All right, folks, enough already!
Back in December I told everyone to Forget the Flat Panel iMac. I
guess that was all the convincing Steve Jobs needed to roll one
out at the Macworld Expo. And I've been getting emails about it ever
since.
It's sorta like the opposite of the time I predicted a PowerBook Cinema with a 1600x1024
display. I nicknamed it the "Dan Knight" PowerBook, because Dan
had always said he'd buy the first PowerBook with
a big enough screen. Sure enough, he bought a TiBook when they first
came out in January 2001. (Okay, it was a lot smaller than the PB
Cinema, but Apple does have to market to the real world.)
Anyhow, back to the flat panel iMac. Ever since January I get a
couple emails a month gloating about my error - along with at
least one or two others wondering about the "truth" behind my other
rumors.
My role as Rumor Monger (my official title, which appears on
my Macworld pass and my business card) is to go beyond the boundaries of real rumor sites.
I sometimes play the contrarian, like when I said there would
never be a flat panel iMac. Everyone knows that sooner or
later LCDs will almost completely replace CRTs.
And sometimes I do a wishful thinking article, like when I predicted
that Apple
would dump Motorola in favor of fast IBM processors or that
Apple would be releasing a 10 GHz
Power Mac G5 at some Macworld Expo in an unspecified year. As
Mac users, we're all frustrated at the way people pay so much attention
to MHz and so little to ease of use.
And sometimes I just write something ridiculous, like when
the Borg decided to sue
Apple over the Cube, Apple's
iWatch PDA, or bemoaning the end of the Mac Web
on the day before April Fool's Day.
So please stop writing to gloat about my errors - they're
usually intentional - or to ask if anything I write has any basis in
reality. As the artwork up top says, these are groundless Mac
rumors and speculation. We do this to help you think about technology
issues and the future of the Macintosh.
If you want to congratulate me on my rumor parodies, I'll be
happy to receive your email.
- Anne Onymus