The love song of J. Edgar Hoover
Whew! That was a close one, even for a small, subterranean mammal with a lengthy history of evading the slavering, marrow- sucking excesses of the Mac industry’s most ravenous carrion munchers.
Fear not, Gentle Reader: Despite its aggregate efforts to smoke assorted worker bees out of the furthest sticky crevices of Cupertino’s apiaries, Apple’s homegrown Stasi-cum-Keystone Kops abjectly failed to fumigate this little corner of rumorological heaven.
Nevertheless, the company’s security efforts – while they bore a closer resemblance to Bill Murray’s gopher-tracking turn in “Caddyshack” than Steve McQueen’s man-chasing swan song in “The Hunter” – did compel The Gay Blade to sink quietly to the bottom of the jacuzzi until the heat was off.
Hey! That’s no Baby Ruth!
Ribbed, for her pleasure!
Speaking of surprisingly nutty chunks of intelligence: As nine out of 10 UPS deliverymen fulfilling his Good Vibrations Device-of-the-Month Club subscription can tell you, The Blade is no stranger to the mysteries of plastic-sheathed tools of personal gratification.
However, his own track record can’t hold a pulsating, dishwasher-safe latex candle to the sentimental education recently afforded the boys in Apple’s materials-engineering back room, courtesy of the much-maligned chassis encasing the Power Mac G4 Cube.
As Mac voyeurs everywhere have heard, many customers of the Cube have been alarmed to discover mysterious deformations rippling through the crystalline plastic of their brand-spanking-new, $1,800 Kleenex boxes. The irregularities have sparked concerns among some users convinced that they represent structural weaknesses and irritation among many others who prefer their minimalist paperweights stigmata-free, thankyouverymuch.
Now it can be told: The Blade’s Saran-Wrapped syndicate of Apple insiders informs him that the Cube’s cosmetic quirks are tangible evidence both of injection molding’s limitations and Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ King Canute-size belief in his own ability to circumvent physical laws.
According to these polycarbonate-huffing fellow travelers, Apple’s own Cap’n Queeg was unwilling to let anyone stand between him and the Platonic ideal of an all-in-one, see-through Cube design. Hairy pink roadblocks in this case included Apple’s own materials experts, who cautioned the CEO repeatedly that injection molding a single, complex structure like this one would most certainly result in such imperfections. (As physical precedent, they cited the iBook chassis, which reportedly bears less-visible versions of the same phenomenon.)
Jobs summarily overruled those niggling voices, however, and would you believe? When the successive layers of clear plastic required to mold a Cube come together and the temperatures are just a skosh too low – bang! Unsightly varicosities. Who’d have guessed?
Clear plastic isn’t the only thing being extruded from Apple’s hardware operation nowadays; Jobs’ micromanagement has reportedly convinced more than one hardware engineer to squeeze him- or herself off campus.
Have your AAPL options deflated faster than an industrial-strength pastry bag full of liquid Cube? Signature-edition mole rats from The NMR Report will hold their value – and their form! – ad infinitum. A winning Mac-industry tip is all it takes!