Ad Terras Per Aspera

This is possibly one of the best commercials I’ve ever seen for a company, Kodak: Winds of Change. Here is the entire dialog:

For more than a century, the Eastman Kodak Company has been part of our lives, our memories, and our future. Continually pioneering technologies that make the process of taking pictures easier, and the results remarkably better; allowing us all to share the precious moments we tresure, the benchmarks of our lives, with those we love. In fact, many of us fondly refer to those special times as Kodak Moments, gets you misty, doesn’t it?

Yup, they sure shovled on the schmaltz pretty thick, didn’t they? But that kind of crap doesn’t work anymore! People want the latest digital things! More power, more features, wireless contraptions! Innovative ways to bring their pictures into the twenty-first century… well guess what, bucko?! Kodak is doing it!

You thought they were just hiding out, waiting for this digital thing to blow over, didn’t you?! Oh sure, for awhile, they were like, ‘Oh, this digital thing will never catch on!’ Hell, twenty years ago they pawned the first digital camera off on Apple!

But now, Kodak is back! They’re taking this digital thing to a level undreamed of! Pioneering technology that will re-define the digital revolution. I know, big talk for the company that unleashed Advantix onto the world, right? Well, turn down your mini-disc players. fire up your Newtons, and listen up! Because they’re not playing grabass anymore!

They’ve got things in their research labs that’ll make biometrics look like a Happy Meal toy! I’m talking facial recognition, GPS-enabled photography so my camera knows where it is! Pictures that learn and group themselves into stories; we’re talking meta-knowledge. Cameras that automatically enhance the color of the grass, because they know its grass! Try and patent that! Ooooh, too late, haha!

And what about sharing, I’ll tell you about sharing! All your friends and family will be emailing their pictures wirelessly to you, and sending pictures of Grandma’s birthday to your phone, and uploading shots of the dog wearing those big stupid sunglasses to your PDA! And they’re going to be everywhere, because now you won’t have to be a Navajo code-breaker to use digital!

And they’re all going to look like freaking Annie Lebowitz shot ‘em, because they’ll automatically adjusts the lighting and the composition for you! No more flash problems, no more red eye! How’s that for advanced! Booyah!

You know what the best part is? They’re going to turn the schmaltz back up to eleven! Ooooh, yes! People will have their Kodak moments again! They’re going to bring back all those damn pictures of the cute puppies and the cuddly kittens and the cooing babies and that doe-eyed kid, you know the one!

They’re bringing them all back, all in the same spot, and its going to be 15 minutes long and James Cameron will direct it, and Celine Dion will sing the theme song while riding along on a unicorn through a field of baby animals under a big blue sky! And there’s not a damned thing you can do to stop it. You were a Kodak moment once, and BY GOD, you will be one again! Only this time, its digital! Hoo-rah!

Even if Kodak fails, this commercial is still total win. Between the two Apple references (including the Newton one), and the poking fun at their own failed Advantix, even if they fail, people will remember this commercial.

So, everyone has noticed the CNET rumor mill bullshitting about Apple ditching IBM for Intel.

You can all stop laughing now; and for those that didn’t get the joke: Apple and IBM are an item. Apple has been using IBM processors since the switch to PowerPC all those years ago, and Apple will continue to be making Macs with PPCs in them until the end of the universe.

However, lets say Apple does get in bed with Intel, we have two choices. (I’m doubting this will happen, but lets humor the idea)

Behind door number one: Apple is secretly working on a new Newton handheld PDA, and wants to use Intel’s half-way decent XScale embedded CPU series, but continuing to use PPC on their desktops, workstations, servers, and laptops.

Behind door number two: Apple is secretly working on reviving Yellow Box (OpenStep for Windows), and wants to produce really cheap Yellow Box+Windows machines, and wants to use Intel x86 on the equivalent of an x86 Mac.

Now, I doubt number two will ever happen. Yellow Box/Windows is a very bad idea, and runs in the opposite direction OSX is going in; however, if Apple were to get their tendrils into Microsoft, Longhorn (often quoted as being Microsoft’s clone of OSX) might actually get released in my lifetime, and actually rock to boot. And if Windows would quit sucking, and inherit Yellow Box functionality, I’d quit hating Windows.

This, however, brings up GNUstep for Windows. If Windows ends up getting an up-to-date version of Yellow Box from Apple, GNUstep for Windows would not be required anymore as we would have OpenStep on Windows provided by the company who bought out NeXT; but it would also become a threat to Yellow Box.

Of course, being able to build OpenStep apps as native Windows ones is not something GNUstep can do, but Yellow Box will be able to do (and will have to do to avoid rejection and failure); this said, I’d even switch to Yellow Box (for building OpenStep apps on Windows) due to its superior integration efforts by the alternate reality Apple (led by Steve Jobs in a beard).

… So, wait, would that mean the alternate reality me runs Windows, because Linux is under a draconian license, and the Overlords Torvald and Stallman are trying to sue Microsoft (the last bastion of freedom in the world) into the ground?