Kirk Hiner's

"When thinking differently just isn't different enough."

Mac OSeX

By Kirk Hiner

It's been an odd December. December, for me, is usually the most predictable of all the months. I traditionally do some shopping, enjoy a candle light service at Ashland First, and scream in insufferable agony as I'm forced to listen to yet another flash-in-the-pan pop slut sing about the Baby Jesus or Good King Wenceslas while wearing nothing more than red hot-pants with white, fluffy fringes and a halter top clearly indicating that yes, it is quite cold on the set.

But this year was different. This year, instead of watching Christmas specials ("Robbie the Reindeer" rocks) and making Buckeye Balls, my festive time was dominated by my good friend Jim Jividen as he climbed his way up the ranks on ESPN's Two Minute Drill. I've seen game shows a thousand times before, but it really is different when a person you know is a question away from $100,000. Jim won the $100,000, along with a trip to Vegas to see the ESPY Awards in February, a trip on which he's taking me. But I don't know...is it wrong of me to hope for an iBook wedding gift as well?

This is my problem. Yes, I'm thrilled for Jim. More than anyone I know, he deserves this cash. Some people attribute his winnings to a ridiculous, almost freakish knowledge of sports. This is true; he does have a ridiculous, almost freakish knowledge of sports, but Jim pretty much has a ridiculous, almost freakish knowledge of everything outside of NT networking (thank heavens). This is only because when he learns something, he bothers to remember it. He writes it down, he says it out loud, and he thinks about it for a while. In other words, he has earned his intelligence, and that intelligence is now worth $100,000 and a chance to meet Linda Cohn..and there ain't nothin' wrong with that.

Still, I want an iBook. I don't think this makes me a terrible friend. I've wanted one before Jim won his money, and I'll want one after he's blown it all on bootleg Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling videotapes. The thing is, I don't even really need one (iBook, not FMW tape, although that Masato Tanaka is something to see). I've got my G4/450, Tieraney will be bringing over her lime iMac when we're married in June, and although the internal modem on my PowerBook 3400c has decided to retire, it's still good for the purpose for which it was bought; to allow me to completely rewrite all Hall and Oates lyrics to be in the past tense:

We wouldn't have if we were you
We told you she could do
She was deadly, man
You know she really ripped your world apart
She watched and she waited
Oh, the beauty was there but the beast was in her heart

Fun for the whole family. But despite my 3400c, I still want the iBook. It has nothing to do with looks and it has nothing to do with power, it has to do with Apple.

See, Apple's down again. I'm used to this, as are most of us. From the moment my boss back at Bankers Trust first questioned my LCII purchase, I knew I'd once again, perhaps inadvertently, sided with the underdog. Oh, we just had a nice run there for a couple years, but even when Apple was at its zenith and the fickle press pretended to like us, we were still wearing targets on our chest.

The odd thing is that this time the projectiles aren't just being fired by Wintel drones, but by Mac soldiers as well. Friendly fire, I believe they call this. But hey, I've addressed this issue before, and I'm not about to launch another attack on Mac journalists and users whose very lives apparently depend upon 1 GHz processors, 17" iMacs and the finder trash can. Instead, I'm going to offer up my own suggestions Apple can incorporate to insure its survival.

This has been done before, I know. In print, on the web and in forums, men, women and children of all ages have shared their ideas on what Apple must do to survive. The thing is, most of these suggestions are hardware/software related only. A quick look back at Apple's history shows their stock price is determined solely by their marketing (1984, up; Power, down; Think Different, up; Jeff Goldblum dancing, down), so I think it's time we take it to the next level.

First up, I think it's time we got the MTV crowd on board. (I mean, they did get Clinton elected, right?) MTV already gives Macs to the gay guys on "The Real World," so why not take it one step further; "The Real World: Cupertino?" They can put Steve Jobs, Gil Amelio, that Scully guy who people seem to accidentally like all the sudden, Larry Ellison, and hey--why not Bill Gates and Michael Dell?--in an office and just turn on the cameras for a few months. Ooh, just imagine the bitter cat fights...all that clawing and scratching! Of course, they'll probably have to add some young, topless, C++ coding coeds or else they won't get the all important 13- to 45-year-old male demographic.

If this is too much to put together, "MTV's Spring Break: Cupertino" is a cheaper substitute, but the topless programming coeds must stay.

Of course, there's really no reason to stop at MTV. Fox is about to sink television to its lowest point since "Who Wants to Marry A Millionaire?" with its much-ballyhooed "Temptation Island," and viewers will no doubt sink even lower by believing it's not prefabricated (I watch wrestling, you see, but I at least understand it's fake). So here's what Apple should do. Create a show called "Temptation iBook" where a bunch of Mac users are put on an island with their Airport equipped iBooks. Then fill the island with Wintel users who try to seduce them to the dark side. Oh, sure, we may lose a couple Mac users, but I think the hype surrounding the show should compensate.

I think a new naming scheme for Apple products is also in order. First came the iMac, which perhaps inappropriately spoke to all the selfish "as long as I have attitude I can do what I want" people currently controlling the world. Microsoft took this one step further with WindowsMe, and even the search engines are getting on board with crap like MyYahoo. This is all well and good, heaven knows we need more people on this planet concerned with only themselves. However, I think Apple could benefit by taking this selfish attitude and redirecting it to others with products named "LeaveWindowsMeAlone," the "No-One-Understands-Me-I-Hate-You-All Mac," and the revolutionary "Mac OS U-Suck."

And finally, I think it's about time we saw a "Girls of OS X" issue of Macworld or MacHome or something. Heck, why not even make it a video? We've all seen those videos of women in bikinis firing rounds off of AK-47s, right? Or is that just an Ohio cable thing? Anyway, I say we dress up some hot babes in iMac colored bikinis (translucent? That's up to the censors) and pumps and have them walk around the desert with iBooks, occasionally stopping to defragment their hard drive, concatenate a couple files or smack some monkeys. I mean, hey, the Apple logo already couldn't get any closer to the Playboy Bunny logo without risking copyright infringement.

So there you have it. Keep your talk of faster processors and rewritable CD drives, it's sex and attitude that sell computers. If there were any room for intelligence and rational thought in the world of computing, Apple wouldn't even be in the mess they're in right now. Save that usable 1/10th of your brain for places where it really matters, like ESPN game shows.

And if you win, keep me in mind for an iBook, or at least another trip to Vegas. With a nod to Mojo Nixon, I'm working on endorsement deals with a couple Vegas strippers for the new line of Apple Lapdance computers.

Is Elizabeth Berkely available?

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