The Man Who Waited Too Much

This is my latest submission to MetroExpress, the newsletter of the local Mac user group MetroMac. The editor likes it and most likely it will be published in the November/December 2005 issue.

My first reaction to the announcement of the new iMac was, "Dang, I paid the same price only a few years ago for an iMac without iSignt, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc." Then I realized with technology, if one keeps waiting for the next best thing, one may become too old before long. That's how I come up with this cartoon.

I did some research on the history of Mac OS and the various technologies and features introduced by each version. Each sentence that the old man said laden with techie mumbo-jumbo refers to a release of the Mac OS.

I originally thought to make the announcer/show host say, "Happy with OS 6.0.8, so continues he wait," just for the sake of having two rhyming sentences. Along that line, the OS versions as mentioned by the old man proceeded in the order of 7, 8, 9, and X. In the end, I didn't want to make it sound like the old man was happy to be stuck at an OS version. That would defeat the point of the cartoon - which is that the man wants to upgrade, but he wants something more.

Interestingly enough, so as not to rely entirely on the Internet for my fact checking, I pulled out an old Mac OS 8 Bible book. I think that was the only time I actually used the book to look up info. I bought it back when OS 8 was the current operating system on the Mac but never actually read through it. So much for how useful paper books are.

I know it's probably grammatically incorrect to say "waited too much", but it goes nicely with Alfred Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much", so I intentionally use bad grammar for a pun's sake.