“What? No ‘Magic Stylus’ for my Newton? Lame.”
- Grant Hutchinson, from Twitter, on the new Magic Trackpad. I’m excited about this, just because the trackpad on MacBook Pros are outstanding. The Magic Trackpad takes the Magic Mouse idea and flattens it, and that leaves all kinds of openings for new input methods on the Mac. We can’t touch our iMac screens yet, but this comes darn close.
Weird – they’re just now reaching two million?
Oh wait. It’s a copy-editing mistake (check the URL).
So to heck with the iPad – you’ve dreamed of someday winning an Apple Newton MessagePad in some random site’s giveaway.
Well, ThinkGeek has heard your plea. They’re giving away an MP100 and a $1,000 shopping spree from now, April 1, until midnight.
I know, I know – it’s probably a joke, right? Especially considering second prize is an iPad. But Think Geek says, “And while the Newton may seem impossibly awesome, we promise it’s true–this contest is NOT a joke.” Who am I to doubt them? Besides the $1,000 grand prize, the bundled Newton is a heckuva money saver.
When you click through to enter, ThinkGeek asks if you want to receive their updates and promotions, so it could be a genius marketing scheme. Just don’t get me wrong: by “scheme” I mean “I’d love to have one.”
And here I had thought of doing something like this as an anniversary prize or something…
[Via Splorp.]
Hilarious. Someone who saw my 1983 Apple.com mockup made the spoof as an actual, working web site.
As of now, the links all say “Coming Soon!” But man, wouldn’t it be cool to work out all the Apple Lisa or BASIC copy for a functioning (albeit fake) retro Apple.com?
What you’re looking at is the high crest of some Mac appreciation wave that is only now breaking.
I posted my Apple.com, circa 1983 picture on June 29 – three days after sharing it on Flickr. Since then, the image has been shared on numerous blogs (including one of my daily reads), and has spread around the world. It’s been an honor to see how this little project took off.
To give you an idea, Newton Poetry typically earns anywhere from 300-700 hits on an average day. For those days that I publish something to Macsurfer, that number can reach into 1,000 or so. But that’s only happened a few times.
Hitting 3,600 hits in a day, however, is unheard of for this blog. It’s madness. And it’s humbling.
The funny thing is, I had a feeling it was coming. Something told me that drafting a snapshot of Apple’s make-believe 1983 web site, something I hadn’t seen anyone tackle before, would be something people could enjoy. But 43,000 views and 30 comments on Flickr (and counting) tells me it reached those Mac fans, like myself, that love the retro kitsch stuff.
Here I thought the first day’s traffic, that little spike you see on the left, was big news. Then things creeped down back to normal, when Cult of Mac wrote about it and – BOOM – off it went. My biggest source of traffic has come from some German web sharing service Swedish blog network that I’ve never heard of. Amazing.
Looking at it almost a month later, there’s some things that I would change about the mockup. For one, someone pointed out that I had the wrong Apple II at the bottom. I’d like to mess with the kerning a bit on the headlines.
Also, some have suggested that I should have used Apple’s old serif font (what would become a modified version of Garamond) for the typeface. But I hate that typeface, and I wanted to keep things simple and more modern. Besides, the picture was thrown together on a Thursday night, the product of an idea and some Google Image searching, and is by no means an accurate representation. It only shows what one could do with Apple’s iconic web site design.
Most of all, my little project has shown the power of the share-able web. After I posted the mockup and Twittered it, the thing spread immediately to blogs and re-Tweets, and started generating unheard-of levels of traffic to this site.
So thanks to everyone who chimed in, shared the picture, and visited this site. I hope some of you will stick around, because I do love me some classic Macintosh, and Newton, and am willing to do more of this kind of thing.
I have a Newton launch day version of Apple.com swimming in my head as I type.
A bit of fun today. It was only a matter of time before someone would parody the “Congrats, It’s a PC” ads by Microsoft.
Apple has already responded in their smug way, but this kind of thing is much better. I mean, not even the homeless guy will buy an HP.
I wonder how Blue Ray compatibility would help Homeless Frank’s cough?
It’s amazing, the referring web sites that come across WordPress’s blog stats plugin.
Take this one: Google April Fool’s search. Someone searched for “coworkers” on the parody search site and found my post from last year about me pranking my coworkers.
The site isn’t officially affiliated with Google. Instead, it was created by Philipp Lenssen, who runs the Google Blogoscoped blog.
April Fool’s Day is like Christmas for me. I celebrate it every year, much to the chagrin of my roommate and coworkers, because I love to pull pranks.
If nothing else, Google April Fool’s search offers unique job opportunities for those willing to…uh…relocate to exotic destinations.
With April Fool’s coming up soon, this is a site I will be visiting often.
