On this page, I’ve tried to focus on quality over quantity when it comes to posts, but it seems that if I don’t write something on a regular basis some so-called friends take this task inexpertly upon themselves (see the comments on the previous post), a turn of events that others have lamented.
To help quell all this turmoil in your lives I’d now like to declaim that the best thing to come out of the UK since the Mini is not Margaret Thatcher, the Millenium Dome or Anthony Kenny, but the gorgeous new iMac. Yes, it was improbably designed by a Brit, interviewed here in the Independent. Read carefully and you’ll find out how the iMac grew out of letting every part be true to itself. It almost makes the iMac a metaphor for Britain, where every eccentric is allowed to be true to him/herself. Clever and quirky, meritocritous and often the underdog, brilliant but perhaps too caring for detail–Britain and the iMac are one and the same. Go ahead and switch from der Vindows XP, ja. Oops, I mentioned the war.
[Tue, Jan 15 2002 – 10:01] Felix (www) (email) MERITOCRITOUS??????
[Tue, Jan 15 2002 – 10:05] Felix (www) (email) Cretinous, more like, anybody who would dare print such a word.
And as for the whole “form follows function” bollocks — it makes for good rhetoric, but I fail to see how the iMac, old or new, is exactly the platonic ideal of the PC. If it were, then surely Apple would make its G4s the same way. But they don’t, because what the iMac lacks is versatility and expandability. Try ordering one with a Zip drive, for example.
[Tue, Jan 15 2002 – 14:00] Felix (www) (email) By the way, Slate reports today that Michael (Lord) Young, who invented meritocracy and the concept of a meritocratic (NOT meritocritous) society, has died. Of course, most people nowadays use the word approvingly and unironically, as you do: Young was always opposed to the concept of a meritocracy, for very good reasons.
[Tue, Jan 15 2002 – 17:50] Matthew (email) but more importantly, which is stefan more like? gimp, grinch or gollum?
[Tue, Jan 15 2002 – 20:48] Felix (www) (email) Golem, I think.
[Wed, Jan 16 2002 – 03:23] Uppers (email) I was reading the iMac was supposed to be a “New Media Portal” for things Apple will begin to make like walkmans like the iPod, and an upcoming digital video camera — hopefully they’ll call it an “iEye”. You plug them in and edit music, film etc in your desklamp. Eventually they’ll get out of the computer business altogether, and into making prettily designed i-doodads. i can’t wait for the iBog, for instance. They’ll be just like that danish company, Bang and Olofson, you know the one who makes pretty TVs and stereos that everyone says are oh so well put together, but cost an arm and a leg.