Oct 19, 1998

New Macs in ’99

The usual suspects have once again spilled it all. The beans in question this time are about new hardware. New lines, new motherboards and new ports are in line for ’99. Read on.

The first step in Apple's plans is to gradually expand their product lines, still conforming to the Consumer and Pro models, one line at a time. The bMac, or business Mac, as reported by Reality, is one such model. The P1, or Consumer Portable, is yet another. But at least two new lines or models are due by the end of the century: The pMac and the pMac (a completely different model) are the future of the Macintosh.

The first of these models is called the pMac, or PC Macintosh. This model will be the ultimate in PC compatibility on the Mac side: 500 MHz Pentium III, 64 MB 7ns RAM and an Ultra-2 SCSI controller all on a 12" PCI card. But it doesn't stop there. To keep costs in the sub-$1,000 range, Apple is excluding the G3 processor and RAM on the UMA-2 motherboard. In fact, say goodbye to the Mac OS ROM or Open Firmware: they are both replaced by standard PC BIOS, which supports direct booting into the PC environment. Priced at $1,500, you have a Mac millions will want.

The other model is also called the pMac, this time short for Pervert Macintosh. In a recent survey, c|net found that nearly 99.4% of all data transmitted over the internet is porn. Apple has torn the wax out of its ears and listened: this machine is built from the ground up with porn in mind. 1000BaseT Ethernet, 69 GB Ultra2 SCSI RAID array, 23" CRT display (capable of 32-bit color at 1280 x 960 resolution) and a new Vagina Port are the goodies on the hardware side. The software side shines as well: a pre-registered Hotline Client (rumored to have ml.sextracked.org as the default tracker), pre-registered QuickTime 4.1.2 and Mac OS(e)X. Now what pedophile could resist such a machine? He won't, if he has $1,800 in his pocket. Packed tight and priced right, this model will solidify Apple's hold over the Internet.

Update: The Vagina Port rumored to ship with the pMac in ’99 (no, the other pMac) will supposedly ship with driver version 1.5 instead of 1.1. What this means to the consumer is that the Vagina Port now supports multiple orgasms and lubrication by oil as well as K-Y Jelly.

Oct 17, 1998

iMac “Body Hair” Campaign

In just the last few days, we have received literally dozens of reports that Steven P. Jobs, the current CEO of Apple Computer, Inc., will personally be shaving all body hair from his corpus to be included in the plastics of special iMacs, in efforts to promote iMac price drops for this Christmas season.

Apple spokeshermaphrodite, Leslie Theresa Doe, stated, “This was the opportunity to get Mr. Jobs really involved in iMac production. I mean, after all, he did steal the design from Amelio and Hancock!”

Being Syrian, Jobs's body hair is expected to be found in no less than 15 different systems, all being distributed across the world. Lucky iMac purchasers who find the magic follicles will be flown to Apple's One Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, California for a special day held by Apple staffers and hired help: Local area barbers will be shaving the lucky winners' body hair as well! This is really a way to show the old Apple spirit is back!

Sep 22, 1998

Apple Says “No” to Open Source

Earlier today, Apple Computer, Inc., made an official statement concerning the recent requests by many of its employees and Open Source community leaders to make the lowest levels of Mac OS X available as source code under an Open Source license.

In their statement, Apple cited many reasons for its decision to keep Mach 3 for OS X proprietary, among them being that they wouldn't want “those stupid Pee-Cee hacker geeks mucking around with our system software and mailing us suggestions.”

In light of this announcement, many are calling for Apple to take even more drastic and unexpected steps in order to embrace the Open Source community. “We want the source code to Apple's big flop, Copland!” says one young hacker. “A/UX is the other OS we want. And we'll get it!” One can only surmise what means the hacking community has to supply the Open Source coders with fodder for their compilers. “Apple is holding a lot of operating systems prisoner. We'll free them all!”

Among the other operating systems Apple holds in its vaults beside the afore-mentioned Copland and A/UX are Newton OS, Pink/Taligent, and Pong for Open Firmware.

Aug 18, 1998

Mac OS X to Emulate Alpha?

Boy, this story sure has one foot in the Wacko File!

During the last few weeks, things have been heating up in the Alpha oven, concerning System-level Alpha 21264 emulation in Mac OS X. What really steams things up now is that this RISC Emulation Core, as Apple and Compaq reportedly call it, may be implemented in Mac OS X!

Sources close to the project, code-named Encumbering Load, say that the reasons behind this purported emulation are many, and surprising ones at that!

Remember the good ol' days of System 7, with almost no native code in the OS for Power Macs and constant crashing? The REC, when implemented in Mac OS X (or in Mac OS 8.1 thru Mac OS 9, via shared libraries and a runtime environment) will bring back many attributes from the OS of Apple's heyday! Overall System instability, inexplicable hangs and mysterious Type 11 errors will all be brought back via the REC! “We're sure the customers will appreciate the nostalgia,” commented Migraine Hashish, co-director of marketing campaigns for product returns of Apple Arabia, the 27th largest Apple Computer, Inc. branch in the world.

