On the Feb. 19 “Today Show,” host Matt Lauer interviewed Fred Medill, host and creator of the Streaming Media Web site, FredTV. Medill is a 14 year-old high-school freshman who has managed to interview stars such as Dustin Hoffman, Denzel Washington, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, and even then-President Bill Clinton. During the Today show broadcast, there was a tape segment showing the computer that the freshman uses to create his Web site. An Apple monitor was visible on his desk. (Thanks for this nugget goes to Sandee Cohen, author of the almost-here “Fireworks 4 VQS,” “FreeHand 9 VQS,” “InDesign 1/1.5 VQS,” and co-author of “Real World Adobe Illustrator 9” and “The Non-Designer’s Scan and Print Book.”) And that’s just the first of lots of Mac sightings from the tube.
On the Feb. 19 ESPN “Outdoors, the Backroads” with Ron Schara, it featured an 80-year old outdoors writer from Ely, MN, who is still using a Mac 512 to write his copy, notes Jay Miller.
The Ten network in Australia is airing a new show called “Screamtest” in which contestants have to spend the night at various haunted locations and complete various tasks set for them. The last remaining contestant wins.
“Recently, the contestants were reading puzzles off iBooks,” Ian Wolstenholme said. “The prizes include iBooks, iMovie, and a Titanium PowerBook is included in the grand prize. They also use QuickTime Streaming Media and VR on their Web site.
The Feb. 25 “Today show” featured a long segment on Mel and Patricia Ziegler, founders of Banana Republic, who now have a new Web business, Zoza.com. The story featured many shots of two Cinema Display monitors as well as the optical mouse and keyboard of a Power Mac G4, which was visible in one shot, according to Mac author Sandee Cohen.
Mary Lynn Stratton (a fellow Tennessean of Yours Truly) was watching “20 Years of Outrageous Moments” on MTV Sunday and noticed that, prominently featured on the set, was a Cube and 22-inch Studio Display.
Also on Sunday, Chicago’s NBC-affiliated WMAQ’s morning news show had a feature on the new Titanium PowerBook. The reporter covered the feature set and pointed out how its speed was far greater than even the fastest Wintel notebook (even mentioning that Mhz isn’t the only factor in determining performance), according to Jeff Curto.
“This was done in a sort of ‘present it to the anchor’ format, and the anchor, Art Norman, looked all set to go to Apple.com and plunk down his cash for one,” he said. “His eyes were as big as saucers, and he kept saying, ‘My PC laptop can’t do that!.’ At the end, the reporter said, ‘The Apple PowerBook Titanium is pretty much the state of the art in laptop computers today’.”
While watching the “Rosie O’Donnell Show” this week, Scott Frazier noticed that the host mentioned that she had bought a guest an iBook.
Cable channel Arts & Entertainment aired a “Biography” episode Monday night featuring actress, Drew Barrymore. They had some interior shots of her production company’s offices, in which sat an iMac, said Brucie Rosch.
Although PowerBooks are in almost every episode of “The X-Files,” the Feb. 19 episode featured a scene in a lab with a 22-inch Cinema Display and a Power Mac G4 Cube, as dozens of readers have pointed out.
The latest episode of “Cribs” on MTV (which gives viewers a video tour of famous people’s houses) shows the rapper XZibit with an iMac on his coffee table. In the show spotlighting techno artist Moby an iBook was seen. And his home studio, where he does all his recording, included a Mac-based Pro Tools system, according to Eric Krauss.
Also, on MTV’s “TRL” every afternoon, you can see a Cube and Cinema Display on the set.
And we’ve got a couple of Mac TV sightings from overseas. On Feb. 15th, Apple was the topic of the “wager of death” the on the TV show, “Street Smarts.” The show asked three people on the street which company makes Macintosh computers. One person got the question correct, and said Apple. Two people got the question wrong by saying that Macintosh makes the Macintosh. (Thanks to Ryan Morse for sending this nugget our way.)
The series “Monarch of the Glen,” showing on BBC America, features a black PowerBook, said James Perry.
There have also been plenty of Mac sightings in the movies.
Paul Gettler saw an iMac in the new (and he says, awful) flick, “See Spot Run,” starring David Arquette and a dog.
One of the movie trailers running before “Hannibal” (at least in Toronto) is for a Martin Lawrence-Danny Devito film called “What’s the Worst that Could Happen?” In the trailer there is a very brief shot of a computer monitor with a fancy GUI that appears to be a mock-up of Mac OS X, according to Michael Gemar and Joseph L. Puente.
“The window we see has a grey borderless title bar on top, and two round unlabelled jewel-coloured buttons on the left,” he said. “Since there are only two controls on the title bar, this clearly isn’t really OS X (and most films avoid using shots of real OSes anyway), but it is also clearly inspired by Aqua.”
(If you’ve sent us an item for our Famous People column, please be patient. It will appear, but we’ve been swamped with entries. If you know of a famous person using the Mac, send it to Yours Truly at dsellers@maccentral.com. If you want credit for your “Mac spotting,” be sure to include your full name.)