Prophecy can, at times, take strange forms. I awoke this morning to the curious revelation that my life’s twists and turns, which have deposited me here in Maine, now at the tender age of fifty, may have indeed been foretold by a popular Saturday morning cartoon.

OK. I know it sounds like I’m an early-morning “west of the Rockies” caller from Area 51, but hear (or read) me out. In my youth, one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons was “The Bullwinkle Show”. Bullwinkle was, of course, a moose. The moose is the state mammal of Maine (although I am skeptical that any actually exist in Maine outside of the Maine Wildlife Park, as I have never seen one in the wild). I am a member of MMOOS, the Maine Macintosh Owners and Operators Society. See, there’s definitely a pattern here.

My other favorite childhood cartoon was “Beany and Cecil”. Like Bullwinkle, Beany and Cecil was “highbrow” kids humor. In one episode the kid-with-a-beenie and his sidekick sea serpent traveled to the South Pacific, to an island called the “No Bikini Atoll”. This has nothing to do with my subject for this week – I just enjoy the play on words. But, I digress.

Back to The Bullwinkle Show. One of the segments on the show was entitled “Peabody’s Improbable History”. In a twist on the “boy and his dog” theme, a dog (and brilliant scientist), Mr. Peabody, adopts a naïve but bright young lad named Sherman to be his assistant. Mr. Peabody invented a time machine, called a WABAC (pronounced “wayback”, and a play on early computer brand names like “UNIVAC”) machine. Each week, Mr. Peabody and Sherman would step into the WayBack machine and visit an important historical figure, like William Shakespeare or Ben Franklin.

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the introduction of Apple’s 20th Anniversary Macintosh, a computer that was both revolutionary and prophetic.

Let’s hop in the WayBack machine and travel back to 1997. In 1997, personal computers were housed in very generic beige boxes and towers and attached to bulky CRT displays. In stark contrast, the 20th Anniversary Macintosh (dubbed “Spartacus” internally at Apple) was a stylish, dark silver, slim (four inches thick) all-in-one computer. It sported an LCD display, vertically-oriented CD player, TV and FM radio tuner, an S-video input, keyboard with leather wrist-rest and trackpad, and a sophisticated custom Bose speaker system with sub-woofer.

Inside, the 20th Anniversary Macintosh contained a motherboard similar to the PowerMac 5500, with a 250 MHz PowerPC 603e processor and 128 MB of RAM. While it certainly wasn’t the fastest computer on the market at the time, what it lacked in raw power it made up for in refined style.
Its price was commensurate with its lofty design. It retailed for about $7,500. However, for an additional $2,500 an Apple technician in a tuxedo would show up at your house in a limo and set it up for you.

In all, Apple built around 12,000 of them. Slow sales caused Apple to drop prices (and the tuxedos and limos), and Spartacus sold for around $2000 when it was discontinued in March of 1998.

What made the 20th Anniversary Macintosh “prophetic”? Look at today’s iMac – a stylish, slim (only two inches thick) all-in-one computer. The iMac sports an LCD display and vertically-oriented CD/DVD drive. Although Apple currently eschews built-in TV and radio tuners, many PCs come so equipped. Sophisticated computer speaker systems with sub-woofers adorn many a computer desk.

Well, our time’s up here in 1997. “Twizzle, Twazzle, Twozzle, Tome. Time for this one to come home”.

© 2007 Peter F. Zimowski