Whedonesque : Comments on 4310 : Someone at Apple Computer Likes Slashdot and Firefly.

Hey, I just saw that too. Pretty cool stuff.

heehee.

Apple are the Independents, no prizes for guessing who the Alliance is.

I heart Apple... I've never had problems with my computer and the fact that they like Firefly is great. Plus, if I do remember correctly Willow had an iBook while Buffy used an iMac during the 7th season... God I'm such a dork for remembering.

Can't forget the colorful iBook on Angel either.

BlindHawkeyes | June 29, 02:42 CET

I've always wondered if there were rights/advertising issues, at certain times, around the use of apple products on Buffy and Angel. There are a number of shows where there are sticky notes over the apple logo on top of the laptops.

herb | June 29, 02:47 CET

Buffy and Angel had a product placement deal with Apple.

Allyson | June 29, 02:53 CET

I don't think this has much to do with product placement reciprocity or anything like that. The manager of the Safari development team is a longtime friend of mine. He is as obsessed (well, almost :-) as I am with Firefly. I sent him email about it. I will have to kick him for not telling me last weekend that he was going to do this!

RBB | June 29, 03:02 CET

No, there's no product placement deal with that, but there was one in place for both series, I was responding to Herb's question about advertising/rights issues.

Allyson | June 29, 03:47 CET

Of course the Scoobies and Team Angel would use Apples. Lives are at stake. Otherwise we'd have gotten at least one instance of Fred plunking away on her PC, only to look up from the Blue Screen of Death at an impatient Angel to say, "Sorry, I almost had the demon horde's location triangulated, but then the hard drive crashed. Give me a few minutes." ;)

Wiseblood | June 29, 05:10 CET

Yeah, cause you never see the bomb system error of death on a Mac. ;) Don't get me wrong, Apple is better than Microsoft, and OS X at least is building on a good foundation (BSD), but I lost my love affair with Macs a long time ago. Any computer that defaults to a _one_ button mouse is just not for me. Fred would be using some kind of Unix variant as any good physics nerd should. :) (I'm pretty sure OS X wasn't out when Fred first showed up, at least.)

Now, iPods on the other hand...

And yeah, the product placement for Apple was fairly obvious in BtVS/AtS. Their marketing is pretty noticeable in a lot of Hollywood stuff. The funniest one though was when Jeff Goldblum infected an alien mothership with a virus from a Mac. Look, Macs are so good, they can create viruses to infect alien technology!

KernelM | June 29, 06:08 CET

I've been a Mac user since art school in 92 and (I hope I'm not tempting fate here) have never seen the bomb. It's an amazing system and unparalelled as far as I can tell. Didn't IBM copy the Mac OS years ago, (Drag and drop, user friendly, etc...) and ditch their complicated "back slash this, back slash that" system?

I pout and sometimes sneer when I have to use my mother's computer at her home, a PC. There's something just so elegant about my beautiful white globular iMac. I luuuurve it.

PC purists will throw things at me I know, but they just don't know what they are missing!

*edited for a mis-spell* HA!

[ edited by Willowy on 2004-06-29 05:03 ]

Willowy | June 29, 07:02 CET

Yes, let's have a Mac/PC debate here, cause you don't see those anywhere else.

Caroline | June 29, 09:18 CET

Sorry, Caroline. I was just joshing around. I'm totally cross-platform compliant (PC at work, Mac at home), so any fun I poke is of the good-natured variety.

Actually, as much as I love Macs, why wouldn't the writers have Fred using a PC if she's a hardcore science geek? Most techy types I've ever known enjoy all that crazy code. (Meaning those who will spend a sunny Saturday wiping their machine's hard drive and doing a fresh reinstall, for fun. 'Fun' may involve some cussing, but they insist it's all part of the process.) I agree she would have had some kind of Unix/Linux setup, KernelM, for the stability. She was very anti-kaplooey, as I recall.