Other reasons for the Alpha emulation remain shrouded in mystery. One haunting suggestion came from a source we have just now started correspondence with. Now that Compaq owns DEC, maker of the Alpha line of chips, and Intel has a large stake in DEC as well, this project very well could be the source of earlier, unsubstantiated rumors of Rhapsody for Merced. Why? Here's unedited email from our source:

Of course, it all makes a ton of sense when you put it all together. Apple, Intel, Compaq, DEC, AMD and Motorola are all pitching in together to do the one thing no one thought possible: Actively port an operating system to the vaporous Merced (P7) chip!

You see, the extreme power of the Alpha is the only thing that could possibly do what it takes to do that OS porting: run the Merced Emulation Environment (MEE) in an OS before the Merced even exists! Of course, this puts Hewlett Packard out in the cold, and stuck with their shitty HP-RISC architecture.

Aug 12, 1998

QuickTime Rumors Heating Up

Several Mac OS and Windows 98/NT developers have been seeded with QuickTime 4.0a1c24, and have reported excellent stability, as well as some startling news and shocking refinements!

This tidbit comes to us from a reliable Apple Developer source, who states that a major change he noticed in QuickTime 4.0a1 was support for SmallTalk and Perl:

As I was installing QuickTime beta 6 today, I noticed several new modules in addition to those installed in the previous betas: the QuickTime for SmallTalk 1.0a2, QuickTime for Perl 1.0a4, and QuickTime for Visual Basic 1.0.2a1 modules!

This is an excellent boon for the scripting community! Imagine, being able to play entire streaming movies through a CGI with Perl and QuickTime 4! I can already see the porn-vendors on the web taking advantage of this!

As a matter of fact, we have a source who uses QuickTime 4's streaming capabilities with the heretofore rumored IBM QuickTime servers:

Here at [redacted], we not only participate in the Apple developer's program but IBM's as well! Because of this, I can confirm that reports of IBM hosting streaming QuickTime servers are true. In fact, [redacted] is utilizing one right now. Check it out: AIX 4.3.1 on a quad-500 MHz POWER3 motherboard, 2 GB RAM and 500 GB of Ultra-SCSI 2 hard drives! And let me tell you, our porn flies faster off this server than [redacted]! Thank goodness for QuickTime 4! It's a porn-monger's dream-c[ome]-true!

It seems like QuickTime 4 will be making a bigger splash than perviously expected!

Aug 1, 1998

Microsoft to Resurrect Xenix

A slow but steady trickle of rumors have seeped into our inboxes as of late, concerning a startling move by Microsoft many of our sources see as The Next Big Threat.

According to many of our sources, in the recent months, Microsoft has been rewriting the source code to their own flavor of UNIX, called Xenix. Their goal is to finally release a new version optimized for the Pentium, MMX Pentium, Pentium Pro and Pentium II processors. Sources also say that, thanks to ActiveX knowledge, MS will compile support for ActiveX and JScript right into the kernel!

If this is true, Linux is in big trouble. This move is reminiscent of the full 180 MS pulled after they realized they couldn't control the Internet: any move necessary will be made in order to dominate anyway; resistance if futile, you will be assimilated.

Jul 17, 1998

Mac OS 8.5 & Hotline?

Sources close to Cupertino, California had this to say about Internet bundling in Mac OS 8.5, due this Fall and currently in alpha:

Well, it appears that Hotline has made a big coup in the race to be king of the Internet hill! Apparently, several reps from Hotline sauntered into Jobs's office and made a very out-and-out presentation on Hotline and its benefits. They threatened to begin encouraging the pirating of pre-release and retail versions of the Mac OS that Hotline servers are so famous for. Apparently, Jobs took the bait and we now have a new default Internet application installed under Mac OS 8.5. Take that, Microsoft and Netscape!"

Update: Since the publishing of this story, numerous contacts from One Infinite Loop in Cupertino have written in to tell us that it looks like the default tracker the Hotline Client will use in Mac OS 8.5 will most likely be ml.sextracked.org.

Stay tuned!

May 15, 1998

Stunning Emulation Feat

Mark Wankoffski, a programmer for Real Time Intrusions, Inc., had this to share in our never-ending quest of wasting time with emulators:

You guys'll shit after you read this! The other day we received our new 300MHz G3 Mini-tower, and I decided it was time to put it through its paces. Take a deep breath and read this.

Base system was Mac OS, then RealPC with Windows, then Fusion, then Virtual PC with OS/2 Warp, then UAE, then Linux for PalmOS for Amiga, then DosEmu for Linux, then DOS-MAMEr33, then vMac for 68000 on MAME, then the R4300i emulator (the core of the Nintendo 64) with IRIX, then vMac again on top of IRIX, with vMac on top of vMac, running Virtual PC hacked (by me) to run on 68K, with BeOS for Intel running Sheepshaver on top of that, and, finally, vMac again in Sheepshaver for BeOS! Whew!

Well, it's clear that the G3 is one tough cookie. Who'da thunk you could have 15 layers of emulation? Maybe this knowledge will prod Apple into releasing Gus, the Apple // emulator, for OS X, or supporting the Apple // API.