Salon.com > Chris Allbritton

A look at the iBook

Fri, 23 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

It was only a year ago that the great Apple debate focused on the iMac: Could the five fruity flavors really restore Apple's health?

The answer has been a resounding yes, with Apple selling nearly 2 million iMacs and inspiring a raft of fluorescent-hued computer peripherals and iMac copycats since the candy-colored boxes were introduced last August. As a result, the Cupertino house that Jobs built nailed its seventh consecutive quarterly profit last week -- on the heels of six quarters of painful losses.

It's only natural then, that the debate would shift this week to the iBook, the new round-edged portable with wireless capabilities, that some say resembles a two-tone toilet seat. Will the clamshell computers, due out in September, be the next insanely great thing -- proof that Apple's here to stay? Or will those bright blueberry and tangerine machines, designed with students in mind, be relegated to the back of the class with the eMate?

The magician of Macworld

Wed, 21 Jul 1999 10:00:00 +0000

No wires. Nothin' but Net.

That's not Apple's slogan for its new wireless iBook, but it should be. During his Macworld keynote on Wednesday, interim CEO Steve Jobs -- the iCEO -- picked up one of the new eye-catching notebooks and passed it through a hoop as he browsed the Apple site.

The symbolism should be lost on no one.

It seems there's no business but show business, and Jobs knows how to play it; he doesn't just milk the crowd for hoots, but for customer dollars and loyalty. To drive home his show-biz savvy, Jobs had Noah Wyle, who played Jobs in the TNT movie, "Pirates of Silicon Valley," introduce him. (It seems the rumors of Jobs' dislike of Wyle's portrayal are false. And seeing the two together only highlighted Wyle's knack for nailing Jobs' mannerisms.)

To further cement Apple's ties to the entertainment industry, Jobs showed off QuickTime TV to the thousands of Mac fanatics gathered in New York. He also worked in several plugs for Disney, which distributes films produced by his computer animation company, Pixar.

AOL's crash chat: You've got grief!

Fri, 04 Jun 1999 16:00:00 +0000

If America Online's sign-in message following Wednesday's crash of the American Airlines flight that killed nine and injured more than 80 in Little Rock, Ark., was supposed to provide comfort, it didn't: "CHAT NOW: React to today's fatal jet crash in Arkansas." The greeting was more a command than an invitation.

Within the chat room, in between snippets of gossip about Britney Spears and some random ugly comments, most people struggled to, well, react. "Isn't it awful what happened in Arkansas?" wrote one AOLer. "Soooooooo saddddddd," responded another. Mostly, though, members discussed the number of dead and other unrelated stuff. It was not an impromptu grief session.

"It seems we are more interested in gossip and entertainment than concern for those on board," said a chatter who goes by the screen name DMiddag, adding that chat rooms that pop up following tragedies give people a false sense of connection. "And why do they want to be connected?" he asked. "It is just the rubbernecking."

But it could be profitable rubbernecking for AOL. Chatting is the company's most popular feature -- and all chat rooms are adorned with rotating ads.