Does anyone know if either of the shows' writers used Macs at work?

Wiseblood | June 29, 10:39 CET

I agree, KernelM -- Gnu/Linux, Unix, BSD is the most logical thing for Fred to use.

And hey, since OS X runs on a BSD kernel, we're all set, aren't we?

Honestly, any scientist probably needs one or more of each major platform around.

chickenbird | June 29, 11:15 CET

OK, Wiseblood. I work with both too. We're the sensible/practical users. ;-)

Caroline | June 29, 13:22 CET

KernelM: The Mac OS X Kernel is called XNU. It derives from Carnegie Mellon University's Mach and incorporates a lot of FreeBSD stuff. Also includes code and concepts from MkLinux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and others. The userland is mostly FreeBSD AFAICT. All this together forms the Darwin system which is even available for x86 compatible PCs.

Macs don't default to one button mouses, in fact all USB mice with how many button soever are supported when plugged in. I use a Logitech Mini Wheel Mouse and didn't have to install drivers to use the wheel or the right click. (Macs did have the right click for years, with one button you just had to use the CTRL button to get the second button functions) Even the middle click works for pasting in xwindow. (Which comes included woth Mac OS X of course)

My mother used to have a PC and never learned to distinguish between the buttons. That was why Apple stripped the 2nd and 3rd button from the Xerox mouse when they created the LISA, to not confuse people. Of course my mother is a Mac user too by now.

As to Fred using a UNIX variant: Yes she sure would have. Mac OS X10.0
(Cheetah) was released on March 24, 2001 and Fred made her first appearance on May 1, 2001. Although I guess they had no computers in Plrtz Glrb at all.

Wiseblood: As Mac OS X is a full fledged UNIX with a lot cool stuff added I'm pretty sure she would use it. Many science type guys and girls in fact use it. In physics, biotech and all the other stuff I don't have the slightest clue of you see Macs all the time.

http://www.geospiza.com/

http://www.chemcomp.com/

http://www.wolfram.com/

Most Linux or BSD apps compile just fine.

Further reading recommended:

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/

Udo Schmitz | June 29, 17:50 CET

Ok, I'm stupid. What exactly am I supposed to be seeing in this image that pertains to Firefly besides the headline?

brother_grady | June 29, 18:19 CET

Does anyone know if either of the shows' writers used Macs at work?

I never noticed. I know Tim uses one at home, Fury uses a PC. And since Fury is clearly evil, I mean, c'mon, do the math.

I think the deal with Apple precluded them from using PCs, but I think i noticed Fred using a PC in season five at some point. I could totally be smoking crack on that.

Allyson | June 29, 18:28 CET

IIRC Joss had a Mac. When having problems with AOL I guess he was convinced that he should get a PC. (Not that the AOL problem was in any way Mac-specific, but you know: PC-users = evil)
As everybody these days works as an extra on the Serenity set maybe one of you could ask him ...
Edit to add:
Allyson: If they had a deal with Apple than why did they put those stupid Post-Its over the Apple-signs in some eps?

[ edited by PowerToThePeople on 2004-06-29 16:38 ]

Udo Schmitz | June 29, 18:36 CET

Allyson: If they had a deal with Apple than why did they put those stupid Post-Its over the Apple-signs in some eps?

I never asked about the specifics. It was sort of a passing comment, "hey, cool iMac." "yeah, we have a deal with apple."

Allyson | June 29, 18:47 CET

brother_grady. Me too. The only thing I can see is the text "Official Firefly Movie Web" in the graphic at the top of the page.

redfern | June 29, 19:29 CET

PowertothePeople, thanks for the info. Being nowhere near as 'puter savvy, my head feels all 'splodey now. Good to learn a bit more about OS X -- I have a four-year-old G4 and just upgraded to 9.2 a while back. I've been a little hesitant to change since I heard the architecture is totally different, but I should know better than to worry. Macs only seem to improve with each upgrade.

