knack for the needle redefines the iMac's cuteness factor, and Apple denies that there's anything to the "Mac OS 8.6.1" CDs shipping with new blue-and-white G3s beyond a simple misprint...
Other scenes from that episode: 1550: 7 + 11 = Number 1, Baby (5/21/99) Aren't ordinal numbers wacky? Here we were all concerned about the fact that for the first time since its debut last August, the iMac actually fell out of the list of the top five best-selling computers at retail-- the newer fruit-flavored models combined to take the number eleven slot, while the classic Bondi blue units did slightly better by taking seventh place... 1551: And Leave The Tags On (5/21/99) "The iMac is just a toy." Man, we can't even begin to tell you how many times we've heard that in the past year, generally by information-technology manager types who talk big and get paid big but wouldn't recognize a real computer if it bit them in the collective butt...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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