CUTE LITTLE CRITTERS

Oh, no -- now they've gone and done it!

Refurbished Bondi Blue iMacs are going for less than I paid for my PowerBook 540c last summer. Man, I'm in big trouble now. I really don't know how I've resisted so long. Perceived lack of funds, probably. But for less than $800, geez! Now I need an excuse not to buy one. How can they do this to me?

I know a lady in Utah who's discovered a new way to impoverish herself: buying iMacs for other people! Can you believe it, the generosity and life-altering consequences of this behavior? She's putting these machines in the hands of individuals who can do something with them. She's not just making someone a gift, she's sowing seeds of enterprise and fulfillment. What an outrageously magical scheme! By spending her money this way, she's making more than a financial contribution, she's adding to the positive energy in the universe. What could be cooler than that?

"Reaping what you sow" is another way to express this dynamic. Unfortunately, the more fear-prone segments of the population usually consider this only in a negative light, as in, say, "if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you." But the mechanism works both ways!

Take the iMac, for example. This is a machine that makes people happy. I mean, just look at the darned thing: it's shiny. It's smooth and round, like a baby's cheek. It makes you want to touch it, poke it, play with it. God made most infants cute for a reason, which if you don't understand, you shouldn't have one! Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive have done the same thing with these babies (no wonder it's raining iMac-dollars in Cupertino). . .

The first iMac I laid eyes on was my mother's. Yes, somehow or other, Mom was motivated to rouse herself from her comfy desert doublewide last August and order one of the very first ones. This is a lady who knows all about babies (or did at one time) and back then knew less than nothing about computers. What she did know was that she'd better get herself an email machine if she ever wanted to hear from her kids again, and her Mac fanatic sons told her to buy an iMac. I even sent her a picture. I told her, "take this to the shop, point to it, and say 'I want one of these!'"

[interlude]

Wouldn't it be cool if life were like that? And wouldn't it be a kick in the head if we woke up in heaven and realized that it was like that when we were alive, but we just didn't notice?? "Uh, yes, Creator, [pointing to picture of attractive member of the same or opposite sex] I'd like one of those, please."

[end interlude]

Anyway, "cute" counts, in the overall scheme of things, and no amount of huffing and pontificating by supposedly realistic souls can alter the fact. The iMac is amazingly good-looking and immediately raises the spirits of anyone who walks into a room and sees one. You can verify this yourself by means of a simple experiment.

Just place one on your desk or a table by the window, where the light shines through its translucent shell, and contemplate the scene for a moment. Now take the iMac away (hide it in a closet or another room), perform a few mundane tasks to kill a few minutes, then re-enter the room where it used to sit. . .oh, emptiness!! A chill enters your guts! You suddenly feel hungry for something sweet and filling, like the fresh cookies your grandmother used to bake.

See what I mean? (Quick, put it back!)

We've recently had a chance to witness this effect ourselves. One of the perks of my wife's college teaching job (yes, the one she's just quit) is a Revision B iMac, Bondi Blue, naturally. Over the last couple of weekends we've brought it home so she can work at her own desk in her own home instead of dragging herself to that place to look something up. The difference between the iMac'ed and iMac-less room is remarkable! Quite extraordinary, in fact. And having this friendly tool at her fingertips instead of being forced to return to the scene of the crime is a tremendous productivity boost, let me tell you. When we finally hit the road for good, that machine will be sorely missed.

Yes, the iMac is one powerful little cutie-pie, that's for sure. But looks count even when the thing in question is relatively useless! Take babies, for example. If they weren't cute, well. . . And Volkswagens! I drove Beetles and buses for years and almost never minded that they were easily blown-off-the-road, freezing cold tin cans of doom. (I even told everyone I knew to buy one.) And armadillos! Yes, armadillos. I'll just go brush my teeth and balance my checkbook or something while I wait for you to come up with just one thing that armadillos are good for. . .

(tick, tock, tick, tock)

There! Any answers? Hah! And yes, they are too cute. If you don't think so, then you didn't buy the Volkswagen analogy in that last paragraph, either, and you probably just left your first-born son or daughter in a basket at the door of a church. I can tell you a thing or two about armadillos that might change your mind, though. Did you know that the reason so many of them get killed by cars is because when they're frightened, they hop straight up into the air? They see a car bearing down on them, no matter that it would simply pass right overhead and leave them unscathed, and (boing!) SPLAT. . . If that isn't cute, I don't know what is. And here's something else: the buggers are practically blind! One time while driving on a country road south of Austin, I saw one snuffling around in the grass by the side of the road. I stopped the car and for some reason slowly walked over to the little beast. . .when I was about ten feet away, it suddenly decided it was in trouble and took off like a shot, (in that humpy little shuffling run they have) right between my legs!!

And speaking of armadillos, Austin, and iMacs: last night Applelinks managing editor Joe Ryan emailed me to say that he had just read The iMac Book, by Don Rittner, and there on page 205 was a "small Applelinks write-up" that mentioned the Farr Site! Well, hoot my gibson. . . This immediately reminded me of a Significant Moment that occurred a few years ago when I was prowling the cut-out bins at Antone's Record Store ("Austin's Home of the Blues") near my old neighborhood in Austin, across the street from the blues club and Ruby's Bar-B-Q: what did I happen to come across but a record album I had never seen before, "Drifting Through the Seventies" by John Clay and the Lost Austin Band! Wow! Far out!!

What do you mean, you've never heard of them? John Clay?? Semi-genius banjo-picking Austin chronicler extraordinaire?? John used to say, by way of explaining the name and bemoaning the band's appearances in out-of-the-way dives, that "we're known as the Lost Austin Band, because whenever we play, nobody can figure out where we're at," which pretty much says it all. If you haven't figured it out by now, yours truly used to play rhythm guitar in this quintessential home-grown Texas string band. I left town before everybody got it together enough to make an actual record, of course. Anway, there on the back of the album was a history of the band, written by John, and in tiny print up near the top was the sentence, "since the formation of the group, other guitar players have been John Farr and. . ." Me! That's me!! My name is on an album cover! (And on page 205 of a new book about iMacs!)

Things are definitely looking up! Now if I can just get the hang of this "cute" business. . .

John H. Farr also edits the Apple Computer News for Applelinks.com and welcomes your comments. His own Web site, the ZOO ZONE, has actually attracted some business! More details to come soon. . .

The Farr Site Forum isn't very active these days. (Guess I'll have to insult a few more hunters or say something really nasty about Microsoft.)

The Farr Site archives offer links to all sixty-three previous columns. (How do I do this every week?)

November 20, 2008