TidBITS : IDE Conspiracy

01 Aug 1994 | Print

IDE Conspiracy

"Development of cost-saving IDE controllers for the Mac has also been nuked, although the project was far enough along that an IDE Mac can't be ruled out." - MacWEEK, July 19, 1993, p. 118

"The 150 is also the first Apple product available with an IDE internal drive." - MacWEEK, July 18, 1994, p. 81

There is obviously a conspiracy of some sort going on here, and I thought TidBITS readers should be the first to know about it. There is a power struggle going on between IDE and SCSI that goes much deeper than the mainstream press have let on.

                               Month     Date      Year      Page
 First "nuked" report              7       19      1993       118
 Second "available" report         7       18      1994        81

There is obviously a collusion of date and year: 19 + 1993 is 2012, and 18 + 1994 is also 2012.

The product of the month and year of the first report is 13951. 1+3+9+5+1 is 19, the date of the first report.

The product of the page and year of the second report is 161514. 1+6+1+5+1+4 is 18, the date of the second report.

The page of the first report, plus the date of the second report, equals the exact number of years that the Macintosh timestamp will be valid before rolling over (136).

Consider all the dates and pages together: 19 + 18 + 81 is 118. Note that the date and page of the second report are not only reverses of each other, but mirror images as well: 18 and 81.

This number 18 plays a pivotal role. If we take A=1, B=2, etc., the letters "IDE" sum 18. Their product is 180. Clearly 18 is the number that represents IDE.

The product of the letters "POWERPC" is 23846400. The product of "POWERPC" divided by the product of "IDE" is 132480. 1+3+2+4+8+0 is 18. The product of the letters "POWERMAC" is 19375200. The product of "POWERMAC" divided by the product of "IDE" is 107640. 1+0+7+6+4+0 is 18. What does this say about the prospect of IDE drives in RISC Macintoshes? It's evident that the possibility cannot be ignored.

The number 19 figures in as well, as the figure that represents SCSI, but it's more hidden. Computers use binary arithmetic, which is based on powers of two. Consider the number 2^1 + 2^9, which is 513. The product of the letters "SCSI" is 9747. 9747 divided by 513 is 19. By now we should not be surprised to realize that the first report, which denied IDE in favor of SCSI, was released on the 19th, on page number "one eighteen" (1+18=19).

Finally, the creepiest coincidence (?) of them all: the sum of the months, 14, is approximately the number of dollars per unit that Apple will save by using IDE instead of SCSI hard drives.

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IDE Conspiracy

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