I can easily imagine Fury using a PC, Allyson. Joss, though, is a little shocking for some reason. He just seems like the Apple type. But if there's room for them both on the evil continuum in the grand scheme of things, I guess it makes some kind of sense. Or maybe they just got hold of that crack you were talking about? ;)

Wiseblood | June 29, 22:24 CET

Wiseblood: You totally have to get Mac OS X. You can import your mail and bookmarks and use everything like before. You can install Mac OS X over Mac OS 9 and either use the latter in the "Classic" environment or reboot your Mac to Mac OS 9 every now and then if needed (like for games or multimedia CDs that were not ported to Mac OS X). If you want to do more with it than writing letters or email or surf the net you should get at least 512 MB RAM total.
Edit to add: You still can ignore all the complicated Unix stuff and use your Mac for what you did before. It still shines in editing movies or photoshopping :)

Uhm... to get back at least a little bit on topic: We all knew Joss was evil.

[ edited by PowerToThePeople on 2004-06-29 21:43 ]

Udo Schmitz | June 29, 23:38 CET

Wiseblood,

get Mac OS X! It is extraordinary. I had no difficulty switching from OS 9 and now OS 9 seems antiquated and much less powerful. OS X is extraordinarily stable. No wonder PC Magazine recently chose Panther as best operating system out there. Oh, and X works for geeks who want to program their little hearts out.

I guess I may be a little biased here. I've been a staunch Mac user since 1984. I'm very Windows-able, but I just don't like to use it.

Whoops, Caroline, seems this discussion just won't stop. It's kind of like those SMG Bad? discussions.

[ edited by phlebotinin on 2004-06-29 22:30 ]

phlebotinin | June 30, 00:28 CET

Come on, we all know Tim is the evilest of them all. The Tim Reaper? Doyle Destroyer? Merle Murderer? Darla Duster? Er, I'll stop now. :-P

I just wanted to point out to people that it's not a two choice market of Apple/Microsoft. PC != Windows. Heck, I'm pretty sure Linux already has a larger market share among desktop users than MacOS. I personally prefer the overall flexibility of PCs over Macs, but that's just me.

KernelM | June 30, 00:47 CET

I was serious about not getting the Firefly reference. I gotta go home now from work -- somebody please help a brother out.

brother_grady | June 30, 01:04 CET

The context for why I posted about this in the first place was because Steve Jobs did his keynote address at the Worldwide Developers Conference yesterday and unveiled the next version of Mac OS X called "Tiger."

And when I checked the Apple website to find out more about Tiger, I got a chuckle out of the fact that the Safari webpage screenshot displayed a Slashdot article talking about the Firefly official movie website. That's all.

I certainly didn't expect such a spirited discussion about Macs, etc. though! :)

[ edited by Oddjob on 2004-06-29 23:20 ]

Oddjob | June 30, 01:19 CET

Appreciate the feedback, all. As long as I won't lose all my 9.2-dependent apps, it sounds like OS X is a no-brainer. Hmmm...

And Oddjob, you expected an unspirited discussion? ;) If Whedonesqers have one thing in common, it's our uncommon passion for whatever topic is at hand.

And speaking of topics (since I'm often guilty of riding those tangential trains of thought well past the last station), I'm not surprised FF is turning up everywhere these days. We Browncoats are legion.

Wiseblood | June 30, 02:20 CET

As an ANGEL connection, Andy Hallett's Web site links page says:

"I'm a big Mac user. Check out what they have to offer."
and links to Apple.com.

Whedonage | June 30, 07:24 CET

Wiseblood: No you won't "loose" the old apps. If they are not too old. But than they wouldn't run on 9.2.2 either. But to get the most of Mac OS X it sure is better to upgrade. Maybe some Mac user can borrow you a copy of the system to test drive it?

Udo Schmitz | June 30, 13:42 CET

June 28 2004