I Rule!

Don’t ask me why I remember this, but I do and look how relevant it is now:

A few years ago, I’m standing somewhere in downtown SF, watching some sort of cultural show in a plaza. I forget where Ms. Lisa Chen is, but I’m looking on with Mr. Randy Mano. We’re conversing easily about this and that when he mentions that there are plans to build a new Mac Store on University in dowtown Palo Alto. He asks me what I thought of that.

This was some time after graduation, and maybe a year before the Mac Store eventually opens. I own a 2nd gen iMac (with a whopping 233Mhz processor and a 4GB hard drive) and the Mac is really the only computer I’ve ever spent serious time working on. Apple’s put out the G5s and maybe the iBook. I dunno if the 1st iPod’s even been built yet.

I tell Randy that it seems like a good fit. High-end boutique store. Lots of disposable income around. Lots of trendy people, young and old, who all wanna have the next cool gadget. And there’re enough creative people in town where they can buy a computer just for the looks. They don’t have the need for an especially practical computer. These folks can get along with a Mac.

We talk about the limits of the Mac OS and how Microsoft runs everything. Software can be tough to find for a Mac, especially some of the more niche applications, and certainly a big chunk of games. He asks something like what I think Apple might do, or how viable I think they might be in the long run (‘member, this is before the iPod). And as I am wont to do, I speak completely out of my ass (which usually leads to some of my best thinking) and I give a response something to the effect of:

If I were Apple, I’d take my cool looking, trendy cases, and stuff ‘em with guts that could run Windows. At that point, the one thing Apple has going for it is it’s Design division, so why not sell computers that would run Windows and look like a Mac? They’d outsell anything Dell or Gateway or HP could put on the market and give Apple a decent share of the home PC market. They could still work on the Mac OS for schools and art designers, but these machines would find their way into a bunch of homes real fast.

Well, as I’m sure most of you have seen:
Apple stock jumps on news that new Macs can run Windows

For the record, at around the same time I also came up with concept of video game consoles that could connect to the internet and update game software. What can I say? I wanted new stadiums and updated player rosters for my version of 989’s NFL Gameday and EA's NHL whatever-the-year-was. That was before the PS2 and Xbox, though those consoles may have been in development at the time.


2 points to be taken from all of this:
1) I'm bloody brilliant and apparently 5 years ahead of my time
2) 3 post in 3 days! How ya like me now??