I don’t wanna be a pinhead no more
May 11, 2001
Forgive The Gay Blade his long radio silence, but April was a cruel month indeed for the denizens of this burrow. This old-school implement has been flying his leathers at half-staff ever since he received word of the passing of Joey Ramone, the true if unsung father of the personal computing revolution.
Forget Jobs, Woz, Jef and Bill: Thanks to the Ramones, Queens, New Yawk, in 1974 was the real birthplace and -date of the do-it-yourself spirit that inspired hands across America to seize the mouse and craft their own PostScript concert flyers and MP3 mosh pits – not to mention HTML-licious hangouts like this one.
Alas, how soon they forget! True, Apple belatedly included atomic boy Iggy Pop in its “Rip. Mix. Burn.” TV spots and obliquely acknowledged its huge debt to the punk movement in naming its new-wave OS after seminal LA rockers X. Amazingly, however, the company has yet to recognize the contributions of Joey, Dee Dee, Johnny and Tommy (let alone Marky or C.J.).
They’re piling in the back seat! They’re generating steam heat! Write Apple and demand this miscarriage of justice be rectified! Hey, ho: Let’s go!
Beat on the brat
And speaking of time-sensitive action items: Even as the punks in the basement are applying the last fortifying drops of airplane glue to Version 2.0 of Mac OS X Server (due to pogo out of the wings on May 21, Day One of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference), their brethren on the client side are breaking out the Carbona for an all-out sprint toward July’s Macworld Expo/New York.
According to the Blade’s rhythm section, the much-rumored rev to Mac OS X – code-named Puma – is speedier than Robert Downey Jr. on a Club Med vacation with some outlaw bikers.
The feature set will freeze on June 1, Sly and Robbie report, and the UI will be set in stone come June 8. The final candidate will sail out of dry dock on July 2, and the worldwide golden master will be declared on July 9, whereupon the entire Apple engineering department will board specially chartered school buses, load up on cheap red wine and Mexican diet pills, and set off for the Jacob K. Javits Center in a rapidly oscillating blaze of glory. Gabba gabba hey!
What better way to kick off a New York Expo than with a Ramones reunion fronted by Dave Winer? Submit set-list suggestions to The NMR Report – a commemorative mole rat could be yours!