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Opportunity Missed MOUNT LAUREL, New Jersey - Under strong protest, I'm back in Mount Laurel working at Computer Sciences Corporation on the next whiz bang something-or-other that's going to "revolutionize" something-or-other. As some small consolation, I'm being housed in the Summerfield Suites, a very fine hotel. Last time I was here, the MacWorld Expo was getting underway just up the road in New York City. Before I started having to make repeat trips to this area, I thought New Jersey was merely a parking lot for New Yorkers. I now realize that's unfair to New Jersey's citizens. Actually, New Jersey is a parking lot for New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians as well as being a toxic waste dump for those two states plus Delaware. Very depressing. Very depressing indeed. However, not even that sort of poisonous environment could make New York City look attractive enough to blow on up there for the Expo! I quit going to MacWorld Expos when they quit having them in Boston. In the environs I hail from, walks in the park are relaxing breaks from the hustle and bustle, not Darwinian experiments in survival. But, no matter where the Expo was held I probably wouldn't attend. With Steve Jobs attaining rock star like status, I'm petrified that all the little geek-ettes will view him as a modern day Elvis, hurling hotel room keys and undergarments at him. Their arms reduced to mush from spending every waking moment at the keyboard, the missiles would fall well short of the intended target and we more unfortunate ones would be pelted by salvo after salvo of room keys and undies. It's just all more than my stomach can handle. Best to view the new goodies via the Internet. So I did.
Cubist Computers The new Cube can only be described as a work of art. Jobs was right to praise this as the finest bit of design work that Apple's ever done. That by default makes it the finest bit of computer design ever, anywhere - on this planet anyway (Editor's Note: What about on Steve's home world?). That much is obvious even viewed through the lens ofmy web browser. I can't wait to see one in person. Though I suppose it would be best if I didn't, given my notoriously poor resistance to the allure of gadgetry. It might not be the computer for everyone, but heck, what is? It's not very expandable. Who cares? I bet the percentage of the market that adds anything to their computers is practically insignificant. As long as one can stuff enough memory in there, it will be more than sufficient for the overwhelming preponderance of computer users. But, back to appearances - the Cube is such a wonderful looking piece of machinery that images of places that just should not be without one keep flashing through my head. Entities that place an emphasis on aesthetics simply must have one of these if there is a computer to be at all visible.
An Art Museum for Example My friend Bob got married this Summer. We attended the wedding and the reception afterwards held at the Huntsville, Alabama Museum of Art. My mind immediately flashed back to this museum and found it inconceivable that they have any computer visible besides a Cube. Any place, any person, any thing that places a premium on sublime beauty will be drawn to these as a moth is to my headlights. Apple tells us the Cube is remarkably quiet due to convection cooling, i.e. no fan. With growing emphasis on environmental aspects of the workplace, the low noise emanating from the computer is a big plus. Expect the OSHA to establish office noise level maximums. Apple's early research into this area should serve it well. Ever been in the corporate offices of a fabulously wealthy multinational corporation? I'm thinking of the kind that spends big money on upscale artwork for their corporate officers' suites. I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't want one of these for their secretaries. It's always seems so absurd to have fine art hanging next to a beige Compaq computer. It's like, well... buttering your dog or something. It's messy and horribly tacky. And what's the point in it anyway?
The Computer of Choice for Multinational Criminals? Jean-Batiste Emmanuel Zorg's secretary in The Fifth Element lacks one thing - a Cube! This would be the perfect computer for world class crooks such as Ernst Stavro Blofeld or Madeline Albright. It matches well the chic look of heavy chrome and marble for which these international, ultra-heavy types lust. We'll certainly be seeing oodles of these in movies and TV, as well as multinational crime syndicates such as Seagrams, Inc.
A Nearly Irresistible Appeal A friend of mine who's notoriously, ahem... frugal - even though he's rolling in dough - took one look at the Cube on Apple's web site and panted "I'm all over this. I've got to have one." Me too! My wife's resisted my suggestion we get one for my 11-year-old daughter. I don't know why. I doubt seriously that we're the only two who fall prey to the other worldly beauty of the Cube.
The Colors, The Beautiful Colors The new iMacs are without question the most lovely colors released to date. Period. They possess a beauty and strike a chord that the others, as lovely as they were, do not match. They still have a 15" display, only 13.8 inches of which is viewable. The long-awaited 17" display has not yes materialized. They've bumped up the specs a tad, while introducing a new bottom line model available in September for $799, a new low price for Apple. I am confused that the color availability is keyed to the price of the iMac. The $799 base iMac is available only in Indigo (blue). The $999 iMac DV is available in Indigo and Ruby (red of course). The iMac DV +, at $1,299, adds the choice of Sage (green) to Indigo and Ruby. The top-of-the-line iMac DV Special Edition is offered at $1,499 in only Snow (white, not yellow, for all you Frank Zappa fans) and the familiar Graphite. The top two models offer DVD-ROMs so you can watch your favorite movies. For more details be sure to visit The Apple Store.
The Rub I happened to catch the Apple commercial featuring the white iMac DV Special Edition and Cream's "White Room". It struck me what a perfect match this would be for the white tiled countertops in our kitchen. Currently the countertops are cluttered by the usual accouterments -- recipe boxes, undercabinet TV, radio/CD player, etc. Visually they serve to detract from the decor -- not add to it. How wonderful if one white iMac could replace all this stuff currently cluttering the kitchen, plus add Internet and all the rest of the goodies your computer offers. I dashed to The Apple Store and was dismayed to find that I had to shell out $1,300 to get a DVD player equipped iMac. Yikes! It seems to me that Apple has blown the opportunity for a huge market. If they offered the top-o-the-line model with a cable ready option for around $1000, they'd sell these things so fast they wouldn't know what to do. They couldn't make them fast enough. Maybe they could drop a few things from the model to bring the cost down if that had to be done. They could cut back on the FireWire ports, reducing from 2 to 1. They could cut out a few things here or there. Leave off the Quicken. Omit the Palm Desktop. Snip here. Tuck there. Do make sure it's got a darn good sound system. Throw in some topnotch telephony software to spice. Voila! Home entertainment/communications center. I'd buy a few of them. Here's why. My daughters each have a TV. Each has a CD player. Each has a this. Each has a that. My 11-year-old is in 6th grade now. She does her reports on a computer - my computer. If everyone had their own iMac, be it in the kitchen, the bedroom, or wherever -- they could do work, email, look up information on the world wide web, watch DVDs, listen to CDs, watch television, or all this stuff at the same time if they chose to. Or in the case of juveniles, as their parents allow them. I can envision my wife preparing some delicious repast while watching a movie on a Snow iMac, perfectly tuned to the kitchen, pausing the DVD as need be to search for a recipe or read an email from her sister, skipping over to The Weather Channel, making some plans and e-mailing a few friends, un-pauseing the DVD, and going right on back to cooking. Perhaps even order a streaming movie available via QuickTime. Hmmm? You'd be getting it through cable remember. No 56K modem choke point. With all this capability rolled into one box you save a huge amount of space -- which is at a premium with all the consumer gadgets that abound. It also gets you the long sought after "convergence." But at $1,500 who can afford to do a lot of that? TVs get replaced, as do CD players and all electronics. If Apple got smart and rolled all your consumer electronics needs into one inexpensive box they'd make history. At the same time, hopefully they'll bump up the screen to the long rumored 17" version. And Apple, make a Banana color. It'll go with both daughters' decor.
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